First off, Pamela, I understand that you -- unlike many of your colleagues at other admissions offices -- not only earned an MBA, but earned it from the Simon School in 1988. So you've been able to see the Simon admissions process on both sides of the fence, as an applicant and evaluator. Have you noticed any changes in the admissions process since you were an applicant?

I think several changes have occurred. First is that we have a lot more applications and I think that the level of quality of students is higher than it was back when I applied ... though I was certainly nervous when I was applying. We encourage a lot more interviews than in the past. Now, we strongly recommend them. We always make it [the interview] available but it certainly isn't a requirement. That, and we have a brand new building are the two big changes here at Simon. The application process hasn't changed besides the interview. The standard of providing your GMAT and transcripts, essays and three letters of recommendations are the same. It's all very similar.

I know that Simon has seen a modest surge in applications over the past four years. Infact there was roughly a 250 app rise from 1995 to 1996 [897-1137]. What about this year?

This year we've actually seen another very positive increase to 1,416 apps. So that's another nice increase over the previous year.

What factor[s] can you attribute this rise in apps to?

I think there are several. Number one, we've been more agressive in recruiting both domestically -- which we've always done -- but also internationally. We participated in MBA Forums in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, which has given us more exposure. I think that name recognition is also a factor -- we are now being included in surveys like Business Week's, for example. Also, every year we graduate more alums, the more people get to see us and hear about us. So those are the things that have contributed to that increase. When I talk to my collegues, it seems that most people [in the admissions offices at other b-schools] are receiving a relatively flat app rate from domestic applicants, but we have been seeing [increases in] both. That makes us feel very good about things.

One of the perks of going to Simon is it's small class size, allowing for individualized attention by faculty. How big is the class at Simon and how many people does the school need to admit to fill it?

This year we are trying to slightly increase our class size. We're looking for 170 incoming students. Last year it was in the 160 range. And in order for us to get a class of 170, we accept around 469 students. One of the reasons that that's [the acceptance rate] somewhat higher than at other places is because of our higher number of accepted international students. They have a harder time getting into the country for visa issues so we accept a little more. So if they [international students] can't provide proof of funding they can't get into the country. The yield is lower than for domestic students. We have things like students asking us to defer their admissions for a year because they couldn't provide funding or other issues.

Indeed, Simon has a huge international contigent. In 1996, for example, 46% of the school's class was comprised of international students -- the largest proportion of non-U.S. enrollment in BW's top 25. Are you seeing a similar figure this year? From which geographic areas are you seeing the sharpest rise?

It's always kind of up in the air but this year we're shooting for between 44% and 46% and based on the history it should work out. In actual percentages -- and, of course, it differs if you're looking at percentages or hard numbers -- the South American countries have shown the most significant increase. Applications from Argentina have increased 200% this year. Applications from Brazil have increased 86%. We've also seen a rise in applications from Russia: they increased 44%. From Asia we've seen significant increases from China -- 62% -- and South Korea is another country that has provided a lot of growth, an increase of 41%.

Do you think this upward climb comes as a result of your recruiting efforts?

For the last two years we've participated in MBA Forums that have traveled to five different cities in Latin America. I think the increases from Korea and the People's Republic of China have to do with -- in Korea, the fact that more and more companies are sponsoring students, and in the People's Republic of China it's simply the numbers. And people want to take advantage of the new market. They (Chinese people) see that there are real opportunities for people with this kind of training [an MBA degree] who can better participate in a more open economy.

Okay, let's talk about how an applicant can gain acceptance to receive that valuable training. What key attributes must an applicant have to get through the initial screening process? What tends to set admitted students apart from those who have excellent credentials but don't get an offer?

We look at two different things: predictors of academic success and predictors of success in the business world. It's certainly important that a person come here and get through the program successfully and grow from the academic experience. We also look for predictors of success in the business world. Is this the kind of person who is a leader? Can he or she excel under a fair amount of pressure? Can he or she communicate to a broad spectrum of personalities? So those questions are in the back of our minds. And they help us sort out who we think will be a good addition to the program and who won't.

I read that the average GMAT for the Simon applicant pool is 610, up from 595. The average GMAT for admits so far is 638, up a full 10 points over last year. Is this trend continuing? Can you quantify it?

It has been a trend that has been occurring for a couple years. I have the ability to pull reports back from 1991, so when I look at year-by-year analysis, we see the trend moving upward every single year. In 1991, for example, for all applicants the average GMAT was 570, so it has moved up to about 610 this year.

Does this have anything to do with the free application program that Simon initiated last year? I understand that you sent applications out with a fee waiver for high-scoring GMAT takers. Is that true?

