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JANUARY 29, 2003 B-SCHOOL Q&A: ADMISSIONS A Talk with Purdue's Admissions Director Ward Snearly of Purdue's Krannert School of Management with tips on applying, GMATs, and living in Indiana
Prior to joining Purdue, Snearly worked in investment banking and as a chief of air-traffic control operations at various U.S. Air Force bases. He also has done money-management consulting for the Indiana School Corp., an umbrella organization of school districts. BusinessWeek Online reporter Brian Hindo spoke recently with Snearly about this year's application activity at Krannert. Here's an edited version of their conversation: Q: What sort of application volume are you seeing, vs. last year? Is the quality of applicants consistent? A: We're on the cusp of entering the busiest part of our year -- from mid-January through the first of April. Right now, both the number of applications and the quality look very good. We're running ahead of previous years, by 5% to 8%. It also looks like the best [group] we've ever had in terms of work experience, the quality of undergraduate training, Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) scores, and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores. Q: Once you receive an application, what's the evaluation process? A: I look at every one of them. Then we pass them around to a committee of faculty and other administrators. [Admissions decisions] depend on a variety of factors -- that's not easy to describe. If there's a unanimous consent among three people, usually [a positive] decision is made. After reviewing an application, we may ask the person to come for an interview. [For instance,] if you don't have at least a year of full-time work experience, we ask you to appear. Four different people are involved in the interview process: somebody from the admissions office, from the Program Director's office, from the Graduate Career Services office, and a faculty member. The interviews usually are 25 minutes and may include a class visit. So they're fairly comprehensive and give us a good look at the student. Q: If a student doesn't get accepted right away or invited to interview, what else can happen to an application? A: We put people for whom we can't make a decision on a wait list if we think they're a good candidate. Or another outcome could be that we say, "We think you're a good candidate, but you would be much better if you had more work experience." In that case, we might offer a future admission. That is, if you work for another year or two, we will give you assurance that we'll offer you a space in the class entering in 2004 or 2005. Another thing we could do is make the admission contingent on the person taking a certain course or courses, or doing something else that would then validate the admission. We prefer to be as straightforward as possible -- yes or no -- when we review applications. Q: Since you use rolling admissions, is it to the applicant's advantage to apply as early as possible? A: Look at admissions as a funnel -- larger at the top, smaller at the bottom. If you're in the queue early, it's a good thing. Q: What are the first things you look at in an application? A: The first is academic credentials. How did the person do as an undergraduate? Or, if they've gone on to graduate school, where did they study, why did they go, how did they perform on the standardized test, the GMAT? How did they do on the TOEFL? Next, we consider the quality of their work experience. How have they applied their education to the workplace? Were they in the military, a school teacher, or a history major? What's their career progression? That's important. Then, of course, in your essays, you show that you've done research about Krannert. From the Web site or visiting the school, or from alumni and friends. Q: How does an applicant make an application stand out? A: By showing that there's a good match between what you're seeking and what the school has to offer, and also demonstrating what you bring to the program that's going to add value and make it an interesting place for the other students. Because, obviously, a lot of what you learn in an MBA program is from your fellow students -- the interaction, the teamwork, the case studies. Q: What other schools do Purdue applicants generally apply to? A: Of course, Indiana University. Michigan. Michigan State. Northwestern. UCLA. Berkeley. NYU. Columbia. Darden. MIT. Carnegie Mellon. There are many others, but those are some that students [tend to] have multiple GMAT reports sent to. Q: It's a pretty crowded market among the top 30 or so B-schools. Why would somebody consider Purdue over some of the other very good schools that you mentioned? A: One very nice aspect of our program is the size. Even though you're in a university setting with about 38,000 students -- so it's a Big Ten, research-oriented, technology-driven school -- ours is an entering class of about 210 students. Of those, roughly 150 are [regular] MBAs, about 35 are in our 11-month accelerated MSIA (Master of Science in Industrial Administration) program, and about 25 to 30 are in our Human Resource Management program. So you get to know every student very well. You get to know the faculty very well. Every day, from 9:30 to 10 a.m. in the drawing room, we have a coffee/tea informal gathering with the faculty, the deans, and students. Lots of people have a chance to interact in that setting. [That's] the kind of learning environment we have. And the school is known as a kind of techno-MBA program. [The faculty] teach how to manage technology, how to apply it in business. Also, we have a number of students who come from engineering and technical backgrounds, in addition to our liberal arts students and business majors.
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