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JANUARY 14, 2003 B-SCHOOL Q&A: ADMISSIONS Texas' Turner Talks MBA Admissions "The recent economy has sent more qualified people back to school"
BusinessWeek Online's Brian Hindo caught up with Turner on Jan. 6 to discuss this year's admission trends. Here's an edited version of their conversation: Q: In 2001, your first year at the helm of McCombs admissions, we were just starting to experience quite a different business environment. Is that sea change reflected in the applicant pool? A: What you see this year and last year are, of course, the [effects of] layoffs. It's great for us. You get really qualified people -- probably with better work experience than you would see normally -- who are suddenly taking this opportunity to get more education. As long as they don't have too much work experience, that's great for the applicant pool. The year before that, 2001, we saw a lot of [people from] the dot-com failures. Those were really pretty good [for us], too, because a lot of people learn more from failure than from success. Overall, the recent economy has sent more qualified people back to school. Q: What's new for McCombs admissions this year? A: We're giving increasing weight to interviews. They're still optional -- the student decides whether to do it -- but the number has grown enormously. Next year, we're going to say they're strongly recommended. We're working toward the point where we can say they're required, but we're still getting the resources in line to do that. In interviews, we get a sense of the applicant's teamwork ability, if the applicant really fits in, and if he or she really has done the research on us. It's also a chance for the applicant to get PR about our program. We also have to pay more attention to "placeability" in this economy. I'm doing a disservice both to the applicant and to our own program if I bring in a person who'll be difficult to place. They might be smart, interesting, have wonderful things in their background, and would succeed in the program, but with the skills they bring to the table they aren't going to be hired by anyone. We've always kept an eye on that, but I think it's more necessary now. Q: In 2002, the average McCombs student had 62 months of work experience, which is on the high side for most Top 30 schools. A: We've actually come down a bit the past few years, and we're planning to come down more. I think all business schools agree that two years of work experience makes a huge difference, vs. coming directly out of college. But once you get to seven or eight years, you should be thinking [instead] about an executive [MBA] program. The other thing is, [a class with longer work experience] hurts female applicants, because around the age of 28 is when they're making family decisions. [Right now], there are too many people walking around the halls with too much work experience. And they're hard to place. Q: Since McCombs uses rolling admissions -- in which applications are judged as they are received, rather than in set application rounds -- is it to the applicant's advantage to submit as early as possible? A: We want your best application as early as you can get it in. For most people, the issue is whether to retake the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) or go with the current score. If they had been taking practice tests and getting one score, and then got a much lower score on the real test, and they're deciding whether to take the test again or rush for the first deadline, I always say take the GMAT again. Once you're pretty sure you've done as well as you can do, you want your application in as early as possible, because we're filling seats as fast as we can. An application that's pretty good but received in early May isn't going to stand much of a chance. Q: How many slots are you looking to fill this year? A: We want a class of 400 to 420. Q: When is the final application deadline? A: Mar. 15 for domestic applicants, and Feb. 1 for internationals. That's a month earlier than in previous years. I should also say those aren't firm deadlines. We will still read applications -- especially good ones -- after those deadlines. Q: How soon did you fill last year's class? A: By early April most of it was decided. Last year's deadline was Apr. 15, so, following that logic, this year we would probably be [almost full] by early March. Q: McCombs, being in Austin, has been known for an emphasis on high tech and entrepreneurship. Do you still draw heavy interest in those areas? A: The last few years the things we've put on our Web site as big strengths of ours were high-tech, entrepreneurship, and globalization. Those were really never meant to be concentrations. They were meant to be strengths throughout the program, so that no matter what field you study, you'll benefit from those three. However, the perception is: "Oh, that's what you have concentrations in." So, we've backtracked from that [emphasis]. In fact, 40% of our students do finance. Some strengths we have that few other schools do are energy finance, real estate finance, private equity, e-commerce, and customer-insight marketing -- which is all about how high tech has changed marketing. Q: What's the split between in-state and out-of-state students, and domestic and international? A: In our current first-year class, there are 309 domestic students and 99 international, so that's 76% and 24%. And Texas residents number 179, so that's 44% of the class, and domestic out-of-staters are 130, so that's 32%. I would like that to be closer to 34%, but that's what I got this past year. Outside of Texas, we draw heavily from California, and after that, from New York. Q: Once you receive an application, how is it evaluated? What do you look at first, and how many people read each application? A: We have what's called the McCombs Admissions Committee, a group of about 100 students. The second-year students help us with interviewing. The first-year students help us with application reviews -- they're not making any major cuts or anything like that, they just help us read the applications. The average competitive application gets two separate, independent reads by the McCombs Admissions Committee before it goes to a final committee, which is a professional staff. Not all files get all that, but most competitive ones do. The first things we look at are quantitative things, such as grade point average and GMAT scores, where applicants went to college, what they studied, what academic skills they bring to the table. That helps us decide whether a person will survive in the program. As much as I sometimes wish it weren't the case, the GMAT really does predict pretty accurately how people will survive in the core curriculum. When I view scholastic probation statistics at the end of the term, I see how many people fell below a 3.0. You compare that to their GMAT scores, and it's almost