Cornell (Johnson) 2012 - Calling All Applicants

I did not take toefl (Mumbai University graduate). Did not apply to any school that thinks that Indians need to take Toefl

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Hi,

I am an Indian applying to the second round of Cornell 2 year MBA. I did my undergrad from a college where teaching medium was English. Do I still need to write TOEFL??

If yes, is it okay if I submit my score before the official score card comes. Deadline for applying to Johnson is Nov 30 and I haven't yet taken date for TOEFL.

Thanks![/quote]
I did not take toefl (Mumbai University graduate). Did not apply to any school that thinks that Indians need to take Toefl



@mumbai247: Thanks for your response. Was your application accepted with Cornell? Did they mention anything about TOEFL score??

Thanks in advance!

Hello Johnson ambassadors, alumni, and gmatclub friends,

I am applying to R2 of Johnson and have researched the school well by talking to current and alumni students and attending admission chat sessions. If invited for interview, I would of course visit the school and take interview on campus. However, does it hurt if you don't visit the school prior to submitting the application? (I know it always works in your favor by visiting school before submitting application, but I visited some schools before submitting application and won't have time to visit Johnson now before Nov 30. No doubt, I will visit the school if invited for interview)
I will portray my fit and research with the school through my essays.

Thanks.

I have fairly lowish scores and I did not visit the campus before my application and I interviewed with an Adcom two weeks back. The entire Johnson Admissions team is fantastic! I really enjoyed my experience up there. Dont sweat about not visiting the campus, I just referenced how I learned about Johnson through speaking with adcoms at admissions fairs and current students in the "how did you learn about Johnson" brief paragraph on the application. Also, I submitted an incorrect essay on my application and switched it out a week later! I am really hoping for a call in December!

Thanks nycbiker.

Cornell interviews are by-invitation only. So I assume you were invited for interview.

Same here. I have an average GMAT score and a horrible GPA, and I did not visit the campus prior to applying. However, I compensated for my application's weaknesses by reaching out to numerous current students and alums so that I could learn more about Cornell and how I could contribute to the Johnson community. I guess my essays did the trick because they invited me to interview.

My problem now is that I was not able do my interview on campus (long story, but I definitely would have gone if I had the chance). Hope this doesn't hurt my chances.

I did not take toefl (Mumbai University graduate). Did not apply to any school that thinks that Indians need to take Toefl



@mumbai247: Thanks for your response. Was your application accepted with Cornell? Did they mention anything about TOEFL score??

Thanks in advance![/quote]

Yes, my status appears as completed, under review.

Ladies and Gents,

I just wanted to give a brief update. My application had been under review since mid-October, and just last week I received my invite. Now, I heard that as a domestic applicant, getting an interview invite is not that big of a deal since they try to interview as many domestic applicants as possible and the invitation-only policy is instituted mainly because they do not have the resources or manpower to interview the thousands of Indian/Chinese applicants. This is all second-hand conjecture, so I cannot attest to the validity of this statement. Does anybody happen to have a clear idea of what an interview invite really tells you about your odds of admissions for a domestic applicant. I am sure this is on another thread, but I am fairly new to GMAT Club.

These are the official stats, as reported by Businessweek. Admittedly, this doesn't show the breakdown between domestic and foreign applicants:

APPLICANTS

Applications (admitted and denied) to the newest class: 1,791
Applicants who were accepted to the most recent class: 27 %
Admitted applicants who enrolled in the newest class: 56 %
Applicant interviews are: Required
Applicants (admitted and denied) who were interviewed: 53 %
Admitted applicants who were interviewed: 100 %

https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/ra ... rnell.html

My guess (not to be confused with facts) is that if you are an international that receives an invite, then you are in pretty good shape. For domestic applicants, I don't think it matters as much. For example, 25% of international applicants are interviewed with 75% accepted, and 75% of domestic applicants are interviewed with 25% accepted.

Basically, according to the BW stats, one can presume that being invited to interview leaves you with a roughly 50% chance of being admitted. Moving beyond that, however, I was just curious as to how that is broken down by domestic/international and whether being one or the other would change that roughly 50% chance at all.

BTW, is it bad decorum to ask for kudos? If not, can I get some?

At this point, I think it's just a waste of time for us to try to figure out the breakdown of the interview invites. Just be glad that you were given the chance to interview for a spot, and then do your best to blow them away. Try to focus on what you can change, not matters that are out of your hands.

