Randall Sawyer has been serving as the director of admissions at the Johnson School of Business for the past two and a half years. Before his appointment to admissions director, Sawyer was the public relations officer for the Johnson School. Prior to joining the Johnson community a little over five years ago, he spent 15 years in and around state government, most recently on former New York Governor George Pataki’s communications staff.
In the interview that follows, Sawyer shares about Johnson’s new dean, impressive gains at the school in terms of female enrollment and the strength of Johnson’s brand management program. He also provides a glimpse inside the application process that prospective applicants will not want to miss. Read on!
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Johnson this coming year?
Randall Sawyer: Can I tell you about two? The first is that in May Joe Thomas was named dean of the Johnson School. That’s very, very exciting for us. Joe, who had been interim dean for a year, brings a very new direction to the Johnson School.
Joe’s a regular at coffee hour every day of the week. He’s also instituted Sage Socials, which is an every Thursday afternoon event. He’s bringing new change to the Johnson School that makes the dean more accessible to students and improves our networking opportunities. So that’s very exciting because Joe is really engaged with the faculty and the staff, which is wonderful.
The second thing that we are very excited about is the fact that we have 39 percent female students in the incoming class. That’s up from 28 percent. Last year we committed extra money to scholarships for females, and we were very involved with several organizations committed to increasing opportunities for women in business, such as the Forte Foundation and 85 Broads. We have a record number of Forte Fellows this year at the Johnson School.
We have a whole yield and retention strategy associated with women as never before. Traditionally, 25 percent of applicants to most MBA programs are women. We were in that space. But through our offering and our scholarships, we were able to create an incoming class that is 39 percent female. If we can get to 50 percent next year, I say let’s get to 50 percent. I don’t know if we can, but I do know that we have a lot more women in the class this year and they are bringing great diversity to the class.
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
RS: That’s a hard question to answer because our big differentiator from other schools is our immersion program. During the second semester, every class, professor, speaker, and field trip has to do with what you choose to immerse yourself in, be it investment banking, capital markets or sustainable global enterprise. Many of our applicants know about the immersion program and that’s why they look at us. But we are also a great entrepreneurship school, a great brand management school.
Last year we had 28 or 29 of the top companies come to the Johnson School to look for brand students. And each student had not just one or two but four or five offers. We are a great brand school. And as the market contracts, I think we’ll see more money going to the staples so we’ll see an increased desire for brand. When you talk about brand in the marketplace most people think of Kellogg, and Kellogg is a great brand school, but we are, too, and people should be looking at us.
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.).
RS: I take this aspect very, very seriously. We look at everyone twice – regardless of TOEFL, GMAT, work experience, GPA. There is nothing in your file that indicates that you won’t get read twice, except for an incomplete file.
So basically, say you hit the submit button yesterday. We take your $200 and it gets deposited. When my team came in this morning, we printed out your application and put it on the shelf. We wait for your other materials – we go online and get an official copy of your GMAT score, put your recommendation letters in your file, etc.
When your application is complete, it goes to one of two or three groups. The first read is done by either one of my readers (I have two paid readers), one of my professional team at the associate level or higher, or one of my 50 JAG students. JAG stands for Johnson Admissions Group – a select group of second-year students committed to assisting in the recruiting and evaluation of applicants. Many of them will do a first read.
We look for about 22 different variables associated with your application. One of my readers makes a recommendation – either “yes, interview” or “no” or “can’t decide.” After the first read is done it goes on a separate shelf and one of my professional team takes a second read. If they agree and both people who’ve reviewed the application say yes, we send out an invitation to interview. If they can’t agree we take it to committee. Or we deny.
My committee meets twice a week, for anywhere from 30 minutes to eight hours. It’s a group of eight and we will come to a consensus – it is not a vote – as to whether or not to invite to interview or deny. Once there’s a decision the file goes back to the admissions staff, who will contact the student and invite them to interview. The prospective student gets to pick a slot that fits with their schedule. Once the student is interviewed, the interviewer – one of my team – makes a recommendation: don’t recommend, recommend with reservation, recommend, recommend with confidence, or highly recommend.
As a benchmark, highly recommend is maybe 1 in 50 or 60 applicants. That is literally saying to the committee, “This person is an absolute rock star we have to have them.” Recommend with confidence is a student saying, “Yes, I want this person in class with me next year.” Recommend with reservation is “There’s something that doesn’t click or doesn’t sound right to me.” And don’t recommend is “no way, no how, not a chance.”
We usually get a three- to four-page dossier of the interview with a recommendation. The interviewer picks one of the five designations and then it goes to committee and we talk about that student and decide whether or not to make that offer. I want to make it clear that there is no vote – this is not a voting system. We are going to talk about you and decide whether you are a good fit for Johnson. I think it’s fairly callous to be voting on someone’s future.
I really want to be transparent in the application process. If a student is not a good match – if he or she needs a higher GPA or GMAT score – I will tell them on the road. We are going to be completely frank. I will not say to them, “Oh yeah, you should definitely apply.” We are up 57 percent in applications over two years, and we do not need that extra $200. There were 2,100 students last year that did not get an offer from us, and that’s no fun.
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?
RS: I think that the Johnson school is really about knowing who you are and what you bring to the table. We are building a community of students who understand what it means to network together and work together in a team environment.
If there is a student out there who wants to go home and study alone and not engage with their fellow students, he or she may not be the right student for us and Johnson might not be the right school for him or her. If you are in the front space of a business, or in brand development, say – we need you to interact every day. These are aspects we want everyone to understand and be a part of.
Also, we are not looking to fill all the seats with investment bankers. When you bring an accountant, a brand manager, and an investment banker together to look at a case study, the answers you get are not all the same. In tests and in some presentations you will stand on your own, but on the whole we are very team centric.
When I ask students at Johnson how many people in your class do you know – as percentage – I have never had an answer of less than 90 percent. I would challenge other schools to match that. I think that provides a great understanding of networking. The MBA is a wonderfully analytical degree and if you go to a top 15 business school you will be well suited to go into business, but what will your network look like? How will you grow socially, personally, professionally? Other schools may not articulate that but we do because that’s what makes us different.
A big thing about us is that my team and I want to be as transparent as possible. I don’t want applying to business school to be a scary thing. This is what happens, and I don’t want to hide it from anyone. Ultimately I want 270 students at the Johnson School who really want to be here and are passionate about being here.
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