Top Podcasts for MBAs

How I Built This 

How I Built This is a podcast about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Each episode is a narrative journey marked by triumphs, failures, serendipity and insight — told by the founders of some of the world's best known companies and brands. If you've ever built something from nothing, something you really care about — or even just dream about it. (45 min per episode)

• Good for: Entrepreneurs, Tech, VCs, General Managers
• Interesting interviews with CEOs and Founders that help you "see sooner, faster" when reacting to challenges that any entrepreneur will encounter. Episodes are pretty inspiring. If you're an entrepreneurial person with a good idea but who has also been procrastinating, this will light a fire under your butt.
• Very conversational and easy to listen to. Guy Raz is a great interviewer and the subjects are pretty compelling.

NPR News Now

NPR News Now is the latest news in five minutes. Updated hourly. (5 min per episode)

• Good for: everyone. 
• The fastest way to keep up to date on your way to and from class. New episodes are updated hourly (indexed on Washington DC time) and seldom repeat segments wholesale, so it is worth listening to whenever there is an update. Episodes are short so they won't burn your cell phone's data plan.
• An excellent balance of US and world news with a consistently professional narration and neutral tone of voice. Much less prone to hysterics and hyperbole than CNN or Fox.

Revisionist History

Revisionist History is Malcolm Gladwell's journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past—an event, a person, an idea, even a song—and asks whether we got it right the first time. From Panoply Media. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance. (~35 min per episode)

• Good for: consultants, social enterprise, public sector
• Basically, every episode of this podcast is a case study in how to get a good grade in a case-based classroom. You may not always agree with Gladwell's points, but they are always incredibly interesting, consequential, well-researched, and surprising. Gladwell points out how complicated systems such as government work and where they have broken down in surprising ways in the past. This is a great source of inspiration if you are interested in improving the world but are unsure which issues are most pressing.
• If you've read any of his books (or better yet, listened to any of his audiobook readings) you know Gladwell is a master story teller and narrator. These are the kinds of podcasts you enjoy alone, like a rich dessert. 

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio is an award-winning weekly podcast with 8 million downloads per month. It can also be heard on public radio stations across the country, on SiriusXM, on several major airlines, and elsewhere. Host Stephen J. Dubner has surprising conversations that explore the riddles of everyday life and the weird wrinkles of human nature — from cheating and crime to parenting and sports. Dubner talks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, social scientists and entrepreneurs — and his Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Dubner Productions and WNYC Studios. (~40 min per episode)

• Good for: Investors, Bankers, Consultants.
• Conversational show that presents contrarian views meant to change your mind. Definitely has a libertarian anti-government lean and has been criticized for letting ideology get in the way or research.
• Generally interesting ideas to bat around with friends. Might even lead to some interesting investing decisions. 

Planet Money

The economy, explained, with stories and surprises. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, "Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy." Now imagine that's actually a fun evening. That's what we're going for at Planet Money.

• Good for: Investors, Entrepreneurs, VCs
• Each episode examines a person or dissects a big idea that had had a profound and previously hidden impact on the economy. Great at helping build an intuition for the cause and effect of business decisions and policy on the overall landscape of the economy.
• Great presenters with a lot of enthusiasm for their ideas. Perfect balance of conversational and informative.

Recode Decode

One of tech's most prominent journalists, Kara Swisher is known for her insightful reporting and straight-shooting style. Listen in as she hosts hard-hitting interviews about the week in tech with influential business leaders and outspoken personalities from media, politics and more.

• Good for: VCs, Tech,
• Kara Swisher interviews the heros of VC, tech and other fields. It's as close as you would otherwise get to a lot of them. However, Swisher is no "gotcha journalist" and often the episodes turn into puff pieces for their subjects. Regardless, it is a front row seat into the mindset of Silicon Valley and the first edition of what leaders there are talking about. 
• An easy podcast to come and go with. Good for listening to when you are doing something else.

How military service prepared me for my MBA

Military members are said to have an advantage in the MBA application process, given how valuable their leadership experience, international exposure, and communications skills are to business education. Some studies estimate that the acceptance rate for military vets is about double that of non-veterans in top MBA programs.

