Admissions Director Q&A
Clear Admit’s exclusive interviews with admissions directors at the world’s leading MBA programs.
Admissions Director Q&A: MIT Sloan School of Management’s Dawna Levenson
As we continue to make the rounds, checking in with admissions directors at top business schools around the globe, we had the good fortune recently to speak with Dawna Levenson, director of MBA admission at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
Levenson’s MIT roots run deep. She has an undergraduate degree from the school as well as an MBA from Sloan. She spent 18 years working for the company now known as Accenture but then decided it was time do something new and different.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Soojin Kwon of the Ross School of Business
We are thrilled to launch the latest edition of the Clear Admit's Admissions Director Q&A Series. We began interviewing admissions directors at leading business schools back in 2008, and we circle back regularly to capture changes and new developments in the dynamic field of graduate management admissions.
We kick off this most recent round of interviews with Ross School of Business Admissions Director Soojin Kwon, who has been leading the admissions team at the Ann Arbor school since 2006. A Ross graduate herself, she knows the school’s admissions process from both sides. During her tenure at the school, she has worked to increase the transparency of the application process through her blog and other online forums.
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Published: January 3, 2013
Admissions Director Q&A: Cristina Sassot of ESADE Business School
In the latest installment of our Admissions Director Q&A Series, we hear from Cristina Sassot, director of admissions at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. Sassot, who herself obtained an MBA at ESADE in 2008, worked for more than 10 years before that in educational consulting. As director of admissions, she is in charge of global outreach and student selection for the school’s full-time MBA, as well as its master of science programs in finance, management, marketing and innovation & entrepreneurship.
In the interview that follows, Sassot shares some of the things that set the ESADE MBA apart – such as its flexible format, in which students can opt for either a 12-, 15- or 18-month program. She also highlights the fact that the school’s 160 students herald from almost 50 different countries, which helped earn it the top spot in terms of student diversity in the Economist’s most recent rankings. And she provides detail about Creapolis, the unique innovation center on campus that houses more than 60 companies looking to share resources and ideas.
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Published: October 1, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Hima Badu of the Indian School of Business
Hima Badu oversees admissions and financial aid for the Indian School of Business (ISB), which has campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali. Badu has a background in English literature and a master in management and worked for a marketing agency before joining ISB.
In the interview that follows, she shares some of the exciting developments taking place at ISB right now, including the launch of a second campus and accreditation by American-based accrediting association AACSB. She also provides some insight into the admissions process from an operational standpoint and helps explain how candidates can use the essays to present a complete picture of themselves to the admissions committee.
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Published: September 26, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Sherry Wallace of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with Kenan-Flagler's Sherry Wallace is now available.
Sherry Wallace, director of MBA admissions at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business, told us that she wants to make the admissions process as transparent as possible. “There is no advantage to us in our selection process if people feel like they are in the dark,” she said.
Wallace herself graduated from the Kenan-Flagler MBA program in 1987 and pursued a career in advertising and marketing with several major consumer packaged goods companies. She later married and returned to North Carolina, and 15 years ago she was offered the opportunity to come back to Kenan-Flagler as part of the admissions team. “It fit me to a tee, and I didn’t need to think very long about coming back to work in Chapel Hill,” she recounts. While she might not have imagined herself in her current role at the start of her career, that she is here now shows the power and flexibility of the MBA, she says.
In the interview that follows, Wallace takes the time to completely demystify the admissions process for prospective applicants to Kenan-Flagler, sharing candidly about what they can expect and how best to prepare. She also underscores the strength of the school’s career services offerings, notes the development of a new healthcare curriculum and more. Enjoy!
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Published: September 19, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Rodrigo Malta of the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business
Our 2014 interview with McCombs' Rodrigo Malta is available now.
Rodrigo Malta, a native of Brazil, moved to the United States for high school and college and ultimately graduated from the McCombs full-time MBA program in 2007. While a student at McCombs, he was highly involved in admissions activities, and after graduation he remained in Austin, accepting a marketing position with Dell.
A year later, when then-Director of MBA Admissions Tina Mabley contacted him about a job opening with her team – as associate director of admissions focused on diversity recruiting – he jumped at the chance to return to campus and work on something he was really passionate about. Later, when Mabley was promoted to program director for the full-time MBA, Malta applied for and got the admissions director’s position.
Did he ever imagine as a prospective applicant to McCombs that he would be sitting in the decision-maker’s seat today? “Never,” he says. “Working in admissions while an MBA student was a lot of fun, but I never considered it as a career,” he says. It wasn’t until he returned to the corporate world at Dell that he found himself missing higher education.
Prospective applicants may be happy to learn that Malta understands the position they now are in on such a personal level. Perhaps that’s why he’s so full of useful tips and advice. Read on to learn what he has to share.
