Why Kellogg is Waiving the GMAT Article

Question

HI Everyone,

Just thought it might be interesting to post an article that discusses Kellogg's thought process behind waving the test requirement and allowing for appeals.

Thoughts?

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Thanks for posting!

Posted from my mobile device

erlandgas · Answer

90% of the class is filled in the first 2 rounds which was well before Covid. Jan 10th was R2 deadline.

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Tons of admitted students are bowing out, because they do not want a distance learning situation in the first term potentially, or maybe don't want to gamble on the job market in one or 2 years so not 90%.

The AD at CBS is freaking a little, said they were looking to backfill 150 seats and also that this same situation is impacting other top schools.

Yield is not great at Kellogg as well; my 2 candidates who applied to and were admitted to MMM turned it down for HBS - this is often the case where Kellogg is plan B for H/S/W.

Many ppl getting off WL at H/S/W exacerbates the yield situation.

Posted from my mobile device

chiefinance · Answer

I agree with  erlandgas . The response of these business schools seems very desperate and embarrassing. Will the world end if enrollment falls by 20%-30%? I also believe that many of the waitlisted candidates will grab the opportunity to be at Kellogg, so why all this drama?

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Just providing an explanation  chiefinance

Posted from my mobile device

chiefinance · Answer

I understand your view. It's just that Kellogg's reaction leaves a bad taste in candidates' mouth. It looks like a knee-jerk reaction that was not properly thought through.

realcanario123 · Answer

Where did CBS mention this?

And also from your perspective how will this impact future class of 2020. I assume HSW will be the less affected leveraging the candidates that otherwise will go to the rest of M7. But how you think this will this affect K/B/C/M? Kellogg has taken some drastic actions, CBS seems to be missing 150 seats, MIT seems to be doing the same as Kellogg "undercovered" from what the Dean said and Booth has not commented yet

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Michael Robinson, AD, mentioned it live on a webinar call. Columbia never does webinars at this point in the season because all the seats are filled, in his words they usually have only a handful of seats open at this time and was very transparent about needing to backfill 150 seats.

I think even the elite Business Schools will be affected because there is a real concern that they will need to do the first semester remotely. So this year you're going to see people who are more okay with that by preference or desperation. I just read a Yale article about how they're making the best of it there, but I think there's a lot of dissension amongst the ranks with Stanford oh, they're not very impressed with how the school is handling things. Word will spread.

If you have a secure job in healthcare something doing Zoom with Stanford is probably not what you're going to do. That said yesterday I talked with somebody who is in private Equity healthcare vertical and she's just going for it.

Anyways, remote is just not what people signed up for and its a dealbreaker for some so, backfilling.

Today I had a call with someone who is going to renege on his Ross offer and work with me to uplevel for an even better offer for next year.

I had another call with someone who lost her job and so she is a little bit less picky about having the first term be a remote learning format. Shes applying for jobs and doing a Kellogg app, maybe Darden and Tepper too, all of them waiving test scores.

So basically I'm not really sure how these two forces will balance out: we have people who lost their jobs looking for Safe Harbor for the next year or two. And then you will have the people who have admits but they still have their jobs and don't want to give up their jobs to be doing, as they see it, Zoom webinars.

For internationals, the zoom webinars would take place in the middle of the night and so not everyone likes that.

I think you are going to see more displaced workers applying round 1 for next year, so if you're applying for next year I think you should do it sooner than later. If you have reason to believe you'll be losing your job I think it's probably not a bad idea to just go for one of these extended deadlines for this year. Its a bit of a fire sale and opportunity for some.

Posted from my mobile device

xprometheusx · Answer

Thanks for chiming in MBAPrepCoach.

Do you feel that some admits are overreacting at the minute though? We are still easily 4 months away from the start of the earliest classes minus a few specialty degrees such as Lauder or MMM and most schools messaging has been that classes will proceed in person?

Also it seems odd that some people are worried about the job market and the MBA because hasn't the general consensus been that as the economy gets worst, the more people seek out an MBA in order to safe harbor?

Thanks again for chiming in. Would love to hear more from you.

gmexamtaker1 · Answer

Well, I think that the people who are going to benefit from this "gmat waiver" phenomenon are those with lower than the usual gmat average of the class (around 720 I think) , what I mean is it is a significant risk for kellogg to accept people with poor quant skills, and if they have an applicant with a 650<x<700 gmat with q47+ they might prefer him/her over a person who doesn't have a gmat , so those 150 places could "easily" be occupied by people who would otherwise hesitate to send an application+you have those who are in the WL. 
Of course, there are exceptions , if a person has a strong quant background from a noticeable university then that is another story, it just looks really "weird" if they would just accept an individual who can't prove somehow his/her academic quant skills , but I would like to hear the opinion of  MBAPrepCoach  on this matter.

