The recession has unleashed a wave of articles about the job market for MBAs. First came the bad news that hiring was down, then we saw articles explaining how it’s getting better again. We also saw MBAs expanding their career goals, from casinos to health care.

Now, US News reports that 2010 grads are faring better than the class of 2009. This is good news: with hiring more or less back on track, it looks like b-school graduates are out to get a job in what they want, not what they can find.

The Financial Times reports that because students are finding more jobs than last year, they are holding out for what they specialized in. Rob Weiler, the director of the career services center at UCLA Anderson School of Management, says, “The students have learned to expect the worst after all they’ve gone through, but from what I’ve seen most are ploughing ahead and are optimistic that they will get what they want. There’s not a ton of people settling.”

The takeaway? Go after what you trained for. Things are looking up!

We’ve heard a lot of bad news about the job market recently “ articles have been popping up about the difficulties MBAs are having finding jobs (though that may be starting to change) and more MBAs are exploring alternate careers. With all this news, should you still go to business school?

This CNN article gives several major reasons, from employers who expect an MBA, to how an MBA can show your dedication to the field. Elizabeth Freedman, author of “The MBA Student’s Job-Seeking Bible” and “Work 101: Learning the Ropes of the Workplace Without Hanging Yourself,” writes that “Having an MBA — as opposed to just a bachelor’s degree in business “ is sort of like traveling someplace by plane instead of taking the train. With either business degree, you may eventually wind up at your final ‘destination’ “ but the MBA will get you there faster.”

Overall, the article makes a good case for why you should still elect to go to business school.

Here at Manhattan GMAT, we care deeply about the quality of our instructors. We only hire people who have both prior teaching experience and a 99th percentile GMAT score. We also pay them the highest salary in the industry “ $100 per hour “ so that they are motivated to do the best job possible.

One great thing about the way we treat our instructors is that it allows many of them to pursue their other passions, whether it’s teaching underprivileged children in urban areas, or creating new and exciting companies. We hire so many intriguing people that we wanted to showcase some of their many talents and interests.  And so begins our new series: Behind the Whiteboard, where we tell you about the non-GMAT related talents of some of our instructors.

Our first instructor to be featured on Behind the Whiteboard is Dave Malloy, who recently won an Obie!

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With all the recent discussion about teaching ethics in business schools, some of us may have started to forget another factor involved in choosing to attend business school: moving up the pay scale.

It’s good to remember that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau , there is about a 20% increase in salary between a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree, and that’s taking into account all of the Master’s degrees out there!

Yet it seems that to make a lot of money you may have to spend a lot of money. A new study commissioned by Bloomberg BusinessWeek has found that there is in fact a correlation between an MBA’s average salary and where he or she went to business school.

Harvard, where students spend an average of $106,000 for their two years of education, comes in first. According to the study, the median income for HBS grads over a 20 year period is $3,867,903. Wharton is second and has the highest average salary at graduation: $137,000.

But if you’re looking for a large percentage increase in salary over time, check out George Washington University, where the average salary increase in 20 years is 114 percent.

It looks like  getting an MBA from a top school has its benefits. Added incentive to get a great GMAT score!

We at Manhattan GMAT are happy to announce the launch of our first annual MGMAT Grant Program, designed to support organizations that prioritize the same standards and spirit as Manhattan GMAT.  Manhattan GMAT staff and instructors from around the country submitted applications to recommend worthy non-profit organizations to receive the grants. Winners were selected based on how closely the goals, standards, and values of the organizations match those of Manhattan GMAT.  We are pleased to award our 3 Instructor Grants for 2010 to the following non-profits:

2010 Instructor Silver Grant ($1,000):
Phoenix Collegiate Academy

2010 Instructor Gold Grant ($1,500):
North Oakland Community Charter School

2010 Instructor Platinum Grant ($2,500):
International Association For Human Values (Youth Empowerment Seminar)

We are excited to be supporting these impressive organizations and look forward to seeing all the great work they do this year!

We will also be awarding the first Manhattan GMAT Staff Grants “ totaling $10,000 “ to worthy organizations this year.  Stay tuned for an announcement of the recipients!

A recent piece at Forbes.com argued that because business schools focus on succeeding in large financial institutions, they tend to ignore some of the issues faced by would-be entrepreneurs. The article concluded that business schools need an overhaul to be useful for entrepreneurs. But is this really the case?

An article published several days ago in Tech Crunch says that it is not. The author, Professor Vivek Wadhwa, explains how his MBA helped him move up through the ranks as a programmer and ultimately succeed as an entrepreneur. My MBA classes seemed to fit our business needs like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Even obscure topics like corporate finance came in handy, in IPO discussions with investment bankers and later, in raising capital for my own company, he writes.