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Published: September 17, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Katelyn Rosa Stephenson of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University
We were lucky enough to catch Katelyn Rosa Stephenson just weeks into her role as interim assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at the McDonough School of Business. But though she is new to heading up admissions, she is not new to McDonough. She joined the admissions staff in March 2008, bringing with her plenty of experience from time spent working in undergraduate admission at the George Washington University.
Read on to learn what Rosa Stephenson has to share about the new curriculum McDonough will implement this fall, including the steps the school is taking to provide its students with a truly global education. She also highlights the contributions of Georgetown’s Jesuit origins to the MBA program and provides practical advice and insight regarding the admissions process. Check it out.
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Published: September 12, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Stephan Chambers of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University
Over the past decade plus, Stephan Chambers, the current MBA director at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, has gotten to watch the school grow from about 50 students to more than 200 and from nowhere in the rankings to the top 20 in the world.
Chambers, who is also the chairman of Oxford’s Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship, founded and ran for a decade the Oxford Executive MBA before assuming his current role. Prior to coming to Oxford he had a 15-year career in the private sector, specifically in publishing, where he invested in and ran companies.
In the interview that follows, he shares why he thinks right now is the best possible time – perhaps in history – to be in business school in general, as well as why it’s an exciting time to be at Oxford. A new dean is championing new initiatives, and Chambers tells us all about them below, so read on.
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Published: September 11, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: James Frick of the Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon University
James Frick calls himself a lifer at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. “I have been at Tepper since 1998," he says "Scary! How did that happen?”
Frick began on the program side, which means that for his first five years there his function was much more working with students once they came to campus. In this role he did a lot of systems work, a lot of advising, etc. But the fact that Tepper is such a small organization really benefitted him, he says. “It allowed me to have half a foot in career services, half a foot in admissions.” And the more of admissions he did, the more he loved it. He transitioned officially to the admissions team in 2003 and became director of admissions in 2010.
In the interview that follows, he shares his enthusiasm for Pittsburgh and its baseball team and highlights a new leadership coaching program that he thinks will help students really learn to communicate and implement the analytical skills they get through the Tepper program. He also shares some sage advice for how to approach the essay portion of the application – advice that will be useful whether you are applying to Tepper or to any other top MBA program. So don’t miss out.
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Published: September 5, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Megan Lynam of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business
In our most recent interview as part of our continuing Admissions Director Q&A Series, we got to know Megan Lynam, the director of admissions for MBA and MMS programs at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Lynam is no stranger to Fuqua. She earned her MBA there in 2003 and has been working in the admissions office since 2005, focusing on marketing and operations before assuming her current role as admissions director.
Lynam spent her early career in consulting, working for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte. Upon graduation from Duke she held a role at Brunswick Corporation's Leadership Development Program, where she led the MBA recruiting effort at Duke.
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Published: September 3, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Christine Sneva of Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
Christine Sneva has been director of admissions at Cornell University’s S.C. Johnson School of Management since May 2011 and spent several years before that directing the school’s International Academic Exchange Program.
There are a lot of interesting things happening right now at Johnson, she tells us. Not the least of which is the arrival of a new dean, Soumitra Dutta, who began on July 1st. Read on to learn more about the things Sneva is most excited about – like a New York City tech campus – as well as her advice for approaching this year’s essay questions and more.
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Published: August 29, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: MIT Sloan School of Management’s Rod Garcia
An MIT Sloan veteran, Rod Garcia has been at the school for the past 24 years and admissions director for the last 13. Before coming to MIT Sloan in 1988, he worked in admissions at the University of Chicago.
In the interview that follows, Garcia reveals that MIT Sloan had a record yield this year, exceeding the target class size by 15 students. “It is a good problem to have,” he says, noting that some schools are struggling to meet their targets amid declining application volume. He forecasts recovery in the year ahead in terms of overall business school application volume – and a very competitive season at MIT Sloan.
So you’ll want to pay close attention to the insight he provides regarding the application process at MIT Sloan and what his team is looking for in response to their unique essay questions.
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Published: August 27, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Ankur Kumar of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
Ankur Kumar, a Wharton alumna, joined the school’s admissions team three and a half years ago. In 2010 she was promoted to run admissions for the MBA program.
Kumar, who received her B.S. in finance from Wharton and her B.A. in economics from the College of Arts and Sciences, worked in investment banking and finance before returning to Wharton to pursue her MBA in strategic management. Upon graduation, she went into management consulting.
Asked to leave management consulting to join the Wharton admissions team, Kumar jumped at the opportunity to shape the program and have an impact. “For me, this transition was really a chance to leverage the skills I enjoyed about finance and consulting and bring them to a program I feel very strongly about and that is personal to me,” she told us.
