As the conclusion to our Admissions Director Q&A Series, we recently spoke with Rod Garcia, director of admissions at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An MIT Sloan veteran, Garcia will celebrate his 21st year at the school this September. Garcia rose through the ranks since joining the MIT Sloan community in 1988, and he has served as admissions director for the past decade. Before that, he worked in admissions at the University of Chicago.

In the interview that follows, Garcia shares his thoughts on the role of MIT Sloan’s Dean David Schmittlein, who came from Wharton in 2007. He also offers advice to candidates regarding business school rankings and shares insight about what his team is looking for in response to MIT’s unique essay questions. If you’re considering applying to MIT Sloan, you won’t want to miss this.

Clear Admit: What’s the single most exciting recent development, change, or event happening at MIT Sloan?

Rod Garcia: To me, the most exciting change or development that has happened here recently is the new dean. Two years ago we brought a new dean on board – Dean David Schmittlein. As far as I know, he is the first dean who was not hired from inside. In the past they have always had a dean from within the school, and we never looked outside. But bringing someone new in brought a lot of new ideas and new energies to the school. That has really made this past year very exciting.

Dean Schmittlein is someone who understands admissions because he served as deputy dean at the Wharton School for years before he came here. We did not have to spend the first year educating him because he was already educated. This dean did not need that. Instead, he was able to dive right in.

For example, this last October I was in a cab in Chicago on the way to a presentation when I learned on my Blackberry that CitiAssist had cancelled our international student loan program. The response by this dean was amazing, which is why we were the first school to have a replacement program in place. It was because of the leadership of this dean’s office. They knew how important this was and immediately started looking for alternatives. It was priority number one.

So that’s why I am very excited about this new administration and the new dean. And this is just his second year…

CA: What is the one area of your program that you wish applicants knew more about?

RG: It’s really not just one area. I think what I would say is I wish MBA candidates would look beyond the rankings and really look at schools from their point of view, not from someone else’s point of view. By doing that I think they will be able to determine whether this place is the right place for them or not as opposed to using an external ranking.

Let me just say, rankings are good. We have been ranked highly, and we will take that. But nonetheless, I would advise candidates to look beyond the rankings because in the process they will discover things. I think it is really personal to the individual.

When I interviewed here in 1988, I knew nothing about MIT or MIT Sloan. I knew nothing about Boston. But when I came to interview – and I spent only about two or three hours in the admissions office – there was something there that happened that made me feel that this was the right place for me. It was not the facilities, it was the not building, but it was something.

I don’t know what the secret sauce is – I wish I could bottle it. But it changed my view of MIT and my view of Boston, and I really wanted the job so much more than before I came for the interview. That’s something you can’t see in a brochure or on a website. So my advice is to come and see it for yourself. Whether it’s this school or another school – candidates owe it to themselves to come and visit.

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.). 

RG: Okay. I’ll start from the application deadline. The first thing we do is import the data to our own database. And even though it’s a paperless application, we print everything and the data is loaded into the database.

The first person to see the application is me. I review each application online and distribute them for reading to members of the committee. They are distributed randomly, by the way. And our readers are all internal – we don’t use students or alumni. The reviewers are all internal staff along with some contract readers – so it’s entirely controlled by us.

The readers pick up a batch of 20, 25, or 40 applications depending on how fast they read. And then a week later they come back with the applications they have scored, and those scores are recorded. From there, I will go into the database and look at the scores, and based on those scores, about 18 percent will be invited for an interview.

That’s right. We score the applications. We don’t have a global rating. Instead, we score every attribute. There are about nine that we look at, ranging from GMAT score to GPA to work success to all the other attributes, like leadership attributes. Essentially there are two major groups of attributes – demonstrated success (GMAT, GPA, work success) and then the leadership attributes. We add up the sum of the two scores, and based on those two scores I will decide the 18 percent who will be invited for an interview.

Is it always 18 percent? No. The size of the class is constant – 324 MBAs plus roughly 50 in our Leaders in Manufacturing dual-degree program. The other number that is constant is the number of people we will interview. Basically, we interview no more than 800. So  depending on the total number of applications we receive, the percentage of candidates that are invited for an interview varies. But it is no more than 800 people, and from there we will admit slightly more than half.

We could interview 1000, even 2000, but we can’t ever offer more than 500 spots, so our strategy is to do the selection at the interview stage. And that’s my job, to find the 18 percent or 800 candidates we will interview.

They are then interviewed by members of committee. Committee members will score them again, and based on those scores, we will pick the 50 percent to admit.

It’s actually quite easy. We don’t spend a lot of time debating because we can refer to something specific in the application. Either it’s there or it’s not there. We don’t say, “I like this person because this person is outgoing.” We don’t do it that way. We say we like this person because this person has a high competency in creativity, or relationship building, or goal setting, or influencing. (Those are all among the leadership attributes we consider.)

It’s a sensible process based on tangible considerations. So when someone says, “Why was this person not admitted?” we can really pinpoint where this particular applicant stood out or didn’tcame up short.

CA: How does your team approach the essay portion of the application specifically? What are you looking for as you read the essays? Are there common mistakes that applicants should try to avoid? One key thing they should keep in mind as they sit down to write them?

RG: I think our system is different from the others because it is always about looking back. The essay questions themselves are unique because we ask for past examples rather than future assertions. We’re not looking for applicants to say, “I will be this…” Instead, we ask them for examples of past behavior. Based on the examples that they give, we are able to give them a numerical score.

And yes, while we do ask candidates to be reflective in their essays, we are not interested in the results but in the process. We are interested in the details. It doesn’t always have to be a happy story or a successful story. Rather, we want to know how you did x or y. Whether it had a happy or successful conclusion is not what we are judging here.

Very often people seem to be stuck in trying to give examples that are glowingly successful. They’ll dig way back to something that happened six years ago. But we are more interested in examples that happened more recently – say, in the last two years – because your behavior in the last two years is more reflective than something six or 10 years ago. Again, it’s really not the story, but the details of the story, the actions that you took, that matter. So don’t reach farther back because you feel like we need an example with a happy or successful ending.