GMATTERS: Admissions Interview: Kellogg
Today our friends from admissions consulting firm mbaMission share an exclusive interview with Beth Flye, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. In the first half of the interview we'll gain insight into Kellogg's application process, the importance of resumes and interviews, and career recruiting on Kellogg's campus. Stay tuned for the second half of the interview next week.
You can find information on mbaMission's free consultations here. And don't forget to take a look below at the list of free GMAT events coming up this week. If you don't see your city listed below, take a look at our website for additional dates and times. You can also check out our weekly Challenge Problem below.
Admissions Interview: Kellogg
Northwestern-Kellogg’s Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, Beth Flye, was kind enough to spend some time with us. Ms. Flye shares her thoughts on a variety of topics:
- Kellogg’s plans for the size of its class and its new building
- Her plans to review the open interview process at Kellogg
- Her advice to applicants who are a few years away from applying to business school
- The differences between applying in rounds one and two and more…
mbaMission: Hello, Beth. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. I’ll start with the same question I ask all Admissions Directors: What is Kellogg not known for that you feel it should be known for?
Beth Flye: That’s a great question, and my response to that would be finance. Schools, like companies, can have a reputation for being known for X product or X service, and I think a number of business schools fall into that as well. And while we do have a strong reputation in marketing, and we’re very, very proud of that, there are other fantastic academic programs here at the school. The one I would highlight as far as the immediate response to your question would be finance, no question about it. And why do I say that? I think it’s for a number of reasons. I think it’s the curriculum we have in particular, also the faculty. In terms of the output side, for students that want to make a career change—let’s say they’ve been in a different functional role or different industry, and they want to work in a finance functional role or financial services industry—it’s a great place to be.
Another thing, too, is if you were to ask me what the most popular majors are here. We have an array of majors, and there are three [that are most popular]. I call them the big three, and they may slightly change from year to year as far as what is first, but they are finance, strategy and marketing.
mbaMission: So, you enrolled the biggest class in Kellogg’s history this year, and I’m curious, are you expecting to scale things down or keep things consistent going forward? Was the increase accidental because of yield or was it by design?
BF: Our plan in terms of enrollment goals for the total enrollment for 2010 is that we want it to be on par with the class we enrolled this year. We did have a goal of bringing in a few more students. We came in at the high end of our goal range, plus about seven to ten extra students beyond that, which is fine. From a service standpoint, space standpoint, everything was okay on that front. We wanted to bring in a few more students, and we were able to do that. This handful extra that we had, that was on the yield side. Our goal is to be [within] roughly the same range for this coming year as well.
mbaMission: We talked a tiny bit about marketing a moment ago. The big Kellogg stereotypes involve marketing and teamwork—can you talk about how teamwork is really manifested at Kellogg?
BF: I believe in the philosophy here about teamwork. It’s actually very simple but powerfully true. I see it every day, not just with the students; teamwork is a way of life at Kellogg. It is a way of life that we think works for a number of reasons. Really, the bottom-line philosophy is to come up with the best ideas, to truly be innovative, to truly get to not just diagnosing a problem in a situation but also coming up with what’s going to be the strategy and plan for a solution. In order to do all of those things, the belief here is not to saddle one great mind with such goals and tasks but to put together a group of great minds. And that is where you’re going to get the absolute best approaches, again, whether it’s ideas, whether it’s solutions, whether it’s a strategic path. And it sounds very simple, but it is very true. And that’s coming back to the quality factor. I think that it starts with the input side, which is the admissions side.
So again, how is teamwork manifested in the classroom? It really starts with the class that we bring in. We want the best and the brightest and the most interesting and, of course, people that want to be at Kellogg. I think one question that people ask me a lot is, “Hey, I very much embrace teamwork, but will I have a chance to shine on my own?” And the answer to that is, “Of course.”
I think that’s one thing I would want to let your clients know or let the world at large know. That, hey, yes, you still are here to develop, and there will be numerous opportunities to do that as far as individual contribution. What we do here is work together, and students become very, very attuned to learning how to identify what other members of the team bring to the table, given the situation. I think our students become just really skilled in identifying the skills and talents of people very quickly and then learn how to employ those skills and talents and put them to work in a situation. Our recruiters comment every year—and we get a lot of great feedback that they see this more so with Kellogg grads than with most other B-school grads—that they [Kellogg students] have such an ability to be flexible, in terms of not just of getting along with people, but [also] working with others and learning very quickly how to draw out the skills and talents of their team members. That in and of itself, I think, is an enormous skill.
mbaMission: You mentioned recruiters on campus. I know that your main role is not in career services, but can you speak a little bit on what you’ve seen in terms of companies coming to campus this year versus last and the number of interview slots and that type of thing?
