Admissions Director Q&A
Clear Admit’s exclusive interviews with admissions directors at the world’s leading MBA programs.
LBS Admissions Director on Reduction in Required Essays, Importance of Interview
With London Business School announcing its essay questions for the upcoming application season this week, we thought it a good time to check in with David Simpson, admissions director for the school’s MBA and Master in Finance programs, to see what led to some of the changes implemented this year.
David Simpson, admissions director, MBA and MiF, London Business School
In brief, LBS has decided to reduce the number of essays it requires from two to one, while retaining an optional essay.
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Rodrigo Malta of UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business
Brazilian-native Rodrigo Malta is next up in our series designed to showcase the real people behind the MBA admissions process at leading business schools. Malta heads admissions at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where he himself got his MBA a decade ago. He went to work in marketing at Dell for a bit after graduating but was ultimately wooed back to the admissions office—where he’d also worked as a student—by mentor and then-Director of MBA Admissions Tina Mabley. He jumped at the chance to return to campus and work on something
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Johnson Graduate School of Business’s Judi Byers
Moving right along in our new series designed to give applicants a glimpse into the real, live people who run admissions at the world’s top business schools, we’re pleased this week to feature Judi Byers. The Hawaiian-born Byers now calls upstate New York her home, where she’s overseen admissions and financial aid at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Business since 2015. (Prior to that she directed admissions at American University’s Kogod School of Business in Washington, DC.) “I hope you’re getting the sense that I am very comfortable with who I am,” she said matter-of-factly as she rattled
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Bruce DelMonico of Yale School of Management
We’re moving right along with our fun new series spotlighting the real people who make those life-altering decisions of whether to admit or deny you to a given business school. At bat this week is Bruce DelMonico, assistant dean and director of admissions at Yale School of Management (SOM). We happen to know he’s a bit of a baseball fan, even though it didn’t come up in our interview. Read on to find some other lesser-known facts about the person who has helmed admissions at SOM for the past 12 years. Of course, we also talked a little
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Real Humans of MBA Admissions: Darden’s Sara Neher
We know. Admissions directors at top-tier business schools can seem all but omnipotent, charged with assessing your worth and charting the course of your future with the decisions they dole out. To be sure, there are admissions directors who have truly changed individuals’ fates with the calls they make. But here’s something else we know. These admission directors also happen to be real people, in many cases completely down to earth and genuinely great to spend time with. We had the thought that it might ease anxious applicants’ minds just a wee bit to get a glimpse of some of
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Admissions Director Q&A: SMU Cox’s John Roeder
As the latest addition to our Admissions Director Q&A Series, we recently connected with John Roeder, assistant dean of graduate admissions at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU). Roeder is a graduate of the Cox MBA program, so he knows the school and its offerings inside and out.
Roeder oversees all of the graduate programs at Cox, including the full-time MBA, “which is obviously close to my heart since it’s my program,” he says. He obtained his undergraduate degree from SMU as well, before heading into consulting at Andersen. Heading back to SMU for business school he then took an alternate path to head into graduate management admissions. “I graduated on a Saturday here at Cox and was working at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management the following Monday,” he says.
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Published: April 28, 2016
Admissions Director Q&A: Kelley School of Business’ James Holmen
How did southern California native James Holmen end up in Bloomington, Indiana, directing admissions at the Kelley School of Business? And what’s kept him there for more than 20 years? We caught up with him earlier this week to learn that and much more.
Holmen studied economics and sociology at UCLA, but what he learned was that he really liked working in a university environment. He spent a few years working at UCLA before heading to Indiana University in Bloomington to pursue a master’s degree in higher education administration. From there, he headed even farther east, to the University of Vermont to work in new student orientation. But a few years later Bloomington beckoned once again, drawing him back to work as Kelley’s assistant director of admissions. “After four years or so, I was named director—and that was about 20 years ago,” he says.
