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FEBRUARY 3, 2000 B-SCHOOL Q&A: ADMISSIONS Meet SMU's Admissions Director A Conversation with Donna Smith, Director of MBA Admissions at SMU's Cox School of Business
Q: Donna, you were appointed the school's director of admissions in 1998, so you've been through one full admission cycle, and are now in the middle of your second. Has heading the school's admissions effort been a tremendous transition from your previous role as SMU's assistant director of career management? A: Yes, it's been a big transition, although the bigger transition was when I left industry to come to higher education. But the role within admissions has been a great learning experience for me, and I think it's also been a tremendous opportunity for the school. We've made great strides. We've taken our entire application and admissions process to a new and improved level. We're much more systematic in the way we go about the admissions process -- we've taken a much more strategic approach to it in general. That can only help the rest of the school as we improve the quality of the student that we bring in. Q: How exactly have you altered the way SMU approaches its admissions process? A: We've done a couple of things. The way we assess candidates has changed slightly. We continue to look at the academic aspects of candidates and the quality of their work experience and their leadership potential, but we've also brought in the added element of [assessing] what their future career goals are and how they're working towards that. How does Cox's MBA fit into their overall picture? [Evaluating] that is something that really takes a whole process. At business schools, students come in as raw materials -- the professors are sort of the operations, processing those raw materials, and then the students graduate. Our Career Management Office is a marketing area that helps students find jobs and helps them succeed in their careers. We're trying to pull that whole thing together and bring career management into the admissions process. Q: Cox is known for its finance and marketing programs. Does your admissions office have a predisposition for people who are focused on those types of careers? A: Not at all. We have a general management curriculum, and so we're looking for people who have all sorts of interests. We have no sort of propensity to look for people that have financial marketing backgrounds or those types of career aspirations. Not at all. Q: Cox has one of the smallest MBA student bodies in Business Week's Top 50. The school's Class of 2001 totals just 120 students. Are you planning to grow the class or are you, in fact, angling to shrink the class down even further? A: We're going in neither direction. We're actually going to stay in a static state at this point, at about 120 people. We have a lot more capacity, but feel that one of the strengths of Cox is that we can provide a small school experience in a large city. You get all the benefits of being in a big business city, with all the benefits of having a personalized [B-school] experience. We feel that 120 is the right number where we can manage that personalized experience and do things like our Global Leadership Program, where we're taking all of our first year MBA students abroad for a two-week trip, with 40 of them going to Europe, 40 going to Asia, and 40 going to Latin America. You can't do that with a class that's much bigger than 120.
Q: Given the school's small class size, should applicants strive to showcase their interpersonal communication skills? A: Yes, they should. When you're this small, fit matters, and that means something to us. Every seat is precious to us, and so we want to make sure that not only do the students have the right academic and leadership qualifications to be here, but that they have the right commitment and desire to make a difference. That's essential in a small school. Q: The Cox School's admissions standards have definitely become more competitive. In 1997 the school's acceptance rate was about 60%, and last year that decreased to 40%. Is the school accepting a fewer percentage of its applicants simply because it's receiving more applications, or is it because the admissions committee is becoming more stringent? A: I would say it's a combination of both, but it probably has to do a little bit more with the selective side. We are being more stringent in terms of what we're looking for and are also putting emphasis on communication skills and how well a [prospective] student packages his or herself, how they present themselves in written form as well as in person. Q: Schools across the nation have been integrating technology to be able to better handle the influx of applications that they're receiving, as well as enhance the actual application experience for prospective students. Cox has integrated a number of tech initiatives, including an online recruiting tool -- what other admissions-oriented things has the school unveiled recently? A: We have, like a lot of other schools, online applications. We also have used the Web to do outreach to prospective students who may not have heard about us, because of our size. And then as you alluded to, we have used the Webcast as a way of reaching out to students who are unable to travel to us and visit our campus. [Through the Webcast] they can actually go online and listen to a group of current students talk about their experiences, interact with them by asking them questions through a chat room, and then also view some Powerpoint slides and photos that we show throughout the presentation. One of the things that we 've found is that the Webcast uses a lot of technology that some international students just don't have access to. And so we'll probably step that down a notch and complement the Webcast with something that's a little less extensive in terms of its technology requirements. We're also using the Web extensively now in terms of communicating with our current applicants either about different events going on at Cox that we invite them to, or about news updates. So, we're exploring different alternatives. Q: Do you feel that the school's tech initiatives