Tag: Poets & Quants

The online business education magazine Poets & Quants highlighted members of Olin’s MBA Class of 2019 in an extended profile of the students and the program published on Saturday.

The piece quoted students such as Ashia Powers, who said her visit to campus during admitted students weekend really sold her on Olin’s program: “The community here is everything, and everyone takes pride in it. They made me feel special, important, and valued.”

The detailed article also took note of application and admission trends that resulted in a group of 2019 MBA prospects with strong academic credentials:

Like many American MBA programs, Olin’s 2016-2017 recruiting cycle could be boiled down to fewer applications but higher caliber students. This year, applications fell off from 1,579 to 1,174 – a near 26% drop. Despite this, the class is actually 17 students larger than its predecessor, with an acceptance rate that jumped 10 points to 40%. Still, the average GMAT score climbed seven points to 694 with the Class of 2019 – a score higher than those produced by new classes at small school gems like Notre Dame Mendoza, Vanderbilt Owen, and Emory Goizueta.

The article featured extended profiles of 14 students. “Everyone who comes to Olin has a name and a story,” Dean Mark Taylor said in the piece. “You are well known by the faculty and supported by an excellent staff.”

Read the full story at Poets & Quants.

In Poets & Quants‘ second-ever ranking of undergraduate business programs, the online business education site ranked Olin Business School #2.

Released on December 5, this year’s ranking saw an influx of institutions participating, growing from 50 schools in the inaugural ranking to 82 schools, which represent the top 16% of accredited undergraduate business schools in the United States. The ranking includes schools with highly demanding academics—both public and private universities with two- and four-year business programs. Olin was ranked #1 in the 2016 ranking.

“We are very proud to be at the top of Poets & Quants’ undergraduate rankings for the second year in a row. It’s a testament to Olin’s academic excellence and student satisfaction, particularly in a much larger field of top business schools,” said Dean Mark Taylor.

Three key area were considered equally: admission standards, the quality of the academic experience, and employment outcomes. Olin scored in the top ten in all three categories. In fact, in employment outcomes, Olin jumped 6 spots to the #5 position.

• Admissions standards measured average SAT scores, acceptance rates, and the percentage of incoming students who were in the top 10% of their high school classes.
• Student experience measured alumni responses to four questions:
  • 1) Was their degree worth its cost in time and tuition?
  • 2) Did the school’s extracurricular offerings nurture their growth as people and business experts?
  • 3) Were faculty available for mentoring and meetings outside of class?
  • 4) Were alumni approachable and helpful?
• Employment outcomes weighed the percentage of students with internships prior to senior year, the percentage with jobs three months after graduation, and the average salary and bonus of a graduate.

Click here to see Poets & Quants‘ complete survey, methodology, and school profiles.

Poets & Quants Editor John Byrne recently visited Washington University to learn more about Olin’s program offerings, meet with students, and talk one-on-one with Dean Mark Taylor about the school’s upcoming “strategic refresh.”

According to Byrne’s just-published interview with Dean Taylor, the pair’s discussion covered a lot of ground: the potential for a one-year MBA, the future of online learning at Olin, taking leadership inspiration from Shakespeare’s Henry V, and Dean Taylor’s love of all things St. Louis (he tells Byrne that St. Louis “feels to me like one of the world’s great cities”).

Check out some of the highlights from the interview below, and stay up-to-date on Olin’s latest happenings by following Olin and Dean Taylor on Twitter.

Considering a one-year, accelerated full-time MBA program

“I think there is an opportunity for thinking about flexibility in the MBA program. The MBA has to shift in terms of what it offers. If you look at the trend of returns to MBAs, they have been declining while the costs have been increasing. People are thinking hard about the value proposition of a traditional MBA.

“One way of thinking about MBA candidates and students is as career accelerators and career changers. Some students know exactly what career they want to be in, and they are already in it. They really want to accelerate their career, get the human capital that an MBA imparts, perhaps increase their network of contacts, and do the MBA as fast as possible. Career changers would rather take a couple of years to perhaps do one or more internships and really ponder which way they want to take their career. We have to cater to both of those audiences here.”

Olin’s close-knit community 

“Olin Business School offers world-class instruction, faculty that is second to none in the world and who are very approachable. There is an intimacy in the classroom between faculty and students that would be hard to find elsewhere in top schools. Everyone who comes to Olin has a name and a story. You are well known by the faculty and supported by an excellent staff. That is one aspect of Olin that marks us out from our competitor schools.”

Olin’s first century in business

“We were one of the first business schools to be launched in the U.S. 100 years ago. We have grown from a small class of 20 or so to one of the great business schools in the world, with extensions in Mumbai and Shanghai as well as in Washington, D.C., through the Brookings Institution. We are a full-service school with a top-ranked undergraduate program, a leading MBA program, and a range of master’s programs, executive education, and a thriving doctoral program as well.”

Interdisciplinary influences on business education

“Literature really tells us a lot about human nature and the human condition. Thinking about those issues is a very important part of humanity and being an effective business leader. The performing arts are very important, particularly in a business school education. Being able to project, persuade, and get one’s views across is in one sense a part of drama.”

