2011 Michigan Ross MBA Admissions Q&A with Soojin & Jonathan

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Linda Abraham: Hello. My name is Linda Abraham. I am the founder of Accepted.com and the moderator of today’s chat. First I want to welcome all applicants to the Q&A today, and I want to congratulate you for taking the time to learn more about Michigan Ross School of Business. It is critical to your decision making process and your admission chances that you know as much as you can about the schools you are applying to. Being here today allows you to ask experts about this top business school. I also want to give a special welcome to Soojin Kwon Koh, Director of Admissions, and to Jonathan Fuller, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Ross. I am going to take advantage of my position as moderator and ask Soojin and Jonathan what's new at Ross.

Soojin Kwon Koh: Thanks everyone for joining us. I am very excited to talk with all of you, and thank you for doing your research on the Ross School of Business. Some of you may have heard about our latest venture fund that we've launched, the third of our student lead venture funds, called the Social Venture Fund. It is a student managed fund, and the students are learning how to invest in and manage sustainable for-profit enterprises that really address a societal need. So we are very excited about that. The school is also going to be launching some activities around what's going to be called 'Inclusive Growth'. On the heels of the passing of our esteemed Professor Prahalad, we are developing an initiative around his vision for creating inclusive capitalism. So there will be activities to focus on his research and his commitment to try to get businesses to do more with less, for more people. So those are two new things that are going on.

Jonathan Fuller: I think Soojin touched on some of the bigger things that are going on here. We're always very engaged with our current student population, and some of the things that we, at admissions are feeling a lot of benefit from, and I think perspective students will also feel a lot of benefit from, is what we call Ross Student Ambassadors. And this year we had a record number of current students who had volunteered to participate as Student Ambassadors; to essentially be a touch point for prospective students. The Student Ambassadors tell those individuals about their experiences here at the school and how they went through the deliberation process and those kinds of things. So we talk at Ross about how engaged our student community is with both helping the school and improving upon the experience that everyone has here. And that is something that we, at admissions are also feeling directly. I'd like to think that it means we did a good job with bringing in a good quality class last year, based on the engagement that they have in wanting to be a resource for prospective students, and also pay it forward in terms of the experience they had as prospective students as well. So it's something that I personally am excited about. Again, it's exciting just to see a good crop of people that are really engaged with maintaining the excellence that we have here, and bringing in the next great class.

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Linda Abraham: Nelly asks, "Would you ever accept an applicant who has a recommendation that he/she takes Quant courses before matriculating?"

Jonathan Fuller: So would we give a conditional acceptance? No. I would try to think through our different reasons why we would give a conditional admission. There are some applicants that we will give a conditional admission based on English proficiency. If we have concerns about the person's fluency, we will require them to take an English for Business Studies class that we provide here at Ross, prior to matriculating. But from a quantitative standpoint, no. If the concerns were that strong about your quantitative ability, we would probably not admit you in the first place, or we would put you on a waitlist or something to that extent. But we wouldn't say, sure we'll admit you assuming that you'll take a calculus course at your local community college or something to that extent.

Linda Abraham: Thank you again all for participating today.

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Linda Abraham: Ashish asks, "Soojin had mentioned it should be a one page resume. However, the application specifically said that it can be a 1-2 page resume. I am concerned with the answer because I submitted a 1.5 page resume. Does that impact my chances?"

Jonathan Fuller: No. We don't do a document screen or anything like that. I will tell you that I don't sit down and look at every essay and count how many words are in each essay. There is the first essay in which we want you to introduce yourself in 100 words or less, so in that one, we really do want you to introduce yourself in 100 words or less. Soojin mentioned one page because that is the goal that we have in mind, and that is what we would expect to see. And historically, occasionally when we didn't have more prescribed resume lengths, we'd see three or four page long resumes. No offense to an applicant that has a three or four page long resume, but if you only have a couple of years of work experience, honestly, you have no business having a 3-4 page long resume! But if it's a page and a half or something, I feel like I'm a broken record, but once again it's the quality verses the quantity. If you have a page and a half long resume that is full of quality information, I'm very happy that you gave us a page and a half. If it's a one page resume that doesn't have a lot of quality in it, you made the one page length, but if there isn't meat to it, then there isn't meat to it. So I would tell Ashish not to lose too much sleep over it.

Linda Abraham: Here is a question from Rick. He writes, "If I broke 700 on the GMAT on the first try and I think I can get a little higher, is there any reason to try again or is the benefit verses the time investment not worth it?" I think this is a really good question.