Yes it is. But, that's been a program that we've had going for the last few years -- not beginning last year [applicants with a GMAT score of 600 and above qualify, the school "generally tweaks around it," however.]

Do you think this discourages applicants with lower GMAT scores from applying?

I don't know if it has an effect on people to not apply, but it definitely encourages high GMAT takers. If an applicant is filling out 4-5 applications to different b-schools and he knows about the Simon's app fee waiver, then he or she is likely to fill it out because it doesn't cost them anything. You're not spending $75 to apply. So it's [the fee waiver incentive] been a way to get recognition from people who may not have known a whole lot about us before. I think it's a good practice. For us it has been very positive.

When I was applying to business school, I was overwhelmed by the catalogues and glossy pictures and it's really hard to see a difference between schools. So I think people use rankings and other literature more often to see the nitty gritty at each school, and I think it really stands out to the crowd when they see that we're offering to waive the application fee.

So you place a lot of weight on the GMAT score.

No I don't think that means the GMAT is more heavily weighted than other distinguishing factors. The one nice thing about the GMAT score is that it's the one standardized score that we can look at across the applicants pool. We have seen a correlation between the GMAT score and success rate in the program. But a high GMAT by itself would certainly not get an applicant into this program.

So you're saying that an applicant with a 780 GMAT score has been rejected? For what reasons theoretically?

Theoretically, we would not accept an applicant with a high GMAT because he doesn't have a clear idea of why he wants an MBA or he doesn't have work experience that allows him to build on. Simon would just not be a good fit. We would write a personalized letter that would help them understand why we turned them down and offer some tips -- like spending more time thinking about what it is that they want to do. Sometimes people jump on the MBA bandwagon because they've heard it helps increase their salary or get a better job. But they don't realize the amount of work that is involved or the commitment that they're making when going to business school.

I understand that interviews are only required for applicants whose full-time work experience is three years or less at the start of the program. Is that true?

No, we're not actually requiring anybody to do an interview, but we're encouraging or recommending everybody to take an interview. Before, that really meant that people who had more than three years of experience were not bothering to interview. And to us, we think that's [the interview] a very important thing. So we're now emphasizing to all of our applicants how much better an idea we get about the applicant during an interview.

They don't just have to come here to Rochester to do their interview either. We have alums that have been trained to interview students. Because we do interviews around the world, there's a high likelihood that there will somebody near you at some point.

Because of the number of international students applications, does it become logistically hard to interview?

Well, there is always some difficulty because sometimes in some countries there are huge ranges between where people live. We train our alumni on interview techniques and have a specific form that alumni complete after they've interviewed a candidate. They numerically rate a person across a number of attributes. It [the form] really helps alumni frame an interview and look for specific tid bits of info from a candidate.

I took a trip to Asia, we have people in Latin America ... so we work hard to make sure that we can accommodate as many people for interviews as possible. Last year, we had a faculty member who went to Shanghai and Beijing and did 50 interviews. We had a number of great candidates and we felt that it was worth the investment to send someone over to interview people in a meaningful way. We have another university person who knows Japanese, had lived in Japan for a few years, and went over to interview Japanese and Korean applicants. So we do quite a bit of field work.

How long do the interviews last?

They last anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes, and the interviewer completes the evaluation form, I'd say, in about 10 minutes

How does the interview fit into your overall evaluation of an applicants?

I think it gives a lot of additional info about a candidate that either is not clear or that we are not able to determine at all on the application. I'm talking about things like the candidate's oral communication skills -- or something that we can't assess: their composure, and again talking in more detail about their leadership abilities, teamwork ... We're getting a better sense about the person and what their goals are. It's easier to assess in an interview over an essay -- though the essays are really important as well. And on the other side, it allows us to give the student a better idea about the Simon School.

How much weight does the interview carry?

When a student is interviewed, it's fairly important because you get so many pieces of info. Is it worth 50%? I really can't say that. I would say that it's very important. We can't hold it against anybody if they don't interview. It's just gives us additional insights about their skill set and what they and we are looking for.

What do you look for in an essay?

The essay questions that we ask are really looking to get info about the candidate's experience: what their focus is for getting an MBA, what they plan to do -- not in any aspecific terms -- but what their goals are after they earn their MBA. Again, we're looking for things like examples of leadership and teamwork.

How many essay questions are there?

There are three essays.

Do they change?

They really don't change significantly. One of them is a little more specific and asks about work experience, objectives, why someone wants to earn an MBA at Simon School. The second question asks applicants to tell us about their personal accomplishments -- that shows us a little about the applicant's potentional for success in the business world. The third is more personal: it allows candidates to express anything that they think is really important for us to know. It may be about something that they've been really involved in as far as extracurricular activities -- that the app doesn't grapple with. Other times, it may be used to rectify a candidate's negatives -- for example, why a GPA is so low. Another example might be if there's a big gap in a candidate's work experience [versus the app pool], and that person decided to travel around the word for a year instead of garnering some experience. It [the third essay question] gives him an opportunity to tell us what he did with this time. Some students take great advantage of it, are very succinct and are very specific. Others do not.

