Ross Admissions Director Blog

Quick Update on R3 and WL

We are close to being done with the review process for Round 3. All Round 3 applicants will be able to access their decisions online on May 15.

The team and I have been painstakingly reviewing and re-reviewing waitlist files. We're looking not only at your merits, but also at how the class is shaping up. The decisions we make now are less a reflection of your fit with Ross, in general, as it is a reflection of how you may fit in the incoming class as it looks at this point in time.

Some waitlisted applicants will get a decision in the coming week; others will remain on our waitlist until additional space becomes available. We appreciate your continued interest and patience.

What it means to be on the Waitlist

Dear Waitlisters -

We haven't forgotten about you. In fact, we will spend more time considering your candidacy than we did for our admitted students. Why? Because we want to make fully informed decisions about your candidacy. The team has been actively re-reviewing your files and your updates to evaluate your potential contribution to and fit with the incoming class. Our decision hinges not only on what you bring to the table, but what the rest of the dinner party looks like. We'll have a better sense of that after May 1, when Round 1 and 2 admits give us their enrollment decision.

There are two main reasons for being placed on the waitlist: (1) you had good academics, work experience and personal experiences, but there were many other candidates who promised to bring the same thing to the table as you did; or, (2) you had good work and personal experience, but there wasn't enough evidence in your academic record to give us confidence that you wouldn't struggle in our program.

Here's how I'd suggest managing your waitlist status: For those of you with strong academics and work experience, other than making sure that you let us know that you are still interested in attending Ross and providing the requisite update, there isn't much you can do to increase your chance of being admitted because it really boils down to how many people with a similar contribution potential decide to enroll.

For those of you with strong experience but less competitive academics - you can still retake the GMAT (we'll accept your highest score) and/or if you had little to no quant courses in undergrad, then you could take a college-level math class to strengthen your candidacy. Make sure you submit your transcript upon completion.

Quite honestly, some of the best students in our program have been those admitted from the waitlist. By "best" I mean - the leaders, the most committed to the school, the biggest contributors, the innovators. Unless they shared with their classmates that they had been on the waitlist, no one would know.

I remember making a call to a waitlister a couple years ago and having to leave a voicemail asking the person to call me back. The next call was to his girlfriend who was also admitted from the waitlist. She was ecstatic for herself and wanted to know if her boyfriend had also been admitted. I couldn't officially share the news with her before sharing it with him, so I let her know that I left him a voicemail to call me. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to return my call before I had to leave the office for recruiting travel. So as not to prolong the anxiety of waiting to connect with me by phone, I asked another Admissions Committee member to give him a call. The newly admitted couple were able to celebrate their happy news together. 

The team and I look forward to making admit calls to waitlisters in the coming month. Though I won't know how many until after May 1, rest assured that there will be many. Thanks for your continued interest and patience.

Gearing Up for GBR

Last week the team and I headed out to the coasts (and Chicago) to meet up with newly admitted students and alums. I was in L.A. and San Francisco for receptions hosted by two of our alums in those cities. For me, it was great to put faces with names - names that the Admissions Committee has seen on applications, discussed in committee, and sent up to the Dean's Office for approval. Names that we hope will be those of future Rossers!

We're looking forward to meeting more than 300 potential Rossers and 60+ partners next weekend during Go Blue Rendezvous (GBR). If you haven't registered yet, there's still time. Here are the reasons you should come:

(1) If you're debating between Ross and another school, you should do your due diligence and experience both. You're about to make, perhaps, the second biggest investment of your life. Don't rely on online research or word of mouth or even a prior visit to make your decision. The decision isn't just about the institution and the programs, it's about your future community/family. Make an informed choice about the community you're about to join, for life.  

(2) If you've already decided that Ross is the place you want to be, come meet future classmates, meet alums and faculty, get a head start on housing, find a roommate, learn about our student clubs, explore Ann Arbor, experience dinner in the Big House.

Enough of the plug for GBR. Just come.