Jonathan Fuller: Yes, it is a good question. I'll start with a high level piece of advice that I give before anyone tells me if they've taken the GMAT yet or what their score is. I usually tell people that if you are in our historic eightieth percentile range, then that is a competitive score. And our eightieth percentile range is a 650-750. That's what it was this year. Our average is 704, so if you're in that range, then that is competitive. Again, that is only one data point within your application. I joke sometimes that I relish nothing more than rejecting people that have a 780 on the GMAT, because they come with the 780 GMAT and think they're golden, and they don't have to worry about anything else on the application. Well, you do. There are all these other pieces of information that we ask for, and you have to make sure that you are strong across the board. So to get to the gentleman's particular question, that's a decision ultimately that you are going to have to make for yourself. I'm not so naive as to think that Ross is the only program that you are applying to, and maybe other programs will give you a different answer, so you are going to have to put that into the decision. But I would just say that a 700 is definitely a competitive score; it tells us that you can perform at a high level in both a quantitative and a verbal context. I wouldn't by default say that yes, you should absolutely take it again to get another ten points maybe next time. There have been studies done which show that if you've done your due diligence and have done a full preparation and have gone in and taken the test and you have gotten a particular score, if you were to take it the next day, you should probably score about the same score within twenty points. So to go back to the benefit verses the time investment and the extra $250 that it cost to take the exam, that is something that he'll have to weigh out. But my knee jerk response is that I would say no, that isn't something that you necessarily should do. But it all depends on how the rest of your application comes together.

Linda Abraham: And wouldn't the undergraduate record also weigh on that? If the candidate has a really strong undergrad record in addition to this competitive GMAT score, then the rationale for retaking it, I think, becomes much weaker.

Jonathan Fuller: It diminishes. Yes, I would hear that. But if someone has a very spotty undergrad record, a low GPA and all of those things we talked about earlier, I would say as Soojin mentioned, you can't turn back the clock and affect any change on your undergraduate transcripts, so if you feel that you can make a demonstrable difference on your score, then maybe you should consider taking it again.

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Linda Abraham: I understand that Ross is strong in general management. How does Ross encourage entrepreneurship for students who want to go into emerging markets like India?

Soojin Kwon Koh: We've got a lot of great opportunities. We have an institute focused on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial studies; it's called the Zell Lurie Institute. And through that institute we offer a lot of co-curricular activities such as working on a venture capital fund. We've got three different types. There is the Wolverine Venture Fund. Then the Frankel Commercialization Fund allows students to work with other students across campus if they've got a business idea and they want to take it to market; they work with our students to help commercialize that idea. And I mentioned the Social Venture Fund at the beginning. Also through the Zell Lurie Institute, we've got a grant program for people with new start-up ideas. It's called the Dare to Dream Grant Fund, and we award up to $10,000 for students to start a business while they are at school. The Zell Lurie Institute awards up to $100,000 in total to students to help launch their business ideas. And then we've got a bunch of case competitions where students will get together with each other or with other students on campus to react to a business case and present before entrepreneurs and capitalists, to see how quickly they think on their feet. In some cases, those can lead to internships or relationships that can help them post-graduation in launching their own businesses.

Linda Abraham: Thank you very much Soojin for coming today. I'm going to continue with the questions to Jonathan because he has said that he can stay a little longer.

Soojin Kwon Koh: Great. Thanks Linda, and thanks everybody for participating. We are very excited that you are interested in Ross, and hope that we will have a chance to meet you on campus one of these days. Good luck.

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Linda Abraham: What about too much or too little work experience?

Jonathan Fuller: Back to the comment that I made before, that what matters is how you convey that experience and how we perceive that to be a value to our overall student body, and how you are going to really be able to make that contribution in the classroom. I often tell people that an MBA experience is much different than what you had in your undergraduate experience. Because when you're an undergraduate, the primary purveyor of knowledge, the expert in the room is the faculty member. While that still holds true, in an MBA context you are also doing a lot of learning from your fellow students. So you are not just expected to be a competent learner, but you're also expected to be a teacher as well. So in that work experience there is the employability aspect and some other things that go along with that, but what we are looking for really is what does this person have to teach? What about their professional and their personal life experiences have they had and they are going to be able to bring to bear for their fellow classmates? I guess I would encourage the applicants or people who are considering applying, if you are interested in Ross and you're interested in our particular approach and philosophy with action based learning and other things and experiences that our program has to provide, go ahead and apply. Don't self select yourself out from consideration because of a percentage that you see, or a GMAT scale that you see, or a GPA range, or whatever it might be. Let us make that call and let us tell you if we think that you may have something to add, and we want you to be part of our community here.

