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LizzyM,
MBA admission is a big business, as you know, as is admission to the elite PhD Business programs. For admission to MBA and PhD in Business programs, they tell you a lot of things. You need an excellent GPA. You need the relevant coursework (e.g. definitely a class in Real Analysis for PhD Finance, classes in Econometrics-1,2, Micro-1,2, Macro-1,2 and classes that have used Tirole's book, Fudenberg's book and Mas-Collel's book, a class in Mathematical Economics, etc for PhD in Business Economics). You need research experience, international experience, excellent letters of recommendation from your professors, work experience, letters from your current supervisor, a GMAT score in the 700s, yada, yada, yada. Pretty much the same stuff we talk about for med school admission, the differences being you need GMAT instead of MCAT, you need Real Analysis instead of Organic Chemistry, etc. Let's call this T-criterion for Theoretical Criterion.
Now I have a relative who is the current PhD Director at a school like Stanford (but not Stanford) and he was also the MBA Director before this. He tells me none of the above matters when it comes to how admission decisions are really made. I am quoting from his email here and all names are changed. Jessica is the secretary, all others below are tenured professors at Stanford. The PhD Director's email follows:
"First Jessica picks out 100 applicants according to the T-criterion and sends it to Hunter's desk. I go down to Jessica and tell her - I know ___ , ___ and ___ have applied. Send those three files to me. Then I say. Bob at Yale does good work, have any of his students applied? Who is this new guy at Cornell who is doing work on stochastic modeling? Do you have any students of his? Hunter sends all 100 files angrily back to Jessica with a i-don't-have-time-for-this-**** note. He then goes over to Jessica and asks her to send files of students from Yale, Harvard, Wharton, and his alma mater UT-Dallas. Ira asks Jessica if anyone from Israel has applied and takes those files. Marty's wife is from Turkey and asks if we have applications from Turkey. Jessica takes all the $100 checks and deposits them. Jerry comes over to me and says he got a note from Petra at Harvard and wants to do her a favor, so Petra's niece is in. Admitted, period. Admitted just like that. Darryl is an applicant who does not have a GMAT but he is Barb's nephew, so Darryl is in too. These two files have been stamped admitted and go to the graduate school for further processing and formal acceptance. Then I go down to Jessica's desk and say, bring all files with GMATs over 700 and if there are more than 25 files, pick 25 at random. Jessica says okay but forgets all about that and those 25 files never made it into our consideration set unfortunately and it is too late to make any of them an offer now. Finally Brian saunters over. He has 3 votes while the rest of us have one at tenure decisions. Brian brings in a lot of money into the school. He asks two questions - are there any students from any of the three schools we have our annual symposium with and are any students from Israel? - I need them. The Dean meets me and gives me six names, courtesy of prominent donors. Those names came to him from the Provost, President, Dean of Fund Raising, etc. These are the students we admitted - my three candidates, all 7 from schools we have our annual symposium with including the two who have yet to take the GMAT, Barb's nephew, Petra's niece, one student from Turkey, all students from Israel, the student of the Bob from Yale, the student of the new guy from Cornell who will hopefully bring skills in stochastic modeling or bring his Cornell prof over for a seminar, all students except one from Yale, Harvard, Wharton and UT-Dallas. The rest of the applications were sent to the Doctoral Office and no one ever looked at them. Admit letters were sent to all these. Then I called these students and talked to some of them to persuade them to join us - the dean wants us to do this, which I think is foolish and a waste of faculty time. Brian came over and said he wanted this guy with a PhD in History. So we admitted him too. Ramaswamy who is gay from Canada (originally from India) asked if we have any gays. I said I didn't know. He said he knew of one, so we admitted Ramaswamy's gay contact. The admit cycle has ended. Carlton returns from his sabbatical and complains we have never had a behavioral student with a psychology degree. I tell him to be my guest. He picks out two. I tell him we have funding for only one. But he persists and we end up sending both late acceptances. Someone reminds me we forgot all about the six students by the Dean. We send them acceptances too with funding. Manter comes in and says a student from Turkey is trying to avoid military service and we must admit him. I tell him we have no funding. We are done. Manter is persistent. I ask him how he will fund the student and he says he will accommodate him from his own TA budget. I have no problems. The student from Turkey who is avoiding military service is in too. That is how decisions are made here and all the T-criteria are bull****."
We are talking about a school like Stanford making admit decisions for their PhD program. AACSB insists on the GMAT for accreditation purposes but this school admits people without the GMAT. And this is a school like Stanford. LizzyM, clearly this is not how your school operates but maybe most other medical schools make admit decisions like the above school?
