Posted by Clear Admit on September 20, 2011, at 1:00 pm
Posted in:  Admissions Director Q&A , School: London Business School With just a few weeks to go before the October 5th Round 1 application deadline for London Business School (LBS), now is a great time to hear directly from the school’s admissions director himself about what sets its MBA program apart.
In the interview that follows, David Simpson, LBS associate director of marketing and admissions, highlights recent changes to the organization of the school’s curriculum, as well as the remarkable diversity of the LBS class. He also walks us through the admissions process step by step and provides some concrete pointers on how to write strong application essays, as well as how to prepare for the admissions interview.
So whether your already busy preparing your application for the upcoming Round 1 deadline or you’re considering adding the school to your target list for a later round, you won’t want to miss what Simpson has to say.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at LBS this coming year?
David Simpson: There has been a lot going on at the school, so I guess this year I have a lot to talk about. We are very progressive in terms of looking at where we want to go and how we can have an impact on the way the world does business. We have spent the past year as an institution exploring our own values and what we think makes us special and unique. Together we have all examined what we like about this place and what makes it tick and what we really stand for.
The greatest development this year at LBS more reflects how we communicate with the world than it involves necessarily making any changes. We have had a program review of the MBA. Basically once every five years we look closely at the MBA program, taking time to appreciate what works really well and the kinds of things that have given us our Financial Times number one ranking. Obviously we want to keep those things, but like anything else, the MBA program has to adapt and change according to its environment. So this year the program director and faculty had the major job of looking at the MBA and making some changes to it.
What we tried to do was organize and structure our learning into themes, creating an overarching structure that would flow through in a sequence to help our students in the best possible way. Right from the start we have reordered some things and added a few new areas.
One is a Leadership Launch right at the beginning of the program. This is really about everyone taking a look at themselves and reflecting on what they have done and what they’d like to be. For this purpose, we have combined some of those leadership activities that existed before early on in the program into a more formal launch initiative that includes two core courses, one on understanding general management and another on global . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on January 27, 2011, at 1:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: MIT / Sloan We circled back recently to check in with an admissions director we hadn’t yet reconnected with as part of our Admissions Director Q&A Series – Rod Garcia of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Maybe it’s all the snow in Boston that gave him a little extra free time to take part. Whatever the case, we’re happy to have had a chance to catch up with him and think you’ll enjoy the interview that follows.
An MIT Sloan veteran, Garcia has been at the school for the past 23 years and admissions director for the last 12. Before coming to MIT Sloan in 1988, he worked in admissions at the University of Chicago.
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Posted by Clear Admit on November 11, 2010, at 12:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Yale In our continuing series of interviews with admissions directors at top MBA programs, we recently caught up with Yale School of Management (SOM) Admissions Director Bruce DelMonico. A lawyer by training, DelMonico grew tired of sleeping in his office and traveling for weeks on end, so in October 2004 he joined Yale SOM as deputy director of admissions in his native New Haven, Connecticut. He assumed the role of admissions director in November 2006.
There are lots of things to be excited about in the coming year at Yale SOM, DelMonico tells us. Of particular note: the arrival of a new dean in July and the construction of a new state-of-the-art campus. And then, just in the week since we reconnected with DelMonico, there’s also been the tidbit of news about a $10 million gift from investor Wilbur Ross, which will fund the new campus library.
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Posted by Clear Admit on November 5, 2010, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: UNC / Kenan Flagler In another addition to our Admissions Director Q&A Series this year, we are pleased to include the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. We spoke with Director of MBA Admissions Sherry Wallace, who shared her enthusiasm about making the admissions process as transparent as possible. “There is no advantage to us in our selection process if people feel like they are in the dark,” she said.
Wallace herself graduated from the Kenan-Flagler MBA program in 1987 and pursued a career in advertising and marketing with several major consumer packaged goods companies. She later married and returned to North Carolina, and about 12 years ago she was offered the opportunity to come back to Kenan-Flagler as part of the admissions team. “It fit me to a tee, and I didn’t need to think very long about coming back to work in Chapel Hill,” she recounts. While she might not have imagined herself in her current role at the start of her career, that she is here now shows the power and flexibility of the MBA, she says.
