People have been talking a lot more about careers lately. Many business and law school admits are comparing school recruiting stats to make final decisions; many current students are wrapping up the interview process now in hopes for their dream opportunities; and the lucky students have already received offers and are making final decisions for the summer. Given the topic is on everyone’s mind, I thought I’d post a few quick articles that discuss the issue.
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Years ago, when organizations were more dependent on hierarchy and tradition, the good leaders were those who made decisions and demanded that employees follow those decisions. But leading today requires something more. It requires something subtler than the command-and-control style that worked in the past. Instead, modern leaders need to focus on the collective interests of their colleagues.
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How bad did law school graduates have it in 2009? This is the question everyone’s been wondering. But now we finally have a little data to shed some light on the situation. The National Law Journal‘s annual Go-To Law School List recently came out with its 2010 rankings of with the highest percentage of law school graduates hired by firms (NLJ 250 law). The bad news is that the No. 1 school sent less than 56% to NLJ 250 law firms (down from 71%). But, for Northwestern, there’s at least a little good news.
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The MBA admissions process has long been considered by some to be a black box. Some define it that way because of its unpredictability. And others for its perceived inconsistency and secrecy. But despite its mysterious reputation, one thing is pretty certain, there usually isn’t a “right” answer or “single” answer to most questions anyhow. Instead admissions teams look at applications holistically. They seek out nuances most of us don’t consider. They interesting analyze trends and patterns. They can spot inconsistencies from a mile away. And they give credibility to the intangible things that many of us might overlook.
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The more admit weekends I’ve been to over the past year, the more I realize how different each school’s culture actually is. Although many students come to town with similar career paths — consulting, banking, finance, marketing — the school culture usually take the lead at these weekends and so the divergent pieces of the programs really stand out. This past weekend, I joined a couple hundred admits at Kellogg’s admit weekend (DAK). And it was definitely an interesting couple of days!
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It’s that time of year, when people from all over the country are hearing back from graduate schools and trying to decide what to do with the next few years of their lives. Many will choose to go to business school and spend two years gaining a wide range of opportunities and learning experiences. Another group of students will choose to go to law school and spend three years reading cases, writing memos, and honing razor-sharp critical thinking skills. And there’s one final group who, in number, is only a tiny fraction of the applicant world. They will decide to spend time doing both.
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Just yesterday I found out that I passed the Statistics waiver exam that I wrote about in a post last week (Click here for post). Most of my JD-MBA classmates also passed, which is good news. Before the exam, I was a little worried given I had never taken stats before, but I put in some good study time the night before, and was able to learn the material pretty quickly.
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Last August, most students came to Northwestern Law ready to study hard, perform well, and make their way to a top tier law firm. But for some, that plan got thrown out of the window a long time ago. By November, before recruiting ever began for 1Ls, the economic environment was the nation’s center of attention. So students began making appointments with advisers. And the career center quickly took charge and did a good job of loudly communicating the message to keep our options open. And in December, students started pumping out applications. To law firms, government agencies and non profits. Both big and small. You name it, somebody sent it. All in hopes of an interview.
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In a recent message from one of my readers, I was asked for a bit of advice about the GMAT. My usual first piece of advice to GMAT questions is to remember, that it’s one part of your application and will almost never “bar” you from admission and that you should be careful aiming for a higher score if it comes at the expense of other pieces of your application. However, unlike most applicants with GMAT questions, this reader has already made it to the promise land and scored above a 700. His concern is that took four attempts and a few bad testing incidents to get there. Check out my response to the question below!
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Diversity has become a bit of a buzzword over the past few years. People use it about as much as business people throw around the word “leadership,” as frequently as admissions teams talk about “fit,” and as habitually as law school professors use the word “reasonable.” But thankfully, many institutions today are taking it more seriously. Chief among those institutions are law firms, especially California law firms according to a recent article I found. Among other things, they are promoting diversity on their websites, starting diversity scholarship programs, increasing target “interview” numbers, and giving diverse employees a seat at the executive table.
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People have been talking a lot more about careers lately. Many business and law school admits are comparing school recruiting stats to make final decisions; many current students are wrapping up the interview process now in hopes for their dream opportunities; and the lucky students have already received offers and are making final decisions for the summer. Given the topic is on everyone’s mind, I thought I’d post a few quick articles that discuss the issue.
