Admissions Director Q&A

We continue our Admissions Director Q&A series with Rebekah Lewin, Assistant Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at the University of Rochester, Simon Business School.  She has more than 20 years of experience working in undergraduate and graduate admissions, financial aid and student experience roles, primarily within the University of Rochester.  In her current position, she oversees efforts related to recruitment, admissions, financial aid and on-boarding for more than 500 students across the full-time MBA and MS programs.   Rebekah also oversees academic operations for the business school and has program management responsibilities for the Barry Florescue Undergraduate Business Program within the University of Rochester. Read more

Diversity and inclusion stand out in the thorough Duke MBA admissions process.  Here to tell us all about it in our ongoing Admissions Director Q&A series is Shari Hubert, Associate Dean of Admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.  Hubert is responsible for overseeing recruitment and admissions for Fuqua’s Daytime MBA, Weekend Executive MBA, Global Executive MBA, and four Specialty Masters’ Degree Programs.  Prior to Fuqua, Hubert was in charge of admissions for the Full-time and Evening MBA programs at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. She has Read more

In this edition of our Admissions Director Q&A, the Director of Graduate Student Recruitment, Rebecca Mallen-Churchill, joins us to discuss the W.P. Carey School of Business at the Arizona State University (ASU). ASU is located just outside of Phoenix, AZ, and the W.P. Carey MBA program boasts executive connections and an interdisciplinary curriculum. Rebecca Mallen-Churchill, Director of Graduate Student Recruitment, ASU W.P. Carey School of Business Mallen-Churchill graduated from ASU in 2005; while earning her degree in theatre and Italian, she also discovered her love for higher education while working for the Graduate Admissions Read more

The Anderson School of Management at UCLA boasts diverse career placement, but stands out for its strengths in marketing and technology. MBA students also enjoy a tight knit community—class size hovers around 360—amid the larger setting of Los Angeles.  Here to discuss additional features of the leading MBA program is Alex Lawrence, the Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid since 2012. In the Admissions Director Q&A that follows, Lawrence highlights Anderson’s career support, campus features and the ins and outs Read more

In addition to being one of the Best Business Schools for Finance, the Chicago Booth School of Business also stands out for its culture of curiosity and a teaching style called The Chicago Approach.  The educational philosophy of The Chicago Approach is about critical thinking—by understanding fundamental scientific disciplines, the resulting theoretical frameworks help define problems, ask better questions, and develop better solutions.  To discuss more of the hallmarks of the Chicago Booth MBA program, the Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions, Donna Swinford, joins us for this Read more

“Collaboration is a buzz word that is often used, but at Cambridge we live and breathe it,” says Margaret O’Neill, Head of MBA Marketing, Admissions and Careers at Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS). O’Neill has oversight of the whole MBA journey, from the moment candidates first engage with the school, to the time they leave to embark upon their post-MBA careers.  She has spent the past 20 years working with post-graduate business school professionals across projects, careers and admissions at both Cambridge Judge and London Business School. Margaret O’Neill, Head of MBA Marketing, Read more

Lisa Rios, the Executive Director of MBA Admissions at NYU Stern, joins us in this Admissions Director Q&A to cover the hallmarks of the Manhattan-based MBA program. A member of the admissions team since 2008, Rios works with the Full-time MBA programs. Prior to Stern, she worked in industry at JP Morgan Chase and Liz Claiborne. Such industry ties and experience are also an advantage NYU MBA students can expect to gain during the full-time program. Below, Rios discusses how NYU’s location, experiential courses including Stern Solutions and much more, Read more

We continue our Admissions Director Q&A series with Blair Mannix, the Director of Admissions of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia.  In addition to rigorous quantitative training, Wharton MBA students enjoy an intimate learning environment due to the Learning Team and cohort structure. Students spend their first year divided into Learning Teams of approximately five to six students, and multiple teams are brought together to form cohorts of about 70 students. MBA candidates of the leading business school can also expect diverse career training—Wharton has made the lists of Clear Admit's "Best Business Schools for..." entrepreneurship, finance, healthcare and marketing. Read more