BF: Sure. The good news is, I’ll call it The Portfolio of Recruiters—you know, the companies that we’ve seen in the past couple of years—they are returning, and we are very excited about that. That’s a great thing. What is maybe slightly different, depending on the specific company, and maybe in some cases depending on the industry, is that the companies are more cautiously optimistic. When I was out on the road, I was down in Charlotte and did a presentation hosted by Wachovia, and a couple of alums on the panel that worked there were telling me that. Saying, “We’ve got X, Y, Z hiring goals, and we’ll be coming up there.” And that was great, and I heard similar messages from a couple of other banks, just for example. The great news is that there seems to be this vibe of cautious optimism.
However, some companies may not have as much of a robust or expansive on-campus interview schedule this year. So, for instance, Company C that was here last year will be back, will be recruiting Kellogg students, but it may not have as big an interview schedule this year. And to me that’s not surprising. I think the great thing, the biggest takeaway, is that it doesn’t sound like we lost anybody. That is great.
mbaMission: That’s fantastic. When I was at Kellogg a little more than a year ago, it was mentioned that some land had been staked out for a new building, and I was curious as to whether a new campus is going to be built. If so, have these plans been delayed?
BF: Great question. Let me tell you what I know. Plans are still in process as far as a new building for the Kellogg School. Just to give you kind of a leadership point about this, Northwestern has a new president that started this year, and I haven’t met him. I hope to at some point. I hear great things, and so I guess my question is: What’s the official status? Where are we in the plans? I know fundraising efforts are going on just as they have been, and they are in high gear, both at the university level as well as in Kellogg Development. Are we any closer to absolutely confirming a location, or when are we going to put a stake in the ground? I don’t have that information, but from what I gather, from what I know, this is still a go. Absolutely still a go.
And that’s a great question. The school has grown, and I would want, the school would want, prospective candidates to know that they absolutely will have the resources that they need as far as infrastructure to be successful here. That comes first and foremost. But ideally? We have some goals that we want in a new space. We have grown. We need, literally, some more space. And that’s going to happen.
mbaMission: I have a couple of questions about the application process itself. First, can you walk us through the life cycle of an application at Kellogg?
BF: Sure, absolutely, glad to elaborate about that. Essentially what happens is once the deadline day hits and people have submitted their applications—they’ve been hitting “submit” buttons before the application deadline, but after that time, I mean—what we do is then download on our end and begin processing. And that’s the simple term there [processing], but it’s a very important part of our operation. It’s assembling one’s application materials into a physical application file. As we put together those applications, and as they’re complete—and complete means we have everything, we have all the application components, all the information so that file is ready to go into the evaluation flow—basically the large majority of the files are going to be read by three people, and the first stop is with a member of our Student Admissions Committee.
Then it’ll go to an officer on my team who will see it, and then it will come to me. And believe it or not, now and then we may have some really difficult cases in which two of the three of us are really on different planes or all three of us are very different, and we have a process where we’ll bring in a fourth person. So the reason I highlight that is that there are lots of ways you can evaluate applications to business school, and while I would not say that ours is absolutely perfect, I think we come pretty darn close. We take it very seriously. A lot of time is invested on the evaluation side, and I never take it for granted that someone has made an active choice, as well as has made an investment to apply to Kellogg. And so by gosh, we absolutely owe every applicant the most through evaluation that we can give. And that’s exactly what we do.
In terms of what happens after a decision, well, within each of our deadline periods, we don’t have a primary decision release date. We do have a date, I believe it’s January 11 for Round 1, for which we let the folks in Round 1 know, “Hey, the latest you would hear from us would be January 11,” but we don’t pull the lever on January 11 so that all decisions go out. I don’t have an exact date handy, but I would say the latter part of November, we will start releasing decisions. So it’s almost like a mini-rolling basis with an application round period. That’s how that works.
mbaMission: Okay. So when you read an application, do you start with the applicant’s resume? Do you start with the essays? How do you actually approach reading each application?
