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International Applicants: Improve your English Listening Ability

Bryan — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:41:49 +0000

I just had a conversation with one of my clients about how to improve his listening ability. Our talk reminded me of my former journalism job stringing (i.e., freelancing) for National Public Radio from Japan. Anyways, NPR is a fantastic news resource, and best of all for those of you trying to improve your listening ability, all (I believe) of their audio programming can be downloaded and followed with the accompanying written story, which can act as a script. Now, the written story does not follow the audio story 100%, but it follows pretty closely, enough to help you understand the different speakers and the overall storyline. You can learn new vocabulary, hear a lot of different topics, voices and accents. It’s also free. Here is a quick sample story I found where the “script” tracks the audio version fairly closely. I listen to NPR a lot so I will continue posting good stories (i.e., interesting with a good script) whenever I find one.

Top MBA Programs Accepting GRE

Bryan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:28:37 +0000

The list is short but notable: Darden, HBS, MIT, Stern, Stanford, Yale (see the full list here.)

For the record, Wharton will NOT be accepting the GRE until next year, for the Class of 2013. (link)

As with the IELTS/TOEFL, you can bet more and more top programs will be accepting GRE in the coming years.

International Applicants: Top MBA Programs accepting IELTS

Bryan — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:15:26 +0000

The British Council, administrator of the IELTS (International English Language Testing System), was kind enough to direct me to their comprehensive list of all universities accepting IELTS for admission. I went through it and found a surprising number of top MBA programs that now accept IELTS en lieu of the TOEFL. (Download the PDF through this page for a full listing.) For international students struggling with TOEFL, here’s an alternative for you. Minimum requirements are shown in parentheses. I expect this list is only going to grow, as programs that accept IELTS can draw from a larger pool of applicants. Watch out ETS!

Chicago Booth (7.0)
Cornell Johnson (7.0)
Drucker (6.5-7.0)
Duke Fuqua (contact for score)
Emory Goizueta (7.0)
Georgetown McDonough (7.5)
HBS (7.0)
Indiana Kelley (6.0)
MIT Sloan (7.0)
Stanford GSB (7.0)
UC Berkeley Haas (7.0)
UCLA Anderson (7.0)
UNC Kenan-Flagler (7.0)
UT Austin McCombs (7.5)
Yale SOM (7.0)

Note: Kellogg is on IELTS’s main list, but at this time they are only accepting IELTS for their Ph.D. program.