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If you come to GBR next week, you may notice that our Wintergarden is somewhat empty. That's because most of our MBA1s are on MAP travel. I noticed it on my way to getting a steaming bowl of oatmeal from our cafe. The halls and Wintergarden weren't buzzing as they usually are. So I was pleasantly surprised when I ran into one of our MBA1s who just returned from a trip to Prague for MAP. She shared with me how incredible the MAP experience has been on so many dimensions. She said that she had been skeptical that she would go into her summer internship after just a couple semesters of b-school and be able to apply newly-gained skills and knowledge, but that MAP has quelled her skepticism as she has applied skills and knowledge she didn't have before b-school (she was a corporate communications manager for an energy company in California). She also talked about how much she has learned from her MAP teammates, her MAP coach and MAP faculty advisor - not only as it pertained to the project, but also as it pertained to her own leadership development journey. It was great to hear a student confirm that the things we tout about the Ross experience are really true.

To be fair, some students have MAP experiences that are not as rosy - team dynamics challenges, disagreement about project goals and deliverables, etc. But I'd argue that those kinds of experiences are far better learning opportunities than the ones that are incredibly smooth, because real life is not always incredibly smooth. And leadership is something you develop and strengthen through experience. Our students are out there developing their leadership muscles.

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I'm really looking forward to meeting many of you next week! If you come, and you've been a blog reader, let me know. I'd love to meet the people that go with the eyeballs that have been reading the blog!

Round 2 & 3 Timelines

Round 2 decisions are being finalized; call lists are being prepared. Admitted student calls will begin next Monday. Calls will be made in no specific order, at no specific time, other than not calling you after 9PM wherever you are. In addition to making calls, we are in the process of coordinating plans for admitted student events around the world (including meet-ups with MAP teams in various countries), securing panelists for Go Blue Rendezvous, exploring new scholarship and loan opportunities, collaborating with alumni on targeted recruiting strategies, working with current students to implement new outreach initiatives, reviewing Round 3 applications, and conducting staff and applicant interviews.

On Tuesday, I'll be out of pocket for the Consortium Fellowship selection meeting. Consortium admit calls will, therefore, begin on Wednesday.

All applicants can access their decisions online at noon EST on March 15. I wish the best to everyone. I know it's a nerve-wracking time. We'll try to get the calls done as soon as we can.

3 More (Long) Weeks

Some of you may be counting down the days (until March 15). We are too. We have much left to do and not enough hours to do everything we hope to do. Of course, reviewing your applications is taking priority among the team, since we have a deadline to meet. The ADs (Associate Directors) are a scarce sight around here while they're reading apps. The interviewers will (or should) complete all of their interviews by the end of this week. Next week will be the start of what we call the "QC" process - as in (Decision) Quality Control. Each of the region managers (ADs) will make recommendations for applications from their regions. Jon Fuller, the Senior AD, will review all of the regions in aggregate. Then I'll do my review to shape the class and bump people up/down in the process. Remember, b-school admission isn't about admissibility, it's about bringing the right group of people together to create a unique learning community.

There were many anxious questions about what it means if you didn't get an interview invitation. As I've stated in several previous posts over the years (and I know that there are some candidates who peruse the archives in search of clues for when the admit calls will start...), no invitation means we need to further evaluate your file. From an applicant's standpoint, it means you will either be waitlisted or denied. Hope that clarifies things.

And now, on to non-process updates. We welcomed almost 70 Consortium applicants to our Consortium Interview Day and Black Business Students Association Conference last weekend. After having flown back from L.A. for a Forte Foundation board meeting that morning, I was surprised to still be standing at 10:30PM when the reception ended. It sounds cliche but it was truly the energy of the candidates and students in the room that kept me going.

This week, a couple of Round 1 admitted students came for a pre-GBR visit. I had a chance to have lunch with them and some of our current students. As an Admissions Director, it's so fun to be in a room with a group of students you've admitted and you see how accomplished, interesting, passionate, sincere and extremely motivated they are. It isn't easy to glean characteristics like that from an application and short interview. That's why we spend a lot of time with your applications - so we can get as clear a picture of you as we can before we make a final decision. I know March 15 feels like an eternity; but it'll be here soon enough.

