CA: How does the incoming class look? What gains/shifts are you most pleased by? What goals have you set for the next class?
JB: We are very excited about our class, and they are already here on campus. We have one of the earliest start dates. It’s a great group. I am thrilled that 34 percent is women, and that is one of the strongest results. Our minority percentages are also strong—at 15 percent underrepresented minorities.
I am also really excited that of the incoming class, 18 are U.S. military veterans. That’s out of 166 students. We are a Yellow Ribbon School and we have been committed to this for several years. The individual who heads our leadership program is a retired three-star general. In fact, his son is a graduate of our two-year program, and he was so impressed with his son’s experience here that he applied for the job.
We have also continued our tradition of having at least one Fulbright Scholar in our program. This year it’s an individual from Bulgaria. It really is a great class. This class—really every class has its own personality—but this is a very can-do, enthusiastic class. They gel well together. And they are very athletic—they really enjoy sports and sports activities. I think our faculty is in for a real treat.
In terms of our goals for the year ahead, we haven’t set clear goals yet. But I suspect that we will seek a class similar to this year’s class. Obviously, we are always looking for strong quality indicators. Our average GPA this year was a 3.4. I think the coming year will be similar. We are not planning to grow the program that much, if at all. We are really focusing on a small class that affords close interaction with faculty.
CA: What haven’t I asked?
JB: I think you have a really good sense of our process. I would just like to say that I am really proud of our admissions team in that we really do enjoy getting to know candidates and we get really jazzed about candidates. Also, the person that reads the file also presents it to the committee. It’s not like we are all sitting in a room and reading from our computer screen. The person who interviewed you is going to be in the room, so the reader might read a summary and then the interviewer might say, “Oh, I really enjoyed Jeanette. She’s got an interesting background—we really want her here at Goizueta.”
And then we’ll start thinking about current students we could match with the applicant—and you might get a call from a Goizueta student. Someone else might say, “Where else is she applying? Does she know about Forte? I think she would be a perfect Forte Scholar.” We end up talking about the candidate for quite some time. We are very excited about that person coming to Goizueta. And when welcome weekend rolls around we really look forward to meeting candidates again, or on the road or when they come to campus. It’s not that I think that no other admissions committee is like that, but I do think that that ours is unusual in that we have so much depth and experience. We are among the most enthusiastic admissions groups out there, and we love to engage with our candidates. The people who apply here are going to go through a very thorough review, and we are going to enjoy it.
Be true to yourself. Be yourself. Don’t write or do what you think we want to hear or see. Don’t sell yourself short in terms of your extracurriculars. I’m not quite sure why, but I often find that people have left some things off their resumes. It turns out they have done quite a bit and yet they don’t have it on their resume. Always put your extracurricular leadership experiences on there. Make sure you include that in your application and your essays, too.