When it comes to community, Harvard Business School’s Chad Losee, current Managing Director of MBA Admissions and HBS MBA ’13, can attest: Business school classmates transcend campus relations and become lifelong friends. As we all continue to adapt during the COVID-19 pandemic, Losee cites the support of his HBS sectionmates in these trying times—and he wants applicants to understand that they, too, can find a strong community at Harvard. Of course, applicants face thorough scrutiny to gain entrance into the HBS community, as Losee recounts the reads and re-reads (and likely more re-reads) of application materials Read more

Special guest Michael Robinson, Director of MBA Admissions at Columbia Business School (CBS), joins us for a podcast episode that will cover everything you want to know about the leading MBA program. Robinson was an entrepreneur, running a music publicity firm, prior to becoming a member of the CBS MBA Class of 2001. He then joined MBA admissions at the school in 2002 and moved up to director of MBA admissions in July 2016. In this role, he serves on the admission committee and manages strategic relationships with key corporate and nonprofit partners to drive future MBA Read more

Before you submit your Harvard Business School application, you'll want to read our Admissions Director Q&A with Chad Losee, the Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid.  He walks us through the life of admissions, new and exciting developments at Harvard, the interview process and more. Losee applied to business schools in the Fall of 2010 and feels grateful to have been admitted to HBS. While a student at HBS, Losee developed his interest in higher education leadership as an admissions ambassador, through an internship in a university president’s office, and by completing a one-year fellowship at HBS after graduating in 2013. Losee remembers vividly what it feels like to go through the process of applying to business school. He and his team aim to make applying to HBS as simple, fair, and transparent as possible for all applicants. Read on for some rich details about the MBA program and more. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Harvard in the coming year? Read more

We continue our series of Admissions Director Q&As with the leading business school in Switzerland.  Located on the shores of Lake Geneva, the IMD MBA does not just prepare you for your immediate post-MBA job, but looks at your long-term career.  Two key streams that run throughout the program are leadership and career development. During the program, students develop the leadership skills and self-awareness necessary to develop into top leaders in business. This doesn’t just involve teaching the basic MBA toolkit, but ensuring they have the global, digital, and entrepreneurial mindset that Read more

IE Business School is centrally located in Madrid’s financial district. Their international appeal and urban environment fosters strong student, faculty and alumni communities. In addition to the school’s one-year, full-time International MBA, IE offers tech, part-time and executive MBA options.  In this edition of Admissions Director Q&A, we hear more about IE from Tino Elgner, the Director of Admissions for the Tech MBA & IMBA Program. Born in Germany, Elgner graduated summa cum laude from Clemson University, USA, with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies and a minor in psychology. After ending Read more

We continue our Admissions Director Q&A series with the newly STEM-designated Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.  Hear all about their MBA admissions, the exciting campus scene, life in Pittsburgh and lots more from Kelly R. Wilson, Executive Director of Masters Admissions, below. Clear Admit: Can you tell us a little about your background? How did you come to your current role? I spent some time in the Washington DC area, working for 9.5 years in the insurance industry. I loved it. I also completed my Read more

In this edition of our ongoing series, Admissions Director Q&A, we stop by the Bay Area of California.  Morgan Bernstein is the executive director of full-time MBA admissions at Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and a 2009 alumna of the program. Bernstein is deeply passionate about helping prospective students navigate the business school landscape, and brings an authentic, compassionate, and transparent approach to her admissions processes. Bernstein is inspired daily by Haas students and carefully curates a community that demonstrates curiosity, self-awareness, resilience, and optimism—among other leadership attributes. Before joining the Haas admissions team in 2011, Bernstein primarily worked in marketing and general strategy roles in the technology, education management, and services industries. When not recruiting the next class of future business leaders, Bernstein can be found chasing after her two young children with her fellow MBA 2009 husband, training for her next running event, or exploring California wine country with friends. Clear Admit had an opportunity to talk with Bernstein about the MBA application essays, Haas's new Certificate in Business Analytics, the new concurrent MBA/Master of Engineering degree, Haas’s proximity to the Bay Area’s innovation ecosystem, and more. Morgan Bernstein, Executive Director of Full-Time MBA Admissions at the Haas School of Business Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Haas in the coming year? Morgan Bernstein: There are a number of exciting developments and changes, including the launch of our Certificate in Business Analytics and our new MBA/Master of Engineering concurrent degree. One of the key developments is that our international graduates are now eligible to apply for the STEM OPT extension during their post-MBA employment authorization. Although the eventual approval of those extensions depends on the training plans that the employers and the MBA graduates submit, we anticipate that this will lead to expanded opportunities for our international graduates who pursue jobs incorporating business analytics, modeling, forecasting, and other skills developed through our program. CA: What is the one aspect of your program that you wish applicants knew more about? Read more