In spite of this however, military members are severely under-indexed in the MBA classroom. Just look at my alma mater, Harvard Business School. More than 180 students in the previous two classes have worked for McKinsey & Company, which boasts 11,000 employees worldwide. The United States Military is more than 10,000% larger, with over 1.3 million active duty personnel, and yet there are about 55% fewer U.S. Veterans than McKinsey Consultants – only about 80 school-wide.

Military Veterans enrich the MBA experience for others, and get a ton of value out of it themselves. Do why don’t more apply?

Some Vets may be reluctant to apply because they feel ill-suited for the rarefied air of an elite MBA classroom. Military service is, after all, a lot more rough and dirty than the office lives of entrepreneurs, financiers, and consultants. Others may feel that they are unprepared for the academic rigors. However, I felt that my military service was excellent preparation for my MBA. In the spirit of this Independence Day, I’d like share some lessons all MBAs can learn from military service.

Integrity beyond reproach

One of my first memories of Officer Candidate School was our Senior Chief brutally punishing the class for failing to immediately fess up to a rule infraction. I remember his strained, veiny neck bellowing that our reputations were everything, and that as officers we would need to exemplify “integrity beyond reproach.”

To get the autonomy necessary to accomplish my mission, I needed my commander to have complete confidence in me to execute, whatever the hardships to be endured. To get my troops to follow my orders, I needed them to trust that my instructions were critical to the mission and already accounted for their well-being.

At business school, I also found myself under the microscope. As an MBA, every day you are interacting closely with the future business leaders of the world, each of whom is going to carry an impression of you based on what they see in and around the classroom. In this environment, you need to carry yourself with the highest integrity, from your academic coursework, to attributing ideas to their originators in discussion group, to prompt and complete Venmo payments after a group dinner. Military officers are used to doing the right thing whether someone is looking for not, which is good because in business school everyone will be.

Quantity has a quality

Sure some militaries have low-quality outdated missiles, but if they launch enough of them at a fighter jet or aircraft carrier, you will quickly realize how quantity has a quality all its own.

The same goes for a lot of business school. A single noisy dorm-room party might not yield the kind of high quality interactions you'd like, but if you’re the kind of person who always shows up, you’ll likely be invited to the more intimate gatherings. An individual networking event may not land you a job, but if you go to every single one hosted by a particular company, it will speak volumes to them about your commitment. Professors look for quality comments, but if you are always ready to jump in, they will appreciate your mental acuity and you will likely be able to ward off any cold-calls on days when you are not as prepared.

Bias for Action

MBA students are notoriously flakey. We talk a big game about organizing a trek or meeting up with an old colleague for brunch, but the fact of the matter is that our time is always double-booked and we’re forced to turn down fun events constantly. Vets are able to overcome these challenges because they are trained to have a bias for action. If someone asks to get brunch, they will know to put a few dates on the calendar to ensure that it happens. If there is a group project to do, Vets know to plan out the meetings, show up on time, and keep the group on track, even if it means leaning on others a little bit to ensure that their work gets done.

Think fast and adapt

Most of the time when I prepare a case before class, I’ll be struck by one or two comments that I think might change the trajectory of the case discussion. Then in class the perfect time for me to share my comment will come and pass before I can get into the conversation. These moments happen to every business school student, but I find that Veterans are better about letting them go, thinking fast, and adapting. Sticking with your original plan and shoehorning that comment into the discussion when called upon later would have disrupted the flow of the conversation and earned you a bad grade as well. Service members are trained to understand that no good plan survives first contact with the enemy, and are ready to adjust accordingly.

How long should I study for the GMAT?

Many people ask how much time they should budget to study for the GMAT. How much time is too little? How much is too much? Is there such a thing as too much?

Yes. Remember: always in moderation.

Turning to the makers of the GMAT is itself informative. According to the official website of the GMAT, the average test taker spends 4 to 6 weeks studying for a total of 21 to 50 hours. Four out of five test takers study for fewer than 10 weeks and 100 hours.

The bottom line is that if you want to apply to schools Round 1 this year, you have plenty of time to study if you start now.

