Posted by Clear Admit on August 25, 2010, at 1:00 pm
Posted in:  Admissions Director Q&A , School: Michigan / Ross ~~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~~
Soojin Kwon Koh, herself a graduate of the Ross School of Business, knows the school’s admissions process from both sides. She has been leading the admissions team at Ross as director of admissions and financial aid since April 2007, though she served as interim director even before that. During her tenure at the school, she has helped increase the “yield,” or enrollment of students accepted into Ross’s full-time program, in great part by making personal connections with prospective students during the admissions process.
Koh was named one of the Forty Under Forty by Crain’s Detroit Business in 2008. Prior to joining the Ross Admissions Committee, she put her Ross MBA to work as a manager at Deloitte Consulting and as an analyst for both the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is also a member of the Forté Foundation, which encourages talented women toward leadership roles in business. » Continue reading
This week, we will launch our fall Admissions Director Q&A Series, featuring interviews with admissions directors at each of the top MBA programs around the globe. In these question-and-answer exchanges, directors tell us some of the things they are most excited about in the year to come and draw attention to aspects of their programs that not all applicants may know.
We also ask them to delve into the nitty-gritty of the application process itself. What, exactly, happens to your application from the moment you hit “submit” through to the moment you learn – fingers crossed! – you’ve been admitted? Admissions directors have seemed more than happy to walk us through this process, and we’ll share with you what we’ve learned. » Continue reading
Posted by Clear Admit on November 9, 2009, at 1:02 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Columbia Earlier this fall, Columbia Business School (CBS) welcomed Mary Miller as its new assistant dean of admissions. Miller brings almost 30 years of experience in the admissions field. She comes 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.
Miller joins CBS as part of its recent move to combine admissions for the MBA and Executive MBA degree programs. Linda Meehan, who previously headed MBA admissions at the school, will remain active at CBS but will focus more of her attention on alumni affairs, Miller tells us.
We caught up with Miller last week for an interview about her new role and about the overall admissions process at CBS. A transcript of our chat follows.
Clear Admit: Having worked in admissions for 28 years, you clearly bring a great deal to your new role at CBS. What do you feel is the most valuable thing you have to share?
Mary Miller: I have had a really wonderful time in higher education, and I feel very fortunate. Especially since I have worked at two public and two private universities. I started out being an academic advisor because I wanted to make a difference. I knew what education did for me – it transformed my life – so when I market, I market from the heart.
I have gone from being an academic advisor to a director of admissions to working in student affairs to working with alumni. And most recently, at the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I added the career services piece. So I have seen the whole spectrum – from when students are deciding what to study to when they walk across the stage with diploma in hand to when they interact with the school as alumni. I think that experience gives me a very holistic approach.
CA: What are you most excited about in joining Columbia?
MM: I am happy to be at such a prestigious university. The thing that attracted me to the join is the new initiative in which Columbia is integrating the functions of its EMBA and full-time MBA program. We think a Columbia MBA is a wonderful opportunity for our prospects, but they don’t always know which program is right for them. My goal is to be very customer focused and help them identify which program is best suited to their individual needs.
Clear Admit: Has the MBA admissions process changed with the consolidation?
MM: Not yet, but I think we are going to see more going forward. I have been working with Ethan Hanabury (CBS senior associate dean of degree programs) on this, and we are going to do a much better job interacting with our public. A lot of times they don’t understand the options and what delivery program is best suited to them. We are going to have some structural changes but we are going to be benchmarking all along the way. So we are going to try to keep the best from each program and share it across programs.
Clear Admit: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
MM: There are a lot of things to talk about when we think about Columbia. We are much more than just finance. We are very proud of our finance faculty and our relationships with recruiting firms, but we have a lot more to offer. For example, in real estate, media, pharma and healthcare – we have centers that capitalize on our New York City location and broaden and diversify our options. A lot of people miss digging a little deeper and recognizing all that we offer.
For example, we have 130 electives. I don’t think people take time to look beyond finance and realize how diverse and interesting and innovative some of our electives and offerings are.
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.)?
MM: I think one of the things that is a bit overwhelming is the volume that we have to deal with here. I am delighted that there are so many people interested in attending Columbia. Dealing with a large volume is quite an undertaking, especially since we want to give everyone full consideration.
Once an applicant hits submit, his or her application goes to a first reader. We do have a few outside readers in this role. But there are not very many and they are usually former employees of the admissions department, because we are very concerned that each applicant be reviewed by a qualified reviewer.
Applicants can be invited to interview at any point in the process, and being invited for an interview is a very positive signal to the applicant that we are interested in him or her. That invitation is really, really important. So a first reader can nominate that an applicant be invited to interview, at which point candidates are then sent a list of alumni in their local area who have been trained and have volunteered to interview applicants. Applicants set up the interview and get to choose who they interview with. There is an interview format that we send to our alumni interviewers. They conduct the interview blind – all they get is a resume of the applicant – and then they return the list of answers to us.
The application then will go to a second reader. If an applicant hasn’t been nominated for an interview by the first reader, the second reader will also have the option to invite for an interview. Once again, at any point in the process someone can be invited to interview. I think this is very important because we all have our own biases and are very diverse in our backgrounds. Many have come from corporate America, others of us have worked at other business schools. I think it’s important for applicants to know that they get a 360-degree review and that they can be invited to interview at any point.
Then, if everyone agrees, it’s easy. Dilemmas come with differences of opinion, so we as a committee debate that. Sometimes at that point we’ll do an additional telephone interview, we’ll check references – we’ll do whatever it takes to make the right decision. Coming to Columbia is the most important decision applicants make and the most important decision we make. The people we accept will be Columbia alumni for life, and we want to make sure we select people who are right for the school.
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?
MM: I think the biggest piece of advice I would give applicants is to use the essays to tell us about themselves and not tell us what they think we want to hear. So often applicants try to anticipate what we are looking for and then tell us that. We read thousands and thousands of applications – you get rather good at spotting essays that people don’t write themselves, have had a lot of help or are trying to write one essay that is used for all schools.
You need to learn about the school first of all. We always encourage candidates to visit campus, talk to our students and talk to alumni before they start to complete the application.
Avoid cut and paste mistakes. “I really want to attend ____ school because.” Other mistakes applicants make is they don’t really tell us about themselves, about what makes them unique. We talk about this – all of the administrators here talk about “telling the story.” Students hear it from the admissions office when they apply and later from career services when it comes time to talk to recruiters. Everyone has a unique story to tell. In admissions what we are looking for is how applicants think about themselves. How they think and what they think is important for us to know. That’s really all we have in admissions. And we use that to evaluate whether they would be a good fit for Columbia.
The last thing I would say is that they need to take this really, really seriously. Answer the questions, follow directions. If our essays ask for 500 words and they give us 5,000, what does that say about an applicant?
Posted by Clear Admit on June 15, 2009, at 11:00 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: MIT / Sloan As the conclusion to our Admissions Director Q&A Series, we recently spoke with Rod Garcia, director of admissions at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An MIT Sloan veteran, Garcia will celebrate his 21st year at the school this September. Garcia rose through the ranks since joining the MIT Sloan community in 1988, and he has served as admissions director for the past decade. Before that, he worked in admissions at the University of Chicago.
