Does the interviewer generally have access to the candidate’s application
beforehand, or to the résumé only?
The interviewer only has the résumé and will not have read the application.
What is the best way for an applicant on the waitlist to improve his
or her
chances of admission?
We manage the waitlist pretty actively. If someone is put on the waitlist
in Round One, there is a possibility that they could be admitted during
Round Two. We have a schedule by which we review the waitlist.
If
someone is put on the waitlist, they can contact us for feedback. We’ll
tell them that we are not sure about this or that. It is a good idea to
contact us and submit additional information -- if it is significant. For
instance, if a person takes a statistics class at night and has a
transcript to show at the end of it, with good grades, obviously we want to
receive that and will consider it the next time we review the waitlist. But
we don’t want a barrage of e-mails every two days.
Are there any top admissions blunders you would hope that prospective
candidates would avoid in the future?
Some things happen often enough that they bear mentioning.
You would be
amazed at the number of people who, before an interview, forget to take gum
out of their mouth or forget to turn off the cell phone.
There are also
people who are not familiar with their own résumé. We ask basic questions. We are not trying to catch them off guard.
We want to give them an
opportunity to put their best foot forward, but they are totally unprepared
for the basic questions.
Obviously we want someone who is courteous to the
interviewer. If it is a 30-minute interview and someone keeps the
interviewer talking for over an hour, that is not good. If someone does not have
enough to say to fill in the 30 minutes, that is not good, either.
We are very big on people writing their own essays, as we
are very interested in getting to know the applicant. Our guideline is that
it is okay if you have
a peer or relative or friend look at your essay -- but ask them to look at it
without a pencil in hand. We don’t want them editing it for you. It is really
important that the essay be the work of the applicant. We are much more
interested in authorship.
Do you ever encourage any particular type of rejected applicant to reapply?
Sometimes there is a person who needs a bit more time to prepare to apply.
Whether they need to take a quantitative class to be a strong applicant, or
whether they need to review the math and re-take the GMAT, those would be the
kinds of people we would encourage to reapply. It really comes down to
preparation and readiness.
Is there any general advice you would like to offer prospective students for
the next recruiting cycle?
This is a really exciting time at the School of Management. We had a
terrific dean for ten years who brought us very far, and now we have a new
dean for another five-year term. That is always very exciting. People are
really resonating with his mission.
There is also a big curriculum review. We
have a major conference in June 2006 about the state of management education. So I
think a lot of the thought about leadership, about what is happening with
education and where it should go, is taking place here.
So many programs are
particularly focused on how something happened, whereas some are more focused on
why something happened. I think the Yale School of Management is the place
where we are looking at how the business world should run and how it
should be
operated. That is very exciting particularly for young people today.
Page
1
2
3
4