I like to think of the process of studying for tests like the GRE and GMAT as progressing through four major phases:

Phase 1: Test discovery – This is your first practice test, taken cold. You learn what kinds of questions you will get in each section, get a feel for the pacing required to advance through each section, and condition yourself for the marathon experience that is taking the GMAT, in full, in a single sitting. For many, this experience is a wake-up call to prepare. But for you, this should be your first dip into the waters to understand the feel or the stroke, the temperature of the water, and the distance you will need to swim.

Phase 2: Audit of Weaknesses – In this phase you go through each of the different types of questions in each of the sections to understand where you are strong and where you are weak. Once you’ve separated them, you should start by trying to improve your weakest subsection first. To do this, you should employ a mix of authentic practice problems and mental exercises that touch on adjacent skills – for example, speed algebra problems, geometry exercises, and vocabulary flash cards.

Phase 3: Gaining a “Feel” for the Test – Once you cross a certain threshold of studying, you will see how the structure of problems will repeat themselves. Usually most problems have a fast way of solving them, and one or two slow ways of solving them. Once you reach this point, you should be able to recognize how a problem is similar to one you encountered in the past, and apply the “fast” solution that you learn by checking the answer previously.

Phase 4: Test Day – There is a wealth of science on how mental acuity is affected by sleep, diet, exercise, environment, and time of day. In the lead-up to test day, you should work to give yourself an advantage on every one of these dimensions. Why would you not? Normally, you do not want to cover any new study material on test day. Instead, you should just practice by solving a few easy problems of each type with which you are already familiar. This will boost your confidence and set your brain back in that “groove” you got a feel for in Phase 3.

Post-MBA Goals: go for idealistic or realistic?

Very few MBAs actually follow through with the career goals outlined in their admissions essays. Even for those who do, the average tenure in a post-MBA job is less than two years. (So don't sweat nailing that perfect job, or be too sure that you indeed found the "right one")

That said, the "Post-MBA Career Goals" section of the application is a critical part of the overall package. Far from being a "gimme" question in the short answer section, MBA admissions officers scrutinize your post-MBA career goals and evaluate your suitability for their program based on your response.

So what questions MBA admissions officers asking when they examine your post-MBA goals?

1. Are they realistic?

Does this candidate understand which career moves are possible -- through an MBA and this school in particular? Has the candidate done his or her research in advance as to what these jobs entail? If not, it shows a lack of preparation and raises questions as to whether the candidate has the maturity to use their spot in the MBA class to the greatest effect.

2. Is their desired outcome impactful?

It's hard to give an admission slot in short supply to someone who doesn't seem like they will do very much with it. The mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. Therefore its adcom is looking for those with a grand vision. The same is true at many other schools. On a practical level, yes, this means changing jobs. But you need to paint a broader picture of the mission you will be serving in the process.

3. Does the applicant's career goals align with their personal narrative?

If not, the adcom may believe that the applicant is not being authentic. In any case, people naturally find those who are consistent about their motivations and interests more compelling. Narrative is something that we do especially well.

4. Do these career goals require an MBA?

Do MBAs from our school recruit for them? If not, it's almost embarassing to tell them to the admissions committee as it shows low commitment and low research on the part of the applicant. Every application needs an argument for why the MBA is the catalyst for your future increased level of impact. If the MBA is a nice-to have, or worse a frivolous educational experience, then you'll only be admitted once the serious candidates have their turn.

What To Do the Year Before You Apply for an MBA

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Say you're someone who knows they want an MBA but are not yet ready to apply. You might be a junior with a year to go before you're eligible for Harvard's 2+2 Program, Stanford's Deferred Enrollment, or Yale's Silver Scholars Program. You may have recently started on a new career and feel that you have not yet built up the work experience or credibility with potential recommenders to be successful in the regular application cycle. Older classmates and colleagues are sending in their applications and you may feel nervous sitting on the sidelines. Should you panic?

No. The only thing you need to do is recognize that the year ahead of you is a golden opportunity, which you can use to dramatically increase your chances of admission.

