Michigan State University: Admissions Q&A

MBA Admissions Director Jeff McNish says Michigan State's Eli Broad Graduate School of Management teaches more than supply chain management

Jeff McNish
Michigan State

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After Jeff McNish, director of admissions for the full-time MBA program at Michigan State University, received his MBA from Michigan State's Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, he got a job in the automotive industry.

That was common when he was a student. This year, he'd be an anomaly.

It's been a while since MBA graduates from the Broad School—located near Detroit, the nation's struggling automotive capitol—flocked to executive positions with the Big Three automakers. In recent years they've broadened their horizons and found places at a wide array of companies, McNish says, aided by a strong knowledge base in supply chain management.

In a conversation with BusinessWeek's Anne VanderMey, McNish talks about why a degree from the school that pioneered supply chain management is widely applicable, what Detroit's uncertain future means for students, and why the word "Broad" isn't pronounced the way you probably expect. An edited portion of the conversation follows.

Have there been any big changes to the application process in the last couple of years?

There have—two, in fact. The first is related to an essay question that really focuses on a candidate's life experiences and how those life experiences have shaped the candidate as an individual and shaped his or her leadership abilities. The second change to our application process is the addition of a new member to the admissions committee. That's our new director of MBA career services. His name is Joe Garcia and he's new to the business school and new to our admissions committee. His voice on the committee is really helpful, given his management and leadership experience as well as his background in sales and marketing. His role really helps us focus on what I consider to be the employability of an applicant—how successful this candidate will be in the post-MBA career search.

On that subject, do you have any sense of how Broad graduates are doing in terms of career placement right now?

We just came back from spring break, our students just returned on Monday, and I know our career services team is working really hard to sort of make an assessment of where our students are right now. Before spring break, we were a little bit behind where we were this time last year in terms of our internships and job offers. I would argue that this might be still the case. We have a little process here, though. Whenever an applicant receives a job offer, whether it's for an internship or full-time work, the student comes up and we have sort of a recognition ceremony. We have a set of glass vases and a student with an offer drops a ping-pong ball in—a green one or a white one—and we've been dropping a lot of ping pong balls in the last couple of weeks. I'm hopeful that once we get through this assessment after spring break that we'll be on par with where we were last year. I think everybody's saying it's a pretty tough market and people are having to work very hard to find jobs.

There's actually a big glass vase in your office filled with green and white ping pong balls?

There are two gigantic glass vases that we have, and one is for internships and one is for full time offers. Whenever a student secures an offer with a company, they come up and all of us in the office gather round. They talk about their offer and they ceremonially drop the ball into the vase and we cheer them on, I guess. It's fun because it helps us collect data, but at the same time the intangible benefit is that corporate recruiters see it and perspective students see it. It gives them something real to look at: Recruiters see how many balls are in the vases and perspective students will see the accomplishments of our current students. So it's kind of a fun thing we do around here and it's especially fun in these trying times.

Would you say the vases are reasonably full right now?

They are. They are reasonably full so that's another exciting part of it, too.

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