Thunderbird's Evolving Global Outlook

Judy Johnson, associate vice-president of admissions at Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, in Glendale, Ariz., has witnessed the evolution of MBA education since she started working at B-schools in the late 1970s. "The MBA education has been moving away from being country-specific and is becoming far more globally contextual," she says.

Before coming to Thunderbird in 1990, Johnson was administrative coordinator at the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. She was also the MBA program director at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University from 1979 to 1983.

Thunderbird, which is famous for its international bent, is undergoing many changes. The school's focusing more on executive programs and has decreased the size of its full-time MBA class. Johnson says the school is becoming more selective, primarily in the area of test scores, when choosing which students to admit. She recently spoke with BusinessWeek intern Helena Oh. Here is an edited excerpt of their conversation:

Are application numbers up or down this year?
We're head-to-head with where we were last year at this time. So far, we have about 120 applications for the class that will enter in fall 2006. Our acceptance rate in 2005 was probably about 65%. The full-time applicant pool has been struggling these past five years, and we have downsized our entering full-time MBA class.

What is your average GMAT score?
The average GMAT score for last year's class rose several points to over 600. We would obviously like to get it higher than that. At Thunderbird, 50% to 60% of our full-time students are non-U.S. citizens. There's a wide variable in GMAT scores, because many students are not native English speakers. We try to be fair to people given their backgrounds.

What would you say to an applicant who thinks the school has a preference for international students?
I would tell them to look at our past student demographics. It would be hard to say we have a stronger preference for...

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