Even if you already have great GMAT / GRE scores in hand, the year ahead of you is your chance to "sharpen the axe" of your resume before you use it to chop through the MBA application. From navigating your career so that it will be in the best possible position right before Round 1 deadlines, to amping up community involvements that will resonate with your narrative and stand-out to admissions committees, to choosing your ideal recommenders and planning out how you can best shine in front of them, there is a lot you can do. We've thought a lot about this ourselves and have crammed all the best services to help a candidate boost their admissions odds in the year before they apply into a package that we call the Early Bird. Through that package, we seek to accomplish four major goals:

1. Achieve clarity and confidence on your career and personal goals
2. Discover your authentic personal narrative, and which moves you can make to bolster it
3. Determine what your resume needs to say when you apply, and work backwards to achieve it
4. Identify which "portable achievements" are within your grasp, and how to obtain them
5. Obtain the best recommendation letters by determining who in your orbit could be best positioned to write them, and how win them over
6. Get personalized coaching and mentorship over the course of the year.

There are many ways to do that. I've included the game plan we use in the Early Bird below, which also comes with 10% off any future purchases of our already lowest-priced Complete School packages, making it quite the valuable investment.

PHASE I: VISION BUILDING

STEP 1: Vision Exercise

We start with one of the most popular career-visioning exercises at HBS and Stanford GSB. You complete two fun, creative tasks designed to illuminate the hidden themes and dynamic tensions in your personal and professional life. The results of these exercises will help clarify pre-MBA career options worth pursuing and will help us understand how to best advise you.

STEP 2: Introduction & School Selection

We then discuss your background, goals for business school, and career aspirations. We offer our insights on what early careers in each field would feel like, and how they would eventually lead to business school. We then suggest a list of MBA programs for you to target, and back into the milestones you would need to achieve in your early career to be competitive at each.

 

Pre-Application Game Plan

$1,750.00

Are you thinking of applying to business school in a few years? We can help you use that valuable time to significantly improve your candidacy and raise your chances of admission.

This service starts with us getting to know you and understanding your motivations for seeking an MBA. We then help you determine which programs would offer the best fit, where you need to be in your career and community activities to get admitted to those programs, and then work backwards to develop a game-plan for getting you there. We also run you through our personal narrative boot camp, helping you build a compelling story to tell schools and future employers. After our initial touch point, we keep in touch throughout the year to answer any questions and make sure you are on track.

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PHASE II: NARRATIVE BOOT CAMP

STEP 1: Narrative Exercises

We send you a series of exercises based on the Harvard Kennedy School's latest research on personal narrative, political campaigning, and public speaking. These forms are designed to tease out the inspirations and motivations that will make for a compelling personal narrative and, and link them to your future aspirations.

STEP 2: Review and Ideation

We then take your completed exercises and existing resume, and construct a few possible narrative story arcs that we believe will tell your authentic story in the most compelling way. This is a highly personal and creative process. Each narrative is work-shopped one at a time, and is not the cookie-cutter result of some computer read-out. This gives you the confidence of knowing that your narrative will be totally original.

STEP 3: Instruction and Coaching

Over the phone, we walk you through our materials on personal narrative and political campaigning. Through this instruction, you will understand what separates a good narrative from a great one, as well as the psychology of how the admissions directors will read and interpret your application. We then apply these learnings to your particular business school application and future career aspirations, taking your questions along the way.

STEP 4: Narrative Selection and Honing

Together we create 2-3 compelling personal narratives for your unique application. We run through their relative merits, why each is compelling, how each will be interpreted by the admissions committee. We workshop the narratives together over the phone until we decide on the one that is the most compelling and authentic for your application.

PHASE III: CAREER ENHANCEMENT

STEP 1: Employment Gameplan

We discuss career-enhancing moves and the way in which can weave your new compelling and authentic personal narrative into the applications for achieving them. By working this way, you will ensure you are walking down the most compelling and purposeful professional path before you send out a single job application, minimizing the amount of time wasted in the application process.

STEP 2: Resume Overhaul

We then use your new narrative to overhaul your resume. Where possible, we provide school templates for you to use to emphasize your commitment to your dream school. After initial formatting corrections, we suggest strategic edits that will enhance your ability to showcase your narrative in the most persuasive way. 