Have essays ever swayed your decision?

It's more if everything else [in the application] is marginal. A person on the fence may get the nod if he submits persuasive and informative essays. Meanwhile, an essay that doesn't provide much info may sway me in the other direction. In the case of somebody having weak academics ... the essay may really help to explain what was going on at that point in their life, and we would take that into consideration.

So you don't automatically reject a candidate with a low GPA?

We look at a lot of factors when looking at the undergraduate degree. Part of it is looking at the candidate's undergraduate institution, looking at how rigorous the program was, where they're working, were they involved in a lot of extracurricular activities? How long ago was it [the undergrad experience]. It [the GPA] may be less of an academic predictor for someone whose been out of school for a long time than for someone who recently graduated. And again, providing an explanation of your specific situation and background in an essay is helpful. We look at things at the four different years in the [undergrad] program and how it increased or decreased. It's not that surprising to see a GPA that is relatively low because there are students who did horribly their first 2 years. And then we see the grades blossom during the student's last two years -- but maybe not enough to pull their GPA up to the norm.

What is the average GPA for this year's class?

Our average GPA for admitted students this year is 3.26. Off the top of my head, I would guess that the range is 2.5 to 3.8

Has the range changed much?

Looking at the long range report, In 1991, the average was pretty much the same: 3.25, so it hasn't really changed.

Some schools say they weigh recommendations quite heavily, and as a result many applicants feel pressured into having a recommender gush about them. But schools usually respond that they are turned off by that. What is your opinion?

I think we somewhat agree with that. When looking at recomendations we want to know how well the person who's writing the evaluation really knows the applicant. For us, it's really important for someone to be able to comment both negatively and positively about a candidate, rather than, say, hear the CEO say things that are glowing or that just don't seem to very specific. If it's not substantive, then it really doesn't help us. Sometimes its really clear that the person doesn't know the applicant at all. For us, those types of recommendations don't carry as much weight as those that really can provide us with a well-rounded picture. A balanced recommendation is a beautiful recommendation.

Again, we really ask for some specific information. The form of the letter of recommendation has a grid where we ask the recommender to evaluate an applicant on a number of qualities so that we can get an overall, quick, snapshot of who that person is. And then we ask them [the evaluator] to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate.

Nobody's perfect and we understand that.

Rochester gives you a little extra time to gain admission. It admits students in September for the mainstream 22-month MBA program and in January for an accelerated 18-month program. The final deadline for a January start is mid-November. Will it be the same for this year?

It will be the same in that we'll accept the majority of students coming in September, roughly 170, and between 60 to 70 in January.

Is the internship issue for the accelerated January class a big one?

It depends on the individual's situation. There are a number of ways to play the January admission. We're on a quarter system. Students can take winter and spring quarter and then get an internship over the first summer, and then come back in for a heavier workload the second year [four more credits than full-timers]. So it's possible to fit the internships in.

What's the turnaround for response?

Generally we try to get back to people within two weeks of receiving a complete application, which means that a GMAT score has been reported from ETS, transcript received, all the recommendations are in, and, of course the essays are completed. The exception to that [the two week turnaround] is during our real crunch period which is around March, when we tell people that its going to be around 3-4 weeks.

Are you especially focused on candidates' work experience?

I think that we look for work experience. At this point we accept a small minority of people with no work experience. We 're look for 2+ years of work experience. This fall, over 80% of our students have two or more years of work experience. And the average amount of work experience is 4 1/2 years.

Not having any doesn't preclude you from entrance into the program though?

No. This year, about 9% don't have any.

Is this percentage predominantly comprised of international or domestic students?

Probably a mixture, though I'm not positive. It's probably more likely dominated by domestic students rather than foreign nationals.

Is there a wait list at Simon?

Yes

How many applicants do you usually put on it?

I think this year we had about 40 people on the wait list.

That's not a lot.

No, it's not a huge number. What we're more likely to do if we had people who where interested in attending Simon and knew we couldn't accommodate them into September class, is rather than wait list, put them in the January class -- with a note that if spots open, they will be inserted into the September date.

How many students are taken (accepted) from the waiting list?

In the past I'm not sure. This year what we ended up doing was offering them [wait listed applicants] admission to January as well, because it did not appear that we were going to end up needing more students. At this point, we have significantly more confirmed students than we expected. Confirmations this year tended to come in earlier, faster, and more than in the past. What we typically find though, is that it's really in August that international students (find they) are not going to be able to afford Simon tuition, or run into Green Card difficulties and have been denied admission to the U.S. We call that our "summer melt" period and we assume we'll be able to get the class size down to what we want.

