Can you recommend some good books to read in the Pre-MBA phase? I want to read some relevant books to:

I wanted to understand how the "audit year" affects the "ranking" of a B-school?

For example, the audit year for Manchester was 2010 as per
http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/manchester-business-school/global-mba-ranking-2013#global-mba-ranking-2013 and its current rank is 29.

And the audit year for Lancaster was 2013 as per http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/lancaster-university-management-school/global-mba-ranking-2013#global-mba-ranking-2013 and its current rank is 71.

I wanted to know if the auditing is an "annual activity" or not? If yes, why does it not happen for all schools (e.g. Audit year for Lancaster is 2013, while audit year for Manchester is 2010)?

Go to http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-ranking-2013 and then add the data for audit, You will see that around 18 schools are audited each year. That means schools are audited, generally, every six or seven years after they last entered the ranking. Most schools have been audited in the last three years. There's no correlation between when a school was last audited and what its ranking is.

To what factors do companies give the most weight-age while shortlisting MBA students for internships, projects and full-time opportunities? Is it the GMAT score, MBA grades, past-work experience, their own internal assessment etc? Is there a general trend across European B-schools?

For example, Manchester Business School and LBS provide internship opportunities while many other European B-schools do not provide internship opportunities. So is it fair to assume that the internship scene in European B-schools is not very robust?

The key thing is that they start with a list of colleges. Each firm that is a major recruiters of MBAs has certain schools they recruit from, and other schools they don't have a relationship with. That initial hurdle is pretty high, and the GMAT score more or less goes along with the school.

Then for internships, obviously most MBAs don't offer them. That's really because of the fact that in Europe people take their MBA a bit later, and the students are looking to move faster in the career they are already in, rather than career entry (which is really what internships are for). So in Europe internships tend to be aimed at pre-experience students.

After that, employers are looking for fit: Can they do the job? Have they done it before? Would folk like to work with them?

Hi Duncan

Few weeks ago, you suggested to refer the following sources for the Pre-MBA phase.

dbs-applicant.dur.ac.uk/index.php?title=2012_Full-?
www.brunel.ac.uk/bbs/mba/reading-list/new-students?

During my research, I found www.mbamath.com. It is a paid Pre-MBA course recommended by few US B-schools.

Do you have any opinion about www.mbamath.com.?

That looks useful.

Is there any relationship between the business research that a school does and its PHD research?

For e.g. MBS ranks 1 in PHD research (as per FT).

It also seems to be good in business research but I could not find any ranking related to its business research.

No, the FT does not score research quality. The FT's PhD rankings reflects the *number* of doctoral graduates. Manchester has a huge doctoral programme. The best guide to the quality of business schools' research is the UTD ranking: http://jindal.utdallas.edu/the-utd-top-100-business-school-research-rankings/worldRankings#20082012

PS MBA went in half way between the 40k I expected and the 60k being rumoured. Tuition fees for the Global Executive MBA commencing July 2015: £51,500