PHASE IV: YEAR-ROUND MENTORSHIP

STEP 1: Regular Check-ins

We schedule three follow-up calls in the next year to check-in, make sure that you’re on the right track, answer any questions, and offer advice for any issues in your career that may arise. 

STEP 2: Constant Contact

You will retain email access to both Nate and Anna for one year to ask quick questions related to the topics discussed in Early Bird.

STEP 3: Future Savings

When you're ready to apply to business school, we will take 10% off our already best-in-class prices for any future purchases of Packages.

Impact! And how to include it in your resume

Some applicants believe that their business school applications are little more than the facts of their resume. And why shouldn’t they be? Many prognosticators of admissions odds ask only for your GPA, GMAT, Undergrad, and most recent employer to reach their predictions. After all, those facts are immutable, admissions committees are familiar with them, and any other attempt to dress up an application is just sleazy marketing, right?

Wrong.

It’s pretty easy to see for yourself why it's not just the facts of the story, but the story itself that matters. Consider the following examples out of news articles:

#1: 36.5% of Americans are obese.

#2: Rising rates of obesity will cost the American taxpayer an additional $200B per year, and reduces available funding for education.

What is the difference between these two statements? In a word, Impact.

While the first statement captures the complete statement of fact, the second captures what it means, what the damage is, and why we should care. Only an educated reader, who knows that obesity is growing, that it is expensive, and that its costs will require tradeoffs in governmental priorities, might be able to read the first statement and infer the rest. But even then, the first sentence does not include enough context to know what point you're trying to make.  Are you telling us about obesity because you want to talk about growing sizes in retail clothing? The need for sturdier cars? Or looming budgetary tradeoffs?

When you write your business school application, it is imperative that you tell a compelling story for why your work is important and why a bystander with little knowledge of the topic (i.e. an admissions officer) should care about it. If can make the admissions officer care about the personal impact you are making in the world, he or she will likely care about you, and whether you are admitted. This is how applicants with sterling credentials can still be denied from top schools when their submissions focus on facts rather than impact. Consider some examples that one might find in a personal essay:

Accomplishment without impact

I am a credit risk analyst at Deutsche Bank, have worked on four deals valued over one billion dollars, and have been promoted twice

Accomplishment with impact

As a credit risk analyst at Deutsche Bank, I developed a new model that helped us better price risk among less credit-worthy customers, allowing the firm to issue more loans needed to grow small businesses.

See how the second narrative is stronger because it not only explains the actions taken but the impact achieved? Of course, we at Ivy Admissions Group don’t just stop there. We’ve argued time and time again that to have a truly exceptional application, one must also tie their achievements and impacts into a broader personal narrative

Accomplishment with Impact and Narrative

My mother was a small business owner, and growing up I saw firsthand both how difficult it was for entrepreneurs like her to get the capital they needed to sustain their businesses. Small businesses are the key to growing the modern economy, with 67% of new jobs coming from small businesses. I joined Deutsche Bank because I wanted to help people like my mom achieve the American Dream, and was able to do that by developing a new risk model that made small business loans more affordable.

Should I take the GMAT or GRE?

There are a growing number of business schools that now accept both the GMAT and the GRE -- HBS, GSB, Booth, Wharton, and Tuck, to name a few (click here for the full list).

Many students ask, which should I take?

