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Oski
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 03:13
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jlola21
I wouldn't apply to a school that had mostly one gender, one race, 750+ GMAT scores and 4.0 GPAs. What would you learn?
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I hope you're not planning to go to Management Consulting or Investment Banking after your MBA then :wink:
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sonibubu
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 05:08
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fresinha12
not to be sexiest, just find it weird that we have compromised too much on merit for gender equality...maybe it has to do with that most of the adcom are women???
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Totally irrelevant. FYI, the admissions director at NYU is male and NYU has the highest percentage of women of any top school -- 40%. It's all about diversity and the right mix.
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 05:26
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When I posted this info I thought only about giving some insights about the specifics of admissions in certain schools – and even then, very careful insights because the data is not representative. However, the discussion has obviously gone too far from its initial goal when we started to argue about ‘unfairness’ of the admission decision.

I'm afraid this way is leading nowhere. The problem is the very mechanics of the admission process makes it an easy target for blame: unfairness will always seem to be there.

Let’s say we have A, B, and C groups of people; the basis for classification does not matter for this example. They have a certain distribution among population, say, A - 40%, B - 30%, C - 30%. However, among applicants, the situation is not the same: A has 40%, B – 10%, C – 50%. In addition to it, there is a market demand, which wants to see, say, A - 60%, B - 15%, C - 25%. And also, there could be some promoted cultural values, according to which there should be A - 33%, B - 33%, C - 33%.

So, which distribution business school has to follow in its admission decisions? Most probably, it sticks to the mixture of all these distributions when creating its quotas. Some schools give more weight to market factor, some to cultural values factor, etc. – that’s why we see differences in the admission policies among schools. But the matter is that the final quota upon which bschool bases its decisions is different both from natural popular distribution and from the distribution among applicants. In reality, the situation is even more complicated because there are more groups and they could intercept – but the principle of decision, I believe, is the same.

Naturally, such an approach would seem unfair – both to those who believes that ‘equal chances’ means equal for each applicant AND to those who believes that ‘equal chances’ means equal chances for any person if he/she chooses to apply. You can imagine that from the market point of view, bschool quota may be not up to the employers desires too. But that’s how it works. Whether it is right or wrong we could discuss endlessly – as well as the nature of the reasons why market wants 60% of group A and only 25% of C.

With respect to all participants of the discussion, I suggest that we keep this thread to the discussion of the factual aspects of admissions: stating that a certain trend exists but not trying to blame/defend the reasons for its existence or the fairness of the trend itself. Perhaps it will be more constructive in that way.

Good luck with your applications! May we all win in the R1 waiting game!
And thanks for reading this long post :)
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 07:15
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Thanks greenoak, I completely agree. Your analysis was great btw! It's good to have some sort of snapshot of at least the online communities we're heavily involved with.

greenoak
When I posted this info I thought only about giving some insights about the specifics of admissions in certain schools – and even then, very careful insights because the data is not representative. However, the discussion has obviously gone too far from its initial goal when we started to argue about ‘unfairness’ of the admission decision.

I'm afraid this way is leading nowhere. The problem is the very mechanics of the admission process makes it an easy target for blame: unfairness will always seem to be there.

Let’s say we have A, B, and C groups of people; the basis for classification does not matter for this example. They have a certain distribution among population, say, A - 40%, B - 30%, C - 30%. However, among applicants, the situation is not the same: A has 40%, B – 10%, C – 50%. In addition to it, there is a market demand, which wants to see, say, A - 60%, B - 15%, C - 25%. And also, there could be some promoted cultural values, according to which there should be A - 33%, B - 33%, C - 33%.

So, which distribution business school has to follow in its admission decisions? Most probably, it sticks to the mixture of all these distributions when creating its quotas. Some schools give more weight to market factor, some to cultural values factor, etc. – that’s why we see differences in the admission policies among schools. But the matter is that the final quota upon which bschool bases its decisions is different both from natural popular distribution and from the distribution among applicants. In reality, the situation is even more complicated because there are more groups and they could intercept – but the principle of decision, I believe, is the same.