BF: For me, my approach is as follows. I look at the data form section, or Part One as we call it. Here are just kind of key points. Who is this person? Name? Where do they live? Where did they go to school? What did they put down as far as grades, degrees, GMAT scores, brief work information, etc.? For me that is getting a snapshot. It’s kind of saying, okay, let me just sketch out who this person is. Sometimes I’ll go straight to the resume right after that. The resume is also to me a very nice snapshot about a person, obviously on the work front. So that’s what I do. I also see the evaluations that the two readers ahead of me have made. I then read as much as I need to read to arrive at a decision. Do I do an absolute word-for-word, cover-to-cover read on every file? No. Decisions would probably never go out! That’s the responsibility of the two readers ahead of me. But like I said, there are times when I will say, “Hey I really want to do a cover-to-cover read.” So that happens. Absolutely. That does happen.
mbaMission: Kellogg is one of the few schools left that has an open interview policy. It has to be grueling. Some schools, notably Darden, have made a switch. How and why do you stick with it?
BF: That’s what our policy still is for this coming year. Our policy is, we require you to request an interview, and we don’t admit anyone without some form of an interview. Whether it’s an alumni interview or one on campus, and in some cases—and this would be if someone is remote or we don’t have enough alumni—we’ll do telephone interviews. I do believe interviews are incredibly critical. I think business schools interview for similar reasons that companies do or any organization that is hiring someone. And for me, that means putting together, especially for those of us who later evaluate applications, putting together the two “Ps,” the Paper Perspective—that tangible, written information that these guys have submitted as part of their application—with the in-person, or People Perspective. And that’s very, very helpful. It has worked.
I will say that I am presently very interested in stepping back and taking a look at not just the policy but the interviewing model and looking ahead. Would there be a change for this year? Of course not. Not at all. But it is something that I want us as an institution to take a look at. It’s almost like giving our interview policy, giving our interview model, a physical. Is this in the best interest of the school? Is this model, this policy serving us well?
SN: Each file is reviewed at least three times, and it may be reviewed as many as eight times, because there are eight people on the Admissions Committee. We spend a lot of time with your file. It is very important that we read everything about you. We don’t triage by score—every reader gets a set of files, and they’re randomly assigned initially so that we really are treating everyone equally and giving everyone the same amount of time. And we will read everything that comes as part of your application: your essays, your recommendations, everything. The first two readers combined will make a decision about whether to invite someone for an interview. If someone’s invited for an interview, that could be here, or if they’re overseas, that could be overseas. Or, we’re going to be trying Skype this year. We’ll also do some by phone.mbaMission: Will the Skype interviews be with video or without?
SN: Both, probably. We’re going to try the video and see how it goes. We’re going to use video with some of our recent grads this summer. We already know them, so we can see if we actually can get a sense for them via the video or not, and see if it’s a distraction. But I think we’re going to at least try it in some places. Next. the evaluation comes in from the interviewer, it’s read again, and then it’s read by me last, and I will review all the files and make all the final decisions. If [the application] doesn’t go to interview, it will come to me sooner, after a second read instead of after a third read.
mbaMission: When you read the application, how do you do it? What do you read first?
SN: I am looking at what my previous readers have highlighted for me, but I’m also going to look at most of the transcripts, the interview. You would be amazed at how often the interviewer uses the same language to describe someone as the recommenders do. It is uncanny. You are who you are. I think our interview process draws that out a little bit because it’s a little bit longer and a little bit more personal than some, but you can’t really trick us. Someone who’s recommending you has known you for a while, and the interviewer often uses the very same language to describe someone. That is so comforting, to feel like you’re really getting an accurate picture of someone. And then you read their essays and get that. When I’m reading, I’m looking for inconsistencies, to make sure there isn’t something that I’m missing or that doesn’t make sense to me. But if everything is consistent and we want you to be a part of our class and we think you’ll add value, then it’s an easy decision. The hard ones are in the middle, where something is inconsistent or we’re not sure we’re getting enough of a picture of you. That’s challenging. It’s also amazing, the stories people have and what we learn about business and different parts of the world and the United States. It’s just a wonderful job. I love to hear people’s stories.
mbaMission: In those cases where people are “in the middle,” what happens?
