MBA Insider: Admissions Q&A June 22, 2009, 2:04PM EST

Vanderbilt: A Small School with Big Ambitions

(page 5 of 5)

John Roeder
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management

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The best way for them to learn is on the front end, and really to interact with the alumni and current students and faculty. It gives the student an opportunity to take it to another level and to another step after the interview process.

How often do you put students in touch with alumni? Is that common?

If there's a common element in their background I'll certainly put students in touch with particular alums that I know well. Again, having the advantage of now having been here for six years and knowing alums who are in cities across the U.S. I have a pretty good knowledge of who's doing what and where and who might be a good contact for a particular candidate. Then, at that point, we can actually get some feedback from the alumni themselves if they end up meeting up with the candidate or interacting with the candidate over the phone.

So it might not be a bad strategic move for the candidate.

Right.

What is the school doing in terms of financial aid?

In terms of financial aid for the international students, it's a much tougher road because as an incoming student you have to have a U.S. co-signer to get the loans. As far as the domestic students, I really haven't seen any difference this year vs. previous years in students' abilities to secure financial aid. We typically do award scholarships to incoming students on the front end based upon their background and their application or interview. Vanderbilt is a private school and tuition is close to $42,000 a year. A scholarship is important. About half the students coming to our program are on some sort of merit-based scholarship award.

Do you have a no-cosigner loan program for international students?

We're actually in the process of developing that program right now. We're working on having something approved here at Vanderbilt University as a whole. But we realize that's a significant factor in many international students being able to come here to Owen. We do provide a significant number of scholarships and we have specific scholarships like the European Business Scholars Program or the Latin American Business Scholars Program, where if the student's coming from that part of the world they're going to be considered for those particular scholarship awards.

Is it true that the Owen School of Management opened in 1969 with 10 students and 10 faculty members in a former funeral home?

That's absolutely true. And we still have some faculty who were there when it opened. I had a gentleman by the name of Dewey Daane in my office the other day. This is an amazing, amazing individual who was there in the beginning and is still on staff here. He was appointed by John F. Kennedy to the Federal Reserve Board and he's been a chaired professor here at Owen since, I think, the early '70s. This is a guy who regularly plays tennis with Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, and he brings these types of names into the classroom. Volcker was just here a couple weeks ago. He's able to have these connections and his entire class, which is a very sought-after course here at Owen. He's bringing in people that over the course of his time and his tenure he's gotten to know quite well. The class has the chance to really interact with some pretty significant individuals.

So, from '69, Owen's a relatively new business school. Many of the MBA programs, many of the top programs, have been around for much, much longer than that. But Dewey's been around for 90 years. He had his 90th birthday party here. We had 400 alums on campus to celebrate; that's also part of the reason Paul Volcker was here. And he's still going. Still going strong.