I wish I was making this story up, but it’s true.
According to the AP, the University of Chicago, one of the world’s leading business schools, will require each MBA applicant to include a four-slide PowerPoint presentation with their portfolio.
Slideshows can be good tools when they’re used well. I hope the Chicago MBA admissions staff will use the slideshows as just one piece of supporting evidence. that seems to be their intent, according to associate dean Rose Martinelli: the slideshow is just “four blank pieces of paper” that lets an applicant have a broader canvas to state their case. I do agree with John Koetsier that PowerPoint is a “traditional application”. Grade school students can build a basic PPT file, after all.
Perhaps applicants should try building something more elegant, like a well-constructed wiki site or a blog on a specific topic.
What I fear is a mad rush of adoption, as other business schools ask applicants to tack on a PPT file. PowerPoint slides without speakers notes or supporting documentation can be worse than useless. A show full of overly animated slides and random fonts won’t impress me much.
Tags: Chicago, Illinois, MBA, PPT, student, teaching, university, USA
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