What Olin looks for in students 

“We are looking for individuals who are excellent and who want to pursue excellence. We are looking for people who have a strong values system and want to have a global outlook. Our vision is global and our thinking is entrepreneurial. The environment here is a very supportive one. I wouldn’t want to be up against any of our graduates in the marketplace, but I certainly would want to be one of their colleagues.”

Read the full interview on Poets & Quants.

Staci Thomas exudes enthusiasm and positive energy and it’s clear that students respond to her teaching tactics in her classroom where they practice the art of communication. Thomas, a lecturer in Management Communication at Olin was named one of 40 Top Undergraduate Professors by the Poets & Quants website this month.

Thomas received the Reid Teaching Award from the Class of 2017 and has been teaching at Olin since 2014 and at WashU since 2010.

Participants in the 2017 Washington University in St. Louis Olin Fleischer Scholars Program, a week-long residential summer program for for high school students geared toward underrepresented and first-generation college student populations, gathered at Bauer Hall on the Danforth Campus in St. Louis Wednesday, July 26, 2017. Staci Thomas, lecturer in Management Communications at Olin Business School, leads a workshop on resumes. Photo by Sid Hastings / WUSTL Photos

Thomas uses the flipped classroom approach in her classes. Students watch lectures on line and when they get to class, they are on their feet, practicing speaking, presentation, and other communication skills.

“She has done an incredible job ensuring that the electronic content is robust and that when in class students are applying the knowledge they have gained,” Steve Malter told Poets & Quants. Malter is Olin’s senior associate dean of undergraduate programs.

“There’s a pretty clear difference between lecturing and teaching,” Thomas explained to Poets & Quants. “We need to stop “dumping information” and placing the onus of responsibility on the students to absorb it. Today’s student grew up in sound-bites, vivid imagery and ever-changing pop-culture references. Long lectures and static images are no longer effective. We need to create new ways of teaching that work for the student, not just for the professor.”

Thomas answers a series of questions on the P&Q site. And the last question says a lot about her dedication and enthusiasm for teaching, “If, in 10 years, I could look back on 10 years’ worth of successful, satisfied former students, I’d call that a success.” Link to P&Q interview.

Poets & Quants features Olin alumna Cambrie Nelson, as one of its “2017 MBAs To Watch.” When asked what made Nelson an invaluable addition to the class of 2017, Joe Fox, former associate dean for graduate programs, compared her arrival on campus to that of a hurricane, “Cambrie Nelson is a force of nature. Her passion, energy, enthusiasm, leadership and willingness to do whatever it takes to get something done is simply extraordinary and exemplary.”

The teacher-consultant-entrepreneur-turned-MBA student was a fully engaged member of her class as Student Government Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion and an appointed representative to University-Wide Diversity Commission. She was president of the Net Impact Club; a TA for a Management Strategy course; a grad assistant for the Social Entrepreneurship department at WashU’s Brown School; and a member of several CEL practicum teams and projects, just to name a few of her extra-curricular activities.

Nelson sums up herself best with this description:

“I am a boldly-curious, collective-minded, empathically-activated, story-architect, catalyzed towards authoring the world that embraces the intersection of business and social justice.”

Here are a few excerpts from P&Q’s Q&A with Cambrie Nelson.

What was your favorite MBA Course and what was the biggest insight you gained about business from it? My favorite MBA Courses were Critical Thinking Processes & Modeling for Effective Decision Making and Competitive Industry Analysis. From these courses, I learned that business is about using both data to guide conclusions, but communication and relationship skills to guide influence.

Why did you choose this business school? I chose Washington University in St. Louis because of its small cohort size, location, curriculum geared toward individualization (with specializations like Social Entrepreneurship), strong academic and research expertise, and its cultural emphasis of building compassionate, collaborative leaders.

What did you enjoy most about business school in general? Beyond getting up each morning to be challenged in a new way, I also appreciate and enjoy that business school is vastly team-oriented. Similar to the world beyond the confines of a school, the need to connect and collaborate to accomplish a task beyond what an individual is capable of is exhilarating and inspiring. Given the diversity of industry background inherent to any business school cohort, often my most influential instructors were my peers who brought their experience and perspective to each assignment we approached.

What was the most surprising thing about business school for you? How intensely it begins and how quickly it ends.

Don’t stop here, link to the full story.

Top photo: Nelson with the CEL Practicum team consulting with The Women’s Bakery in Remera, Rwanda.

Poets & Quants asked top business school deans, “What was your favorite mistake in your career?”  The question solicited thoughtful answers from the deans of Wharton, Kellogg, Emory, and others including Olin’s Mark Taylor.

“I can think of instances, especially early in my career, where I was too emotionally attached to a pet project to admit that it was not performing according to expectations and that I needed to cut bait. The time, effort and imagination that goes in into launching something can easily cloud one’s judgment into thinking, “It can’t possibly fail and turnaround and success are just around the corner.” After this happened a couple of times – and I saw that prevarication only made matters worse – I realised that having projects fail is a normal element of business. In fact, if some projects don’t occasionally fail, it means that, as a leader, you are not taking enough controlled risks. The skill is in having more projects succeed than fail.”
– Mark P. Taylor

Link to Poets & Quants article.