Naturally, such an approach would seem unfair – both to those who believes that ‘equal chances’ means equal for each applicant AND to those who believes that ‘equal chances’ means equal chances for any person if he/she chooses to apply. You can imagine that from the market point of view, bschool quota may be not up to the employers desires too. But that’s how it works. Whether it is right or wrong we could discuss endlessly – as well as the nature of the reasons why market wants 60% of group A and only 25% of C.

With respect to all participants of the discussion, I suggest that we keep this thread to the discussion of the factual aspects of admissions: stating that a certain trend exists but not trying to blame/defend the reasons for its existence or the fairness of the trend itself. Perhaps it will be more constructive in that way.

Good luck with your applications! May we all win in the R1 waiting game!
And thanks for reading this long post :)
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FN
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 07:51
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i want to clarify, my posts are not meant to be personal but as i said, i am getting tired of this political correctness that seems to have become the dominating factor in any conversation these days. Majority of those 25-year olds from HBS probably went to work for AIG, Lehman and GS etc, there was a very articulate post by a hedge-fund manager who made some interesting pun at these young MBAs.

And dont get me wrong, there are a lot of well deserving very qualified female applicants who are on this forum and who apply to b-school, its just that the pond is getting smaller and the number of fishes is increasing..so at some point diversity hurts us personally.
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 09:19
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The way I see it, while yes, I don't agree with lowering the bar for certain groups I do agree that the class should be diverse. So I am in a tight spot huh??

Really though, that's the name of the game. It is nothing new. If you don't like it, go ahead and vent, it is normal to be upset when you feel you are getting slighted.

But you have to understand that in applying to b-school , or anything else these days for that matter, this is the name of the game. It is not like this just happened. We are living in a world that encourages diversity.
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 10:08
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this thread started with greenoak doing some number crunching and exersing his grey cells beyond the essays and look where its got us!

i am a female and its worked to my advantage during my undergrad (got into a decent school and paid 1/3rd the tution compared to others (mostly male)).I'm not ecstatic bout it.

To me , equality of opportunity is of utmost importance which I think the b-school admission process does give. There is no cap on eligibility and everyone has an equal oportunity to put their best foot forward.

Decisions should be based on merit and merit can definately not be calculated based merely on GPA, GMAT, no. of awards, amnt of $$ you secured for your company, $$ you make, sex, ethnicity etc. Its also about the personality and thought process.

To ensure diversity schools should encourage diverse applicants which they definately are doing. Based on these endeavors the % of women, minorities are going up which is great! I remeber specifically asking the Stern adcom if they allow any kind of dilution just to keep the % of women to 40 and he was pretty emphatic in saying no.
Although Cornell is pretty gung ho rite now on increasing the % of women to arnd 50 I am sure they are not going to compromise on the calibre. The women I know at Cornell are definately not merely adding to the "diversity". They have awesome personalities and awesome experience.

I don think we'll ever have a fool proof system in place because this is can be a very subjective process (common we are asked to choose our recs and choose those who'll only say the best about us!!!!). I just hope some well deserving candidate does not lose out and some mediocre applicant does not waste away this awesome opportunity.

May the best APPLICANT(s) win.
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 10:19
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I can't believe you guys are arguing about the merits of diversity in the class profile. Half of a top business program's appeal is the existing curriculum, the other half is the strength of the class pool as a whole.

If Wharton was all IT males from well-to-do families in India, I would not even want to attend.

Anyways, to the OP, I feel the data is fatally flawed. It may be right or it may be wrong, but there is no way to tell. You have too small of a data pool.
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Some last year admission stats from admissions411 27 Oct 2008, 10:26
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Ok, I just want to call an end to this thread. Start a new one if you want to discuss Admission 411 stats, but this thread turned ugly and I think most of us here would rather people just keep those inner feelings to themselves. No fault, no blame, but let's just not go forward with this anymore. Sound good? :wink:
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