Wave 3, Culture and Relativity

Last wave of Round 2 interview invitations will go out late tomorrow afternoon. Remember that if you're not invited to interview, it doesn't necessarily mean you're heading to deny. Applicants whose materials were not complete at the time of the application deadline may not have undergone the requisite reviews. We're doing our best to get through the apps in a timely and thorough fashion.

Last weekend we enjoyed meeting over 60 applicants (including 13 men) for our Women's Interview Saturday. The event was co-hosted with our Michigan Business Women (MBW) student club. Attendees got to hear perspectives on Ross from different women across the Ross community including myself, Paula Caproni (the MBA Academic Director), the co-presidents of MBW, a panel of current women students, and a (co-ed) production of Follies, our annual student-produced comedy show. One of the points I invited attendees to validate with current women students is whether they feel like they're only a third of the class. The answer that I've consistently gotten over the years is that our women students feel like they're far more than a third of the class. That says a lot about our culture - both the women and the men.

When you're about to embark upon an intense experience like an MBA, the culture in which you do it can make a big difference in what you give to it and get out of it. You've heard it before - finding the right fit is very important. And it's a very personal decision - it's not about what the right fit has been for many others like you - it's about finding the right fit for you. The same holds true for us as we make our admissions decisions - there may be two candidates in the pool who seem similarly qualified, but one is admitted and another is not. Admissions decisions aren't just about who's qualified, it's about who we think will fit best in the fabric of our community. And it isn't a static definition of fit from year to year. It changes with the pool of applicants we have each year. To give you a real life example, we admitted a candidate several years who decided not to matriculate that year. He reapplied the following year and was surprised to be waitlisted. He assumed that having been admitted once was a virtual guarantee of being admitted the following year. Unfortunately for him, that wasn't the case since he was being considered in an entirely new pool of applicants. We've seen the opposite happen as well - an applicant who was waitlisted or denied in one year is admitted the following year. The thing to keep in mind as you get decisions from the various schools - it's not just about you, it's also about who you are relative to the rest of the applicant pool. 

 

 

The Bane of Admissions Officers

I wanted to pass on a link that one of my staff happened upon. It's an essay service that offers to review your essays for $19.95 or edit them for an additional $20. They provide sample responses for many b-school's essays, including our own.

http://mbaessayguru.com/sample-essays/michigan-ross-essay-1

I hope you haven't used this site to model your own essays after, or worse, paid for their services. I've shared this link with our small team of readers so their antennae are up for similar essays. We purposely maintain a small cadre of readers so that readers can better calibrate their evaluations across a larger pool of applications, and also, to better detect similar essays (like last year's hit parade essay, "If I were a fruit, I'd be a ...).

Years ago, MBA2s used to be involved in the application evaluation process but we discontinued that because reading 3 - 5 applications per week didn't lend itself to developing the insights needed to make comparative evaluations. That's a critical component of the admissions process - the comparative view, not just a view of an applicant's admissibility on its own. That's why some applicants that are admissible are not admitted. This leads me to another cautionary tale. One of our students alerted me to a posting by an indignant applicant who claims that s/he was rejected by us and admitted by HBS despite having a stellar academic record from MIT and a near perfect GMAT score. This is the flaw with online forums - participants can claim whatever they want, even if it's not true. For the record, we did not have an applicant with that profile apply here. And if we did, such an applicant would have been rejected if that kind of attitude had come through in the application or interview. Everyone involved in the evaluation process cares too much about our community to let that happen.

Interview updates and happenings around the school

As promised, Wave 1 interview invitations went out yesterday. The next two waves of interview invitations will go out by end of day on Friday, February 3 and Friday, February 10. The first wave of Consortium interview invites will go out by end of day tomorrow, and the next set will go out with the second wave on February 3.

In case you missed one of my earlier posts explaining the wave process, here's the deal: the wave in which you are invited to interview has no correlation to: (a) when you submitted your application; (b) the strength of your application; or, (c) the likelihood of your admission. We do it in waves so that we can smooth the interview load over a longer period of time. If we released them all on one date, we wouldn't be able to do it until much later in the process, and the window of time for interviews to be conducted would be extremely limited. The wave process enables us to do more thorough and thoughtful reviews with a limited staff.