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Published: March 24, 2016
HBS MBA Executive Director Weighs In On Hiring Of New Gatekeeper
Harvard Business School (HBS) yesterday announced Chad Losee (HBS MBA ’13) as the next managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid—succeeding Dee Leopold, who has held the position since 2006. Make sure to check out our initial coverage from yesterday for information on Losee’s credentials and background. To learn more about Losee and Harvard’s decision to select him as Leopold’s successor, we spoke with Jana Kierstead, executive director of HBS’s MBA program. Clear Admit: Dee Leopold has done such a wonderful job with the MBA admissions process at HBS, building a reputation for innovation, transparency and fairness
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Published: March 20, 2016
Admissions Director Q&A: Maria Pineda of UMD’s Smith School of Business
In response to our readers’ interests, we are excited to have recently added a handful of new schools to the line-up of MBA programs we cover regularly on Clear Admit. The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business is one of them. As part of our expanded coverage of Smith, we caught up recently with Full-Time MBA Admissions Director Maria Pineda.
A 10-year veteran of the Smith School’s admissions office, Pineda worked in undergraduate admissions in New York City before that. “I wanted a change of scenery, so I was initially attracted to the Smith School’s location, with its traditional campus setting nestled next to a metropolitan city,” she says. She’s also a big believer in Dean Alexander Triantis’s vision of cultivating students to experience transformative change and then applying lessons learned to the workforce.
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Published: September 7, 2015
Admissions Director Q&A: Wharton’s Frank DeVecchis
Way back in February, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School named a new director of MBA admissions. Aside from an immediate flurry of coverage here and elsewhere about this Wharton “insider” Frank DeVecchis stepping in, little else has been heard since. What gives?
As was reported then, DeVecchis does know Wharton intimately. He worked in the Wharton MBA Program Office for more than five years before heading over to admissions. In charge of operations and daily management of the MBA program, he advised more than 800 students, implemented the school’s innovative Course Match registration program and rolled out a new three-week orientation for incoming students.
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Published: August 18, 2015
Admissions Director Q&A: Julie Barefoot of Emory’s Goizueta Business School
School’s in session at Emory’s Goizueta Business School! Just as students were beginning to stream onto the Atlanta campus for both the full-time and executive MBA programs, Associate Dean of Admissions Julie Barefoot made time to discuss all things Goizueta with Clear Admit. We are so grateful to her.
Barefoot has been at Goizueta since 1988, so if anyone knows the school, it’s her. She herself holds an MBA from UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business, so she also knows MBA admissions from both sides.
In the interview that follows, the self-professed foodie dishes on the Atlanta restaurant scene, exciting developments in the school’s management practice initiative, the opportunities available to students interested in social impact and much more. She also goes into amazing detail about the admissions process, including giving advice on how to tackle the essay questions.
If Goizueta is one of your target schools, this is a must read.
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Published: August 10, 2015
Admissions Director Q&A: David Simpson of London Business School
London Business School (LBS) shared its essay questions for the upcoming application season with Clear Admit even before posting them to its own website! That’s the kind of special treatment we love around here. As if that weren’t enough, LBS Admissions Director David Simpson then made time for a wide-ranging interview in which he discussed the subtle changes to this year’s application, what he’s excited about most in the year ahead, why only a GMAT score will do and more.
Simpson has served as admissions director for LBS’s MBA and Masters in Finance programs since 2012, but his time at the school dates back many years before that. He is a self-described “geek” about reading applications, so much so that he sounded genuinely disappointed that there’s a bit of down time ahead for him in that regard. (His team recently finished reading applications for the incoming class.) “I miss it,” he says. “I absolutely love reading applications.”
Of course, that down time means he’ll soon be out on the road meeting new potential candidates, another part of the job he enjoys. Check out this list of events to see where you might have a chance to meet him in person. And don’t miss the tips and advice he offers in the interview that follows. Our thanks again, David, for the heads up on the essay questions and the chat!
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Published: August 5, 2015
Admissions Director Q&A: Sara Neher of UVA’s Darden School of Business
We recently caught up with Sara Neher, director of MBA admissions at Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (UVA), who had just returned from a family trip to celebrate her dad’s 70th birthday in the mountains of Colorado. Trading one beautiful environment for another, she’s back now in Charlottesville and ready to dive into the MBA admissions cycle just as it begins to heat up.