Do you provide counseling for applicants, both prospective and rejected?

Yes, and we do get a number of students who call or E-mail who want to know why they were rejected and what to do to improve their chances the next time around. Oftentimes when we look at an application we're able to specify exactly why it fell short. We say that this person would be great if he had another year or two of work experience, or this person would do well if he understood English better ... if his TOEFL score was a little higher. So what we do is write letters explaining this and encourage them to reapply.

For those who just will not fit in, we send a rejection letter that says we're simply becoming more competetive and that you're [the applicant] not a good fit. But for those who look encouraging, we give them specific guidance about how they would be a better applicant. We give an honest assessment of their application and give them helpful feedback. We try to be as tactful as possible when explaining that some people's files just will not make it.

What is the price tag to attend Simon School this year?

The tuition is $754 per credit hour. So generally, in the first year they [students] take several more courses so that the price tag for first year is about $24,000 and the second year costs about $21,000.

Do you offer financial aid or scholarship.

Yes we do. We offer merit scholarships to students.

How much on average does the merit scholarship cover?

I would say that the average -- and this is just an average -- amount of tuition covered by a merit scholarhip -- and we express it as percentage of tuition -- would be 30%

Many institutions do not offer scholarships to international students. Given that Simon has such a large international student population, I would think that the school may have a hard time subscribing to this.

We do offer merit scholarships to international students as well.

Do you discriminate between how many scholarships you give to domestic and non-U.S. students or do you arbitrarily dole them out?

For us, it's really based on merit. During the admissions process, we discriminate about how many types of people we accept. But, once they've been accepted, we look at the students who best qualify for the scholarships. We give them to those who are most meritorious.

Who are Simon's toughest competitors? In other words, with which schools do you most often compete for students?

We consider our major competitiors, in terms of where other students end up going, to be: Cornell, NYU, University of Michigan, and Wharton.

Fill in the blank: you should come to Simon if you're most interested in what?

I think that some of the advantages of Simon school are our strong academic programs in Finance and Accounting. But also the ability to partner and become involved with students from all over the world, to really learn a huge amount about global economies both within the classroom and from your classmates is invaluable.

Fill in the blank: you should stay away from Simon if you're most interested in what?

I think for students who are interested in things like organizational behavior and human resources, Rochester's probably not the best place for students to go. We don't have concentrations in those areas.

Is there a lot of job placement abroad?

Yes. It's my understanding that we have a number of students who find jobs abroad either with a foreign company or with a company like Procter & Gamble or Kodak who have branches or divisions in foreign countries. Some 15.5% of the offers for the Class of '96 were abroad, and that did not include international students returning to sponsored companies.

Companies say they find Rochester grads to have some of the best skills in finance and operations (ranking 8th and 6th respectively on BW's 1996 department rankings). Because the city of Rochester is dominated by the big three: Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and Xerox, do you see those companies gobbling up most grads? In other words, has placement branched out?

I don't think that those companies have ever been the majority employers, but again, I'm not in placement and I don't have those figures. Especially because of the finance concentration, a lot of our students end up going to New York City to work on Wall Street. We have a program called the New York Recruiting Program where the whole school moves to New York, we get a number of suites at the Waldorf Astoria and we invite a number of companies to interview and talk with our students. It allows the companies a relatively risk-free way to interview our students. And gives students an idea of what's out there.

Simon has been accused of having an inactive alumni network. Can you comment on this?

We have -- at least speaking from the Admissions area -- we have a very strong network of alumni who are willing to participate in a variety of admissions activites and programs. Because we graduate small classes every year, we do not have a lot of alumni in industry. The school is relatively young and we graduate a small number of students every year. But we are gradually seeing our alumni (list) grow.

In which industries are you seeing the largest alumni growth?

My understanding is, and again this is coming from an admissions perspective, that alumni growth in industry is somewhat cyclical. Today, what I see a lot of people going into is investment banking and consulting. However, when I was a student, investment banking took a downturn and corporate finance -- at places like Procter & Gamble and Kodak -- was the big thing.

Is there anything that you'd like to add as we come to a close?

One of the things I 'd like to do is spend more time doing market research. Some [students] say that having the opportunity to be in an international environment is wonderful. So I think that there are students that are coming [to Simon] because of that, and others that are not. I'd like to see if we can get a better handle on what the student perception is.

Pam, thanks much for speaking with me this afternoon. The international student component is a major part of the Simon School experience, and it will be interesting to see the type of interest the school generates as foreign markets continue to open.