have been relatively successful? A: Technology certainly has given us greater exposure in a low cost way. So we do believe that the investment has been well worth our effort. And that's why we will continue to experiment with new technologies. Q: How important is it for a prospective MBA student to participate in, say, the school's Webcast or visit the campus, in order to see if they fit with the Cox learning philosophy? A: Personally, I think it's more important for them than for us. I mean, certainly it shows us that they're interested in the school and that this is something they take very seriously. And that's something we'll take into consideration. But I'd put the emphasis back on the students and say, "You should be [researching the school]. You should be doing as much homework as you can about us to make sure that we are where you want to be." So if they're not doing it, then they're actually short-shrifting themselves, and in the process they may be saying to us unintentionally, "You know, I'm not sure if this is what I'm really interested in." Q: Donna, you earned an MBA at Stanford University several years ago. Though Cox and Stanford are obviously two very different schools, how in your mind has the actual MBA curriculum and general experience changed? A: Since I was at school, I think the curriculum has become much more practically oriented. My recollection of those many years ago when I was in business school was that while yes, we used cases and we certainly did hands-on work, there was a little bit less of an emphasis on actually going out and incorporating real time experiences into the learning process. All schools now are trying to incorporate that because I think some schools probably learned lessons along the way [revealing] that theory doesn't work in practice. So you've really got to [use real-life scenarios] to make your students successful and give them effective tools. You've got to make sure that they're getting practical, hands-on experience at the same time as classroom experience. I think the value of the MBA continues to increase. There have been people out there who say, "Well, there are so many MBAs now that it's almost a commodity." I don't believe that's true. I believe that more and more organizations are understanding the value that an MBA can bring to their organization, the overall strategic vision and the knowledge of what tools to use to solve certain kinds of problems. So I think the value of the MBA just continues to increase. Q: Once I've decided that the Cox School is one of the B-schools that fits with my personality, what are the different ways that I can apply? A: You can do the traditional method, which means that you call us up or get on the Internet and request an application be sent to you. You can also get on the Internet and just use our online process which is provided by Embark.com. And there you would complete everything online except for your recommendations, obviously, and then submit it to us electronically. Or you can use Multi-App, which is a diskette-based system where you can fill out some common fields for a lot of schools and then move on to our actual application questions. Q: SMU is among the growing list of schools that seem to be wedding themselves to technology. What do you foresee as a realistic date when the school, in fact, runs a paperless admissions process? A: Well, one of our competitors [MIT] is completely there. It's hard for me to answer that question. I would think that certainly within the next five years it's going to be a very serious issue for us in terms of being completely paperless. But it's difficult for me to answer that. Q: At this point, is there any particular way that you prefer to receive an application? A: No. We really want the candidate to use whatever is easiest for them, and that's why we provide the different options. The manual process is no better, no worse than the online. Q: You mentioned that SMU is growing its reputation abroad. Do the majority of the school's applicants still hail from Texas? A: That's changed significantly. Of the class that just entered this fall of '99, about a third of them were from the Southwest, which is significantly down from two years ago. Of that 34%, probably 50% or 60% of them came from Texas. Q: Does one's residency impact at all on admission? A: No, it doesn't. Q: Let's get into the nuts and bolts of the application. How do you first approach the evaluation of a file? Do you start with an applicant's admissions triangle -- the GMAT, the GPA, and the work experience -- and then move forward to the more subjective ends of the application? A: We start with that triangle because that is, in some ways, the easiest thing to get your hands around. It's quite tangible. But it's not as though we screen based on those criteria. We look at the candidate holistically. So we'll look at the GMAT, at the GPA, and at that work experience and start to form an opinion, but we will continue to be completely open-minded as we review the rest of the application because you can find lots of pleasant surprises. And that's our role: to find a diamond in the rough. Sometimes those are hard to see if you just look at the tangible criteria. Q: Work experience seems to have become an element that schools now place a lot more importance on. Members in SMU's Class of 2001 have an average of four years of work experience. Meanwhile, Cox only admitted a scant 3% of its applicants with less than one year's worth of work experience. Is that one of the first things that you tend to look at? A: We'll look at that and say "Okay, if somebody has no professional full-time work experience, what have they been doing other than that to help round out that element of their application?" So, yes, we will look at that. But we're not looking for quantity, we're looking more for quality. The scant 3% percent that you referred to were outstanding in terms of their undergraduate experience and demonstrated some incredible potential as well as existing leadership skills. So yes, [little or no professional experience] will send up a bit of a flag, but we will continue to read through [those applications], because we're looking