CFACharterholder22 wrote:
In addition to the analysis of the candidates, I was curious about the quality of undergraduate institutions of the admitted applicants. While I won’t name any of the exact institutions of the people admitted, I will show you this. Please see the attached excel file. I took the information from US News’ ranking database. Because they separate colleges into National, Liberal Arts, Baccalaureate, etc, I was originally unable to compare one college to another. For example, is Amherst better than UPenn? However, I got around this by putting every college in the US News database together and making my own ranking system. That database is privileged information, so I had to take out the data used to come up with the rankings. I can, however, tell you how I got to these numbers. I ranked all of the colleges using this system:
35% Peer assessment score, 20% SAT average, 20% Acceptance rate, 10% Graduation rate, 10% Freshmen in top 10% of HS class, 2.5% Freshman retention rate, 2.5% Avg. alumni giving rate
This is the result of that system: 50% of the admits that went to a US undergraduate institution went to one of the top 100 of the 937 US schools. 80% of the admits went to a school in the top 25th percentile of US schools. Please note that 38 out of 268 admits, or 14%, went to a non-US institution and were excluded from the analysis.
If the school that you went to isn't on this list, I didn't see it in the US News database. I may have missed a few of the lowest rated schools or the school could be unranked. Parsons for example had no information and that's a decent school.
Great info, CFA!
On the surface, it seems as if NYU explicitly targets people from top undergrad schools, but after thinking about it, I have a few questions about my assumption.
The first thing I wonder is: does NYU look for people from good schools, or do people who graduated from good schools look for NYU?
We all know (painfully know) that you have to put in a lot of time and effort just to get past the gate at NYU. Only someone who values education very highly would do such a thing. Since such strong values on education are most often instilled at an early age, you would presume that they were present when selecting an undergrad school. Thus, those who target and get into top MBA programs also likely targeted and got into top undergrads.
Conversely, those who ended up in lower ranked schools either did not value the quality of their undergrad’s brand as much, could not get into the better school, or made a decision based on finances to go to a lesser school. For the most part, these conditions and feelings are likely to persist when considering graduate schools, dissuading such people from applying to top programs.
Because of this, it seems reasonable to guess that the top MBA program’s applicant pools will likely be represented by far more people from higher ranked u-grad schools than people from bottom schools.
Furthermore, top schools help students land great jobs, and NYU clearly cares about the quality of employment and job progression. So it makes me wonder, does the school matter, or do the life accomplishments to follow, which certainly have been facilitated by a prestigious undergrad degree, matter.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly: is Adcom motivated to recruit from top undergrads? I don’t think there is a single MBA ranking that includes quality of the undergrad school that the applicant attends. So unlike GMAT or GPA, the undergrad schools brand does not directly impact NYU’s bottom line or brand image. Certainly it is considered, but probably well behind other things like job, gmat, GPA and essays.
So, my opinion is that the type of people who target and get into top undergrads will also target and get into top grad schools; however, that NYU is not specifically emphasizing undergrad school in their selection process, because it does not directly impact their bottom line or brand image.
Again, great report, CFA. It's a lot of fun to think about and analyze the decision process of adcom.
This question is like the classic chicken and egg question. Were the students who went to top undergrad schools, smart and motivated before they got in, or did they become smart and motivated after attending the top schools. Probably both are true. Interesting to talk about though.
17 Jul 2008, 12:33
I am trying everything to get the degree but I don't even know whether providing the degree by the 1st wk of Aug will be sufficient. 
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