Regarding the interview day that's being planned in collaboration with the Michigan Business Women student club - yes, it's open to all interview invitees. The thing to note is that the agenda will be focused on the Michigan Ross experience from our women students' perspectives, and the panelists will be members of the Michigan Business Women student club.

To give you a glimpse of what's happening around the school, on Monday (Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the U.S.), the school hosted a lunch and lecture with former Washington, D.C. Mayor, Adrian Fenty, who led significant reforms in the DC public school system. He gave a frank talk about the challenges he faced in implementing changes that led to rising graduation rates and enrollment there. Also this week, the Dean held town halls with MBA1s. (She held sessions with MBA2s before the holidays). She was joined by associate deans and senior administrators to update students on some of the school's current priorities: globalization, entrepreneurship, defining what the next generation of action-based learning will look like, and expanding our already-broad array of inter-disciplinary (i.e., cross-campus) initiatives. The Dean is planning to release a strategic plan for the school by late summer. You can read more about these and other initiatives on the Dean's blog.

Tomorrow evening, I will be joining our MBA students for the second annual Revitalization and Business Conference in downtown Detroit. The conference will feature prominent industry and city leaders and entrepreneurial change agents who will share their perspectives on how business issues contribute to Detroit’s progress and transformation. Last spring, I met with the students who organized the inaugural conference and was struck by their commitment to not just make an impact "out there" or in emerging countries, but also in making an impact in and around our community, and they weren't even Michigan-born and bred. Another way in which our students impact our community is by serving on the boards of local nonprofit organizations. During a conversation with one of our newly admitted students from New York last March, he commented that many schools had social impact initiatives, but few were as focused on the local community as Michigan Ross is. He told me that this was one of the deciding factors for him to join our community this fall.  

Notification update

Happy new year! It's sunny, 41 degrees, and snow-free in Ann Arbor as I write. MBA students have returned from their winter breaks and the school is buzzing once again. Of course, the Admissions Office was buzzing even without students around last week as we wrapped up Round 1 decisions and began processing Round 2 apps for the Committee's review.

Judging from the visits to my blog today, I'm guessing that many of you are anxious to hear about notification dates for Round 1 decisions and Round 2 interview invitations. Here's the scoop. All Round 1 decisions will be released this Friday, January 13 at noon EST. We'll begin making admit calls beginning Wednesday morning (EST). If we can't reach you by phone, we'll email you.

Round 2 interview invitations will go out in 3 waves. The first wave will go out next Monday or Tuesday. Some of the folks on our Round 1 waitlist will be invited to interview with this wave.

Note to Consortium applicants: you may not get the first wave invitation on the same day as we haven't received all of the Consortium apps from the Consortium yet. We'll try to get the invites out as soon as we can. We will be hosting a Consortium interview event in mid-February in conjunction with our Black Business Students Association conference on February 18. We'll confirm the details in the interview invitation.

To Round 2 applicants - if the Admissions Committee needs any additional documents or information from you, we will contact you via email. Good luck to all and we look forward to reviewing your applications.

Review process in full swing

Here's where we are with Round 1: the team has reviewed all the files from their regions and made preliminary recommendations. Now I get to do the fun part of building the class. This will take a few days as I review individual files and interview reports, and keep on top of the impact each decision will have on the composition of the class. After I'm done with my review, I'll submit the recommendations to the Associate Dean for her review over the holidays. (Please keep in mind that we'll be closed from the afternoon of Dec. 23 until Jan. 3). If you want additional insights into the process, check out my interview with John Byrne on the Poets & Quants site.

I know many of you are anxious and wonder why we can't get decisions out before the holidays. The answer is that we want to make sure we give full consideration to each and every applicant, and not just use stats and numbers to make decisions. It took a lot of time to prepare your apps; we want to give it the proper time for review as well.

Here's the way I view the decisions - each and every person who submitted an app is motivated, ambitious, and hard-working. I know this because that's what it takes to prepare an app for b-school. By virtue of this, all of you possess qualities that can help you succeed in any environment; don't lose sight of that. 

On that note, on to building the Ross Class of 2014. Happy holidays all!