And the winner of the 2024 WashU Olin BIG IndeaBounce pitch contest is…. We started with some 120 student teams pitching their startup ideas from more than 65 universities and 14 countries. They were narrowed down to 14 finalists who submitted two-minute-long video pitches after which a final three were invited to Washington University’s Olin Business School campus in St. Louis to pitch in a Shark Tank-like format before three judges. Their presentations and ideas were assessed by Maxine Clark, founder of Build-A-Bear, which has more than 500 retail outlets, and Akeem Shannon, founder and CEO ..read more

In the spring of 2023, Poets&Quants reported that the Graduate Record Exam appeared to have peaked: that the test, which for years had been gaining market share against the Graduate Management Admission Test, seemed to have plateaued in terms of the rates at which prospective MBA students were submitting it with their applications to the top business schools. Not so fast. A new analysis of submission rates at 54 of the leading U.S. B-schools shows that 2022 may have been just a minor slump. Boosted by a return to mandatory admissions testing at several schools, the GRE bounced back in 202 ..read more

A new poll of prospective MBA students shows the declining appeal of in-person study — a remarkable turnaround from just a year ago, when students embraced a return to the classroom after years of remote and hybrid classes forced by the coronavirus pandemic. In a new poll by education consultancy CarringtonCrisp of thousands of candidates for graduate business education, fewer than one-quarter said they want to study entirely on-campus — a dramatic change from a year ago, when the proportion of students preferring blended or entirely online study had dropped from 38% in 2022 to just 29%, and ..read more

The new home of Lehigh University’s College of Business, the Business Innovation Building, opened last spring.  Courtesy photo Lehigh University’s College of Business named Manoj K. Malhotra as its new dean this week following a nationwide search. Malhotra will replace Georgette Chapman Phillips who is retiring this summer after leading Lehigh Business through a decade of growth. Malhotra will begin his deanship on July 1. He is currently the John R. Mannix Medical Mutual of Ohio Professor of Operations Management at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. H ..read more

A soft-spoken intellectual and globalist, IMD Dean of Innovation & Programs David Bach will become president of the institute on Sept. 1 After years of top leadership roles at IE Business School, Yale School of Management and IMD, David Bach has been named the next president of IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. A soft-spoken intellectual and globalist, Bach was chosen to lead one of Europe’s top business schools after an international search that began in October of last year. The school’s Supervisory Board unanimously voted to appoint its Dean of Innovation and Programs president effective ..read more

“Every day should be Earth Day,” says Phillip Bruner at the University of Washington Foster’s School of Business.  Driven by a dual passion for environmental advocacy and technological innovation, Bruner teaches Climate Finance and the Race to Net Zero at the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington, where he is a professor of sustainable finance. The course covers green bonds, project finance, ESG investing, carbon markets, natural capital, and biodiversity finance. In contrast to students’ levels of commitment to sustainability even a year ago, Bruner now sees “almost ..read more

We don’t have to tell frequent readers of Poets&Quants For Undergrads that the way we do business in changing. The pandemic, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, the climate crisis and a myriad other factors have impacted everything from how we go to work, what work we do once there (wherever “there” may be these days), and how our work interacts with the world around us. To keep up, business schools themselves must change. And many are. Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business – long a top business school for graduate students – launched a brand new program for und ..read more

Charles Galunic teaches the Lead the Future class at INSEAD, one of dozens of elite executive leadership courses at the top global business schools On the last day of Michelle Buck’s week-long executive education class on leadership at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, she asks her students to do a written exercise called “Who Am I as a Leader.” This seemingly simple exercise, usually just a paragraph long, she says, becomes a powerful tool because it helps them reflect on core values: who they are, where they come from, where they are headed, and what they offer a ..read more

Balancing The Account, Photo by Ken Teegardin Best Accounting Firms To Work For In 2025 PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) LLP is the best accounting firm to work for in the U.S., according to a new ranking. Vault, the leader in data-driven employer rankings and verified employee reviews, recently released its 2025 rankings of the Best Accounting Firms to Work For, offering a comprehensive look at the U.S. public accounting landscape. In addition to its signature Vault Accounting 25, a list of the best overall firms, Vault also ranked the Most Prestigious Accounting Firms, Best Accounting Firms by ..read more

2024 ClimateCAP Fellows. The 12-month fellowship Each year, the ClimateCAP Initiative, a program led by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in partnership with 43 other business schools, selects a group of 12 highly gifted and driven MBAs for a 12-month ClimateCAP Fellowship. Now in its second year, the fellowship welcomed a new cohort at the start of 2024, with Fellows from top schools across the country — and, for the first time, two international Fellows from Cambridge Judge Business School. Life for ClimateCAP Fellows is steeped in opportunities, including workshops and dialogues ..read more