In the interview that follows, Garcia shares his thoughts on the role of MIT Sloan’s Dean David Schmittlein, who came from Wharton in 2007. He also offers advice to candidates regarding business school rankings and shares insight about what his team is looking for in response to MIT’s unique essay questions. If you’re considering applying to MIT Sloan, you won’t want to miss this.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting recent development, change, or event happening at MIT Sloan?
Rod Garcia: To me, the most exciting change or development that has happened here recently is the new dean. Two years ago we brought a new dean on board – Dean David Schmittlein. As far as I know, he is the first dean who was not hired from inside. In the past they have always had a dean from within the school, and we never looked outside. But bringing someone new in brought a lot of new ideas and new energies to the school. That has really made this past year very exciting.
Dean Schmittlein is someone who understands admissions because he served as deputy dean at the Wharton School for years before he came here. We did not have to spend the first year educating him because he was already educated. This dean did not need that. Instead, he was able to dive right in.
For example, this last October I was in a cab in Chicago on the way to a presentation when I learned on my Blackberry that CitiAssist had cancelled our international student loan program. The response by this dean was amazing, which is why we were the first school to have a replacement program in place. It was because of the leadership of this dean’s office. They knew how important this was and immediately started looking for alternatives. It was priority number one.
So that’s why I am very excited about this new administration and the new dean. And this is just his second year…
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
RG: It’s really not just one area. I think what I would say is I wish MBA candidates would look beyond the rankings and really look at schools from their point of view, not from someone else’s point of view. By doing that I think they will be able to determine whether this place is the right place for them or not as opposed to using an external ranking.
Let me just say, rankings are good. We have been ranked highly, and we will take that. But nonetheless, I would advise candidates to look beyond the rankings because in the process they will discover things. I think it is really personal to the individual.
When I interviewed here in 1988, I knew nothing about MIT or MIT Sloan. I knew nothing about Boston. But when I came to interview – and I spent only about two or three hours in the admissions office – there was something there that happened that made me feel that this was the right place for me. It was not the facilities, it was the not building, but it was something.
I don’t know what the secret sauce is – I wish I could bottle it. But it changed my view of MIT and my view of Boston, and I really wanted the job so much more than before I came for the interview. That’s something you can’t see in a brochure or on a website. So my advice is to come and see it for yourself. Whether it’s this school or another school – candidates owe it to themselves to come and visit.
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.).
RG: Okay. I’ll start from the application deadline. The first thing we do is import the data to our own database. And even though it’s a paperless application, we print everything and the data is loaded into the database.
The first person to see the application is me. I review each application online and distribute them for reading to members of the committee. They are distributed randomly, by the way. And our readers are all internal – we don’t use students or alumni. The reviewers are all internal staff along with some contract readers – so it’s entirely controlled by us.
The readers pick up a batch of 20, 25, or 40 applications depending on how fast they read. And then a week later they come back with the applications they have scored, and those scores are recorded. From there, I will go into the database and look at the scores, and based on those scores, about 18 percent will be invited for an interview.
That’s right. We score the applications. We don’t have a global rating. Instead, we score every attribute. There are about nine that we look at, ranging from GMAT score to GPA to work success to all the other attributes, like leadership attributes. Essentially there are two major groups of attributes – demonstrated success (GMAT, GPA, work success) and then the leadership attributes. We add up the sum of the two scores, and based on those two scores I will decide the 18 percent who will be invited for an interview.
Is it always 18 percent? No. The size of the class is constant – 324 MBAs plus roughly 50 in our Leaders in Manufacturing dual-degree program. The other number that is constant is the number of people we will interview. Basically, we interview no more than 800. So depending on the total number of applications we receive, the percentage of candidates that are invited for an interview varies. But it is no more than 800 people, and from there we will admit slightly more than half.
We could interview 1000, even 2000, but we can’t ever offer more than 500 spots, so our strategy is to do the selection at the interview stage. And that’s my job, to find the 18 percent or 800 candidates we will interview.
They are then interviewed by members of committee. Committee members will score them again, and based on those scores, we will pick the 50 percent to admit.
It’s actually quite easy. We don’t spend a lot of time debating because we can refer to something specific in the application. Either it’s there or it’s not there. We don’t say, “I like this person because this person is outgoing.” We don’t do it that way. We say we like this person because this person has a high competency in creativity, or relationship building, or goal setting, or influencing. (Those are all among the leadership attributes we consider.)
It’s a sensible process based on tangible considerations. So when someone says, “Why was this person not admitted?” we can really pinpoint where this particular applicant stood out or didn’tcame up short.
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?
RG: I think our system is different from the others because it is always about looking back. The essay questions themselves are unique because we ask for past examples rather than future assertions. We’re not looking for applicants to say, “I will be this…” Instead, we ask them for examples of past behavior. Based on the examples that they give, we are able to give them a numerical score.
And yes, while we do ask candidates to be reflective in their essays, we are not interested in the results but in the process. We are interested in the details. It doesn’t always have to be a happy story or a successful story. Rather, we want to know how you did x or y. Whether it had a happy or successful conclusion is not what we are judging here.
Very often people seem to be stuck in trying to give examples that are glowingly successful. They’ll dig way back to something that happened six years ago. But we are more interested in examples that happened more recently – say, in the last two years – because your behavior in the last two years is more reflective than something six or 10 years ago. Again, it’s really not the story, but the details of the story, the actions that you took, that matter. So don’t reach farther back because you feel like we need an example with a happy or successful ending.
Posted by Clear Admit on February 24, 2009, at 11:35 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: INSEAD In our continuing series of interviews with admissions directors at the world’s top business schools, we were fortunate enough to connect recently with Jake Cohen, who in September 2008 replaced Antonio Fatás as dean of INSEAD’s MBA program.
Cohen, a professor of accounting and control and business law at INSEAD for more than five years, also served as director of the INSEAD-PricewaterhouseCoopers research initiative on high performance organizations, overseeing the school’s largest research center. Prior to joining INSEAD, Cohen was a senior teaching fellow in the accounting and management group at Harvard Business School.
In the transcript that follows, you’ll hear from Cohen about some of the exciting things to expect in the year ahead at INSEAD’s Fontainebleau and Singapore campuses and get some practical tips on how to make your application stand out.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at INSEAD this coming year?
Jake Cohen: We are preparing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of INSEAD. We’ll be running some landmark events that will celebrate the achievements of the visionary founders of the school and those that have contributed to the tremendous evolution of our institution over the years.
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.).
JC: Applications are reviewed by round. When an application deadline passes, all the files are checked for completeness (i.e. to be sure they include an online application, 2 recommendations, GMAT score, TOEFL if non-native English speaker, university transcripts, application fee).
The files, in their entirety, are then reviewed by the admissions team. A selection of the candidates to be invited to interview is made. The candidate is then informed that he/she is being invited to interview and is provided with the contact details of the interviewers.
Our interviews are conducted by our alumni, normally in the country of residence of the candidate. We work with 1,500 alumni interviewers around the world – we are fortunate to have a very strong worldwide network of alumni who are very committed and engaged with the school.
