Admissions Q&A: Judith Hodara, Wharton Senior Associate Admissions Director » Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consultants Blog

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Dawna Clarke (Tuck)
Rose Martinelli (Chicago)
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Sarah Neher (Darden)
Soojin Kwon Koh (Michigan)
Randall Sawyer (Cornell)
Beth Flye (Kellogg)
David Simpson (LBS)
Liz Riley Hargrove (Duke)
Linda Meehan (Columbia)
Bruce DelMonico (Yale)
Peter Johnson (Berkeley)
Isser Gallogly (NYU)
Mae Jennifer Shores (UCLA)

Clear Admit School Guides
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Clear Admit Interview Guides
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Application Deadlines
Below are the upcoming deadlines for admission to top-tier schools.
Jan. 2: Michigan / Ross R2
Jan. 6: HBS R2
Jan. 6: LBS R2
Jan. 7: Chicago GSB R2
Jan. 7: UVA / Darden R2
Jan. 7: Dartmouth / Tuck R2
Jan. 7: Duke / Fuqua R2
Jan. 7: Stanford GSB R2
Jan. 7: Yale SOM R2
Jan. 8: UCLA / Anderson R2
Jan. 8: Wharton R2
Jan. 9: UNC Kenan-Flagler R3
Jan. 12: Cornell / Johnson R3
Jan. 12: Kellogg R2
Jan. 13: MIT Sloan R2

Essay Topic Analysis
Below are links to our comments on some of the top programs' essay topics.
The Career Goals Essay*
Berkeley / Haas*
Chicago GSB*
CMU / Tepper*
Columbia*
Cornell / Johnson*
Dartmouth / Tuck*
Duke / Fuqua*
Harvard*
IESE*
INSEAD*
London Business School*
MIT / Sloan*
Michigan / Ross*
Northwestern / Kellogg*
NYU / Stern*
Oxford / Said*
Penn / Wharton*
Stanford GSB*
UCLA / Anderson*
UNC / Kenan-Flagler*
USC / Marshall*
UT Austin / McCombs*
UVA / Darden*
Yale SOM*
* denotes '08-'09 commentary

Categories
Use categories to access all that has been written on each of the topics. We have categorized by school and by subject matter.

Interview Reports
A selection of interview field reports from fellow applicants posted to the MBA Admissions Wiki. Add your reports when you are finished with your interviews.
Chicago
Columbia
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Harvard
Kellogg
Michigan / Ross
MIT / Sloan
Stanford
UNC / Chapel Hill
Virginia / Darden
Wharton
London Business School

GMAT Resources
GMAC
Manhattan GMAT
GMAT Club
Princeton Review
Test Prep New York
Kaplan
Beat The GMAT

Writing Resources
Guide to Grammar and Writing
The Internet Grammar of English
English Usage, Style and Composition
The Economist Style Guide
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

School Rankings
Rankings are a good way to start your research on various MBA Programs. Keep in mind each uses a different methodology.
Business Week
Economist
Financial Times
Forbes
USNews
Wall Street Journal

Career Guides
The following resources should be useful to those who want to research the careers open to them after (or before) earning an MBA.
Vault.com
Wetfeet

Business School Resources
The following are business resources offered by a variety of leading Business Schools. It's useful to subscribe to these resources, especially for the schools to which you are applying.

MBA Programs: North America
If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
Berkeley / Haas
Carnegie Mellon / Tepper
Chicago
Columbia
Concordia
Cornell / Johnson
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Emory / Goizueta
Harvard
HEC Montreal
Indiana / Kelley
Michigan
MIT / Sloan
Northwestern / Kellogg
New York / Stern
North Carolina / Kenan Flagler
Notre Dame / Mendoza
Pennsylvania / Wharton
Queens
Stanford
Texas / McCombs
Thunderbird
Toronto
UCLA / Anderson
Virginia / Darden
Western Ontario / Ivey
Yale