SN: Sometimes if we still don’t feel like we know who you are, that’s a problem in and of itself that will prevent you from getting in. We feel like at that point, we’ve given you many opportunities to let us know who you are, and if something’s still not feeling right or is inconsistent, or we don’t feel like you gave us enough information—we feel like your essays were incredibly vague and could have been written by somebody else; not written for you, but just don’t tell us enough about you, that I could have had the same story—then you haven’t done your job, and you won’t get in, no matter what your scores are. If I really like you but I’m concerned about your ability to do the work, you’re also not going to get in. And that’s also not based on one score or one grade; that’s going to be [based on] what everyone says about your work ethic or your drive. And then if I don’t feel like you’re a leader, you’re not going to get in. If you haven’t been showing us that you’ve been involved in enough activities and that you’re willing to take initiative and work with others, I’m going to be concerned about that. So it’s not so much that you could provide us with anything else at that point. I really want to see it in the application and in the other pieces. But sometimes we’ll call or e-mail someone and ask a question, or we’ll find out if someone’s going to be at an event and talk to them there. But this is an opportunity, these applications, and it’s pretty thorough. Please give it all that you can in the space we provide.
mbaMission: How much coaching do you feel is appropriate for a recommender? Do you think it should be a completely hands-off process, or do you think it is okay for applicants to discuss their goals for business school with their recommenders?
SN: Please sit down and talk to them. It will be a good process for you, too. It will be introspective for you. When I write a recommendation for someone—which I’ve done a fair amount, especially in my previous job—I ask the person to send me their resume. I ask for bullet points; never write actual paragraphs, because that leads to too much of your own language potentially going into the recommendation, but bullet points that cover your key accomplishments or the reasons you want to go to that school. I also ask for the mission statement of the school or something from the school’s Web site so that I know what that school is about, so I can think about how that person would be a fit for that school. A little bit of a package to give to the person so that they’re ready to write the recommendation. And then sit down with them and talk about the goals and the purpose and the why. Hopefully there is someone that you do that with anyway, a mentor or a manager that already knows your career plan. But if not, certainly spend that time.
mbaMission: How can a candidate best reveal his or her fit with Darden?
SN: This is an excellent question, because I think each school I talk to and each staff member at each school that I talk to has a different feeling about this question of fit. I do think we want applicants who have really thought about the schools they’re applying to, but I think until you’re actually there, if you haven’t visited, it’s hard to know. I don’t always expect people to reveal as much about fit as I think some schools might. I think that if you tell me who you are, what you’re about and what you want to accomplish, I’ll be able to see if you’re a fit or not. It’s more important to me that we get personal details, because one of the mistakes people make is regurgitating the Web site back to us. You telling me that you want to take so-and-so’s class or the case method is important because of what we put on our Web site is just a waste of your word count. It shows me that you can read our Web site, but it doesn’t show me anything about who you are. Really spend that time with personal examples, incidents, specific stories that you think tell me something about yourself that would make you a fit for the case method. For example, something about presenting at a board meeting and the questions you were asked and how you had to manage that on your feet and what kind of preparation you had to do beforehand—that would completely tell me that you could accomplish the case method, right? But it doesn’t tell me exactly what I already know about the case method that I’ve told you on the Web site. Really personal examples from the workplace or from an activity, that’s how you can convey that the best. The best essays are always about a moment in time and not a laundry list or a chronology of everything you’ve ever done.
mbaMission: Do you judge applications differently in Round 1 versus Round 2? Is it better to get in during Round 1?
SN: It’s always better to do the first round. The main reason for that is because every seat and every scholarship dollar is available, so it’s open. In Round 2 it’s pretty similar in terms of the admit rate, but I would say that there are fewer scholarship dollars available per person because people from the first round accepted them. It’s impossible for us to make it even, so I would say always try to apply in the first round if at all possible. I welcome people to apply in the third round, especially if they’ve had job changes or life changes, but please explain why you’re applying in that round. If you’re reading an interview like this, you’re pretty prepared, so you should explain why. And it’s perfectly acceptable to say, “I wanted to take the GMAT again” or “I wanted to make sure my recommenders had time.” That’s okay. Your chances aren’t going to be as good as if you’d applied in Round 1, but having a reason like that is fine.
mbaMission: What kind of discrepancy in volume do you see from Round 1 to Round 2 to Round 3?
SN: It used to be a lot different. Round 1 has really grown in the last few years and is almost the same size as Round 2, slightly smaller, and then Round 3 is maybe a quarter the size of those, maybe a third. It’s pretty small.
mbaMission: What did you see in terms of application volume last year? Do you have a prediction as to whether the volume will increase or decrease this year?
