Blog Archive In Other News A Medical Research Endowment, the Lack of Female CEOs, and Unusual Essay Prompts

Blog Archive In Other News… A Medical Research Endowment, the Lack of Female CEOs, and Unusual Essay Prompts The business school world is constantly buzzing with change and innovation. Each week, in addition to our regular news posts, we briefly touch on a few notable stories from this dynamic field in one roundup. Here is what caught our eye this week: Harvard Business School (HBS) has received a $20M donation from the Robert and Myra Kraft Family Foundation, Inc., of which alum Robert K. Kraft is president. The gift will establish the Kraft Endowment for Advancing Precision Medicine to support research within the field of precision medicine, which focuses on using genomic information on diseases to better diagnose and treat patients. In collaboration with the Broad Institute, HBS hopes to help advance the field of precision medicine through commercialization. “[The gift] will have a huge impact on generations to come,” Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust said, “contributing to the quality of life for many people around the globe by alleviating the pain and suffering caused by a wide array of serious illnesses.” The role of women within business schools has been a notable topic of discussion  lately. Yet a recent article published by Quartz claims women are still disproportionately represented in executive rolesâ€"so much so, in fact, that a mere 4.4% of CEOs at SP 500 companies are female. Citing a “striking contrast between education and leadership,” Quartz reports that many top-ranked business schools are well on their way to gender equality within the student body. MBA application questions and prompts often follow a traditional path, with only a few schools truly stepping outside the box in the quest to find their ideal candidates. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is known for challenging the status quo, and this year its essay topic has baffled even the Wall Street Journal. Chicago Booth asks applicants to choose one of 16 photos depicting student life and describe “how it resonates with [their] own viewpoint on why the Booth community is the right fit for [them].” Perhaps more schools will follow suit and choose unorthodox essay prompts next year? Share ThisTweet Harvard University (Harvard Business School) News University of Chicago (Booth)