Linda Abraham: Abucheq asks, "I applied in round one and have received additional responsibilities post that. I would want to highlight that due to the high profile nature of these responsibilities. How can I do that? Also, when are the admission notifications expected for round two?"

Soojin Kwon Koh: Regarding the first question, you can't let us know about it. Because we are considering apples to apples at the time of the application. If you applied in round one, your materials are done. You can talk about it somewhat in your interview if you are invited for an interview, but we assume that everyone has the opportunity or the possibility of gaining new responsibilities, new projects, new winds, new achievements, and we can't keep opening the faucet and letting people give us new information. So we are going to evaluate everyone as their application was submitted. And the notification for decisions for round one is January 15th.

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Linda Abraham: We are starting to get a lot of questions about GPA, GMAT and things like that. So I want to ask the applicants, how many of you are concerned about your GPA? Alright, 28% say they are concerned about their GPA. How many of you are concerned about your GMAT? We've got 31% concerned about the GMAT. How many of you are concerned that you have too much work experience? Alright, 21% are concerned about too much experience. And how many of you are concerned that you don't have enough experience? 18%. If I add these numbers up, it comes out to over 100%. So that would imply, not terribly scientifically, that everybody is worried about something, or a few people are worried about an awful lot in their application! The interesting thing about all these concerns is that they are all quantitative and not qualitative. I'm wondering if Soojin and Jon want to comment on that.

Soojin Kwon Koh: Sure. I wanted to comment on the GPA piece. A lot of people are worried that Ross's average is 3.3-3.4 converted from whatever scale. We are not looking for someone to hit that average. We also are going to be looking at what your major was, and what school you went to. What was the diversity of your curriculum? How challenging was it? What were the trends in your academics? So it's not just one piece that we are going to look at on your transcript, and we're not going to zero in on that GPA. We are going to look across that entire transcript to see how much did this person challenge themselves? Is that why their GPA might be a little bit lower or higher? And what does it say about the person in terms of the classes that they took? Do they show a curiosity for just one main thing or a variety of things? Those are the kinds of things we want to glean from the undergraduate record. But all of the quantitative stuff is just one piece of the whole picture that we have of each candidate. So I wouldn't obsess about getting that one piece right. You can't do anything about the undergraduate record; it's done. So there is no sense in worrying about that. You can take the GMAT more than once, and we will take your highest score. So if you feel like you haven't done your absolute best, then by all means, I would encourage you to consider retaking it. And we are going to be interested in the Quantitative breakout in particular, because the first year, especially the first semester of the first year is going to be highly analytical and quantitative. So we want to make sure that folks who are going to be in our program are going to be ready to hit the books, hit the numbers, and not drown. We don't have a hard percentage in terms of the percentile for the Quantitative, but we will be looking at the piece too. Especially for people who don't have a quantitative job or an undergrad major that had some quant skills with it.

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Linda Abraham: If you feel that somebody is applying to the wrong program for them, would you reach out to them and suggest that they apply to another program, or would you just reject them?

Soojin Kwon Koh: In some cases we do, less so with the full-time MBA applicant pool and more so with our smaller programs. With the Executive MBA and the part time MBA programs, we might do some counseling.

Linda Abraham: Jamie asks, "Hi Soojin and Jon. Can I do an MBA-MPT or another program initially when applying, or can I decide at a later time?" I think the main question here is can you do a dual degree program? And can you decide later to do the dual degree, or do you have to decide before you actually arrive?

Jonathan Fuller: We offer over 20 dual degree opportunities, including one with public policy. You don't have to decide whether or not you are going to apply to the dual program before you've actually been admitted to the MBA program. You can make that decision or that distinction within your first year, but it does have to be within your first year of your MBA studies. If you go beyond that into your second year, you wouldn't be able to be totally classified and experience the time saving and the efficiencies that are gained from being a true dual degree applicant. But you definitely don't have to make that decision now. There are people who will elect to apply to a complimentary program during the first year of their MBA studies.

Soojin Kwon Koh: And the way the curriculum would work is you would start one year here, and then if you decide to apply to one of our other graduate schools on campus, then you would do the next year at the other school, and then the third year would be combined.

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Linda Abraham: The next question is from Cyril. He attended the Ross Information Session yesterday in Bangalore, and he had a great time. He thought it was just outstanding, and really appreciated the number of alumni who were there. But his question is, "I will have 11 years of work experience by 2011, and I'm certain that I want to do a comprehensive two year program and not an Executive MBA program. Should my essays explain this, and how do you view experience?

