Dear Readers and My fellow applicants, I am back with one
more (and probably the last one this season) details of my experiences of business
school information session. This last Wednesday (17th October, 2012)
I attended the Bangalore Information Session of Ross School of Business,
University of Michigan. The session was scheduled at 7.30 PM in the Taj Vivanta
Hotel, M.G Road and started right on schedule. The session was hosted by Diana
Economy, Associate Director of Admissions at the business school. 6 alumni were
also present at the venue making it the largest number of alumni present at any
business school info session in Bangalore that I’ve attended.
Even before the session formally started, I got to talk to
alum who he shared his story of the Ross admission. The formal session started
with a presentation about various aspects about the business school. Most of
the information in the presentation is available on website and hence I’ll only
write about some Key takeaways from the info session.
Since the info session was being organized after the Round 1
application deadline was over, Diana apologized for not being able to come to
Bangalore before the Round 1 deadline. However, she emphasized that there was
absolutely no difference in admissions decisions in Round 1 and Round 2. She
told that even the scholarship decisions are evenly distributed across Round 1
and Round 2 deadlines, so it does not necessarily makes any difference if
someone applies in Round 1 or Round 2. On the same note, she informed that all
the scholarships are Merit based and there are NO Need based scholarships.
Speaking of the infrastructure, the newest Stephen M Ross
School of Business building is a state of the art facility and is a LEED
certified building.
Academics: The
core-curriculum focuses mostly on team based learning primarily through case
studies and lectures at times. 2nd year is entirely electives with
some options of electives in the 1st year too. As popular, Ross
follows the philosophy of Learning by Doing i.e. Action based Learning. The
most important part of this philosophy is the MAP which happens over the last 7
weeks of the 1st year. It is a part of the core curriculum and hence
everyone has to participate in this. These are small consulting projects
sponsored by industry and about 50% of the MAP projects are from outside the US
which gives good opportunities for an international exposure. Some alumni
highlighted the importance of MAP projects for Career switchers when students
can do MAP projects in their desired field. There are several other
opportunities for Action Learning through the various Institutes (like Tauber,
WDI) at the University of Michigan. The Operations program through the Tauber
institute, in fact, offers special Operations focused internships for people
interested in pursuing career in operations.
One other great program about the Ross Learning by Doing
philosophy which I found very interesting is the Leadership Crisis Challenge.
As part of this, Ross talks to very senior business leaders (read CXOs) about a
crisis challenge that they have handled. Now a group of students are given the
same challenge and data relevant to that. The students then address a real live
press conference where journalists ask questions and the students have to respond.
I mean, can you really have a better experience than this.
Careers: Every
year, some 50 2nd year MBA students are trained by career services
and they act as mentors to the first years. They are people who have done the
same internship that you want to do, are in the same industry that you want to
focus on and hence this provides a great learning experience. For applicants
interested in Consulting post-MBA, here is a great news. Apparently, the writer
of the famous case preparation book Case-in-Point, has told that the Ross
Consulting Club is the best consulting club.
Daina was very kind to let us know some folloing key
information about the recruitment for International students at Ross. The top
firms hiring international students last year were Citi, Delloite, Boston
Consulting Group, McKinsey and PwC. The top functions were Strategy Consulting,
Marketing & Brand Management, IT consulting and Finance. About 50% of the
class went to New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
Life @ Ross: Ross
boasts of its Community. The community building starts right from MTreks which
are adventure trips and they happen even before the school starts. Ann Arbor is
a great city and has many things to do from Golf to Biking to Hiking. Most
students live within 1-2 miles of the business school and this again forms a
great community.
Admissions: Talking
of GMAT/GRE, Daina informed that the business school is very quantitative and
hence they look at evidences of quantitative skills through GMAT and Academic
transcripts. In academic transcripts, they will look at the quantitative
courses that we have taken. A member from the audience asked a question about the
school’s judgment of quantitative skills for an applicant from the liberal arts
background. Daina replied that in case of a liberal arts background, they will
focus more on GMAT to see evidence of Quantitative skills. On TOEFL (although
this is mandatory only if the language of instruction in undergrad was not
English), Ross has a cut-off of a minimum of 100. They are specifically looking
at the Speaking and listening scores on TOEFL.
On Essays, Daina advised that the essays must reflect
Authencity (Be Yourself), Clear Goals and Reasons for Ross. On the same note, an
alumnus advised the following while writing the essays, “Write an essay which
can convince the admissions committee on Why MBA, Why Now and Why Ross”. Daina
told that essays are also a way to judge our writing skills and they compare
the AWA essays (on GMAT) with the application essays to see for signs of essays
written by admission consultant.!!! Daina informed that essays essentially
gauge two things – Can You Write and What is your story?
On Recommendations, she told that a recommendation from a
current supervisor is the most preferable. However, in cases where one can’t
approach his/her current supervisor for some reason, he/she must explain the
reason for the same in the optional essay. Academic recommendations were not
advised. Daina especially stressed on preparing the recommenders for writing
one. An applicant asked if it was fine to share essays with the recommenders
and to this Daina told that it was fine until they don’t copy the essays in the
recommendations. She advised to hand over our Resumes to recommenders and
explain them clear reasons for pursuing an MBA. The recommendations must
essentially highlight Professional
skills of the applicant.
Resume: Daina
emphasized that the resume should be tailored to suit a business school
application and not for a job application. In essence, it should talk of career
progression, impact on the organization, quantified results, a brief about ECs
and academic highlights. She advised not to put internship experience in the
resume. Importantly, resume should be 1 page only.
The interviewer will only have our resume and it could be alum
or a current student via Skype. Interviews are mostly used to gauge
Communication Skills and the right ‘FIT’ with the school.
Diana advised us to closely follow the Blog of the
admissions director as many important information will be directly published
there.
The formal session ended with
this and we proceeded for informal chats with the alumni. Alumni advised on
writing consistent application and being human. We must highlight our stories
sharing insights on the challenges we faced and the learning from such
challenges. During the informal sessions, some applicants asked about career
support for international students at the business school. To this, the alum
replied that the career service at the business school is phenomenal. One alumnus
pointed out 1 very great advantage of being an international student and that
is that as international students the entire US is all the same for us. We
don’t have any regional preferences whereas Americans might have very rigid preferences.
So this flexibility of location works very well when it comes to recruiting. There
were some discussions about the specifics of MAP process – Students have to
give a preference for 15 projects out of the 100s and usually people get some
project within their top 5 choices. There may be some company imposed
restrictions on the profile of students but the business school works hard to
ensure that such restrictions are few. For example, for a finance heavy MAP
project companies might insist that at least one person on the team should have
a finance background and similarly a company offering MAP project in India
might insist on having at least one Hindi speaking person on the team. Essentially,
the MAP projects are not too much functionally deep and hence everyone can
almost work on every project. During the informal discussions, Diana
highlighted that Ross is looking to Create
Public Leaders.
There was a discussion on the
need of work experience for MBA. Alumni pointed out that most of the discussion
in the class is within the students and the Professor is only facilitating the
discussion. Hence, work experience brings perspectives to the class during
discussions and hence it is very important for going to a business school and
making the most out of it.
I left the session at around
10.30 PM leaving with a firm belief that Ross is the business school where I
want to go for my MBA. To learn more about my MBA Journey, Stay Connected…!!!