For this edition of our Admissions Director Q&A series, we hear from Taylor Martini, who serves as the Executive Director of UCI Merage School of Business’s Full-Time MBA Program. He oversees total operations of the Full-Time MBA Program, including financial and strategic management, academic programming and supervision of the admissions and student services teams. Before moving into his current role, Martini supported the recruitment and admissions function of the program office for four years. Martini joined the Merage School in June 2015, soon after graduating from the UCI Paul Merage School of Business Full-Time MBA Program. During his time in the program, Martini secured multiple HR-focused internships which included a human resources rotational program at Tilly’s and Learning and Organizational Development role at PacSun. Prior to his MBA studies, Martini spent three years working in the mortgage banking industry. Martini was born and raised in Southern California and completed his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Chapman University. Clear Admit had the chance to sit down with Martini and learn more about UCI Merage’s Full-Time MBA curriculum update that emphasizes leadership for a digitally driven world. Read more

You may have already seen the Real Humans of Vanderbilt Owen's MBA Class of 2021, and now we are back to hear directly from the admissions office.  In this edition of our Admissions Director Q&A, we head back to Nashville for an interview with Associate Dean Sue Oldham. Working closely with colleagues in the dean’s office, faculty, staff and student leaders, Oldham strives to enhance the end-to-end student experience from the moment a prospective MBA student becomes interested in Owen until they graduate. This includes oversight of Admissions, Academic Programs and Student Life, Shared Services, Extracurricular Learning, and the Career Management Center (CMC). Oldham joined Vanderbilt Business from Rice University, where she was most recently the Executive Director of Alumni Engagement, External Relations. Previously she was Executive Director of Recruiting and Admissions for all five MBA programs at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. She had joined the Jones School in 2008.  Prior to her job at Rice, Oldham had a 10-year career in information technology consulting spanning several companies and cities from Los Angeles to Charlotte to Dallas. Oldham earned a BA in English at Rice University and an MBA ’93 in Marketing from Vanderbilt Owen. Oldham’s community involvement is extensive, as she continues to be very involved with leadership positions at her church, children’s schools, and neighborhood. Sue currently serves on the board of directors for Avondale House and Friends of Fondren Library and is an active leader in the National Charity League. Sue and her husband Ted have two children. Oldham took time to chat with Clear Admit about Vanderbilt’s STEM-designated finance concentration, reflections 4,000 essays deep into her career, and the emphasis Vanderbilt places on PERSONAL SCALE. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Owen in the coming year? Sue Oldham, Associate Dean at Vanderbilt Owen Sue Oldham: The Vanderbilt MBA program is excited to announce that, effective Fall 2019, its finance concentration has been designated as a STEM degree program. The STEM designation allows international students the eligibility to prolong their post-completion Optional Practical Training (OPT) in the US by 24 months. This STEM designation is a direct result of the leadership team here listening to what our students are saying, specifically our international students. Under the leadership of Dean Eric Johnson, we were able to work with our faculty to ensure that this STEM designation in the Finance concentration is one that would have an immediate impact, not only for our current students but for all prospective students. This exciting development is at the crux of what Vanderbilt Business is about: PERSONAL SCALE. We heard our students. We hear the prospective students. We recognize the changing landscape of the MBA market especially for our international students and we are proud to say that we responded to you. CA: What is the one aspect of your program that you wish applicants knew more about? SO: Two humbling moments immediately come to mind: We had a record year in terms of our employment offers and salary for the Class of 2019. For the class of 2019, 97% had job offers (95% acceptance) with an average salary of $119K which are all-time record highs for Vanderbilt Business. We are grateful for all of those companies who find their top talent here at Vanderbilt Business and are reaffirmed by their confidence in our program and our students. We received a #1 Ranking by AIGAC (Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants) for The Human Connection: The “school that got to know their applicants the best.” Such a humbling accolade that resonated the most with our teams where this business of “recruiting and admissions” is still a personal one that ties back to our school mission of “PERSONAL SCALE” and is reflected in our record-high employment numbers because the relationship building continues when you step foot on this campus and actually grows in your two years 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.)? Read more

