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
(I had to edit this because at least one ISP was blocking this post.)
It is “extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately.”
