Does faculty rank affect their influence in your admission?

Question

Hi everybody,

Is it true to say full professors have more power in admitting and funding you than associate, assistant and lecturers? should you focus on them when contacting faculty?

Should we contact lecturers at all? even if our interests fit each other?

And what about adjunct and "clinical"profs?

PaulLanzillotti · Answer

Hey Saeedt:
This is a very interesting question. To be honest, am not completely sure if the premise on which your question rests is correct. I do not think it is a question of Prof. tenure or seniority that really has an impact on the admissions process. At best, and for most programs, faculty are at an arm's length from the admissions process.

I do think that contacting faculty at the school can be a good idea -- but only if you are really interested in their research other subject matter expertise. Otherwise, it will be a complete waste their time to speak with you if you are just going through the motions. Additionally, I think it is valuable to contact members of various clubs that you are interested in. If you have insightful questions, I believe that the type of response you will receive will tell you a lot about the culture of the school that you seek to attend.

Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti

bizschoolprep · Answer

Saeed,

In most of the schools, professors/asst. profs do not interfere at all in the MBA admissions process, unless they know you for a long time and for the right reasons. However, where it may help contacting professors or asst. profs or lecturers etc is the impression you create to the admissions committee that you have done your homework well and know fairly well what you want to do during your time in the business school.

Good luck!

saeedt · Answer

yeah, tnx.
Who knows how's the distribution of adcom? how many profs are there among them? what profs?

longhorn07 · Answer

I'm not so sure what the benefit of contacting a professor is. They are very busy, and I bet most will simply not have enough time/resources for an unknown person that isn't even a student at their school. If you are truly interested in one, try to sit in on their class and perhaps chat with them afterwards.

Bottom line is that outsiders will have a very small impact on your chances of admission. Want to get in? Best focus on developing yourself, and your overall application package.

Bottom line is that outsiders will have a very small impact on your chances of admission. Want to get in? Best focus on developing yourself, and your overall application package.

saeedt · Answer

hey longhorn07,

These professors sometimes appear in the adcom. And having had your name familiar for a prof, you make your chances better. Moreover, it's a great idea to mention some of the profs to whom you had correspondence and shown some kind of "fit" in your SOP, the fit, which is dead important esp in PhD!

Hope it helps

risys82 · Answer

Saeedt,

I assume that your question is around PhD admissions, and not MBA admissions. Please make sure you post all of your questions in the PhD in Business forum unless you are asking about MBA related items. As you could probably tell, this site is really geared mainly towards the MBAs, and by posting in some forum other than the one specifically geared towards PhDs, everyone is going to get confused because they assume that you are asking about MBA admissions. 3 things will end up happening: People who answer your question thinking it is related to an MBA will get answer the wrong question, thus wasting their time. You will get bad advice because the advice is geared towards MBAs and not PhDs. Other people in the PhD forum who could have benefited from actual responses now cannot because the post is now lost somewhere in a random forum. So unless you are not interested in just a PhD, do not post in any forum except the PhD forum. If you are interested in other programs, be specific in your post, otherwise assume that people will respond for the MBA. If a moderator sees this post, please have it moved to the   PhD in Business forum  . Now back to your question:

I agree with longhorn07. You are far better off developing yourself and improving your application than you are by trying to contact faculty, especially if it is out of the blue. Do not contact professors randomly. At best, they may simply ignore your your email, or write you back with a short message telling you that they can't be that helpful. At worst, they will remember you unfavorably as a pest. Professors are VERY busy people and they often receive tons of frivolous requests from people. Many of them seem to have a hard enough time even completing actual serious requests, much less respond to random people who may or may not (most likely not) be serious candidates. Anyone who has gone through the application process will know how hard it can be to simply even obtain letters of recommendation from your professors... following up and reminding them repeatedly just to have them send off a few letters. And this is if you already know the professor personally and they believe strongly in your abilities! Even quite quite a few current PhD students may complain about having difficulties with obtaining face time with the professors who are supposed to be mentoring them. Again, these are current PhD students we're talking about... people who have made the cut. So given all of this, don't you think that a random email from a stranger won't really be all that welcome for the most part?

There are only a few exceptions that I *may* consider contacting faculty. One is if you are referred to another faculty member directly by someone who knows them well enough (meaning both the person you know and the faculty you are contacting actually know each other). In this case, you can open up your email by saying that you were referred to them by professor X. Another is if you are very likely to be a stand-out candidate. Unfortunately, as far as I can see from your profile, you probably will not meet this criteria. You are likely average for the top 50, and below average for the top 30.

Another time when I *might* consider contacting faculty is if you have already applied and you have been either invited for an interview or wait-listed (I'm probably leaning more on the side of if you have actually been invited for an interview). If you can't even at least get either invited or wait-listed on your own, your chances of getting admitted into the program aren't going to increase simply because you contacted a few faculty members.

Now commenting on what you said in your last post. You don't need to contact professors to indicate that you have a potential fit with their interests. You simply need to review their faculty profiles and CV, and mention that potential fit in your SOP. Once again, I disagree that having your name familiar for a professor is going to make a difference in your admissions chances unless you are at least competitive enough to have obtained an interview. You aren't going to magically go from not even getting on the waitlist to getting admitted simply because you emailed a professor or two.

To conclude, I would probably be opposed to contacting faculty except in the few limited situations I described above. If you really want to improve your chances for admissions, start addressing all the weaknesses in your potential application.

saeedt · Answer

Thank you for the info, risys82. I'm sorry to have misplaced my post

shawdaff · Answer

while they are not formally in adcomm - they can certainly lobby for or against someone. and they are heard.

Does faculty rank affect their influence in your admission?

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