By the way, since you're looking for kudos, you can automatically get five kudos points if you update your profile by adding your schools and indicating the status of your applications.

So the previous posts got me thinking... I know I said that applicants should focus on what they can change, not the statistics. However, I have completed my interview, so all I'm doing now is waiting for the decision. Therefore, I have an excuse to speculate rather than write my essays or practice for my interview.

Cornell did not report what the percentage breakdown was for domestic and international applicants. And so, I took the percentages from the below linked article, and got the average, which is 51.5%. I would assume that the number should be a little bit lower because of Cornell's complicated student loan process for internationals, but for the purposes of this analysis, I will keep it at 51.5%.

https://poetsandquants.com/2011/11/19/indian-chinese-mba-applicants-face-higher-rejection/3/

With 1,791 applicants, that means there were 922 international and 869 domestic applicants last year. They interviewed 53% of the candidates, which gives us 949 total interviewees. 27% (acceptance rate) of 1,791 is 484, and 56% (yield) of this number gives us a total of 271 students (out of scope for this analysis but I figured I would include the number anyway).

The class is made up of 34% international and 66% domestic students. If we assume that there is a 1:1 proportion of the breakdown (international vs. domestic) for those accepted and those who enrolled (highly unlikely as more internationals probably ended up not going due to visa/student loan issues), then 165 (likely higher) international and 319 (likely lower) domestic applicants were accepted. This means that the acceptance rate for internationals was 17.89%, while the acceptance rate for domestic applicants was 36.71%.

Now let's say that the theory stated above is accurate, and that 75% of domestic applicants are interviewed, while only 25% of internationals get this chance. If these numbers are true, this would mean that 231 international applicants were interviewed last year, as against 652 domestic applicants. These numbers only give us a total of 883, vs. 949. Following the 34/66 split, let's add 22 to the int number and 44 to the dom number. And so, the new totals should be 253 int and 696 dom. 165 people accepted out of 253 interviewed would give us a 65.22% success rate for the internationals who were interviewed, while 319 out of 696 domestic applicants should give us a 45.83% domestic success rate.

If we simply divided 27 by 53 (acceptance rate / interview percentage = success rate), we would have gotten a success rate of 50.94%. One can argue that 5.11% is a sizable discrepancy, but with all the variables involved in this process, I think the difference between 45.83% and 50.94% is negligible.

Are Alumni interviews better or Skype interviews for Cornell ?

Alumni interview is conducted by non-admissions people and they might not be sufficiently skilled to undertake and gather information through an interview intended for admissions.

Skype interview is conducted by Adcom, but the whole talking infront of the webcam by looking at it, and please adjust your volume, cant hear you!, is not so effective as a personal interview.

So given these circumstances, which option did peers choose and why?

You are correct. You may want to focus completely on telling your stories rather than getting distracted by something else. If the adcom interview is not face to face, we recommend alumni interview over phone/Skye interview. Also, the chances are higher that you can connect to a person better while talking to him/her in person than on Skye/phone. As far as the skills in interviewing is concerned, the alums who take interviews are well trained and guided by the admissions committee to take these interviews. In case of Johnson, most of these alums are the ones who were once a part of Johnson Admissions Group during their time at the school and are well versed with the application process.

Hope it helps. Good luck!

I got the interview invite on Monday (11/21) and I replied to their email on the same day requesting to schedule an alum/phone/skype interview. I haven't received a response yet. Any idea how long the adcom takes to reply and schedule an interview?

I would suggest that you call them up to schedule your interview. That's the quickest way to do it.

Sure. The interview was professional but conversational. Being my first MBA interview, I was a bit nervous of the unknown. I have to say that everyone was very pleasant and that the interview was stress-free. I highly recommend following LionsSBC's advice and do some meet and greets in the atrium. The students are awesome and are very willing to talk with you.

The interviewer opened right up with "Why do you want an MBA? Why now? Why do you like Cornell?"

After a few specific-to-my-app follow up questions, I was then asked to recall examples of experiences in leadership, conflict, and team work.

The one somewhat unexpected question I was asked was "What 3 things about you would like me to convey to the admissions committee?" I stuck with two unique strengths and a personality characteristic that "fits" their culture.

The interview lasted about 55 minutes. It was a blind (all she had was my resume).

As I said above, it was very conversational. The interviewer told me quite a bit about her past and experiences at Cornell.

Don't over-rehearse your answers, relax, and it will go well. I didn't really believe that advice when I first read it on here from another Johnson prospective, but it's absolutely true.