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Posted by Clear Admit on October 26, 2010, at 1:30 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: CMU / Tepper We’re excited this year to add Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business to our Admissions Director Q&A Series. Last week we caught up with James Frick, recently named MBA director of admissions, whose interview follows.
Frick has been with the Tepper School since 1998. Initially he worked on the program side with students once they became part of the Tepper community. “But the more I did of admissions, the more I loved it,” he says. “So I jumped in with both feet in 2003.”
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Posted by Clear Admit on October 19, 2010, at 1:17 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Cornell / Johnson Randall Sawyer has been serving as the director of admissions at the Johnson School of Business for the past five years. Before his appointment to admissions director, Sawyer was the public relations officer for the Johnson School. Prior to joining the Johnson community, 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 his excitement about a couple of big names scheduled to speak at the school, impressive gains in terms of diversity and the strength of Johnson’s marketing and brand management program. He also provides a glimpse inside the application process – and advice on answering the new third essay – that prospective applicants will not want to miss. Read on!
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Posted by Clear Admit on October 14, 2010, at 3:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: UT Austin / McCombs ~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
We are excited to add the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin to our Admissions Director Q&A Series this season. We caught up with Rodrigo Malta earlier this week and got to learn how he went from being a full-time McCombs MBA student to directing admissions for his alma mater in just a few years. As you’ll see in the interview that follows, we then drilled him about the McCombs MBA and the admissions process he directs, and he provided some great advice for prospective applicants.
Malta, a native of Brazil, moved to the United States for high school and college and ultimately graduated from the McCombs full-time MBA program in 2007. While a student at McCombs, he was highly involved in admissions activities, and after graduation he remained in Austin, accepting a marketing position with Dell.
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Posted by Clear Admit on October 12, 2010, at 4:29 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Columbia ~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
There’s been a lot of news out of Columbia Business School (CBS) recently, what with a $100 million gift from alumnus Henry Kravis ’69 and plans for expansion to a new Manhattanville campus. Given the flurry of activity, it’s no wonder we’ve had a hard time catching Mary Miller to participate in our Admission Director Q&A Series. But catch her we finally did, and her interview follows.
For those who haven’t been keeping up with the admissions office at CBS, Miller joined as assistant dean of admissions in fall 2009, bringing with her almost 30 years of experience in the admissions field. She came to CBS from the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she managed MBA admissions, student affairs and career services as associate dean from 2002 to 2009. She also served as associate dean of MBA admissions at New York University’s Stern School of Business for several years and as director of undergraduate programs at the College of Business Administration at the University of Iowa.
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Posted by Clear Admit on September 29, 2010, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: NYU Stern ~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
This week in our continuing Admissions Director Q&A Series, we turn to New York City, where we caught up with Isser Gallogly, executive director of MBA admissions at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Gallogly understands the MBA and its potential for changing people’s lives first hand. “I am on my third career,” he told us in an interview. He worked in banking after college and then returned to business school to obtain an MBA as part of a career shift toward marketing. After almost a decade working for Unilever and Loreál, he decided to shift again toward education and academia. “I know how much an MBA has changed my life both personally and professionally, and helping others on that journey seemed to me to be a very gratifying job opportunity,” he said.
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Posted by Clear Admit on September 24, 2010, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Duke / Fuqua , Uncategorized This week in our continuing series of discussions with admissions directors at top business schools around the world, we caught up with Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean of admissions at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Hargrove is a veteran admissions officer with strong ties to North Carolina. She began her career in undergraduate admissions at North Carolina State University and joined the staff at Duke in 1993, where she has been ever since.
Read on to learn more about Fuqua’s new education and research strategy, based around six key industry verticals. By establishing research centers in each consulting, finance, energy/environment, IT/media, health care and consumer goods, the school hopes to connect its students with the fields’ most important leaders and set itself apart from other MBA programs.