In particular, her time as a Wharton student helped her appreciate the importance of having a diverse class of students who come from all over the world and bring with them a range of ways of thinking about business, she says. This is something she has pledged to keep top of mind as she brings together Wharton’s future classes.
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Published: August 22, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: INSEAD’s Peter Zemsky
A new Masters of Finance degree program and a new Singapore section of the INSEAD Global executive MBA program are among the developments Peter Zemsky chooses to call out in the interview that follows. Zemsky, a professor of strategy with a focus on competitive strategy, industry evolution, value innovation and action learning, is the acting dean and dean of the degree programs and curriculum at INSEAD. He also teaches the core competitive strategy course in the MBA and eMBA program.
Zemsky doesn’t waste words in his answers to our questions. Read on for his concise, practical tips on how to make your application to INSEAD stand out.
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Published: August 20, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Conrad Chua of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with Conrad Chua of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School is now available.
Conrad Chua met an alumnus of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School while working in business development and was soon sold on the school’s values and ethos. Three years ago he became head of MBA recruitment and admissions.
Chua, a native of Singapore, worked in the public sector there for 10 years, but he completed his undergraduate education at Stanford and a graduate program at London Business School. “The masters I did at LBS really opened my perspective, and I decided I didn’t want to stay in Singapore,” he told us. He and his wife moved to the United Kingdom five years ago. As Chua heads up admissions at Judge and his wife works toward her PhD, they are also learning the ropes as new parents to an eight-month-old baby.
We are grateful to Chua for making time to speak with us and share some of his hopes for the school under the leadership of Christoph Loch, who joined as its new director last year. Among the things to watch, Chua says, is for Judge to become the center of entrepreneurship and startup energy in Cambridge. He also helps define what collaborative diversity means at Judge and why it’s such an important part of the experience there. If Judge is on your list of target schools, you won’t want to miss this interview.
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Published: August 15, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Dawna Clarke of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business
Dawna Clarke is a veteran in the MBA admissions world, where she has worked for more than 25 years. She was appointed director of MBA admissions for the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth by Dean Paul Danos in September 2005, and since then she has served as the primary point of contact for MBA applicants and worked to actively promote the Tuck MBA program to prospective students.
Clarke came to Tuck from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where she spent 15 years, the last five as director of admissions. And before Darden, she was associate director of admissions at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. So she knows a thing or two about what it takes to get into a top-tier MBA program.
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Published: August 13, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Bruce DelMonico of the Yale School of Management
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with Bruce DelMonico, the Admissions Director of the Yale School of Management, is now available.
Yale School of Management (SOM) Admissions Director Bruce DelMonico recently took time out of his busy schedule to bring us up to speed on things in New Haven. A lawyer by training, DelMonico grew tired of sleeping in his office and traveling for weeks on end, so in October 2004 he joined Yale SOM as deputy director of admissions in his native New Haven, Connecticut. He assumed the role of admissions director in November 2006.
There are lots of things to be excited about in the coming year at Yale SOM, DelMonico tells us. A new dean, Dean Edward Snyder, has been at the helm for the past year, helping to put into motion several exciting new developments, including the launch of a new Global Network for Advanced Management and the re-launch of the school’s Leadership Development Program. Construction continues, meanwhile, on a new home for the business school called Evan Hall, designed by famed architect Lord Norman Foster.
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Published: August 8, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Stephanie Fujii of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley
Our 2014 interview with Stephanie Fujii, the director of admissions at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, is now available.
Stephanie Fujii has been director of admissions at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley since August 2010, ably filling the shoes of outgoing director Peter Johnson, who had been with Haas for more than a decade.
That she had no trouble taking on the new role comes as no surprise. Fujii is not new to admissions, nor is she new to Haas. She has been a part of the Haas admissions team for the past seven years, serving previously as senior associate director. Before that she worked in the nonprofit sector in eldercare, after receiving an MBA of her own from Haas.
“It is exciting to be part of the process and to meet people on the road and help them understand what makes our program unique,” she says. Prior to business school she was in HR consulting and while a student at Berkeley she was a Haas Student Ambassador, which involved working closely with admissions to plan student events.
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Published: August 6, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: London Business School’s David Simpson
It’s an exciting time to be in London – and an exciting time to consider an MBA or other masters program at the London Business School (LBS). In the interview that follows, David Simpson, LBS associate director of client services, highlights recent enhancements to the organization of the school’s MBA curriculum and shares details about a review currently underway of the school’s Masters of Finance program.
He also stresses the global focus of LBS’s offerings and the remarkable diversity of the LBS class. Finally, he walks us through the admissions process step by step and provides some concrete pointers on how to write strong application essays, as well as how to prepare for the admissions interview.