Neher, who celebrates her ninth anniversary as director of admissions this month, says she initially turned down an invitation to work at Darden. After five years in sales at Proctor & Gamble—including completing an MBA at Emory’s Goizueta School of Business while working—she returned to her home state and undergraduate alma mater to work for the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, which offers merit-based scholarship aid to exceptional undergraduates, graduate students and professors to come study and teach at UVA. During that time, the foundation launched a scholarship program with Darden for MBA students. “I met the dean—everyone was speaking my MBA language—and they said they had a vacancy at Darden in admissions,” she recalls. To which she replied, “No, I love my job.”
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Chicago Booth Admissions Director Reveals Origins of Unusual New Essay Prompt
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business has done it again. Seven years ago the school made waves when it invited applicants to respond to its essay prompts via PowerPoint presentation. This year, the school has decided to go even further—innovating on its prior innovation. Applicants now are instructed to select one of 16 photographs that capture elements of the school’s community and culture and offer a response—in whatever format they want—that tells the Admissions Committee how the photo resonates with their own viewpoint on why Booth is right for them.
“We are always trying to stimulate more authentic reactions,” Chicago Booth Associate Dean of Student Recruitment and Admissions Kurt Ahlm explained when we caught up with him earlier this week. “But we also wanted to give people a better sense of the breadth and depth of the Booth experience,” he continues. “With this new prompt, we wanted to give people the opportunity to see that and reflect on it.”
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Admissions Director Offers Advice on Kellogg’s New Essay Questions
We caught up with Director of Admissions Beth Tidmarsh late last week to discuss the new essay questions posted by the Kellogg School of Mangement on July 8th. Though the wording and order of the questions has changed slightly this year, applicants are asked, like last year, to respond to two required prompts and given 900 words in which to provide their answers. As in past years, applicants also have the opportunity to respond to an additional optional essay with no word limit.
Leadership and collaboration once again factor prominently into Kellogg’s new essay questions this year, but Tidmarsh and her team hope the prompts provide applicants with a great deal of latitude in how they respond.
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Fuqua Admissions Dean Dishes on Essays and Life
It’s not every admissions director who will make time during her vacation to discuss how prospective business school applicants should approach their essays. And yet Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean for admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, did just that. Speaking from North Carolina’s Outer Banks this morning, before the kids woke up ready to head to the beach, she shared insights with Clear Admit on the essay prompts released last week.
Not a lot has changed this year in terms of Fuqua’s application, it turns out. Applicants will find they have twice as much space in which to answer three short-answer prompts—one on short-term goals, one on long-term goals and one on an alternative plan should that first short-term goal not pan out. This year candidates get 500 characters for each response, up from 250 last year. “We wanted to give candidates a little more opportunity to expand upon their responses,” she says of this year’s doubled answer field.
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Georgetown McDonough’s Shari Hubert Points to Subtle Changes in New Application
Refreshed following a two-day staff retreat, the head of admissions at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business took time this morning to share with Clear Admit her advice to prospective candidates on how to approach the school’s application for the Class of 2018.
Though its essay question remains unchanged from last year, there are subtle shifts elsewhere in the application, says Shari Hubert, who has served as Georgetown McDonough’s associate dean of MBA admissions since 2013. Among other things, applicants will have greater opportunity to highlight experiences living and working abroad. Read on to learn more about these subtle shifts, as well as Hubert’s advice on how to make taking a risk in response to the essay pay off.
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NYU Stern Head of Admissions Offers Advice on Essays Posted Today
Just after New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business posted its essay questions for the 2015-16 admissions cycle this morning, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions Isser Gallogly got on the phone with Clear Admit to share some advice on what the school is looking for in prospective applicants’ responses.
Stern didn’t change much this year in terms of its essay prompts. The first, identical to last year, invites applicants to outline their professional aspirations, including why they are pursuing an MBA now, what they have done to determine that Stern is the best fit for them and what they see themselves doing professionally when they graduate.
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McCombs Director of MBA Admissions Weighs in on Essays, Application Changes
The McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin earlier this week posted its essay questions for the application season. Though the prompts remain largely the same as last year, McCombs Director of MBA Admissions Rodrigo Malta had several interesting tidbits of news to share yesterday in an interview with Clear Admit.