MBA Programs: Rest of the World
As there is some variety in the length of international MBA programs, we have denoted the length of the program next to its name (1 = one year; 2 = 2 years). If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
AGSM (Australia) 2
Cambridge / Judge (UK) 1
CIEBS (China) 2
Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (China) 1
Cranfield School of Mgmt (UK) 1
ESADE (Spain) 1 or 2
HEC (France) 2
IESE (Spain) 2
IMD (Switzerland) 1
INCAE (Costa Rica) 2
INSEAD (France) 1
IPADE (Mexico)
ISB (India) 1
London Business School (UK) 2
Manchester Bus. School (UK) 2
Melbourne (Australia) 2
Oxford / Said (UK) 1
Rotterdam (Netherlands) 1
Tsinghua IMBA (China) 2
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) 1

Additional Resources
Here we link a host of additional resources available across the web. E-mail info@clearadmit.com to have resources added to this list.
AACSB International
Association of MBAs
Beyond Grey Pinstripes
EFMD
gradschools.com (worldwide)
Infozee
mba.com (GMAT Scores)
MBAInfo
mbaleague.blogspot.com
MBAzone
MBA Jungle
TOEFL
Top MBA

MBA Tipline
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Blog Archive

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Admissions Q&A: Judith Hodara, Wharton Senior Associate Admissions Director

~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~

As many of you may know, former Wharton Admissions Director Thomas Caleel stepped down in June, and a search for his replacement is currently underway. Of course, the important work of the admissions office cannot be put on hold. Anjani Jain, vice dean and director of Wharton’s Graduate Division, has stepped in as interim director until Caleel’s successor is named. He is supported by a veteran staff of senior and associate admissions directors led by Judith Hodara, who joined the Wharton Admissions Committee in 2000.

Amid a busy season of travel to admissions events around the globe, we managed to catch up with Judith last week on the road. She shared enthusiastically about the new accelerated three-year JD/MBA program that the Wharton School will offer in collaboration with the Law School of Pennsylvania beginning next year.

In her answers below, she also helps demystify the application process for prospective applicants and offers some advice on how applicants can let their true voices come through in their essays. So read on!

Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Wharton this coming year?

Judith Hodara: As we recently announced, the Wharton School and the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania are launching an accelerated three-year program leading to both the JD and MBA degrees. We’re really excited about this new opportunity to add to our joint and dual degree programs.

Students in the new program will spend the first year in Law School and the following summer in four Law and Wharton courses designed specifically for the three-year JD/MBA. The second and third years will include a combination of Law and Wharton courses, including capstone courses in the third year and work experience in law, business, finance, or the public sector in the summer between the second and third years.

Applicants must be admitted by both schools in order to enroll in the three-year program. Students in the joint program will be required to meet the Law School’s mandate to perform 70 hours of supervised legal work in a pro-bono setting in order to graduate.

CA: Walk us through the life of an application in your office from an operational standpoint. What happens between the time an applicant clicks ‘submit’ and the time the committee offers a final decision (e.g. how many “reads” does it get, how long is each “read,” who reads it, does the committee convene to discuss it as a group, etc.).

JH: Once an application is processed by members of our operations team, it is assigned to one of the student readers who are members of the admissions team. This first read is then shared with members of the admissions committee who re-read the file and make further recommendations on extending an invitation to interview.

If the invitation is offered, the application waits for another read once the interview report is recieved. The interviews are blind, so the interviewer will not have had access to the application beforehand. All of these applications with interview reports are then discussed in a series of committee sessions, and the final decisions are sent out 10 weeks after the deadline date.

CA: How does your team approach the essay portion of the application specifically? What are you looking for as you read the essays? Are there common mistakes that applicants should try to avoid? One key thing they should keep in mind as they sit down to write them?

JH: We are hoping students will be true to themselves when they write about the things that matter to them. They should keep in mind that we really do read the WHOLE application from start to finish. The essays do tell us so much about the applicant, both in terms of the content they choose and how they are able to express themselves.

There are not really common mistakes beyond assuming that the reader WANTS or NEEDS to read something specific; these become the applications where the applicant does not allow his or true voice to come out and leaves us wishing we knew more.

# posted by Clear Admit @ 10:09 am in Admissions Director Q&A, MBA News, School: Penn / Wharton

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