For this edition of our Admissions Director Q&A series, we hear from the Indian School of Business (ISB).  An ISB alumnus and MIT Sloan Fellow, Dibyendu Bose is currently the Director of Admissions & Financial Aid (AFA) at ISB. He also heads the Office of Alumni Engagement and works closely with Dean Rajendra Srivastava in driving different strategic initiatives. Earlier he has worked in India, United Kingdom and USA primarily in the corporate sector and also has had an entrepreneurial stint working in the Boston ecosystem. Read on the learn more from Bose about ISB’s Post-Graduate Program in Management (PGP), memorable application essays, and ISB’s interview process. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at ISB in the coming year? Dibyendu Bose, Director of Admissions & Financial Aid (AFA) at ISB Dibyendu Bose: We are excited how our Post-Graduate Program in Management (PGP) is progressing towards becoming a globally top-ranked MBA program. We have recently been ranked #1 in Asia & 7th Globally (among one-year programs) by Forbes. Further, we have been ranked #1 in India year on year and 24th Globally by Financial Times. These are indicators of the efforts going on at ISB and reinforce that we are on the right track. CA: What is the one aspect of your program that you wish applicants knew more about? DB: This one-year flagship Post-Graduate Program in Management is our MBA equivalent. With more than 150+ international faculty teaching the programme, 43+ exchange options available to choose from and 1300+ job offers by 200+ companies, this one year is indeed a transformational year for the students at ISB. 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.)? DB: We follow a well-defined and global shortlisting process for the application reviews. Read more

We are back for another edition of our Admissions Director Q&A series.  This time, we stop in New York's third largest metropolitan area of Rochester.  There, Rebekah Lewin is assistant dean of admissions and financial aid for the full-time MBA and MS programs at the University of Rochester, Simon Business School. She has over twenty years of undergraduate and graduate admissions experience, primarily at the University of Rochester. In her current role, she oversees strategy related to recruitment, admissions, financial aid, and on-boarding for these programs. Rebekah also provides leadership to several other key areas, including Academic Operations, the Registrar’s Office, and the Undergraduate Business Program that launched several years ago. Lewin is involved in several board and advisory roles, including serving as Vice-Chair on the Board of Trustees for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, the Forté School Advisory Council, and the MBA Tour School Advisory Board.  She is a graduate of the University of Rochester, Simon Business School MBA program and she holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Roberts Wesleyan College. Clear Admit got the scoop on Simon’s new STEM-designated MBA option, a step-by-step breakdown of how applications are vetted, the insight essays should offer into candidates, and more! Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Simon in the coming year? Read more

We continue our Admissions Director Q&A series with a stop in the Southern U.S.—Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically.  Melissa Rapp is the Associate Dean of MBA Admissions at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School there. In this role, she leads the team responsible for the recruitment, evaluation, and matriculation of students across Goizueta’s portfolio of MBA programs. Rapp has worked at both small and large institutions helping to form and implement admissions strategies. Most recently, she was Director of Admissions for Full-Time MBA and MSMS programs at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas and a masters from Baker University. Read on for more from Rapp about Goizueta’s centennial, the school’s holistic approach to applications, the hallmarks of a fantastic essay, an inside look into the interview process, and more! Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Goizueta in the coming year? Read more

