Applicants to the MBA program are asked to introduce themselves to their future classmates via a brief video statement. “Videos should be a single take (no editing) lasting no more than one minute. You can use an application such as QuickTime or iMovie to record yourself,” wrote Levenson in her recent blog post.
“The assignment—introduce yourself to your classmates—sounds light, but it’s much harder when you start thinking about it,” Levenson warned. Although the ultimate submission should be done in a single, unedited take, applicants would do well to give it plenty of forethought. “This is not a spur-of-the-moment ‘respond to this question right now’ approach,” Levenson noted. By sharing the prompt in advance, her team is signaling that applicants should be thinking strategically about what they choose to share. “We are letting them consider what they think it important to them that they want their classmates to know about them,” she said. “As with everything else that we do, our goal is to get to know them better.”
The tip Levenson offered in her recent blog post was: “Be yourself! Be authentic! We are using this video to further assess your fit with MIT Sloan and to gather additional insight into your personality, presence, and passions!”
Optional Essay Instructions Have Changed Some
With the addition of the video statement, Sloan has also changed some of the instructions around the optional essay, Levenson pointed out. The optional essay should really be reserved for sharing things that might warrant additional explanation, such as your choice of recommenders, areas of concern in your academic record, or other extenuating circumstances in your history. This information should be provided in 200 words or less.
Last year, in part because of the tight word count on the cover letter component, many applicants felt a need to share more with the Admissions Committee and looked to the optional essay as the place to do that. Though she didn’t have precise statistics, Levenson wagered that as many as 80 percent of applications submitted an optional essay last year. The hope, between the increased cover letter word count limit and the new video statement component, is that the number of candidates who feel a need to use the optional essay will fall dramatically this year, she said.
More Specific Time Frame Around Interview Invites to Continue This Year
After receiving feedback from applicants and others that Sloan needed to be more specific about when it issues interview invitations and more sensitive about when it sends out other emails during the same time frame, Levenson and her team plan to do both this year. “We are constantly taking the pulse of our applicants and prospects to see how we can improve our process—and that feedback was clear,” she said. So, expect to see blog posts from Levenson around the timing of interview invitations for each of the upcoming season’s three rounds.
“We will be as transparent as possible without sacrificing our ability to admit the most qualified applicants at all times,” Levenson said. “There is a balance there though,” she continued. Because there is a human element to the application process, it’s very difficult to set absolutely rigid dates, she noted. “The number of applications we receive determines how long we take to read them,” she continued, which can result in some variation year to year. “On the part of the applicants, it’s all actually really good news—we spend a lot of time reviewing their applications and there are some variables that we can’t predict.”
No Tricks, No Surprises
“I’d like to just repeat what we have always said—there are no tricks, no surprises,” Levenson told Clear Admit. “This is an opportunity for people to let us know who they are and get to know us and assess fit. The application process is designed to establish a relationship so that all their questions can be answered as well. It is very much a two-way street.”
Women’s Week Events Fill Early August, Female Enrollment Continues to Grow
Sloan will again host its popular Women’s Week events throughout the week of August 7th. These events—which this year will take place in Chicago, Cambridge, New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—bring prospective female applicants together with current female students and alumnae to learn more about Sloan and its inclusive community. This year, prominent alumnae will provide TED Talk–like presentations in several select cities on the impactful work they are currently doing and how Sloan helped prepare them for it. A panel of local alumnae from across MIT Sloan’s two-year MBA, Sloan Fellows, and Executive MBA programs will share how they are creating ideas made to matter. In place of a webinar the school has offered in the past for applicants outside of the event cities, this year it will live stream the Thursday Cambridge event to help give women all over the world a true sense of what the events are like.
The response to Women’s Week events in recent years has been very positive, Levenson noted. “A large percentage of those who attend Women’s Week end up applying to our program.”
Surely related, the percentage of women continues to increase every year and looks like it will increase again this year, Levenson said. “It will definitely be over 40 percent.” In addition to Women’s Week events, Sloan also puts on a range of other events specific to women throughout the year, including a Women’s Ambassadors Program in both the fall and spring, and collaborates extensively the Forte Foundation. “Sloan is really a very nice environment to be in for women,” Levenson said.
Overall Application Volume Up Slightly After Huge Increase Last Year
Last year, Sloan saw application volume jump by 34 percent. This year it increased slightly above that, which suggests to Levenson that recognition of the value of the MIT Sloan MBA program is strong and continues to grow.
As for international applicant volume, Sloan did not see any significant shifts, despite concern around immigration and visa policy. Her team did get questions from international applicants in the past season and prospective international applicants they are interacting with now, Levenson noted. These questions take a few different forms—about student visas, work visas, the overall culture and environment, and whether changes to immigration policy will affect Sloan’s admissions process. “The answer to that last question is emphatically no, not in any way, shape, or form,” Levenson stressed.
As for visas, Sloan can’t control what may or may not happen any more than any other school can. “I will say that there is a great group here that works with all of our admitted students to help with the process of getting visas, and so far we have not had any problems with any incoming students getting the visas they need to come here.” As for the environment and culture international students will encounter upon arrival at Sloan? “I can’t stress enough what a diverse environment we have—not just at Sloan but across MIT,” she said. “MIT has taken a very strong stand throughout the past few months—we are and will remain an incredible supportive and collaborative environment for anyone who comes here to study.”