for that potential and we're looking for that existing leadership. Q: What does a "quality" person look like? A: A quality person is someone who we believe is going to make a huge contribution to the school as well as to their classmates. And so, that means somebody who has a very strong sense of self, who understands what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their challenges will be in terms of reaching their career goals. A "quality" person is somebody who has a strong desire to make a difference. That's a very important thing, because when you have the desire to make a difference, you have passion, you have drive, you have a lot of things that aren't measurable through a GPA or even in the number of years of work experience. Q: At the same time, it seems that you need to have at least the ballpark credentials to lead you into the promised land... A: Yes. There are rare individuals out there who have that kind of vision for themselves and others, right out of undergraduate. It often takes [others people] years of maturing within a professional work environment to build that or to recognize that you've got it. But there are rare individuals out there who can distinguish themselves right away. Q: So it's not a prerequisite to have prior business experience? A: No. Q: Is the school willing to accept a candidate with, say, a humanities or liberal arts undergraduate education, who is a high school teacher? A: Absolutely. My background was in liberal arts, so I have a strong bias for liberal arts to a certain extent. But we've got an opera singer in the first year class. We've got people who were teachers, we've got people who ran not-for-profit children's camps. Business does not define leadership by any means. A nice thing about Cox is the diversity of [student] backgrounds. Q: There seems to be a bias, founded or not, against consultants. Do they, in fact, face an uphill battle because admissions officials sometimes feel that consultants really don't demonstrate the kind of work experience that they're looking for? A: Hmmm. I guess I would disagree. I don't know where that comes from. I think that, again, it depends how you define consultants. That's a very broad word that a lot of people use. That's where we have to delve deeply and say, "What does that word mean? What does it encompass in terms of the skills this person has built and the types of responsibilities they've taken on?" Q: The school's Class of 2001 had a 640 GMAT average. Today's applicants tend to get extraordinarily uptight about meeting a school's class average. Is it worthwhile for someone who scored a 600 to retake the test and score a 630 to bring themselves closer to the school's average? Is that rationale founded? A: No, I don't think so. I think that's not a fair question for us, because it's a question of what [applicants] feel comfortable with. We're not sitting here saying you have to score a 640 to be competitive. What we've said is that we're looking at that holistic candidate, so it's the combination of those things. If retaking the GMAT and getting closer to our average makes a candidate feel better about themselves, then absolutely do that. But if they're doing it only because they think the admissions committee will look at them differently, I don't know if I would say that that would be founded. It's all a question of how you put the rest of your [application] package together. Q: Can an applicant actually take the GMAT exam too many times? A: I do believe that there's probably a point where you have to say, "I need to stop." At a [certain] point, that test becomes very accurate and so moving your score plus or minus 50 points probably isn't going to happen if you've taken it five or six times. If you've taken it three times, that's probably a good number, and that will probably give you a sense of where you're settling or where your potential is on that exam. Q: In order to get a more accurate idea of who an applicant really is, do you go so far as to rank is or her undergraduate institution and major? A: No, we don't. We take it into consideration, just as we take into consideration a student's track record throughout their undergraduate experience. Did their grades get better towards the end? It's taken into consideration, but it's certainly not ranked. Q: How important is it for prospective students to showcase their extracurriculars to demonstrate that they are leaders? Is it a red flag when you see somebody who hasn't been out there doing community service or participating in job activities that go beyond work responsibilities? A: It will raise a little bit of a red flag, only because it will beg us to ask the questions, is this student well rounded? What do they do outside of their job to balance their lives? We've found that single track kinds of mindsets typically aren't real leadership-oriented. So, yes, that will raise that kind of flag, but it certainly is not the kind of thing that we want people putting on their application just to put on their application. We want to see the commitment, we want to see the consistency, and again, we're looking more for how well rounded the person is and how they balance their lives. Q: You mentioned the importance of communication skills. Last year, the school interviewed 100% of its admitted applicants. What's the philosophy there? A: Our philosophy is that if a student can communicate well on paper, we also want to make sure they can communicate on the fly, in person. Because again, going back to the issue of measuring the success of an MBA student, and the success of an admissions office, in all honesty, you can look at the success of a student within the MBA program in the two years that they're in the program, but ultimately the success is measured by that student's ability to succeed in the workplace after school. A lot of that depends and is predicated upon their ability to communicate verbally and to think on their feet. So we believe that having the interview is an important part of understanding who the candidate is, how well they communicate, how well they can analyze and think on their feet. That's not to say that [we prize] form over substance, it's