There have been two interesting and informative pieces in Business Week over the past few days, both dealing with the topics of what the leading business schools are – and aren’t – looking for in an application student, drawing upon input from the admissions officers themselves.
The first is the transcript from an online chat with Kellogg’s Beth Flye that took place a few weeks back. Over the course of the discussion, Flye fields questions from anxious applicants, assuring chat participants that while Kellogg does require some full-time work experience, the school is concerned with depth, breadth and quality over quantity, and naming intellectual ability and leadership potential as two of the things the program prizes in potential students. The subject of visiting to attend an information session and speak with students also comes up several times, underscoring the importance of demonstrating that one has done his or her homework and is committed enough to make the trip to the school’s campus.
While the Kellogg chat covers some of the things that Kellogg likes to see, the second item deals with the sort of things that admissions officers hate to hear. A nice complement to the advice we recently offered on what one might discuss in an optional essay, adcom members from a number of schools weigh in on the do’s and don’ts of addressing a liability in one’s application, selecting recommenders, sharing personal information and marketing oneself in the application process. Here’s an excerpt that covers some great ground on the topic of explaining a shortcoming in one’s candidacy:
In explaining inconsistencies in your application, use the old writing teacher’s cliche, “Show, don’t tell,” as your guide. Daniel Garza, assistant dean at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business, encourages taking a “journalistic approach”: sticking to the facts, rather than editorializing. In other words, “Don’t have a pity party for yourself in your application,” says Ballenger.
“What I look for is complete honesty,” says Brian Lohr, director of admissions at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “There’s an ethical component there, too.” If you say you’re “not a good test taker” – and admissions officers say lots of people do – demonstrate how you’ve taken steps to deal with it in the past. (“And you can’t tell me that if you only took the test once,” [Chicago's Associate Dean of Student Recruitment and Admissions Rose] Martinelli adds.) Low GPA? “Make a case for how it will be different this time around,” says Anne Coyle, director of admissions at the Yale School of Management. No quantitative courses on your transcript? Talk about the statistics class you’re taking now to catch up, says Kellogg’s Flye.
The full text of the article is available here.