After the interviews take place, each interviewer sends the admissions team a report, and then the candidate’s file is reviewed in its entirety, this time with the addition of the interview reports, by two separate members of the admissions team. The file is then presented to the admissions committee, composed of faculty and alumni, who make all final decisions on who is admitted to the program.
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?
JC: From the essays we are looking to get more insight into what makes the candidate tick. We are looking to get a sense of their personality and to understand what makes them different from other candidates. A common mistake is to give a formulaic response that the candidate thinks we want to read – whereas we are looking for authenticity. We greatly value honesty.
Posted by Clear Admit on December 19, 2008, at 1:19 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: UCLA / Anderson As we near the end of our Admissions Director Q&A series, we are pleased to bring you a recent interview with Mae Jennifer Shores, admissions director at the Anderson School of Business at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
As reported by BusinessWeek earlier this fall, Anderson is currently experiencing an application volume surge, in part due to the fact that more students seek haven in business school when the economy slumps. But in the BW article, Anderson’s dean also attributed the rise in applicants to the strength of the school’s entrepreneurship program and increased interest among candidates from Asia.
In the interview that follows, Shores provides a ton of information regarding social enterprise at Anderson, an area she feels applicants don’t always know enough about. She also gives some excellent pointers on how to craft strong and compelling application essays. (Hint: Don’t submit a 27-page answer when the question asks for 1,000 words…)
Clear Admit: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
Mae Jennifer Shores: I wish applicants knew more about UCLA Anderson’s commitment to social enterprise. The school has a long track record of demonstrated involvement in social enterprise that predates much of the recent interest among business schools in the area. UCLA Anderson’s activities are unparalleled as they extend beyond student clubs and activities to include academic training and professional experience.
Social enterprise is found in the following academic, co-curricular and career areas:
• Elective courses: These include Leaders in Sustainability, Social Entrepreneurship, Business and Economics in Emerging Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation, Business and the Environment and others.
• Leaders in Sustainability Program: This multi-disciplinary program provides a mechanism for UCLA Anderson MBA students to pursue their interests in sustainability in collaboration with graduate students from across the university. The program prepares students who will be leaders in their professional fields to make key business and public policy decisions with an eye to sustainability. Students gain experiential knowledge by collaborating on client projects for local businesses, nonprofits and government agencies.
• Price Center for Management Development Program: This program offers industry-specific, executive development programs that are designed to help managers build essential skills as well as effective and profitable organizations. MBA students serve as teaching assistants or fellows in Price Center programs.
• Johnson & Johnson Health Care Executive Program: This program trains executive directors of community-based health care organizations, Head Start agencies and HIV/AIDS programs in Africa in health literacy. The program has effectively reduced work absenteeism, Medicaid costs for children’s ER or clinic visits by as much as 58 percent.
• Applied Management Research (AMR): As part of these projects, students spend 20 weeks examining a specific company, industry and strategic opportunity and develop strategic plans for recommendation and implementation. Past projects have included studying low-income Indian consumer attitudes and behaviors surrounding packaged foods and improving wait times at the nation’s largest free clinic.
• UCLA’s Net Impact chapter: The local chapter of national organization Net Impact is housed at UCLA Anderson. Net Impact’s mission is to improve the world by growing and strengthening a network of new leaders who are using the power of business to make a positive net social, environmental and economic impact.
• Careers in hundreds of organizations with missions involving social entrepreneurship, including the American Red Cross, Amnesty International, Hong Kong Trade Development Council, J. Paul Getty Trust, RAND Corporation, National Endowment for the Arts, US Agency for International Development, US International Trade Commission and others.
These opportunities are enhanced by the school’s location in Los Angeles, which has one of the most diversified employment bases in the United States. Los Angeles is home not only to small business (98 percent of firms hire fewer than 100 employees), but also to major industries such as finance, aerospace, biotechnology, defense, media and entertainment, high tech, health care and consulting.
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.).
MAS: Once applications are complete (i.e., all required parts of the application have been submitted), they are sent out for review to individual committee members. Our review is holistic and based on the strength of the entire application. We read all files in their entirety rather than pre-screen applications based on academics, test scores or other criteria. We allocate whatever time is required to thoroughly read and assess applications. First reads can take up to an hour or more. Subsequent reviews may take less time.
Each file is read in its entirety and evaluated for the applicant’s admissibility in a given year. In the first phase of reviews, all applicants are either invited for an interview or denied without an interview. The number of reviews a file receives in this phase depends upon how clear the decision to interview or deny is.
The clearest decisions receive two to three reads. For those candidates who are interviewed, their application is read again in its entirety with the interview results included. Each file is read by two to five individuals before a decision to admit, deny or waitlist is recommended.
Following the post-interview evaluations, the committee meets formally and collectively reviews all the files once more, revising any decisions as deemed necessary based on group consensus. The makeup of our committee is very diverse, which allows for multiple perspectives in the evaluation process. The committee is comprised of seasoned admissions officers who represent formal training and direct experience in business, higher education and the not-for-profit sectors. Our varied, deep industry experience allows us to collectively craft a similarly rich and diverse class of students.
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?
MAS: When my team reads essays we are looking for clarity of thought and cogency. We look for an ability to clearly articulate what has transpired in your personal and/or professional life, how this has shaped who you are today and how these experiences have led you to pursue an MBA at this time. The best essays are genuine and introspective. The best advice we can offer any candidate is to heed the advice of admissions professionals rather than the advice of well meaning, but less informed, friends, colleagues and even alumni of MBA programs.
The biggest mistakes candidates make arise from ill-conceived assumptions about what the admissions committee is looking for in applicants. As a result, many essays are clearly tailored with a false sense of impression management. These mistakes play out in the following ways:
• Over-editing one’s essays. While it is fine to receive input from others regarding the clarity of one’s thoughts in essays, overreliance on others to edit, fine-tune or carefully craft verbiage in essays often leads to sterile essays in which one’s own personal voice is lost. Essays may also read as if they were written by multiple authors. Both actions call into question the authenticity of your work, as well as your personal integrity.
• Crossing the boundaries of appropriate disclosure. As admissions officers we are interested in getting to know applicants as individuals. Including details about one’s life are fine as long as they are relevant to your MBA candidacy. While it is fine to highlight, for example, that your mother was ill for much of your undergraduate experience and that your need to attend to her illness negatively affected your grades, we do not need to hear the intimate details surrounding her illness.
• Ignoring guidelines. Applicants are evaluated not only upon their academic, professional and extracurricular experiences, but also upon the judgment calls they make as part of the admissions process. There is flexibility in the word limits of essays, but wide divergence from specified guidelines calls into question one’s ability to act professionally or perform well on a team. For example, I will never forget the essay from an applicant that ran 27, single-spaced, pages. The applicant had disregarded the 1,000 word limit (the equivalent of three double-spaced pages). Exacerbating matters, the applicant submitted an additional five-page essay to explain his decision to submit 10 recommendation letters, rather than the requested three. My reaction was: “This is very sad because this is an incredibly accomplished individual. I would have some real concerns about this person’s suitability on a team.”