SN: We were flat this year, which I felt was really fine, given that we lost our international student loan program earlier than many schools did. I felt like we really had very strong domestic growth, and it pretty much equaled the decline from India. If you look at GMAC’s data, GMAC’s test-taking in India is down, and so I expect that to be the trend going forward. But I think that there are some markets really growing, so I don’t expect the applications to go up this year, but I expect that we might be steady again. If you look at a 20-year trend, business school applications will go up preceding a downturn in the economy, and then they’ll level out, and then they’ll start to go down as the economy recovers. So, if the economy really takes off, as I hope it does, we could see a decline in applications. But I think it could be flat.
mbaMission: Has the student loan situation been resolved?
SN: The rising second years and the incoming students all have loans sufficient to cover all their expenses, and they’ve had that for a couple months now, and that’s all going fine. I think everyone’s expecting more banks to enter the arena in the next year, which will increase the competition, which will change all the rates, so we might want to change our programs to take advantage of lower rates. So I can’t really predict what it will be.
mbaMission: So all incoming students this year have loans?
SN: Yes.
mbaMission: Is there anything else you want people to know about Darden or about applying to the school?
SN: There are always things I want people to know. I would say, never be afraid to interview because you think it’s going to be competitive. Don’t try to differentiate yourself from others; try to be your best self. These are sort of cliché, but people get caught up in “There are so many consultants applying” or “There are so many bankers applying.” I still want the best and most interesting bankers or the best and most interesting consultants, so don’t let that dissuade you. I would say, do try to watch some of the videos and things, because you can get a much better sense for the program [that way] if you’re not able to come to Charlottesville. We will be releasing our list of our travel cities; we’re going to be going to over 60 cities this fall, so hopefully you can come visit us as we’re traveling. And the dean will be at many of those events. Our events are unique in that there’s usually equal numbers of alums to prospective students, so you really get to talk to a lot of alumni. And that’s really valuable, because I think very highly of our alumni, and I really believe that you can get a really good sense for the program if you talk to people who have been through it. We do not do PowerPoint at our events. You can get that from the Web site. So take a look at those things and those videos on the Web site beforehand, and come and talk to people.
mbaMission: Thank you so much for you time. I think you’ll help a lot of people.
SN: I hope so. I think this process should be a lot more transparent than it is.
This Week's Challenge Probelm
If n is a positive integer greater than 1, then p(n) represents the product of all the prime numbers less than or equal to n. The second smallest prime factor of p(12) + 11 is
(A) 2
(B) 11
(C) 13
(D) 17
(E) 211
Last Week's Challenge Probelm Solution
The consumer price index gives us a ratio between prices in 2000 and prices in 2009. We are told that “for every Zeropian dollar spent on consumer goods in 2000, $1.75 on average had to be spent in 2009.” In other words, if something cost X dollars in 2000, it cost 1.75×X dollars in 2009 (as long as the price increased exactly according to the index, which is just an average). In dollar terms, the increase in price would then be 1.75×X – X = 0.75×X dollars.
We are asked for this dollar price increase for Brand Z running shoes. Representing the price of these shoes in 2000 as X, as we already have, we can rephrase the question as “What is 0.75×X?” We can further rephrase this question to “What is X?”
(1) SUFFICIENT. We are told that the price of the shoes in 2009 is $91. We have represented the 2009 price as 1.75×X dollars, staying consistent with our variable naming throughout the problem (never change variable designations midstream unless you’re starting over completely). So we can write an equation:
1.75×X = 91
We know we can solve for X, so we can answer the question. (Incidentally, if we had to solve for this X on a Problem-Solving problem, one fast way would be to convert 1.75 to a fraction. 1.75 = 7/4, so we can quickly write that X = 91×4/7. Since 91/7 = 13, we get X = 13×4 = 52.)
(2) INSUFFICIENT. We are told that the price increase in dollar terms, divided by the price of the shoes in 2009, is 3/7. However, this information is already completely implied by the stem. If the index is 1.75, then any good’s price increase was 75%, or 75 cents for every 2000 dollar. Since the 2009 price is $1.75 for every 2000 dollar, the ratio of the price increase ($0.75) to the 2009 price ($1.75) will always be 0.75/1.75, or 3/7. This holds true no matter what the original 2000 price is, so we cannot determine X through this bit of redundant information.
The correct answer is (A): Statement 1 by itself is sufficient to answer the question, but Statement 2 is not sufficient.