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Posted by Clear Admit on September 17, 2010, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Chicago ~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
Earlier this week we featured an interview with Ankur Kumar, recently named the new deputy dean of admissions for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Today we turn to another new senior admissions director taking the reins for the first time this admissions season: Kurt Ahlm of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
For the past several years, Ahlm has served as the right hand to Rose Martinelli, who led Chicago Booth’s admissions team for more than a decade before stepping down earlier this summer. When Martinelli transitioned to a different role within the university, Ahlm was asked to serve as senior director of admissions in an interim capacity. “We are going to see where things go from there,” he said in our interview earlier this week.
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Posted by Clear Admit on September 14, 2010, at 3:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Penn / Wharton ~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
As part of our continuing series of interviews with admissions directors at each of the top MBA programs, we recently caught up with Ankur Kumar, the new deputy director of MBA admissions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Kumar, a Wharton alumna, joined the school’s admissions team about a year and a half ago, shortly after fellow Wharton alumnus J.J. Cutler signed on as admissions director. Cutler has since become deputy vice dean of the school, with oversight of both the admissions and career services offices, and Kumar has been promoted to run admissions day to day for the MBA program.
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Posted by Clear Admit on September 3, 2010, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Northwestern / Kellogg Beth Flye, assistant dean and director of admissions for the full-time MBA program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, is the latest contributor to our ongoing Admissions Director Q&A. We caught up with her last week just before she set off for Latin America to meet with prospective applicants there.
Flye has 20 years of experience in higher education and has served as admissions director at Kellogg since January 2003. She is well known in the admissions circle for encouraging applicants to know themselves and be themselves when applying to Kellogg.
Read on to learn more about Kellogg’s new dean, the school’s distinctive joint degree programs and how to make your application essays stand out to the admissions committee.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at Kellogg this year?
Beth Flye: This is a very easy question to answer and one that I answer enthusiastically. What is new at Kellogg is that we have a new dean. Dean Sally Blount, who is also a Kellogg grad. She has hit the ground running and has spent a lot of time meeting key stakeholders. We know she will have a strong accent in focusing on the student experience.
She has been busy meeting with a lot of people – alumni, faculty, those of us on the staff side. She is also already on the road doing fundraising. Her calendar is very busy and I haven’t spent very much time with her personally yet, but I can tell you she is very much on the move.
I do anticipate that there will be some changes as she settles into the role. One of the things that I think she will be focusing on will be global initiatives, though exactly what that will entail I am not entirely sure. She wants to continue to grow the Kellogg brand – making sure that our alumni network is well connected around the globe and that we are attracting the very best talent.
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
Beth Flye: I would definitely like to highlight the two joint degree programs we have. We have our “triple M” program, the MMM, which is the Kellogg MBA plus the MEM (masters of engineering management) from Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. This program integrates management, operations and design from concept to execution, helping students learn a systems approach to managing a company.
We also have the JD/MBA program in partnership with tNorthwestern’s School of Law. Our combined JD/MBA is a little bit over three years, so it is more of an accelerated program compared with some other JD/MBA programs. What is great about the JD/MBA program is that it is a wonderful platform for someone who wants to get both an MBA and a background in legal and regulatory training.
Something that sets our JD/MBA program apart is that on average we see 25 to 30 students a year. This . . . → Continue Reading
Posted by Clear Admit on September 1, 2010, at 4:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Berkeley / Haas ~~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~~
The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley is one of a handful of top MBA programs whose admissions team has a new leader beginning this season. In mid-August, Stephanie Fujii replaced outgoing Director of Admissions Peter Johnson, who had been with Haas for more than a decade.
Fujii generously made time to speak with us while getting the hang of her new role just as the first admissions round of the season heats up at Haas. Though newly minted Berkeley’s admissions director, Fujii is not new to admissions nor is she new to Haas. She has been a part of the Haas admissions team for the past five years, most recently as senior associate director. Before that she worked in the nonprofit sector in eldercare, after recieving an MBA of her own from Haas.
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