• Confusing Shakespearean prose for business school writing. Applicants are eager to have their essays sound sophisticated and polished, full of lively prose and witty observations about their careers. That’s fine. Yet a common trap applicants fall into is being overly verbose, losing sight of the main points they want to communicate. Keep in mind that we are assessing your communication skills, not assessing your ability to write prose in the style of William Faulkner.
• Focusing on impression management. Applicants are prone to relying upon any number of techniques to improve how they appear to admissions committee members. While candidates should present themselves in the best light possible, they should avoid any hint of misrepresentation that can come from using business jargon, exaggerating achievements and failing to recognize the contributions of others to their success. It is all too common for us to read essays that are intentionally peppered with vague phrases such as “I’m a socially responsible businessman” or “I want to work in the technology space.” If you don’t support these statements with real-life examples of what you want to do, it sounds contrived and purposeless. Similarly, embellishment of one’s accomplishments or focus on oneself to the exclusion of others calls into question one’s integrity and capacity for teamwork.
Avoiding these mistakes can dramatically enhance your candidacy and chances of admission. We receive upwards of 4,000 applications annually and draw a diverse set of talented applicants to our program. In a pool this diverse, the need to find some unique way to differentiate yourself from the others is not the critical element that many believe it to be.
While we do admit exceptional individuals to UCLA Anderson who have worked on nuclear submarines, been Olympic athletes or achieved great success in investment banking, there are other candidates we find equally attractive. These individuals may never appear on the cover of Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek or the New York Times, but they are striking and noteworthy for being well-rounded contributors to their communities, thoughtful, genuine and ready for an MBA.
Posted by Clear Admit on December 10, 2008, at 12:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: NYU Stern With round two application deadlines fast approaching, we are beginning to wrap up our Admissions Director Q&A Series here at Clear Admit. Today we are pleased to add a recent conversation 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 said. 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.
Indeed, Gallogly and his staff do seem committed to helping prospective applicants. “We want to be people’s partner in the application process,” he said. To this end, NYU Stern has a range of resources for the prospective applicant in the Applying to Stern section of its website, including admissions directors’ tips and advice, podcasts, interviews with the media and more. You won’t want to miss those or the transcript of our conversation with Gallogly, which follows.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at NYU Stern this coming year?
Isser Gallogly: Well, I have a lot to choose from. I think one of the most interesting things that we’ve been doing lately is a series of Market Pulse events. There is so much going on in the world right now, and we’ve been having panels with our star professors and noted faculty talking about the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy and solutions for the future. .
Really, it’s just part of what you get at NYU Stern. We are a dynamic, plugged-in institution. We really try to stay on the absolute cutting edge of what is happening in the world. What that means is that our students have incredible access to all kinds of people – from the dean of the school, Thomas Cooley, to Professor Nouriel Roubini, who was predicting the current recession a couple of years ago at the IMF, to Professor Ed Altman, a leading expert on corporate distress and default.
We are dynamic, forward looking, innovative, and we change. This was a different year, and in different years you do different things. That said, I could definitely see the Market Pulse events becoming an ongoing series. They have been so successful – some have been standing room only – and it’s very likely they will be continued over the course of next year. Obviously we are all hopeful that the economy will change for the better, but especially given current conditions, I think this new addition has been an exciting and valuable one for both Stern and the business community at large.
[Several portions of the Market Pulse series are available on video on the NYU Stern website. Click here to learn more.]
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
IG: There are two big misconceptions when you are an elite business school in New York City. The first is that Stern is a finance-only institution. The second is that the community may not be collaborative. Both of these ideas are not correct.
Of course, we are close to Wall Street and we do have a wonderful finance program, and people certainly come here to pursue careers in the financial sector. But we also have a phenomenal marketing program. In fact, we are ranked number five in research produced among top business schools.
Within marketing we have a great entertainment and marketing focus, and we also have expertise in the area of luxury and retail. On the marketing front, not only will you get to work with CPGs – Colgate, Kraft, Unilever, etc. – but we also have a lot of marketing opportunities with luxury/retail, financial services and pharmaceuticals. At Stern marketing is much broader in its range of industries.
And yet people don’t know as much about a lot of these things at Stern. We also have a wonderful program in entrepreneurship and social enterprise. Really, the list goes on and on. I think if people looked a little deeper, they would see we are very strong across the board.
The second thing that people think when they think of New York – for right or wrong – is that it can be a very aggressive culture. I think the surprise that people get when they experience Stern is that the culture is very collaborative, very diverse and very team based.
We have one of the highest percentages of women, we have people from all over the globe and we have people who bring experience from a range of industries, from investment banking to entertainment to marketing. But as different as they all are, what these people all have in common is that they respect one another and work together. And I think this collaboration is something that people are surprised about when they come to Stern.
So, to reiterate, we are much more than finance, and the culture here is incredibly collaborative. The students here are really down to earth.
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.).
IG: We obviously have three deadlines, but we employ a rolling decisions process, which makes us unlike some other schools that have a round system. We do provide notification deadlines as to when we will get back to you, but typically that’s the latest possible date and we try to get out our decisions as soon as we have them. We recognize that this is an anxious process, and we don’t make people wait unnecessarily.
Our process is holistic and individualist. Everyone gets reviewed by the Admissions Committee and every application is reviewed more than once, so it’s not just a single individual’s decision. And in some cases, the committee will debate considerably. In every case we just try to ensure that everyone gets a full and complete review and is seen from more than one vantage point.
One aspect I think is unique about our process has to do with who’s reviewing the applications. In some schools, students, part-time help or alumni are involved. But at NYU Stern all applications are reviewed by trained admissions professionals who are part of our full-time team. Occasionally we will bring in some help, but even then these are people who have been a part of our team.
The second point is that our interview process is very different than most schools. First of all, the interview is not optional, it is required. Second, the interview is by invitation only. We only do it if we are serious about the application. Between 25 and 30 percent of applicants are invited in for an interview. This means that we are not going to waste anyone’s time.
Almost all of those interviews happen in New York City with one of our admissions professionals. I always tell people that if you are applying to Stern, set aside the time and money to travel to New York and interview. We take it very seriously.
Our interviews are conducted almost exclusively by trained, professional admissions staff – individuals who are trained assessors of talent. We rarely have students or alumni conduct our admissions interviews – we think our students and alumni are terrific, but most of them are not professional interviewers. So our staff really invests the time to meet each candidate individually in the process. I do interviews myself.
Furthermore, the interview is not blind. The interview is 30 minutes long, and we are not going to waste people’s time by asking them to tell us why they want to go to business school. We’ve already asked that in the application. We want candidates to take it to the next level in the interview. At the same time, these interviews are conversational, they are not interrogation.
Last year our selectivity was 14 percent, making us more selective than most other business schools in the world. So, we want to make sure that we are screening not only on paper but in person as well. I think anyone who has done a job interview has seen some wonderful resumes and then been surprised during the interview that the person was somewhat different than he or she appeared on paper.