“We really, really, really love our first essay question,” Malta says of the prompt that invites applicants to introduce themselves to members of their future McCombs cohort. “We have had it for three years now, so we had it way before Harvard did,” he adds with a satisfied chuckle.
When the question debuted at McCombs the year before last, applicants were asked to reply in essay form. Last year, McCombs offered greater flexibility, inviting applicants to choose between writing an essay, sharing a video introduction or sharing an about.me profile.
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Columbia Business School Admissions Director Provides Insight into 2015-16 Essays
Columbia Business School (CBS) kicked off the application cycle for the Class of 2018, sending its application live in late April, before any other leading business school. Though this year’s essay questions aren’t hugely different from last year’s, the school’s admissions director took time to share her perspective on the subtle changes with Clear Admit and offer some guidance to applicants who may be preparing to embark upon the application process.
Speaking to Clear Admit yesterday, Admissions Director Amanda Carlson turned first to the school’s first essay prompt—the “career goals/why a Columbia MBA now” question.
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Ross Admissions Director Provides Insight into New Essay Questions
The admissions director at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business weighed in on the school's new application essay questions—announced this week—in an exchange of emails with Clear Admit. Read on to learn what she had to say.
On Wednesday, Ross Admissions Director Soojin Kwon posted the school’s new essay questions for the 2015-16 application season on her Admissions Director Blog. This year, she and her team chose to combine last year’s two essay questions ("What are you most proud of personally?" and "What are you most proud of professionally?") into one, more open-ended question and ask a second question about applicants’ career goals.
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Published: November 5, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Dana Brown of Saïd Business School at Oxford University
Dana Brown recently assumed the role of MBA director at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. In this position, Brown has overseen the review of the MBA program and implemented new elements to help “ensure that Oxford MBAs – as future leaders – have the skills, knowledge and personal qualities needed to meet the world-scale challenges of the 21st century,” she says.
Brown is no stranger to Oxford. Having received her PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she came to Oxford to study for an MPhil in Russian and East European Studies as a Rhodes Scholar. She went on to teach international business at Saïd until 2010, when she relocated to France as academic director of the International Executive DBA at EMLYON Business School. Brown has recently returned to Oxford and continues her research on international business and corporate social responsibility while serving as MBA director.
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Published: October 12, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Grace Kim of the USC Marshall School of Business
Grace Kim is senior associate director of MBA admissions at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business. She was generous enough to make time recently to answer our questions about the admissions process at Marshall, and we thank her!
In the interview that follows, Kim shares new developments planned for the school, including the creation of several half-semester electives as part of the curriculum. These new, shorter courses are designed to add greater breadth of content and allow students to better prepare for highly specialized careers.
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Published: October 8, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Maryellen Lamb of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School
Maryellen Lamb was named deputy vice dean of Wharton MBA Career Management, Admissions and Financial Aid last fall, and she tells us that she absolutely loves the role. “I have a great job because I get to see both the comings and goings. I see Wharton students from when they just start thinking about an MBA through their time here as students and then as they advance in their careers,” she says. “It is so fun to watch really high-performing individuals reach even higher.”
Philadelphia born and raised, Lamb began her career in Princeton as a currency trader, but she found that the more successful she became, the farther away from Philadelphia she was forced to move. About 10 years ago she decided she wanted to return to Philly, and when she got a call from Wharton to come work in the Career Office as an advisor to students looking into investment banking, she jumped at it. “Over time, I have loved being at Wharton even more than I ever thought I could,” she says.
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Published: October 5, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Itziar de Ros of IESE
Itziar de Ros has been leading the charge since 2011 as MBA admissions director and president of the MBA Admissions Committee at IESE in Barcelona, Spain. She is responsible for global marketing, student selection and administration of scholarships for the IESE MBA class of 280 students.
No stranger to the school, de Ros herself obtained an IESE MBA in 2006. She worked as a marketing and sales consultant at DuPont before returning to IESE in 2007, where she held roles in admissions, marketing and communications and development before stepping into her current role.
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