just to say that we've seen the elements that are written, now we just want to make sure that they're consistent with the rest of the package. Q: Do you contact applicants to set up an interview or should they take the initiative? A: We have actually moved to an interview-by-invitation format at this point. That's effective this year because of staffing resources. Q: How can I best prepare for a sit-down with you or a member of your staff? A: There's nothing you can do to prepare, except know yourself and be yourself. Q: Is it a good idea to at least review the application, to think about things that could augment, say, my essay responses? Or should I introduce new things that may help give you a better idea of who I am, that aren't stated on the application? A: It would be a good idea to be familiar with what you said in your application, because that's our only knowledge of you, so our questions will be based on what we see in that application. But it would be a great idea to bring in additional things to supplement what we know on paper. We don't have standard questions -- we have standard things that we're looking for, but each one of us gets to those answers in different ways. Q: Who does the interviewing at the Cox School? A: Two associate directors and myself. Q: Does all of the school's interviewing occur on campus or do you guys do interviews during recruitment sessions as well? A: Both. We do interviews when we're traveling on the road in the fall and in the early spring, like around now. We also do some interviews for our international students... Q: Is it a good sign that I've been contacted by your office to interview? A: It's highly unlikely that you would be accepted if you're not interviewed. Q: Does the interview evaluation form confer a certain amount of weight? It seems like a nice way to introduce the meat to the bare bones of the admissions triangle. A: Yes, it absolutely has weight. I don't know that I could say how much weight it has, because as I said before, the interview is used to make sure that we have consistency with what we've read in the written application. So, yes, it will round it out a little bit more. Q: Another way to learn more about the applicant on top of his or her numbers is through the essay questions. If I'm not mistaken, the school has three required and one optional? A: Yes, we have three required -- two of them are sort of longish, two pages, and the other is short paragraph. (Editor's note: The Cox School's 1999-2000 application essays include: 1. "What are your immediate post-MBA career goals? Tell us how your education and career to date have helped you shape these goals. How will an MBA degree help you achieve these goals?" 2. Ten years after you have graduated from the Cox MBA Program, an article is written about you in a major international publication. What is that publication, and what will the article say?" 3. "Please respond to one of the three questions or statements below. A. Describe your leadership style. What skills do you need to develop to become a more effective leader?  B. Describe a situation in which your intitiative had an effect on others.  C. Describe something about which you have a passion.") Q: What do the essays get at? What are you trying to uncover? A: We're just trying to understand the game plan for this person. The first one gets at where they've been, where they're going, how they propose to get there, and why the MBA makes sense for them. The second one is much more aspirational. We're looking for an element of creativity in it, but we're also looking for what your vision is for yourself, what you aspire to be, and what sort of rewards you look for in your career. Then the third short question gives candidates an opportunity to round themselves out and talk about something that's not necessarily MBA or career-related, something that's a little more personal or closer to home for them. Q: What are some red flags that you've come across when reviewing application essays? A: Typographical or grammatical errors. Those are really important things that we look for. We also want to make sure that the [prospective] student is addressing our question. A lot of schools ask similar questions. But each of us wants our own question answered. Q: Is writing essay responses past the school's suggested word limits a big no-no? A: It's not a big no-no. I wouldn't go to six pages though. If we have a two to three page limit, and you go to four or five pages, it's probably okay. But it can also raise a flag for us, because we'll say, "How effective is this person at communicating with us in written form?" Q: Recommendations are another facet of the application that helps to add a dimension of understanding to the applicant. Just how important are the recommendations in the grand scheme of things? It seems like, for the most part, the majority of these forms are overly glowing, where the applicant can do no wrong. Does that discount their worth in your eyes? How do you handle the recs? A: That's the secret of being an admissions officer... there is a way to read between the lines. And I'm not going to tell you how it's done, because it's not exactly scientific. But there is a way to read between the lines and to understand when somebody is being a little too effusive as opposed to being critical and objective about a candidate's prospects for success in business as well as in an MBA program. So, does fluff discount it? We will read between the lines, and we will make an assessment. What tends to happen is that if the recommender is somebody who doesn't know the candidate very well, we'll find a lot more fluff, because they have to fill the space. So what you find is that the people who can provide the best assessments -- and sometimes they are very effusive -- are quite accurate and you can make the distinction. Q: What kind of person represents a good recommender? A: Certainly the best recommender is your immediate supervisor, somebody who can truly assess how well you perform in the workplace, how you've been able to deliver on things that have been asked of you, how you may go above and beyond your responsibilities. That would be your very best