In another insightful blog post, entrepreneur Steve Blank says the decision to go back to school is a little more complicated. He argues that at the beginning an MBA might not help you as much, but as a company matures, it becomes an essential tool for running a business smoothly. He writes, as startups grow, []the skills people need at each step of a company’s growth evolve and change. The skills required when they were an 8-person startup trying to ˜search for the business model’ wasn’t the same set of skills needed now that they were a 70-person company ˜executing the business model.’

Wadhwa ends his article explaining that The point is that education is the best investment that one can make. Unlike stocks and bonds, education never loses value; and when you add experience, it gains even more value. Perhaps he has a point.

Our partners over at mbaMission recently wrote a post about what it takes – and doesn’t take – to get into a good business school.  Based on data released by top business schools like HBS and Stanford, many would be surprised to find that graduating from a non-Ivy school  does not decrease their chances of acceptance.  As Jeremy Shinewald puts it:

The admissions committees are more interested in your performance “ academic, professional, volunteer, personal “ than your pedigree. Further, the admissions committee is interested in diversity. We don’t feel that we are going out on a limb stating that Wharton does not want and cannot have a class of 850 UPenn undergrads, because they simply want the best potential business leaders out there and thus must jump into a much deeper pool.

You can read the full post here.

An MBA degree does not necessarily have to be synonymous with a career in finance.

While most MBAs do still choose to go into finance and consulting, the options for business school graduates are not limited to these two fields.  Health care, for example, is attracting a substantial number of MBAs. A recent New York Times article points out:

Health care is the target career for 10 percent of students working on a master of business administration degree at Harvard Business School, making it the third most popular choice, behind financial services and consulting.

This trend is accelerating as the boomer generation ages and needs increased health care. In fact, the Times article notes business schools like Tufts and Duke already have programs focusing on health care management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business is in the process of creating a new masters of health care delivery science.

But if the health care sector doesn’t strike your fancy, you can follow in the footsteps of MBAs like Tim Elliott, who, as this BusinessWeek article describes, left his job as a vice-president of finance and technology to join MBAs Without Borders. The nonprofit program sends MBAs overseas for six months to work in the developing world, and it’s seen a substantial increase in applicants over the past year.

In fact, if you’re interested in nonprofits, there are now MBA programs that focus specifically on nonprofit management.  Beyond Grey Pinstripes is a great place to start if you’re looking for a business school devoted to sustainability and nonprofit management.

And for a list of the top 100 companies MBAs would like to work at, you can always refer to Fortune Magazine’s list.

Several news outlets recently wrote about a list of strange questions that you might encounter in a business school admissions interview.

The admissions process is stressful enough without having to worry about which type of tree you think you would be if you were a tree. Thankfully, our partner mbaMission has confirmed that it is very unlikely you will be asked such a question. In fact, they’ve conducted interviews with top admissions officers at Yale, Tuck and Kellogg, and all of the officers said their goal for interviews is to get a feel for the applicants and who they really are. They are not looking for how quickly prospective students can answer strange questions on their toes. A new mbaMission blog posting notes:

We feel that our responsibility as an admissions consulting firm is to calm MBA candidates and keep them focused on what is truly important within the application process. Interviews are not easy, but overwhelmingly the questions are straightforward and will be about you. So, you should be able to rely on your experiences to answer the questions. By entering your interview calmly and staying in your everyday frame of mind, you will be able to thoughtfully address the questions that you are asked. If you can do that, you should perform to the best of your abilities and you may even enjoy your interview.

You can read the rest of the blog post, which includes quotes from interviews with top admissions officers, here.

[This article has been updated in a new post featured May 9, 2014. Read the newest version of The Distinction Beween a 700 Score and a 760 Score]. Recently, I was asked to write an article addressing what it takes to score in the 99th percentile. I have some reservations about writing such an article, but I agreed to write it.

First, I’m going to tell you why I have reservations about writing this article. A lot of people may read this article and think: Great! I can just do this and score in the 99th percentile! In order to have this conversation in the first place, however, we have to assume that the tester is already scoring at least 700, if not higher.

In other words, you cannot start with the information in this article (unless you’re already at 700+!). In addition, I can’t write an article that tells anyone, at any current level, how to get to 760. What I can do is write an article detailing the differences between a 700-level scorer and a 760-level scorer. What you can do, if you really want a 760, is first get yourself to a very solid 700-level “ using other articles and resources, not this one. (A very solid 700-level refers to someone who can consistently score 700 under full, official test conditions; it does not refer to someone who got 700 once after skipping the essays.)

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