• Amazing at math? Take the GMAT.
  • The quantitative portion of the GMAT covers a broader set of mathematical topics and offers more complicated problems than the GRE. Additionally, in the GRE you can use a calculator--not so for the GMAT.
  • However, because those who take the GMAT (namely, business school students) score higher than those who take the GRE (general graduate school students), it is harder to get a high percentile math score on the GMAT than on the GRE.
  • For example, a scaled GMAT quantitative score of 51 (i.e. no wrong answers) puts you in the 97th percentile and a score of 50 (only one wrong) puts you in the 87th percentile. On the GRE, a perfect quantitative score or one off would both put you in the 97th percentile.
• Bad with time pressure? Take the GRE.
  • In the GRE you are given a certain time allotment per section (30 minutes for 20 Verbal Reasoning questions or 35 minutes for 20 Quantitative Reasoning questions) and you are free to go back and forth answering questions within a section. The GRE even has a function that allows you to "flag" questions that you would like to return to. This allows you to calmly budget your time according to the difficulty of the questions and not waste your time on one impossible one.
  • The GMAT on the other hand only presents one question at a time. You can't go back or advance to the next question until you answer the current one. The test does this because the difficulty of later questions depends upon how well you answer earlier ones. People who stress out on standardized testing may spend the GMAT fretting about each question they get and second-guessing their previous answers if they see an easier question later in the test.
• Not a native English speaker? It depends. 
  • The GRE has a very heavy emphasis on vocabulary. Even native english speakers have to build up decks of flashcards to study the arcane words that the test loves to use.
  • The GMAT emphasizes grammar logic. Pick your poison.
• Bad at test taking in general? Take the GRE.
  • Some business schools, usually the ones who are fighting to maintain or move up the MBA rankings (e.g. Wharton, Columbia, and Yale), place more emphasis on the average GMAT score of their incoming class, since publications such as U.S. News & World Report and The Economist use that statistic in their annual rankings of business schools.
  • If you are going to get an equivalently low score on your standardized test, it is better to do so in the GRE since that statistic is not as closely tracked and a school may have less hesitancy in admitting you for fear that you will bring down that average.
• Not 100% sure about business school? Or want to do a Joint Degree Program? Take the GRE.
  • The GRE will get you into any graduate school, and leaves you some optionality.
  • However, certain joint programs (such as the JD-MBA at Kellogg) require you to take the GMAT, so do your research.
• 100% sure about business school? Take the GMAT.
  • If you feel you're equally equipped to take both the GRE and the GMAT, and you're serious about business school, take the GMAT. It can signal to the Adcom that you're serious about business school, and can even qualify you for some merit-based scholarships. However, if you know the GRE plays to your strengths, go ahead and take it. Your score matters!

At the end of the day, our advice is to take the test where you can score highest. Take practice tests to figure out which is best for you.

Mark Zuckerberg's advice for MBA applications

Facebook CEO and noted dropout Mark Zuckerberg gave the commencement address at Harvard’s graduation this year, and he left the graduates with an important nugget of advice for applying to business school. If you weren’t paying close attention, you may have missed it.

Here is the full video. The quote in question comes right after 6:00:

Here is the quote:

One of my favorite stories is when John F. Kennedy visited the NASA space center, he saw a janitor carrying a broom and he walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon”.

What did the Janitor do in his reply to strike a chord with the President? In a word, he offered a purpose for his work.

Say one of the Janitor’s Window Cleaner peers applied to business school. If we were on the admissions committee and came across his resume, we might see lines such as “expertly cleaned all glass surfaces with 10% fewer streaks and peers” or “implemented new harness safety program, dramatically reducing falls.” 

Now let’s consider the Janitor. What might his business school resume say? Maybe, “Enabled the success of the moon-landing by providing clutter-free work spaces that enabled calm, decisive mission management” or, “Aided the President’s key national priority by maintaining safe, clean, and functional work spaces that top engineering talent would want to work in.”

Why do we find the second resume more compelling even though they have similar performance in similar jobs? In the first case, the Window Cleaner demonstrates an achievement-orientation and a desire to do his job better than others, but his impact starts and ends with himself. His resume explains why he is a better worker, but it does not explain why we should root for him to be successful. We never learn why we should care about how well he does his job. Meanwhile the Janitor, much like the Third Stone Cutter in an earlier blog post (check it out if you have the time), extends his impact outside of himself. In doing so, he creates a cause -- a vision, a meaning, a mission --- big enough for all of us to root for. The purpose of his work is clear and all of us can feel a part of it.

When we help clients craft their admissions essays, we never lose sight of the fact that Admissions Committees are made up of people who find meaning in their work by believing that it matters on a global scale who they decide to extend offers of admission. Whether at undergraduate colleges or MBA programs, all Admissions Committees want to give those spots to the people they believe will make the most of them. The surest way to make that argument in your application is to clearly explain not only the nature of your work, but its purpose as well.