recommender. We don't tend to be impressed by titles as much as by the content of what [a recommender] has to say about you. Q: Most recommendations have a grading scale for the evaluator to rate the applicant, as well as a written response section. Which of these components is looked at more closely by your office? A: We look at the written elements as well as the ranking elements equally because sometimes you find that people, when given a grid, will be harsher, but when they actually write about the candidate, they will be quite complimentary. Q: What would you rather see: A recommendation with longer, well thought out written responses, or one that is more succinct in nature? A: As long as we're getting meat, as long as we're getting content and a good assessment of the candidate, I don't care if [the written responses are] three pages long or half a page long. As long as there is substance to it, it doesn't make a difference to us. Q: This year, the Cox School has five admissions deadlines, spanning from Nov. 30, 1999 to May 15, 2000. What is the turnaround time for response? A: In general it's between four to six weeks. Each deadline has its own notification date as well, so the November 30th [deadline] had a notification date of January 15, and then January 15 has a February 15 [notification date], February 15th's is March 23rd... Q: Does SMU deliver decisions to its applicants electronically, by phone, or via snail mail? A: It's actually a combination of all three. In all honesty, denying a person is a very difficult thing, so those are not done in person. Instead, they are done either electronically or via snail mail. And we do give candidates who were not accepted an opportunity to speak with an admissions officer to understand why the decision was what it was and also to discuss if they would like to reapply, what they can do to strengthen their application, etc. Q: Is it always better to apply earlier to the program? As an applicant, is it to my benefit to apply, say, by the school's second or third deadline, rather than the fourth or fifth? A: Certainly, it helps to be earlier in the process rather than later. By the fourth or fifth [deadlines] we typically have filled the class or are very close to filling the class, and so it's going to be a much more selective process toward the end. But I don't think it makes a difference if [one applies to deadlines] one, two, or three. Q: Do you allot class spots equally per deadline? A: No, we do not. Q: Do SMU's waitlisted applicants have to wait until the summer to get a decision back from your office? Or do you reevaluate them each successive deadline? A: They are continually reevaluated each time. Q: What, as a waitlistee, can I do to better my chances of acceptance? A: There really isn't anything to do. If you feel that perhaps you're doing something right now that wasn't mentioned in your application that might help to strengthen [your candidacy], certainly that is something that we would welcome you to submit. But other than that, there really isn't anything that can be done to improve your possibilities. We just ask that you sort of hang on with us, and just know that we'll be evaluating you with each subsequent round of applications. Q: It's not to my benefit to contact you, at least to demonstrate my interest in the program? A: Oh, certainly you can do that. We're not going to stop that. And we certainly appreciate your interest in the program and so a candidate can certainly do that. But I'd say that that will not necessarily help, it will just let us know that you're interested. Q: Do you make a note of every interaction you have with applicants? A: Yes, we do. Q: Is there such a thing as overkill when it comes to gauging my chances for getting off the wait list? A: I would answer that the same way I'd answer somebody here asking me the same question if they were looking for a job. Use your judgement. Could somebody call us too many times a day? Probably, because that sends a message that perhaps you're a little too anxious about your situation. There's a fine line between what's overkill and what's consistency and persistence. Q: For the unfortunate majority who need to wait at least another year before possibly attending Cox, do re-applicants tend to have a better chance of getting in the second time around than folks who are applying to the school for the first time? A: It's really hard to say. [Decisions are made] on an individual basis, and it's [also] on an annual basis because the applicant pools change every year. The feedback we provide [to denied applicants] is feedback relative to the pool of candidates for that year. So we can certainly help them understand that. Our pool of candidates isn't changing significantly -- it's not like we're seeing huge changes -- but there is an upward trend for us in terms of the quality of the applicants that we're seeing. So, chances are, what we say this year is going to be relevant, but you might have to push it a little bit further [to measure up to next year's candidates]. Q: Donna, would you like to provide an overall message for folks who wish to apply to Cox this year? A: When prospective students are looking at MBA programs, they need to look beyond what they see just in the rankings or in the name. They need to look at the quality of the experience that they're going to receive, and they need to ask themselves: do they want a smaller school where they can make a bigger difference, or do they want a different kind of experience? They also need to look at the different kinds of strides that a school has taken in the last couple of years. Our Global Leadership Program is a tremendous program for our students. We've just launched the E-Business Initiative (EBI) at Cox where we are partnering with 12 corporations to help us look at our curriculum and integrate E-business issues and projects into the classroom. And so the types of things that a school might be doing and the types of things that Cox is doing in particular are important things that a prospective student needs to consider. Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | FEBRUARY
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