So whether you’re considering adding the school to your target list, or have committed to apply for next year already, you won’t want to miss what Simpson has to say.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Soojin Kwon of the Ross School of Business
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with Soojin Kwon, the director of admissions at the Ross School of Business, is now available.
Soojin Kwon, 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 since June 2006. During her tenure at the school, she has worked to increase the transparency of the application process through her blog and other online forums.
Kwon was named one of the 40 Under 40 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 currently on the board of the Forté Foundation, which encourages talented women to pursue careers in business, served as the chair of the 2012 GMAC Annual Conference and is a member of the ETS Business School Advisory Council.
Kwon, who we first interviewed in 2008 for this series, was kind enough to make time again this summer to bring us up to speed on all things Ross, including new developments in the past year and plans for the year ahead.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Isser Gallogly of New York University’s Stern School of Business
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with Isser Gallogly of NYU Stern is now available.
Isser Gallogly, assistant dean of MBA admissions at New York University’s Stern School of Business, understands the MBA and its potential for changing people’s lives first hand. “I am on my third career,” he told us in an interview. He worked in banking after college and then returned to business school to obtain an MBA as part of a career shift toward marketing. After almost a decade working for Unilever and Loreál, he decided to shift again toward education and academia. “I know how much an MBA has changed my life both personally and professionally, and helping others on that journey seemed to me to be a very gratifying job opportunity,” he said.
In the interview that follows, he talks about the mission of the Stern School under Dean Peter Henry and a new Essay 2 for full-time applicants, as well as some of the things he thinks not all prospective applicants know about Stern. And if Stern is one of your target schools, you’ll want to pay close attention to the very detailed explanation Gallogly provides of the admissions process at Stern, including his emphasis on the importance of the interview. So read on and be prepared!
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Admissions Director Q&A: Kellogg School of Management’s Kate Smith
When Beth Flye, Kellogg admissions director since 2003, returned to her native North Carolina in spring 2011 to head up admissions for Kenan-Flagler’s new online MBA program, Kellogg decided to mine its own alumni for a replacement. Kate Smith, a 1998 graduate of the Kellogg MBA program, had spent the past 15 years building a career in brand management, first at General Mills and then at Pepsico. When Kellogg came calling, she was ready.
“It’s just incredible to have the opportunity to come back to Kellogg,” Smith told us. “For me, having a deep understanding of the school’s culture and heritage is really what’s most exciting,” she said. “My personal experience was truly life changing on so many levels.”
Smith returned to Kellogg in February 2012 as assistant dean for admissions and financial aid across all of the school’s programs. Having remained engaged with the school as a recruiter and in other capacities as an alumnus, she was able to hit the ground running and hasn’t had any major surprises since she got there, she tells us. Read on to learn more about what she’s most excited about in the year ahead, how she views the admissions process, her advice for applicants sitting down to write their essays and more.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Kurt Ahlm of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Our 2014 Admissions Director Q&A with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business' Kurt Ahlm is now available.
Kurt Ahlm is a 10-year veteran of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business admissions office, and he seemed the perfect person to take the lead role there when former director Rose Martinelli stepped down two summers ago. Since then he has helped welcome a new dean to the school, Dean Sunil Kumar, and seen the school continue its international expansion with the opening of a new center in China to complement campuses in Chicago, London and Singapore.
Ahlm started his career in undergraduate admissions at Northwestern University and then spent time working as a corporate recruiter before coming to Chicago Booth. “I really liked higher education but I also liked the more professional type of atmosphere that the corporate world offered,” he says, adding that MBA admissions provides a great mix of both. Chicago Booth benefits, in turn, from his strong background in both admissions and recruiting.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Columbia Business School’s Mary Miller
We are excited to announce the relaunch of our popular Clear Admit Admissions Director Q&A Series. Beginning today, we will feature two new interviews each week with admissions directors at leading MBA programs around the globe. In the course of these conversations, top admissions officials share exciting news about upcoming developments at their schools as well as valuable information about the admissions process and more. You won't want to miss this unfolding series. To kick things off, we turn to Columbia Business School's Assistant Dean of Admissions Mary Miller.
~ CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~
Miller took the helm of Columbia’s admissions office in 2009, bringing a wealth of experience from similar stints at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and New York University’s Stern School of Business.
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Published: January 26, 2011
Admissions Director Q&A: MIT Sloan’s Rod Garcia
We circled back recently to check in with an admissions director we hadn’t yet reconnected with as part of our Admissions Director Q&A Series – Rod Garcia of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Maybe it’s all the snow in Boston that gave him a little extra free time to take part. Whatever the case, we’re happy to have had a chance to catch up with him and think you’ll enjoy the interview that follows.
An MIT Sloan veteran, Garcia has been at the school for the past 23 years and admissions director for the last 12. Before coming to MIT Sloan in 1988, he worked in admissions at the University of Chicago.
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