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.).
CS-J: We try to be very transparent about it all. When an application comes in I will go over it and look at it briefly to see first, is this someone who’s got work experience, and second, do they have enough of a quantitative background or at least a decent score on the GMAT quant section that they will be able to be successful. I will look through the essays briefly and say, “Yes, this is someone we want to interview.” This is not based on GMAT scores, because we know people can improve those. It’s more about what are you doing and what are you going to bring to us.
The first reader is always going to be one of our staff. We don’t use students in any part of our reading or interviewing. Then the primary contact for the person will be the second reader. For second readers, we have the world broken up into territories for each of our staff members. I know not all schools do it this way, but I think it’s a sound practice because it allows each reader to really get to know the companies in an area—we even do company visits with the Career Management Center. They are also really familiar with the regional schools, even at the high school level, and the alumni in the region.
That person will do the second read, without seeing the notes of the first reader. Then it comes to me and I will look over the comments of both readers. Then we have admissions meetings as a group—we usually have four or five in each period. The Admissions Committee consists of everyone on the MBA admissions staff and the director of the Career Management Center. Sometimes the admissions staff will all say, “We love this person,” but the career management director will say, “That’s fine, but they really don’t have the necessary experience to go into the field they are targeting, and they will be disappointed.” In those cases we will often pick up the phone and call them and say, “Explain to me why you want to go into it X. Would you consider doing this first?” And then if the student seems reasonable and coachable, absolutely, we’ll admit him or her. We really try to make sure they are the right fit and will be successful in the program.
We have the luxury of being able to admit who we want to, and we are definitely not just looking for people who have banking or consulting backgrounds. Right now, we have a young woman who used to be in charge of the botanical gardens in Boston, a Navy Seal, a pilot—in fact, all sorts of people from the Armed Forces—people who were formally teachers, in addition to the more traditional backgrounds. We really get to know the candidates while they are applying.
If they are obviously a fabulous candidate, we work out a scholarship at this point. We are also more than happy to answer questions waitlisted candidates have about ways they can make their application better. We go into detail—this is what we are looking for, tell us more about this, etc. We work with waitlisted candidates, and if they seem to be getting the idea and working with us to do what they need to do—whether strengthening their GMAT score or taking an algebra course—they have a real shot at being admitted off the waitlist. Each territory manager will reach out to his or her waitlisted candidates individually, although there is also one person overseeing the waitlist as a whole.
For candidates who are admitted, we call them personally. That’s our favorite day of the year other than orientation when everyone shows up on campus.
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?
CS-J: We narrowed ours down to one long essay this year because we weren’t getting the answers we wanted from some of the other questions we’ve asked in the past. We also have a second part, where candidates choose two of several prompts to write a tweet response to. The purpose of that is to find out something personal about them and perhaps to make them—or us—chuckle.
The main essay is always going to be about why do you want to do an MBA, what do you want to do with it and what are the skills you have already developed. Now, we know they are probably going to change their mind when they discover all the wonderful jobs that are out there, but we want to make sure they understand what they can do already and, with that, what they are going to contribute to a classroom. I will advise that candidates refrain from writing, “My short-term goal is to get an MBA.” That is not an acceptable answer.
CA: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
CS-J: There is one more thing I’d like to highlight, which is that candidates can come to visit us and have an interview before they have submitted an application. If someone comes to campus, we will grant them an interview. If they don’t come to campus, interviews are by invitation. We feel comfortable assuring anyone who comes to campus an interview because if they have taken the trouble to come from California or Japan, then that is a good sign. We also feel like if we can get candidates to campus they will see how great Owen is and want to come for sure.
