Best MBA-Related Reads for the Week ending 2005.01.28 [Edit 4]

• FT 2005 MBA Rankings - Harvard moves up one to tie Wharton for first place. Columbia, Stanford, LBS, Chicago, Tuck, Insead, NYU Stern, and Yale round out the top 10 (in that order). (Found at FT.com)
• Wharton Career Services Guru Peter Degnan Changes Jobs - An excellent historical account of Peter Degnan's impact on the Wharton Career Management Office since 2002. Students are understandably concerned about what this departure means for the full-time MBA program. In an opinion piece one student from the class of 2006 uses the news as an opportunity to complain about how much Wharton spends on the Executive MBA program relative to its brand importance and financial benefit. (Found at Wharton Journal)
• Wharton Professors Embarrassed by Class-Skipping Students - Now Future MBA Girl (aka Alli Myatt) could have just said something bland and generic in her post like, "everyone's stressed about DIP" and then wrapped it up with a few clichés about how business school is truly very like drinking champagne from a fire hydrant, but instead she gets specific about how that stress manifests itself. I love her description of sheepish professors who are "grateful that SOMEONE showed up to class." Scandalous. (Found at FutureMBAGirl.blogspot.com)
• Peter Drucker Defines the American CEO - "CEOs have ultimate responsibility for the work of everybody else in their institution. But they also have work of their own -- and the study of management has so far paid little attention to it." (Found at CareerJournal)
• Product Naming Case Study: Choczels - I never thought that one of my favorite blogs in the world would ever write something that I could share with the MBA audience, but Todd Levin has surprised me again. You know there's some overachieving schmuck out there already drafting his class of 2008 application essays about his experience "leading" the Choczels team. (Found at Tremble.com)
• MBA graduates weather economic downturn - "At the core of the FT rankings is a survey of the salaries MBA graduates earn three years after graduation. It shows that some one who went to one of the top 10 US business schools in 2001 today earns an average salary of $144,492." (Found at FT.com)
• Majority of Workers Believe Their Bosses Lack Integrity and Fairness - "More than half of American workers question the basic morality of their organizations' top leaders and say that their managers do not treat them fairly...." I'd be interested to know whether managers with MBAs are any better or worse than their non-MBA peers.(Found at Worthwhile Magazine)
• Probability Is a Myth - The next time some wannabe posts, "Hie, I have 780 GMAT, 3.9 UG, 4 yrs W/E IT, IIT Madras what are my chances at H/S/W?" just post a link to this essay in response. Cliff's Notes version: "My probability of getting into Stanford GSB is not really 10%. In fact, there may be no one whose chance of getting into Stanford GSB is 10% or even near 10%. It may be that one-tenth of the applicants have a 100% chance and the rest have a 0% chance. It's more likely that there's some kind of a double-humped distribution in which some select few have an 80-95% chance and the masses have a 0-5% chance." (Found at BusinessBoy.blogspot.com)
• Your MBA Plans Will Not Remain Secret - A cautionary tale that serves to remind us all that it's only a matter of time before the entire company learns of our plans to leave in pursuit of an MBA. (Found at MargaritaLuvr.blogspot.com)
• Top Tier MBA Required for Job - How often do you see a help-wanted advertisement that actually specifies the need for an MBA from a "top tier school"? Here's one (an interesting career-oriented website, to boot):

  -> Opening: Director of Brand Marketing, TheLadders.com, NYC
  Seeking world-class Director to develop & execute brand strategy to drive business & build brand. Have a profound impact on the future at a defining moment in our evolution. The ideal candidate has MBA in Marketing from a top tier school; 5+ yrs brand marketing exper.; strong working knowledge of industry marketing channels; excellent interpersonal & communication skills. Resume, cover letter; Email: careers@theladders.com

  (Found at Marketing Sherpa)
• Infamous MBAs from Top Schools - Writes a poster in the business week forum, "We all know the famous ones such as Bush for H and Donald for W etc. Token boys on their school's website. I am trying to compile a list of those infamous one that all M7 trying to forget. Anyone wants to add to this list?" This is fun; help compile the list. (Found at Business Week)
• The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business - Most of the list is available to Business 2.0 subscribers only, but at least the top 10 is available online. It includes the tale of the Bank of Ireland CEO who was busted for downloading porn at work. (Found at Business 2.0 Blog
• Wharton sees wave of profs fresh out of school - Wharton hired 23 new faculty members his academic year. Thirteen of them came straight out of Ph.D. programs. "Consequently, younger professors are teaching a large range of courses -- from small MBA courses to high-enrollment introductory courses," says the article. Though the article focuses on reactions (mostly from Wharton undergraduates), it piques my interest in the extent to which Wharton's MBA students are satisfied with these younger professors. Given their youth, many of these new faculty members are going to be the same age as the incoming MBA class. They're also going to lack much practical business experience. Are age and experience even necessary for business school faculty (Found at The Daily Pennsylvanian)
• Consulting and Banking Career Discussion - Every once in a while the forum regulars that hang out in the monkey cages at Business Week stop flinging poo at each other just long enough to have an intelligent discussion. Here's one that ballooned to 154 replies since Monday of this week. It begins with a question about pay ranges for consultants, but evolves into a more meaningful analysis of what the job is really about. (Found at Business Week MBA Forums)
• New Blogs Added to My Feed this Week - I had trouble picking just one. First, there's the humorist with the leaden GMAT score and the golden keyboard (dinged by NYU? Ouch! Should have taken the GMAT Retakerinator Survey) [Warning - this blogger has a problem staying "on topic" and may not be a safe-for-work read], then there's the Michigan MBA student who dropped not just one but two comments in response to yesterday's post. How can I not show some love for that sort of dedication? Plus, anybody with the guts to call his interviewers at Morgan Stanley "a bunch of guidos" wins my respect (he won't be winning any jobs, though, if the MS boys ever read that).
• New Series of B-School Comics - Words won't do this one justice, so I will steal some of the other Zach's bandwidth to showcase this great work. I hope he keeps it up.
  
• MBA-NFL Draft Idea - Writes PandaCH, "Think about what the term "Ivy League" did for a bunch of antiquated institutions with lazy gardeners... We need something like that for b-schools too." Columbia invented the M7. Isn't that good enough for you? Well, the rest of the post has some interesting ideas too. A fun exercise in lateral thinking. (Found at PandaCH.blogspot.com)

Edit 1: How could I fail to leave out the wonderful new comics being done by Zachary Emig? Also provided the missing link to Business 2.0 story.

Edit 2: Modified an adjective... ;) Those of you who download your feeds regularly can hunt for it and you'll learn that I'm really a nice guy who feels occasional pangs of guilt.

Edit 3: Inserted a warning about one of the links above...

Edit 4: Edited the link to MBAHoing.