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Yes, they are going to be looking for other measures of numeracy. And so if you have a B or better in stats calculus etc in academic setting then that will be serving as a proxy for your Quant score.

I would say this is more of an opportunity for someone who is really good at math but really can't get things figured out on the GMAT

It is really important that you have some type of proof that you're going to be able to handle the coursework.

If you don't have much for them to go on I would definitely recommend doing MBA math because you can complete that pretty quickly.

The idea is that they need to know that you will be able to handle the coursework because if you fail or drop out that's a real financial loss for them, on top of the negative juju.

If you're applying round 3 without a GMAT make sure to really flesh out all the areas of numeracy that you could point to- grades, alt transcript, but also maybe if you use quant skills in your job.

UNSTOPPABLE12

Posted from my mobile device

sfa5129 · Answer

lol it seems that you are talking about me!
Yes you are right! some people like me struggle with the GMAT. I got As in math, statistics, calculus, etc, but when it comes to GMAT, I just got paranoid and kept getting low scores. So, this waiver will really help me to get in my dream school. =)

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Hi @xprometheusx

Thank you for the kind words. I'm not sure if they are overreacting or not. There are definitely "some" scary reports forecasting that social distancing will go on for a very long time. And there really is no Vaccine at this point.

I'm not really sure how it will go down but I think some people feel so strongly about not doing this in a distance format they would rather wait..jobs are scarce now so people are less inclined to let go of a good job for something that might not be valuable to them. That said, thete are sure to be more layoffs coming and so wise to create options.

I'm afraid I didn't really understand what you were saying in the second paragraph. Yes often an MBA program is considered to be a safe harbor when unemployment is high.

However at the same time you're going to have to pay for this $hit when you get out and some people are not keen on gambling on the job market in 2 years hoping that things will be better by then..which is something we really just cannot predict.

So some people are weary of taking on extra debt in hopes of it paying off later. Its a valid point; I think being overly conservative is also risky.

="xprometheusx"]Thanks for chiming in MBAPrepCoach.

Do you feel that some admits are overreacting at the minute though? We are still easily 4 months away from the start of the earliest classes minus a few specialty degrees such as Lauder or MMM and most schools messaging has been that classes will proceed in person?

Also it seems odd that some people are worried about the job market and the MBA because hasn't the general consensus been that as the economy gets worst, the more people seek out an MBA in order to safe harbor?

Thanks again for chiming in. Would love to hear more from you.

Posted from my mobile device

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

happy to hear that. Do your best on the app! Get help.

Posted from my mobile device

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

I just wanted to provide a little bit more insight for those of you on the waitlist and really annoyed by this whole reviewing the reject pile situation.

I totally validate your your feelings about that and I also want to provide some insight.

So basically if people are Mutiny on the Bounty with regards to their admit then the school has to backfill those seats and you can imagine this is now really more like they are creating a NEW cast of characters.

In the words of Stanford it is about selection not evaluation.

It's definitely not about which candidate is good enough but more they are looking at the class as a *composite* this is their *Mosaic* that they are designing and is there some pieces of that falling off they have to rethink the whole thing.

So they are basically recasting the production. They want to make sure that it's balanced in terms of the industries, the goals the ethnicities, nationalities... all of that

and they've been building to this up till now and having to go back to the drawing board is the reason they probably want to look at all the options.

I do also think this might come out a little bit in favor for US applicants, because lockdown, visa and US students would be taking classes during the day rather than Indians who live 10.5 hours ahead of Chicago.

However there are the diversity considerations as well in order for them to deliver a valuable product to you - they have to pick ppl very specifically

Posted from my mobile device

raceya2002 · Answer

Does anyone know how Kellogg evaluates someone with a pre-articulated business idea wanting to pursue the part-time entrepreneurship pathway? Do you have a competitive advantage if you come to the entrepreneurship pathway with a pre-articulated or without?

LoveWildLife · Answer

Perhaps a little late to provide my thoughts ... i did not submit R3 rolling with GMAT but i did provide them with a score after submitting my application. My quant was decent - Q49 but my verbal was a disaster - much worse than my mock result v38-41 but i guess i should still send them the scores so they have more clarity of my quant ability since my degree is in the domain of social science. I m totally ok with distance learning in the first term - i m an international student so i can save some extra costs. But i m worried about the covid 19 situation. My goal is to change sector whilestaying in Asia so going to the US makes little impact to me if thats for networking purposes. My first choice is still INSEAD but kellogg is also an excellent option for fast track learning within one year.

Posted from my mobile device

Posted from my mobile device

bb · Answer

Why Kellogg is Waiving the GMAT Article

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards