{"id":51297,"date":"2021-03-21T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=51297"},"modified":"2021-03-17T04:24:13","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T11:24:13","slug":"whats-new-at-mit-sloans-competitive-full-time-mba-episode-409","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/whats-new-at-mit-sloans-competitive-full-time-mba-episode-409\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s New at MIT Sloan\u2019s Competitive Full-Time MBA [Episode 409]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"What\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Need-to-know information about MIT Sloan [Show summary]<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Dawna Levenson, Assistant Dean of Admissions at MIT Sloan School of Management, shares the latest from the school\u2019s full-time MBA program<\/a>, including why it\u2019s chosen to go test-optional and how the pandemic is shaping the classroom experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see yourself at MIT Sloan? Read on for the inside admissions scoop. [Show notes]<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the most competitive MBA application cycles in memory. Today, I\u2019m interviewing the Assistant Dean of Admissions at one of the most competitive MBA programs, MIT Sloan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dawna Levenson is Assistant Dean at MIT Sloan School of Management<\/a>. Dawna earned her bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s in Management Science at MIT Sloan, became a partner at Accenture, and then returned to MIT Sloan in 2007 as Associate Director of Academic Programs. She moved into admissions in 2012 and became Director of Admissions in 2013, and Assistant Dean in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you give an overview of MIT Sloan\u2019s full-time MBA program for those listeners who aren\u2019t that familiar with it? [1:52]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We have a two-year MBA, we have a one-semester core, and then three semesters to really shape the curriculum to meet your interests. We have three tracks. We have one in finance, one in entrepreneurship and innovation, and a third in enterprise management. Think of those as templates or maps for particular areas of concentration. We also have three certificates: one in business analytics, one in healthcare, and a third in sustainability. These have been designed so that people are able to actually do one of each, if they\u2019re interested. You could imagine that you may do the finance track, but then want to apply it to healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One other distinction I want to make is that, while the tracks are very specific to our two-year MBAs, the certificates are actually open to not only our MBAs and the entire Sloan community, but actually the entire MIT community. We are, in fact, MIT School of Management. That can mean as much as you want it to mean. As an MBA student, you are able to get involved in classes and clubs and conferences throughout the Institute to really help compliment your MBA experience. You can take some of your electives throughout the Institute. You can actually, also, take classes at several of the Harvard schools as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s new at MIT Sloan, other than a lockdown and a pandemic? [3:18]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to ignore the pandemic, and we absolutely should not. What I think has come out of that is lots of really interesting conversations in the classroom, as well as lots of very interesting projects. Many of our courses, which are, in fact, project-based, have taken the opportunity to refocus on different aspects of the pandemic and COVID-19. Whether it be from a healthcare standpoint or whether it be infrastructure and the impact there, or if you just think about it from a global perspective, so many things have been impacted. This has really, I think, shifted the conversation an awful lot. And again, at MIT and MIT Sloan, we\u2019re really all about identifying and solving the world\u2019s biggest problems. There were those who said we\u2019ve been built for this time. I think we\u2019re trying to do everything we can to really make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you give a couple of examples? [4:20]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Last spring, when the pandemic hit, one of our courses is called USA Lab. And for that lab class, all of the projects, which had been defined very differently early on, shifted focus to be very much focused on helping the companies that we\u2019re working with figure out how to survive through the pandemic. This fall, all of our action learning lab classes have become virtual, which has become very, very helpful to their sponsoring companies all over the world. Because as I mentioned, companies have been impacted tremendously. As part of the actual learning experience in the past, there\u2019s been a travel component tied to that that has been funded by the company. To the extent that the company itself is struggling a bit to still get the knowledge and expertise of our students, to not have to worry about that has actually been quite a relief for many of these companies, a welcome change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How have pandemic restrictions affected the MBA experience and program at MIT Sloan? [5:25]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with last fall. I think it\u2019s important to note, and we\u2019re not alone in this, but really the number one constraint that helps to define and shape the experience is the number of people who can physically be in a room at any point in time, and that is state of Massachusetts regulations. This past fall, that was 25 people. That includes a faculty member, a teaching assistant, an AV assistant, and therefore, 22 students. Understanding that, we opened the campus in the fall to any students who wanted to come on campus, anyone who was able to get there from around the globe was able to come. The number of in-person classes they had though was very much driven by what I was just describing here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the simplest of terms, many classes are a Monday, Wednesday class. We would have a group of students in the classroom on Monday and also a second group of students being virtual. And then on Wednesday, we would have a different group of 22 students in the classroom. Now, the number of those who could be online would vary very much actually by faculty, and what they were willing to do, because they could, in fact, have students who were only online. This isn\u2019t necessarily for your first year core experience, but just in general, you could actually register for a class either in person, which would put you in one of those one-day\/ 22 student classes, or online only. Many of our faculty were really generous with what those numbers would look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The spring, from an academic standpoint, is going to be very similar. What I think we need to figure out how to continue to do better is all of the co-curricular activities. They also were all virtual, and we\u2019re hoping that this spring we\u2019ll be able to have some of those in-person, following similar guidelines with regard to the number of people who could potentially be in the room. But students, all of our students, really crave in-person experience and being together, and so we\u2019re trying to think of creative ways to be able to address that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What don\u2019t people know about MIT Sloan that you would like them to know, or what is a common misconception about MIT Sloan that you\u2019d like to get rid of? [7:49]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I often think perhaps the caliber and quality of our finance ecosystem gets overlooked. I know that when people are thinking of applying to business school to pursue a career in finance, we may not be at the top of their list. I think people are pleasantly surprised when they arrive and see the outstanding faculty we have, the ecosystem that we\u2019ve built around courses and clubs and competitions in the field of finance. I think that\u2019s actually a bit of a surprise to people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can prospective students engage with the Sloan community if you and your students can\u2019t go to them and can\u2019t get together with them? [8:45]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We have migrated to a 100% virtual recruiting engine, which includes a variety of different events<\/a>. Quite frankly, some are actually more effective and have a wider reach than in the past when we did travel. There are some benefits and definitely some lessons learned here. We host traditional info sessions online. We have a faculty lecture series that we\u2019re continuing to add to, where we have faculty speaking. You can either watch the original, or we have it recorded, and you can watch the faculty recordings. We\u2019re doing a tremendous number of coffee chats, which is a much smaller group of people, maybe 15 or 20, with someone from admissions and potentially a student or an alum to engage in conversations like you and I are having right now. Those have seemed to be very, very effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sloan has a fairly distinctive MBA application with lots of different components. Can you go through the purpose of these different elements? [9:53]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We completely understand that in the application, you\u2019re not going to tell us everything there is to know about you, but you\u2019re going to tell us enough for us to want to know more. You\u2019re going to give us enough information for us to have a good sense of whether or not you are, from a capability standpoint, capable of doing the work. If you think about the cover letter, the resume and the video<\/a> together, I think of that as a package to tell your story. The resume is your work history. The video is who you are personally. What gets you up in the morning? What excites you? And the cover letter is really meant to tie it all together. Why MIT Sloan? Think of those three things together, and look at those three items together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one required letter of recommendation is, quite frankly, our desire that if you\u2019re only asking one person for a letter of recommendation, you\u2019re going to spend the time really thinking about who that person might be, and you\u2019re going to invest the time sitting down with him or her explaining what your interests are. We want to get from them a meaningful letter of recommendation.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two references are, to the extent that we have additional questions that we may want to find out or ask about you, for if we have other people for whom we can call and contact. And it would never be a cold call. People worry about that. We would obviously email them and ask them if we could speak with them at a mutually convenient time. It\u2019s important to let your references know about it, but I think manage their expectations in terms of how we might or might not get in touch with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The org chart, truth be told, we\u2019ve actually borrowed from our Sloan Fellows MBA program<\/a>, which is a program for more senior individuals. It helps give us a visual around where you stand within the organization. It is not meant to be a traditional org chart. It is not meant to be, if you work for a large company, the org chart that sits on their website. It\u2019s almost like a relationship map. Put yourself in the middle of the page, and then, to whom do you report? Who reports to you? With whom do you interact? It helps give us a better sense of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have two pre-interview questions this year, and the first one is around the mission of the school, which is to develop principled and innovative leaders who can improve the world, and to advance management practices along the way. An important element of that is to create a diverse environment, and so we\u2019re asking you to share with us a time when you contributed to the diversity of an organization or a group<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second essay is asking you to submit a one-page data visualization, either one that you\u2019ve seen that has attracted your eye and your attention or one that you have created on your own to share it with us. And then in the interview, it\u2019s actually a great icebreaker, we ask you to tell us, why did you pick this? Why is it important to you? And what do you want to make sure I get out of this? It really helps us in assessing your overall communication skills. Again, what is important to you? Depending on what you choose, it\u2019s a really nice icebreaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n