This installment of our ongoing series, Admissions Director Q&A, takes us to the beautiful city of Barcelona, Spain, and the business school, IESE.  An IESE full-time MBA graduate of 2010, Pascal Michels joined IESE as an associate director on the career services team in 2013 and took over the role of full-time MBA admissions director in 2017.  A recovering finance professional, Pascal finds true meaning in working with people and is passionate about business education. Currently he is in the last steps of getting certified as an Executive Coach by Columbia University in New York.  In his free time, he claims to go swimming a lot, but generally just hangs around the gym’s spa. Unverifiable injuries and a hectic travel schedule are his preferred excuses for not having completed a marathon since 2015. Clear Admit had the opportunity to chat with Pascal Michels about IESE’s MBA program and the importance of not being boring in your application (or in real life). Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at IESE in the coming year? Read more

We continue with our updates to Admissions Director Q&As with a trip to Ithaca, NY.  Judi Byers is the Executive Director of Admissions & Financial Aid for the residential MBA programs at Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. She leads a team of 14 admissions professionals and directs the strategic recruitment and admissions activities for the Two-Year and One-Year MBA programs in Ithaca. Read on to hear from Byers about Cornell’s Diversity and Inclusion efforts, its NYC curriculum, the Cornell Application Guide, LEAD events to get to know candidates, and more! Clear Admit:What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Cornell in the coming year?  Read more

Since 2017, Dartmouth Tuck's Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, Luke Anthony Peña, has developed and implemented strategies for recruiting, selecting, and enrolling MBA candidates who possess the greatest potential to become tomorrow’s wise leaders and contribute to and thrive in Tuck’s distinctly immersive learning community. Peña previously served as director of MBA admissions at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he led its marketing and recruitment teams, and managed all external outreach including events, online programming, and social media. At Stanford GSB, he introduced and implemented data analytics to enhance recruitment and yield efforts, and created digital resources to improve relationship management with both alumni ambassadors and prospective students. In this Admissions Director Q&A, Peña talks about Tuck's enhanced first-year core curriculum, the new two-week long orientation, the emphasis Tuck places on Full-Time MBA students, and more. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Tuck in the coming year? Read more

We are moving right along in our Admissions Director Q&A series with a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dawna Levenson is an Assistant Dean of Admissions at the MIT Sloan School of Management there. Dawna Levenson, Assistant Dean of Admissions, MIT Sloan School of Management As the co-lead of the team, she shares responsibility for all recruiting, evaluation, conversion and marketing activities in support of the MBA, Sloan Fellows MBA, Master of Finance (MFin), Master of Business Analytics (MBAn), and Master of Science in Management Studies (MSMS) programs. Prior to this role, Levenson was the Director of Admissions for 5 years and the Associate Director for MFin Admissions for one year. Levenson came to Admissions from the MIT Professional Education office where she managed the Advanced Study Program, the Career Reengineering Program, and a collaboration with Accenture’s Solutions Workforce. Levenson had worked closely with the Admissions Office reading MBA applications since 2007, before joining the team full time, and brings a wealth of admissions and recruiting experience to the team. Prior to MIT, Levenson was a partner at Accenture where she spent 18 years. She holds a SB and SM degrees from MIT Sloan. Clear Admit interviewed Levenson about the increasing demand for data science, the lifecycle of an MIT MBA application, the most memorable applications to her, interviewing at Sloan, and more. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at MIT Sloan in the coming year? Read more

Welcome to another edition of our series, Admissions Director Q&A!  This week, we are excited to feature Soojin Kwon, the Managing Director for Full-time MBA Admissions and Program at the Michigan Ross School of Business. Kwon has led MBA Admissions since 2006 and, since 2016, the student experience and academic advising of the MBA programs. Before joining Ross, Kwon was a Manager in Deloitte’s Strategy and Operations practice. Prior to consulting, she served as a Presidential Management Fellow, doing rotations with the Senate Budget Committee, House Appropriations Committee, and Department of Commerce. Kwon holds an MBA from Ross, a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale. She has served on the boards of the Forte Foundation, Greenhills School, and ETS’ Business School Advisory Council. Clear Admit was thrilled to sit down with Kwon to discuss the brand new +Impact Studio, Michigan Ross’s unique interview process, reflections on 15 years’ of admissions essays, and more. Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting development, change, or event happening at Michigan Ross in the coming year? Read more