Admissions Director Q&A
Clear Admit’s exclusive interviews with admissions directors at the world’s leading MBA programs.
Published: September 24, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Isser Gallogly of New York University’s Stern School of Business
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.
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Published: September 10, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Rupesh Bisht of the Indian School of Business
Moving right along in our Q&A Series, we turn this week to India, specifically the Indian School of Business (ISB). With campuses in Hyderabad and Mohali, ISB features an accelerated one-year Post Graduate Program (PGP) in Management, as well as a PGP for Senior Executives, a Fellow Program, a Management Program for Family Business and several additional executive education offerings.
Against time zone odds, we were lucky enough to connect with Rupesh Bisht, ISB’s associate director for admissions and financial aid. An alumnus from the ISB class of 2009, “I am an experiencer of the product itself, which gives me some advantage in terms of knowing the product inside out,” he tells us. In addition to his admissions responsibilities, Bisht also oversees international marketing for ISB, as well as the school’s Young Leaders Program (YLP).
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Published: September 7, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Kurt Ahlm of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Kurt Ahlm is a 12-year veteran of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business admissions office, and he has been at the helm for the past four years. During that time, he has helped welcome a new dean, Dean Sunil Kumar, and seen the school continue its international expansion.
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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Published: September 3, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Stephanie Fujii of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business
As we reported here on the Clear Admit blog earlier this week, Stephanie Fujii just stepped into a new position at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business: assistant dean of the full-time MBA program and admissions. She was appointed to this newly created role last month by Haas Dean Rich Lyons, and she now oversees both the full-time MBA admissions and the full-time MBA program offices.
A 2004 Haas alumna, Fujii knows the school inside and out. She has been working in admissions there for almost a decade, advancing through the ranks to become executive director in 2010. Between obtaining her MBA at Haas and returning to work there, she served as executive director of a San Francisco assisted living community for the elderly.
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Published: August 24, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Alex Lawrence of the UCLA Anderson School of Management
~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~
Alex Lawrence, an alumnus of the UCLA Anderson School of Management (MBA ’99), took the helm as assistant dean and director of MBA admissions and financial aid in August 2012.
Lawrence, who replaced interim director Rob Weiler, knows the school intimately. Five years after receiving his MBA, he returned to campus to serve as executive director of the Riordan Programs, an initiative founded by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to help high school and undergraduate students attain higher levels of education. In this role, Lawrence developed programs targeting students who are the first in their family to apply to college or seek an MBA degree. Under his guidance, nearly 70 percent of Riordan MBA Fellows went on to obtain their MBA at some of the nation’s most elite business schools.
In his current role as director of admissions, Lawrence is turning his focus toward assembling the strongest and most diverse incoming MBA classes he can at Anderson.
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Published: August 20, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Conrad Chua of Cambridge’s Judge Business School
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. In 2009, 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 wanted to work outside Singapore,” he told us. He and his wife moved to the United Kingdom seven years ago.
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Published: August 17, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Rodrigo Malta of the University of Texas’s McCombs School of Business
Rodrigo Malta, a native of Brazil, moved to the United States for high school and college and ultimately graduated from the McCombs School of Business 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 assistant dean for the full-time MBA, Malta applied for and got the admissions director’s position.
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Published: August 11, 2014
Admission Director Q&A: Amanda Carlson of Columbia Business School
Amanda Carlson was named assistant dean of admissions at Columbia Business School (CBS) in September 2012, and we recently had the opportunity to learn from her about some of the things that sets the school apart.
A member of the admissions team since 2002, Carlson knows CBS admissions inside and out, and as assistant dean she oversees both the MBA and Executive MBA programs at the school.
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Published: August 3, 2014
Admissions Director Q&A: Sherry Wallace of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School
Today we hear from Sherry Wallace, director of MBA admissions at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. We are grateful to her for making time to share some of the things she’s most excited about in the year ahead – not the least of which is welcoming a new class of students to campus today for orientation.
But that’s not all. With a new dean at the helm, Kenan-Flagler is in the midst of wide-spread growth and improvement. Increased application volume, record numbers of job postings, a new energy concentration and continuing emphasis on leadership are just a few of the things you’ll learn about in the interview that follows.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Bruce Delmonico of the Yale School of Management
We’re continuing our round of interviews with Yale School of Management (SOM) Admissions Director Bruce DelMonico, who has been leading the charge at the New Haven business school since 2006. (A lawyer by training, DelMonico grew tired of sleeping in his office and traveling for weeks on end, so he took a job in his hometown as part of the Yale SOM admissions team. A decade later, he’s still there.)
It’s an exciting time to be at Yale SOM, DelMonico tells us. Under the leadership of Dean Edward Snyder, who joined the school in 2011, Yale SOM has continued to expand the Global Network for Advanced Management, a consortium of leading business schools, and moved into its sparkling new home, the Lord Norman Foster–designed Evans Hall.
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Admissions Director Q&A: Shari Hubert of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business
In our continuing series of interviews with admissions directors at leading business schools, we spoke most recently with Shari Hubert of Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. Hubert joined McDonough last year as associate dean of MBA admissions, where she leads recruitment efforts to attract highly qualified, diverse students to the school’s full-time and part-time MBA programs.
Prior to joining McDonough, Hubert served as director of recruitment for the Peace Corps’ Office of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection, where she was responsible for recruiting 4,000 volunteers annually and managed the operations of nine regional recruitment offices across the United States. Before that, she led campus recruitment for Citi’s Global Bank in North America and served as the manager for campus relations in corporate recruiting at GE’s corporate headquarters. She also led the Executive Leadership and Civic Development Program at the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy association focused on public and private partnerships.
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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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