Mary Goss is director of admissions and student affairs at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame (No. 29 in BusinessWeek's 2002 ranking of full-time MBA programs). Her career spans 18 years of graduate management admissions. Before joining Notre Dame in August, 2003, she was director of admissions and student services for the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University. She earned an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Goss recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Mica Schneider about how to make the cut at Mendoza. Here's an edited transcript of their discussion:

Q: Your office saw a 16% drop in applications this past year. How else did the admissions season differ from past years?
A: You had to fight for every student. A lot of schools went to their wait-lists in July, which affected our class.

Q: When might this trend reverse?
A: I see the same thing for the next two years. After that will be an incredible increase, based on demographics.

Q: How are international MBAs faring in what has been a slow-to-recover job market?
A: They need to plan on going back to their home countries after graduation. We're trying to hook our students up with alumni [there].

Q: How have you changed admissions since your arrival?
A: We've taken a more personal approach, letting applicants talk not just to admissions officers but to students, career-services officers, and others.

We've partnered with other business schools to offer mini-forums in U.S. cities that weren't covered by the Graduate Management Admissions Council's forums. We've also [gone to] cities such as San Francisco to do nothing but admissions interviews. We found a great yield from the people we interviewed on the road. We have...250 alumni around the world interviewing for us.

We also got the Women in Business Club organized. They sent e-mails to every female applicant. This year's entering class is 27% [female], so those efforts paid off. [Editor's note: In 2003, the MBA class was 18% female.]

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