Jonathan Fuller: I guess in a nutshell how we view experience is not so much in terms of quantity of experience that someone is bringing to the table, but really what the quality of that experience is. So someone might have 11 years worth of work experience, but in terms of what they have done that is of substance could be just as substantial as someone who has many years fewer than that. So I wouldn't necessarily say that if you have x number of years of work experience then you must do an Executive MBA instead of a traditional two year program, or some other kind of full-time MBA experience. To the candidate, I would say that it's really a question that he is going to have to answer for himself in terms of what is going to be best fit for his career ambitions and what the various experiences can provide. In terms of our particular program, the average number of years of work experience is five, but the range is actually pretty wide. Most people will come to us with at least a couple of years of work experience, but I think in this most recent class, the range was as many as twenty years of work experience. But again, more important than just that raw number of years is really what the quality of that experience is. And how we are going to evaluate that is through looking at that individual and looking at those experiences as conveyed through the resume, the essays, and the interview. And we are going to see how we can answer the question: what is this person going to contribute here in the classroom environment? What are they going to be able to share with their fellow students to help educate them as well? So that's really how we are going to be looking at it.

Soojin Kwon Koh: Let me add to that and say that someone who has more than the average years of full-time work experience, we will be interested to know why you are seeking a two year, full-time MBA as opposed to the Executive MBA. The experiences are quite different. So we want to know that you are choosing the full-time for the right reasons, and you are not shortchanging yourself in terms of which program is the better fit for you.

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Linda Abraham: The next question is from Rogers. "Do you have any tips for re-applicants? Also regarding the essays for re-applicants, do you have any suggestions regarding a cover letter, word length, a repetition? And does attempting an optional essay make any difference?"

Soojin Kwon Koh: Sure. I encourage re-applicants to submit a cover letter that is very reflective. I am impressed by candidates who do a thorough review of their original application and try to understand where they could have strengthened their candidacy, and address those things as well as also letting us know what is new in their experiences and perspectives. What have they learned about themselves through the last year between the original application and the new application? And regarding the optional essay, since you are writing a cover letter, the optional essay really is redundant. Anything you want to say, you can include in the cover letter. As far as rewriting the essays, that part is optional. If you think that there are ways that you can share something different about yourself by answering those new questions, then by all means please let us know. We are not looking for a rehashing of what you have already told us as far as what your interests and goals are, and "Why MBA now?", and those kinds of things. But if there is something new, that is what we're looking for because we will have your original application, and we will have that to compare it to, to see what's new since then.

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Linda Abraham: How are you new and improved? That is the key question for re-applicants. Okay, the next question is from June. "I have heard that the Ross School has a higher standard for GPA. How much weight do you put into the GPA?"

Soojin Kwon Koh: I'm not sure what he means by "higher stand of GPA"; we've always had a high standard.

Linda Abraham: My guess is that what he is saying is that you put a lot of weight on the GPA relative to other elements of the application.

Jonathan Fuller: I would say that we have the academic bucket, the GMAT and your undergraduate performance being the main two components of that bucket. I would say that the GMAT definitely is a good indicator of your potential for strong performance in the first year of your MBA experience. But it is one examination that people can definitely study and prepare for, and perform well on the spot for that one particular test. An undergraduate transcript is a much more sustained indication of how someone performs in an academic environment. So to an extent, I would say that in some ways we do value that undergraduate performance, I wouldn't say more so necessarily than how we value the GMAT, but that is part of the reason why we put emphasis on that. Because for the span of that three or four years that you were pursuing your bachelor's degree, that is a better predictor of your academic performance in the MBA context as well.

Linda Abraham: Bikash writes, "I've read lots of the internet blogs, and you have lots of students talking about using the MBA as a platform to change tracks, change careers, from marketing to consulting, etc. I have a technology background and I've been working for the past 12 years. Post-MBA I plan to change my role to techno-managerial from the purely technical, as well as expedite my career growth. Do you think a Ross MBA could help me here?" I guess the question is not really so much 'yes' or 'no', but what are the tools that Ross would provide to help in such a transition.

Soojin Kwon Koh: Ross is a great place for people wanting to change careers; the vast majority of our incoming students are looking to change careers. Because we are very strong in general management and in strategy, that gives students a really great foundation for pursuing whatever career path they are interested in pursuing. The first year is general management, and it gives you all the basics of business from finance to accounting, strategy, and marketing. Once you finish the core curriculum the first year, then in your second year you can choose to focus if you want in a particular area by taking coursework and doing extra-curricular and club activities related to a particular industry. Or you can continue down the general management path and take a wide variety at Ross and across campus. And then our Career Development Office also provides a lot of support for preparing students to be successful in a career change strategy. So between our student peer counselors as well as our staff counselors, they can help our students develop the resume, the pitch, and the interview skills to be successful in whatever career path they want to choose.