It is our responsibility in admissions to make sure that the quality of the Stern network is as high as possible, which is why we have trained professionals conducting all of our interviews with candidates. It’s the only way we feel we can ensure the consistent high quality of students at Stern.
Really, though, it’s in the benefit of the applicant. The applicants typically like the opportunity to have 30 minutes speaking directly to a member of the Admissions Committee. This is their chance to make their case in person.
Not only do we want to make sure that applicants are the right fit for us, we want to make sure we are the right fit for them. When they come to visit Stern as part of the interview they can have lunch with a student, visit a class, and have a tour of the school. All this helps them make an informed decision as to where to attend.
So our approach to the interview is unique and a bit different – but we think that this special part of our process really does get us the best possible talent.
Getting back to the application process as a whole, people have three notification possibilities. There is the invitation for an interview, the waitlist or the one no one wants, which of course is to be denied.
After a candidate goes through the interview, we typically get back to them within three weeks. Last year we admitted between 50 and 60 percent of those who were interviewed.
In terms of how we notify candidates of our decisions, we do almost all of it with an online status check. This allows applicants to see where they are in our process 24/7. When people’s status does change, we also send them an email.
When people are admitted we do try to have the person who conducted the interview give them a congratulatory call. Those are special calls to make. Every once in a while, these calls catch people by surprise, but for the most part we find that candidates stay pretty much on top of their online status – they watch that pretty closely.
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?
IG: There are obviously a lot of dos and don’ts. But one of the most important dos is to answer the question asked. In one of our essay questions, we ask about applicants’ short-term and long-term goals. But we find that a lot of people do not explicitly state both a short- and long-term goal. The question asks for this explicitly, so to answer it is an important thing.
Another piece of advice I would share is that applicants should take their time to choose their schools carefully and apply to only the schools they would be thrilled to be admitted to. Then, they should take the time to customize their essays specifically to those schools and to the questions they ask.
Do not just try to use the same essays to answer different questions. Take the time to really answer the question asked. That’s so much easier to do when you have fewer essays to write because you’ve done your homework in advance and know where you want to go.
Also, do your spell check. Now, a typo is not an automatic disqualification, because we know people are human and make mistakes. But let’s just say this: It certainly doesn’t look good. When your essay is only 500 words long, to have one of those words be that glaringly off, it’s just not ideal.
When we are reading the essays, we are really looking to make sure that people have thought things through, have clear direction and have passion. A lot of people are writing what they think you want to hear. But what we really want to hear is what they are dying to say.
People spend too much time thinking about how to get into business school and not enough time thinking, “Is business school really right for me and how will it help my career both in the short run and in the long run?” Think about that first and then the essay is going to be really easy because you will have done your homework.
Sometimes people just think, “I’m really not happy doing what I’m doing now and I might be happier in this area so I’ll just go to business school.” But the ones who are most successful in business school and in life are the ones who have taken good stock of who they are, what they want and how business school will help them achieve their goals and dreams.
Posted by Clear Admit on December 5, 2008, at 4:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Berkeley / Haas As many of you are no doubt well aware, the second round application deadline for the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business looms just around the corner on December 9. For any of you working to put the final touches on your application, you won’t want to miss this recent conversation we had with Peter Johnson, Haas director of admissions.
Johnson has been working in higher education for more than 20 years and has been at Haas for the past nine. He loves the opportunity it gives him to interact with some really fascinating applicants and students, he told us.
In the transcript that follows, Johnson shares interesting details about the many experiential learning opportunities available to Haas students, talks about how excited he is to have long-time Haas finance professor Rich Lyons return to the school as its new dean and imparts some valuable advice to prospective applicants about how to approach the essay portion of their application.
Our thanks to Peter Johnson for making time to chat with us. And lots of luck to all the Haas applicants out there!
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Haas this coming year?
Peter Johnson: Well, that’s a very open question of course. I could come up with a lot of answers, but if forced to choose one my answer is probably our new dean, Rich Lyons, who arrived in July. He returns to the Haas School after a year and a half on sabbatical working as chief learning officer for Goldman Sachs. He’s been on the faculty as a professor of international finance for many years, but many of us here are really excited to have him come back in the role of dean.
What does that mean for the school? I think we are going to see a further sharpening of the school’s brand identity, and I am expecting a lot of new programming through our Leading Through Innovation initiative. So I think having him back as dean is a very good thing.
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
PJ: One of the things I wish more applicants knew more about is the breadth and depth of the experiential learning opportunities we provide for students. One of the opportunities that lots of applicants seem to know about is the international business development program, which has been running for 18 years and through which we providing consulting services to businesses across a range of industries on international projects.
But beyond this we also have the Haas@Work Program, in which we provide services to companies who are looking for solutions to a particular business problem. Some of the recent companies that our Haas at Work teams have been involved with have included Disney, Cisco Systems, SunPower and Lam Research. So it really is a broad variety of different industries with different types of business problems.
We also provide students with corporate social responsibility experiential learning opportunities though our Center for Responsible Business. These students get to work with businesses interested in strengthening their social responsibility initiatives. And then there’s business innovation and strategy. For instance, lots of companies are looking to change their technology strategies.
So, as you can see, we have many, many experiential learning opportunities students can choose to be involved in while they’re here. And, in fact, if you talk to alumni about their most rewarding experiences here at Haas, you will find that it’s these experiences that many of them talk about the most.
One great way to see a little bit more about what’s going on with regard to experiential learning is to visit our International Business Development website at www.ibdclass.blogspot.com. There you will find a range of different blogs about the projects that students were working on this past summer as well as some projects that are coming up.
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.).
PJ: Well, once a candidate clicks submit that is the beginning of a fairly complicated process that starts with the materials being printed and matched with transcripts and placed in a hardcopy file. Given the volume of applications we receive, we haven’t tried to go to an online reading process.
After the files are assembled, each file then goes to a first read, which is typically a longer read than the others. How long the read takes depends on the individual reader, but this first reader reads the entire application carefully, highlighting key aspects and making a recommendation about whether he or she thinks the candidate should move forward in the review process. In terms of who conducts this first read, it’s going to be someone from our admissions staff. We do not use student readers.
The file then goes on to the second reader, who does basically the same thing. At that point, if both agree that an application is not competitive, the process is pretty much finished. But any other combination of recommendations means that the application goes to a third reader.
Then, one of a few things might happen. Either the candidate will be invited to an interview, be slated for being placed on the waitlist, or be slated for denial. In the case of those candidates we are invited for an interview, we communicate with them and offer then an invitation to interview. When the results of the interview come back, the committee convenes and discusses, and a decision is made.
Candidates who are placed on the waitlist also will be invited to interview prior to a decision being made. Certainly not all of those who are invited to interview will get admitted, but getting invited to an interview is always a good sign. At Haas, we don’t admit people without an interview, so that’s one of the key pieces along the application road.
Sometimes people interpret an invitation to interview as indicating that perhaps there is something wrong with their application. That would definitely not be the case. In an average year we are able to invite between 25 and 30 percent for an interview.