a perfect line. The lower the score, the more likely they are to be on probation. Q: Once you've determined that an applicant has the academic bona fides to succeed, what's next? A: Next we look at the resume and work experience. You're looking to make sure there are no big gaps anywhere -- or if there are, that they're explained in the essays. You look for progression, promotion -- what kind of work a person did, and do they really need an MBA? Once we do both those things, you have still a huge number of people who are admissible. Then, the decision becomes a more subjective, qualitative thing. This is what we get from the essays and the interviews. We're looking for things like how much research the applicant did on our school. That shows commitment. Did you research our strengths? Do you have really focused reasons for applying? Could this essay have been written for any school? Do you really have a sense that you want to be here and be a part of our community? Of course, a very important part is the interview, if they choose to do it. Q: What percent of applicants do an interview? A: Last year we did 819 interviews out of about 2,900 applications, or about 30%, vs. 14% the year before. Of the admitted students this year, 46% have been interviewed, vs. 22% the year before. The message is out that you probably ought to do this. So far this year, about 57% of applicants have done one. This year, I'm hoping that 60% or 70% of the first-year class will be interviewed. Q: Are interviews done on-campus or off-campus? A: Both. Once applicants apply and submit the application fee, they have a three-week window to schedule an interview -- not to have one, just to schedule it. They go online [and choose] either an on-campus or off-campus interview. If they choose off-campus, the computer will search for an alumnus in the applicant's area. It's very user-friendly. A lot of people choose to do the on-campus one, because they're going to visit here anyway. They may think an on-campus interview is better, but that's rubbish. The staff doesn't do the interviews. Students and the alumni do them. Students can sell the program better than the staff can. Q: What are some common application pitfalls? A: No sense of a real person behind the essays. Nothing unique, nothing stands out. It's just kind of blah, blah, blah, and it sounds like one of a hundred. Usually, but not always, that indicates that we're school No. 5 you're applying to. Applicants will go the extra mile for the schools they want to attend. Another thing would be that the applicant hasn't done any real research on McCombs. So they rattle on about how they want to do human resources. Well, we don't even have that here. Some of [what helps] is what I would call pizazz, or "wow." Would you be a compelling person that I would want on my [learning] team? This is why we use students so much in the process. They're the ones who are going to have the applicant on their teams, so they would make a better call on that than the staff would. Q: You require three essays of applicants. The first question is a fairly straightforward one that asks why the applicant wants an MBA, and why from McCombs. The second one is a little different. It asks the applicant to research extracurricular activities at McCombs and discuss how he or she would get involved in community life, outside of academics. Why? A: One of the hallmarks of our program is the student culture -- which tends to be collaborative and cooperative, rather than competitive. In a way, I don't really want smart, capable students who come, do the course work, and leave, and no one knows who they were. Ideally, we're looking for the kind of people who are going to give back. Secondly, a lot of students gloss over how they would get involved. That's the chance to say, "I would like to see myself becoming a leader" -- or maybe external vice-president, or internal vice-president, or maybe they're a passionate follower. The better applicants will go to the lengths of saying, "Not only am I going to get involved in the entrepreneurship society," for example, "but I'm also going to bring all my contacts to bear and I'm going to provide McCombs with connections to the job world I've already got." You can quickly tell those who spent five seconds looking at the Web page, vs. those who really thought about it. Q: Then you give applicants three choices for the third and final essay. The first choice asks applicants to describe a "defining moment." A lot of applicants wring their hands over just how profound an experience they need to write about. How should someone approach the answer? A: There's no one way. If you think back on your life and there is a turning point or a major epiphany, and a light went on in your head, and you decided "This is now what I want to do different," that usually makes for an interesting essay. The most common mistake is not to say how that made you a different person, or how that would be important to a study team or our school. They may go through this terrible car accident with their parents, and relate how they themselves had to "play the parents" for several years, and then -- end of essay. They need to go the extra step to say "and therefore, I learned this, this, and this. This has changed me in these ways, and I'll bring that to the table [at McCombs]." Q: The second choice for the third essay is: "What makes you unique? How will your uniqueness add to the classroom experience at McCombs?" Do applicants have to walk a line between demonstrating individuality and being able to fit in? A: That's usually not as much a tightrope as it might seem. They've already told us in the first essay, and presumably the second, a lot of how they're going to get along in the program. This is more what's cool or different about you. The mistake in this essay would be repetition. I get a lot of "I love my wife, I love my church, and I was a Boy Scout." That doesn't really make you unique. If you're having a hard time trying to define what's unique about you, maybe you shouldn't choose that essay. If you're not [unique], then discuss your work ethic, or something you've noticed about your character or behavior or personality that really seems to be different from other peoples', and how you see that as a big advantage. Q: The last option asks the candidate to play admissions director and offer an evaluation of his or her own application. What are you after with this option? A: This is the chance for the person with the low college GPA to say, "Yes, the applicant had a low GPA, but take into account that he was working full-time all those years and his dad died his sophomore year." What I want is a balanced accounting of their strengths and weaknesses, not some sort of cutesy spin.  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  | | JANUARY Learn about your online education options |
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