Admissions Director Q&A
Clear Admit’s exclusive interviews with admissions directors at the world’s leading MBA programs.
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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