MBA admission is a big business, as you know, as is admission to the elite PhD Business programs. For admission to MBA and PhD in Business programs, they tell you a lot of things. You need an excellent GPA. You need the relevant coursework (e.g. definitely a class in Real Analysis for PhD Finance, classes in Econometrics-1,2, Micro-1,2, Macro-1,2 and classes that have used Tirole's book, Fudenberg's book and Mas-Collel's book, a class in Mathematical Economics, etc for PhD in Business Economics). You need research experience, international experience, excellent letters of recommendation from your professors, work experience, letters from your current supervisor, a GMAT score in the 700s, yada, yada, yada. Pretty much the same stuff we talk about for med school admission, the differences being you need GMAT instead of MCAT, you need Real Analysis instead of Organic Chemistry, etc. Let's call this T-criterion for Theoretical Criterion.
Now I have a relative who is the current PhD Director at a school like Stanford (but not Stanford) and he was also the MBA Director before this. He tells me none of the above matters when it comes to how admission decisions are really made. I am quoting from his email here and all names are changed. Jessica is the secretary, all others below are tenured professors at Stanford. The PhD Director's email follows:
"First Jessica picks out 100 applicants according to the T-criterion and sends it to Hunter's desk. I go down to Jessica and tell her - I know ___ , ___ and ___ have applied. Send those three files to me. Then I say. Bob at Yale does good work, have any of his students applied? Who is this new guy at Cornell who is doing work on stochastic modeling? Do you have any students of his? Hunter sends all 100 files angrily back to Jessica with a i-don't-have-time-for-this-**** note. He then goes over to Jessica and asks her to send files of students from Yale, Harvard, Wharton, and his alma mater UT-Dallas. Ira asks Jessica if anyone from Israel has applied and takes those files. Marty's wife is from Turkey and asks if we have applications from Turkey. Jessica takes all the $100 checks and deposits them. Jerry comes over to me and says he got a note from Petra at Harvard and wants to do her a favor, so Petra's niece is in. Admitted, period. Admitted just like that. Darryl is an applicant who does not have a GMAT but he is Barb's nephew, so Darryl is in too. These two files have been stamped admitted and go to the graduate school for further processing and formal acceptance. Then I go down to Jessica's desk and say, bring all files with GMATs over 700 and if there are more than 25 files, pick 25 at random. Jessica says okay but forgets all about that and those 25 files never made it into our consideration set unfortunately and it is too late to make any of them an offer now. Finally Brian saunters over. He has 3 votes while the rest of us have one at tenure decisions. Brian brings in a lot of money into the school. He asks two questions - are there any students from any of the three schools we have our annual symposium with and are any students from Israel? - I need them. The Dean meets me and gives me six names, courtesy of prominent donors. Those names came to him from the Provost, President, Dean of Fund Raising, etc. These are the students we admitted - my three candidates, all 7 from schools we have our annual symposium with including the two who have yet to take the GMAT, Barb's nephew, Petra's niece, one student from Turkey, all students from Israel, the student of the Bob from Yale, the student of the new guy from Cornell who will hopefully bring skills in stochastic modeling or bring his Cornell prof over for a seminar, all students except one from Yale, Harvard, Wharton and UT-Dallas. The rest of the applications were sent to the Doctoral Office and no one ever looked at them. Admit letters were sent to all these. Then I called these students and talked to some of them to persuade them to join us - the dean wants us to do this, which I think is foolish and a waste of faculty time. Brian came over and said he wanted this guy with a PhD in History. So we admitted him too. Ramaswamy who is gay from Canada (originally from India) asked if we have any gays. I said I didn't know. He said he knew of one, so we admitted Ramaswamy's gay contact. The admit cycle has ended. Carlton returns from his sabbatical and complains we have never had a behavioral student with a psychology degree. I tell him to be my guest. He picks out two. I tell him we have funding for only one. But he persists and we end up sending both late acceptances. Someone reminds me we forgot all about the six students by the Dean. We send them acceptances too with funding. Manter comes in and says a student from Turkey is trying to avoid military service and we must admit him. I tell him we have no funding. We are done. Manter is persistent. I ask him how he will fund the student and he says he will accommodate him from his own TA budget. I have no problems. The student from Turkey who is avoiding military service is in too. That is how decisions are made here and all the T-criteria are bull****."
We are talking about a school like Stanford making admit decisions for their PhD program. AACSB insists on the GMAT for accreditation purposes but this school admits people without the GMAT. And this is a school like Stanford. LizzyM, clearly this is not how your school operates but maybe most other medical schools make admit decisions like the above school?
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