As to what happens with candidates on the waitlist, we use the waitlist throughout the cycle in a variety of ways. Those placed on the waitlist during round one are reviewed again at the end of round two. In some cases, these applicants may receive an offer at that point. In other cases, they will be released from the waitlist. And in still other cases they will remain on list for the third round. So in this way, it is only at the very end of the process that our waitlist functions as a traditional waitlist, in that applicants receive a spot in the class based on a spot becoming available where one might not have been available before.
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?
PJ: What we are looking for in the essays is a clear sense of who the candidates are beyond what we can see on their resumes and transcripts. What are they passionate about? What are their goals? What are the experiences they have had that have helped prepare them for a rigorous MBA program?
A key mistake I see some applicants make is that they approach the essays with the intention of writing something they think the Admissions Committee wants to read. When they do that, they usually squeeze out any individuality, and the result is something very generic.
Another piece of advice I’d offer to prospective applicants is that, as they look at our essay and short answer questions, they should think about how they would answer if a friend or family member were asking. Of course, you’ll want to go back and clean it up a little, but I think the people who are most successful are the applicants who are able to more authentically present a complete picture of who they are.
Some will get another chance to do this in the interview, certainly, but given the volume of applicants to Haas, the written application has to be compelling enough to move applicants forward to the next stage, so they should view this as a real chance to show who they really are.
Posted by Clear Admit on December 2, 2008, at 1:15 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Yale With second round deadlines approaching at many schools and prospective applicants eager to learn as much as possible about the various MBA programs and their application processes, we’re working hard here at Clear Admit to reach admissions directors at each top program as part of our ongoing Admissions Director Q&A Series. A big thanks to Yale SOM’s Dean of Admissions Bruce Delmonico, who cleared time in his schedule this week to take part.
Delmonico’s answers to our questions about Yale SOM in general and the application process in particular follow. As you’ll see, when asked about exciting developments taking place on campus this year, he had trouble limiting his answer to just one. We think that’s great. The more he wants to share, the better!
Read on to learn about some of the new things in the works in terms of Yale’s curriculum, international exchange opportunities, diversity initiatives, Tony Blair coming to campus, a new dean taking charge and more. You’ll also benefit from Delmonico’s inside tips about how to write winning application essays, and you’ll get a preview of just what happens to your application after you hit “submit.”
Clear Admit: What is the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Yale SOM this coming year?
Bruce Delmonico: Just one? It’s tough to limit it to a single development, so I may need to take a few liberties here.
At the outset, I think many of the exciting things happening this year at SOM flow from the new core curriculum we rolled out three years ago, in the 2006-2007 academic year. We feel that this new, Yale integrated MBA curriculum really redefines what management education is about by making the learning much more multidisciplinary, much more contextual, and much more real-world than other MBA curricula. Many of the changes happening this year enhance these aspects of the curriculum.
Thus, for example, we instituted a semester-long international exchange program that is being implemented for the first time this year. As part of the exchange program, some Yale SOM students are spending the first semester of their second year at LSE in London, IESE in Barcelona, IIM-Bangalore or Tsinghua University in Beijing, while students from each of those universities are studying here at SOM. (One of the SOM students doing his exchange in Bangalore actually just won India’s prestigious “Numero Uno” award.) We feel this exchange program complements the first-year International Experience trip and further enhances the international focus of the curriculum.
In addition, SOM joined the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management on July 1. The Consortium is one of the premier organizations promoting diversity in American business. Our membership in the Consortium is just one way in which SOM is demonstrating our commitment to diversity. Just as the international exchange program highlights the importance of developing our students’ international perspective, joining the Consortium demonstrates the importance of diversity to the SOM experience.
Beyond these two developments, the one thing that has garnered even more attention this year is Tony Blair’s arrival here on campus as the Howland Fellow at Yale, through which he is teaching a seminar on religion and globalization being offered jointly by SOM and the Yale Divinity School.
This course is just one example – albeit the most prominent one – of the ways in which the various Yale professional schools collaborate to provide our students with a broad, multidisciplinary education. (Beyond Prime Minister Blair, we also have added roughly a dozen new full-time faculty here at SOM, including Gary Gorton and Andrew Metrick, both of whom have recently joined us from Wharton.)
And, of course, perhaps even more exciting than anything else going on is that we have a new dean here at SOM – Sharon Oster, the Frederic D. Wolfe Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and director of the Yale SOM Program on Social Enterprise. Dean Oster has been at SOM for 26 years and knows the school inside-out.
In terms of her priorities as dean, I would call them the “Three C’s”: curriculum, campus and community. Specifically, she is committed to: (1) continuing the great work that has been done so far with the new curriculum; (2) ensuring that the new SOM campus stays on track to open in the 2011-2012 timeframe; and (3) fostering the SOM community, particularly by strengthening the connections between faculty and students. Everyone here at SOM is excited to have her as dean.
Sorry about the lengthy response – there’s a lot happening at SOM that I wanted to make sure I captured.
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.).
BD: After an applicant submits an application, we make sure it is complete by adding to it any supplemental materials that were submitted separately. Once complete, it is then sent out to read. Each application receives two independent reads by different members of the Admissions Committee.
Applications are read in random order and, as a result, applicants can be invited to interview at any time in the round. Applicants also can be invited to interview at any point in the admissions process – whether early in the round after a preliminary review of the file or later in the round after a first or second read (or, in some instances, after coming before the Admissions Committee). Typically, we will invite roughly a third of applicants to interview and will extend offers to roughly 40 percent of the people we interview.
Once an application receives two reads and, if applicable, an interview, it comes to the Admissions Committee for a decision. The Admissions Committee meets regularly throughout the year to make decisions.
Admissions decisions are made collectively by the Admissions Committee using a consensus decision-making model – all members of the committee must agree on the decision.
Although we try to release decisions as soon as possible and will release some decisions before the posted decision deadline, the majority of candidates will learn the outcome of their application on or a little before the deadline date. Because applications are reviewed in random order, the timing of an admissions decision is not an indication of the final outcome.
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?
BD: The essay portion of the application is an important one because other than the interview, it is the one way through which an applicant can speak directly to us. It is also the one element over which an applicant has the most control at this point – their GMAT and undergraduate records are already in place by the time they apply, as is their work experience. And once they select their recommenders and send them the recommendation form, that is out of the applicant’s hands as well. So the essays are the main way in which applicants can improve their application.
The main piece of advice I can give applicants on essays is very simple: answer the question. Too often, we will read essays in which the applicant has something to say, but it bears no relation – or just tangential relation – to the essay question. We give applicants a good bit of leeway in terms of essay topics, but we do expect them to stick to the topic.
A related piece of advice is not just to answer the question, but to do it clearly and concisely. Pay attention to the word limits and stick to them. Don’t feel as though more is better. Beyond the substance of what you write, we are looking to make sure you can articulate yourself clearly and directly in writing, so keeping it simple is a good thing.
Finally, the last piece of advice I can give is to write what’s important to you. Many times, applicants will write what they think we want to hear. It’s clear when this is the case. We care about authenticity and are not looking for you to tell us what you think we want to hear; we want to hear what’s most important to you. If you write about what matters to you, your essays will not only be more compelling, but they will likely be written more clearly as well because it’s easier to write about things that matter to you.
Posted by Clear Admit on November 25, 2008, at 11:30 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Columbia Before joining Columbia University in 1989, Linda Meehan’s pursuits included teaching and running a home business, among others. She moved to Columbia Business School (CBS) in 1993, where she serves as Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid.
Dean Meehan recently took time out of her busy schedule amid CBS’s rolling admissions process to answer a few of our questions. Read on to learn about some of the interesting new elective courses the school will offer this spring, as well as just how the admissions process unfolds for CBS applicants.
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at Columbia this coming year?
Linda Meehan: Columbia Business School is leading the charge in this new era of business school education, starting with some of our natural advantages: our cutting-edge faculty research and a focus on experiential learning, a powerful alumni network and our location in the city of New York.
Our rigorous core curriculum provides not only the business essentials, but also the leadership skills and networking opportunities that last a lifetime. The following are two elective courses, available to students in spring 2009, which exemplify the innovative offerings of our robust curriculum:
“The Future of Retirement Wealth”
Retirement wealth, including 401(k) and IRA balances and assets in corporate and state and local pension plans, represents a significant fraction of global financial wealth. The United States and many other countries around the world have been undergoing fundamental change in this arena. In addition, the economic crisis of 2008 is introducing a new set of challenges for the retirement wealth system. This course will use the tools of economics and finance to analyze important questions about the future of retirement wealth.
“The Marketing of a Nation: Israel”
In this hands-on, project-based course, students will be given the frameworks and tools necessary to create a marketing campaign to increase American audiences’ awareness of all that Israel has to offer. The course will present a variety of conceptual frameworks from marketing, branding and strategy; offer relevant case studies and background research; and cover relevant industries such as hi-tech, tourism and lobbying. Class time will be divided between lectures, industry guest speakers and intensive group work. Teams of three to five students each will work throughout the week to develop the goals, strategy and implementation for their marketing campaigns. In the final class session, students will present their campaigns to members of the Israeli consulate.
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.)?
LM: An individual application may be reviewed independently by two to three individual members of the admissions committee before the application is presented to the larger admissions committee for a final decision to be rendered.
At any given point during the reading process, the first reader, the second reader or the third reader may request for an interview invitation to be extended, but the application also may make its way to the final admissions committee before an interview invitation is extended. Interviews are generally conducted by alumni in the applicant’s local area. Interviews are blind so the only information an interviewer has about the applicant is that which is shared by the applicant. Generally, an applicant will send a resume to the interviewer.
Once the application has been reviewed, the larger admissions committee, which I chair, will render a final decision on an application.
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?
LM: Essays are one portion of the application over which the applicant has complete control. It is important that the essays are constructed carefully and thoughtfully. Be sure to answer the question we have asked. There is no magic formula that, if you plug in the answers, will provide you with the perfect essay. Tell your story. Be genuine and be passionate. If you are excited and genuinely enthusiastic about what you are writing, your story may inspire the reader of your application. Remember what you choose to write about tells us as much or more about you as your answer itself does.
A pitfall applicants may encounter is trying to look for that magic formula mentioned above. Be true to yourself and your story. Our students don’t come from a cookie cutter. Each one is unique, and so are you.
Posted by Clear Admit on November 20, 2008, at 10:51 am
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: Duke / Fuqua As part of our continuing series of discussions with admissions directors at top business schools around the world, we are pleased to offer this recent interview with Liz Riley Hargrove, Associate Dean of Admissions at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. Hargrove has spent almost her entire professional career at Duke. After starting in undergraduate admissions at North Carolina State University, she joined the staff at Duke in 1993 and has been there ever since.
In the interview that follows, Hargrove shares her excitement about Fuqua’s plans for global expansion, describes the school’s philosophy of collaborative leadership and provides an important tip for applicants to help ensure that you’ve adequately answered your essay questions. So read on!
Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change or event happening at Fuqua this coming year?
Liz Riley Hargrove: Fuqua has just announced a plan to expand our campus to become the first globally embedded business school in five countries simultaneously. We will have a physical presence in India, Russia, China, the United Kingdom (probably London) and Dubai. We just announced it at the end of September.
For prospective applicants it means that Duke will be one of the first business schools to actually be on the ground in all of those locations. We have revamped one of our EMBA programs – our cross-continent program – and students in that program will be able to take classes in those regions of the world. We also will have career services and other resources on the ground in those regions. So it will definitely benefit our full-time MBA students in terms of curriculum, faculty and career services options.
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
LRH: I would say that a lot of people, just from reading our website, aren’t really familiar with the kind of culture that our students experience here. We are of the philosophy that Duke is a collaborative leadership culture. In other words, we believe students can be both collaborators and leaders, as opposed to having the philosophy that those two things are in opposition.
Everything at Fuqua is designed to give students the opportunity to work in teams but also to define and refine their leadership skills. I think students are closer as a result. They challenge each other to be better and to improve and to continue to get better.
We have lots of ways for students to practice what they are learning in a low-risk environment. Our students are not passive participants in their business school education. They are actually encouraged to be a really great part of helping to Fuqua to be a really first-rate school. For example, our Career Fellows help their fellow students in the job search process, and our Leadership Fellows help peers work on leadership skills. Students here have the opportunity to really get involved with the running of the school.
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.).
LRH: Once an applicant hits the submit button our operations team takes over. They download all the applications and print them, and then they are put into folders with labels and divided up for reading among the Admissions Committee, which is approximately 20 people. Each application is read at least twice and most often three times before the Admissions Committee meets to discuss it. It takes 45 minutes to an hour to read one application.
The first reader uses an evaluation criteria we have established. As part of that criteria, an applicant’s undergrad record, GMAT scores, essays, recommendations, interview, community involvement, leadership – all are assigned equal weight in the process. I really like that because an applicant can have a blemish on his or her application but still be a great fit, and if we’re looking at the applicant as a whole being instead of just one component it really allows us to create the diversity that we want here. It’s like creating a mosaic.
Once each file is read, we have an Admissions Committee meeting where each file is discussed and a vote is taken. In the case of a tie, I break it.
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?
LRH: There are a couple of things in the application process that applicants control and then there are things they can’t do anything about. Their undergrad record, GMAT scores – those things are what they are. But everything else they can control. The essays and the interview really give the applicant a chance to differentiate themselves. So they are a key part in terms of us getting to know why they want to come and their potential fit.
We want students who really want to come to Duke, so we are looking for evidence of why they chose Duke and why they think it’s a good fit for them as individuals.
In terms of the most common mistake we see, that would have to be applicants who don’t answer the essay question. We see that a lot. For instance, in answer to a question about how an MBA fits into short- and long-term goals, many candidates will tell us what they want to do right after they graduate, but not tell us anything about their longer-range plans.
My one piece of advice to applicants as they sit down to write their essays is this: Have someone read your essays without giving them the questions. If they can tell you what the questions were after reading your answers, then you have answered the questions.
Again, while the essays are only one component of the application process, they are a really important component.
In closing, I think it’s a really exciting time to be a student at Duke University. We have a new dean who is an incredible visionary and who has a strategic plan for how Duke can make a significant shift in business education. And the fact that we are going to be on the ground and have a physical presence in five other regions around the world is one of the most ambitious strategic plans I’ve seen in the 15 years I’ve been here. We are all really excited and we know it will have incredible benefits for our students.
Posted by Clear Admit on October 22, 2008, at 1:00 pm
Posted in: Admissions Director Q&A , School: London Business School Were you working feverishly to complete your application to the London Business School (LBS) in time for last week’s round one deadline? If so, you’re probably wondering just what happened after you hit the submit button. In the interview that follows, David Simpson, LBS associate director for marketing and admissions, takes the mystery out of the process, walking us through each and every step.
As the most recent participant in our continuing Admissions Director Q&A Series, Simpson shares information about a new one-year management masters program at LBS geared toward people without work experience in the business world. In discussing the school’s full-time MBA program, he highlights the remarkable diversity of the LBS class. And in closing, he provides some concrete pointers on how to write strong application essays, as well as how to prepare for the admissions interview.
So whether your application is already in or you’re preparing to submit in 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: In August 2009, London Business School will be launching a new Masters in Management program. The new 11-month, full-time program is designed for people without work experience who want to lay the foundations for a successful career in business.
This launch is an exciting move for the school. It builds upon our reputation as a dynamic and entrepreneurial organization, adept at taking advantage of emerging opportunities. (Click here to read more about the launch.)
We will continue to focus on recruiting talented experienced individuals for our full-time MBA program. We want people from all walks of life, who can bring a wealth of personal and professional experience to the class. Work experience is necessary for our full-time MBA, as we expect high levels of contributions and collaboration from individuals during this life-changing program. In the class of MBA 2010, the average length of work experience is 5.6 years, with the range being between two and 12 years.
CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
DS: We strive to highlight exactly how much the international and professional diversity of our MBA class adds to our participants’ learning experience. It is easy for any business school to talk about ‘being global,’ but making diversity work and maximizing value for students is less straightforward. At London Business School, an MBA class can represent over 60 nationalities with students bringing diverse professional backgrounds. We create a collaborative learning environment that includes study groups, classroom discussion and practical projects and provides a unique and challenging experience. The first-year study groups, for example, offer a challenging and yet supportive learning environment due to the outstanding caliber of each participant and the depth of personal and professional and experience each brings (an average of 5.5 years work experience).
For example, one of our current study groups includes the following members, who will work together on every core course for the first year of the MBA, before each of the students personalize their second year MBA studies through the flexible nature of our 15-21 MBA curriculum:
A management consultant from the United States; a Canadian project manager in the construction sector; a Polish financial analyst with the World Bank; an Indian strategic research manager in the confectionary industry; an Israeli entrepreneur with experience in the healthcare/tech sectors and a German professional with private equity and banking experience.
Many student groups go one step further to include individuals from even more diverse backgrounds. This year we have a concert pianist and a plastic surgeon. As with every year, we also have many other doctors, lawyers, military personnel and people from other ‘non-business backgrounds.’ Often our many incoming students from corporate business backgrounds will underestimate how much they will learn from their more ‘non-traditional’ peers…and then the MBA starts and they find out exactly why each individual was recruited.
We work hard to ensure that every single student will have something special to offer to his or her classmates. Our thorough and competitive admissions process helps us to recruit such talented individuals.
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.).
DS: Like many schools we have a stage admissions process, but we run ours over a fairly long season. Our first deadline is in October, with offers made in December. Our final deadline is at the end of April, with offers made in July. Although we expect applicants to carry out a lot of research, which takes time and effort (often including a campus visit at some point in the process), we are aware that candidates’ personal and professional circumstances can change rapidly, affecting their application submission.
Online applications are downloaded after the admission deadline, printed out and additional documentation added. Admissions team members will then read the application and decide if the candidate is to be granted an interview or not. Nobody joins the London Business School MBA without having been through a face-to-face alumni interview. We find that alumni interviews offer us a consistently high standard of detailed feedback from the perspective of someone who has gone through the program themselves. Interviews offer candidates we considered to be ‘borderline’ for some reason a chance to shine. After all, when it comes to gaining post-MBA employment it is the all-round package of knowledge, experience, intellect, personality and charisma that will get you a job. Because interviews are carried out in locations all around the world, usually wherever candidates are based, they add the benefit of local market/cultural knowledge.
Senior admissions staff may follow up with a secondary interview in certain cases where we require further information in order to make a final decision.
Once the alumni interview results are added to an application, our Admissions Committee makes its final decision. The committee makes decisions on applications from each of our four admissions stages, managing a waitlist throughout. This enables us to select the highest caliber individuals to create the best possible culturally and professionally diverse class. It is a very long and involved process and we utilize all stages of the admissions schedule to add individuals from different backgrounds and craft the best all-round ‘perfect class.’
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?
DS: We read everything we ask for very carefully. Essays are an applicant’s chance to tell their story, describing why they wish to study for an MBA at this stage of their career. Essays add color and depth to the basic core facts and timelines given in a resume and application. Candidates should make sure they research each school they apply to in detail, using all the resources offered by schools and organizations like Clear Admit before sitting down to write their essays. Each school has its own identity and personality, and candidates need to exhibit an understanding of that. Remember that the full application, including the essays, is passed on to the alumni interviewer, who will focus in on certain areas. So be prepared to talk in depth on any topic you wrote about. When submitting any business school application – be honest, be thorough, be self-aware and be excited about your chosen school.
That’s all the detail I am prepared to give you on how to answer our essays…it is for you to interpret what you think London Business School Admissions Committee wants to read in your essays. Good luck!
Posted by Clear Admit on October 17, 2008, at 1:35 pm
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 series. Flye, who has almost 20 years of experience in higher education, 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.
In the interview that follows, you’ll learn more about Kellogg’s unique accelerated one-year program and get Flye’s tips for writing stand-out application essays.
Clear Admit: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?
Beth Flye: The Kellogg School’s One-Year (1Y) Program. The 1Y program is designed for a person with consistent and specific career goals who wants to gain more business education and return to the workforce quickly. For this type of candidate – a person seeking career enhancement who meets certain prerequisites – the One-Year Program is an excellent educational opportunity and return on investment. More information about the Kellogg School’s One-Year Program can be found here.
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.).
BF: After an applicant submits the application, our processing team downloads that information and collects all of the other necessary information to make the file “complete.” After that, the application file goes into the evaluation pool.
For a portion of the applications, the first review will be conducted by a member of our student Admissions Committee. Following that evaluation, one of the admissions officers will review the file, and then the application will come to me for a final review.
For some cases, the file will be read by a fourth reader to help the admissions office reach the most informed decision. As you can surmise, we have a very thorough review process, given that a significant amount of attention is given to each application.
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?
BF: Essays serve as another means for an applicant to tell us more about him/herself. We are looking for clarity from our applicants on not only what they have been doing but why various elements of their professional and personal experiences are significant.
Regarding potential mistakes, I always advise applicants not to fall into the trap of writing what they think the Kellogg School’s admissions team wants to read; what we are looking for is their authentic/genuine thoughts.
Posted by Clear Admit on October 14, 2008, at 3:47 am
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 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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