AIGAC Blog

Last month, AIGAC hosted its first annual conference in Chicago.  Twenty-six graduate admissions consultants representing 15 companies from six countries gathered to learn from each other, from admissions representatives and from outside experts.

The two-day conference, held on June 18th and 19th, featured panel discussions on a range of topics related to the graduate admissions process and the role of admissions counselors, as well as tours of local business schools, meetings with admissions officers and valuable networking events. The conference was organized by our events committee, led by Graham Richmond.  They did a phenomenal job!

The conference’s first day included campus tours of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business in Hyde Park and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston. As part of these visits, AIGAC members also had the opportunity to meet with admissions officers at each school as well as other administrators from areas such as career counseling and marketing. To conclude the day, conference attendees gathered for a fun private dinner at a restaurant in downtown Chicago. 

The conference’s second day featured a packed schedule of three panels, touching on several aspects of admissions consulting.  The first panel introduced several seasoned AIGAC members who fielded questions related to best counseling practices.  The panel explored the most challenging issues that admissions consultants encounter, and examined actual solutions employed in resolving these challenges.  The second panel covered CRM and best practices for using a product such as Salesforce.com to develop a client focused company.  Finally, our third panel was an admissions roundtable with admissions representatives from top-tier business programs such as the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, the London Business School and UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.

At a joint cocktail hour hosted by AIGAC at the annual Graduate Management Admissions Council conference, conference attendees also had the opportunity to meet with additional admissions directors including representatives of Michigan Ross, Cornell, Haas, Anderson, Tuck, INSEAD, Yale, Indiana Kelley and Tepper.

Through these many interactions, AIGAC learned that Kellogg’s new facilities are now expected to be ready in four years, that application volume has increased across the board, and that career placement has remained quite strong despite a shaky economy.  We also gained additional insight into the life of an application as it is reviewed, and learned more about the qualities schools are seeking in successful candidates.  AIGAC members were able to answer questions about admissions consulting generated by curious admissions representatives as well.

All attendees agreed: the conference was a terrific event, full of excellent networking and extremely useful information.  It was a great step forward for the industry. Consultants from several firms said they look forward enthusiastically to future years’ conferences, noting that the inaugural event helped them learn more about their profession and their colleagues, including the fact that they face many of the same challenges.

The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education’s (CBE) is best known for  www.caseplace.org  (a great source for MBA case studies focused on issues related to social responsibility) and  www.beyondgreypinstripes.org  (focused on socially responsible MBA programs).   CBE has now published The Aspen Institute Guide to Socially Responsible MBA Programs: 2008-2009.

CBE actually ranks MBA programs through www.beyongreypinstripes.org and it is this data that the source for The Aspen Institute Guide.  While I will not reprint the entire “Global 100,” as you can see below, the schools that rank well on this list include both unsurprising perennial “Top 20″ schools and some schools that get little if any attention from Businessweek, US News & World Report, EIU, FT, Wall Street, or Forbes:
1    Stanford    USA
2    Michigan (Ross)    USA
3    York (Schulich)    CAN
4    UC Berkeley (Haas)    USA
5    Notre Dame (Mendoza)    USA
6    Columbia    USA
7    Cornell  (Johnson)    USA
8    Duquesne (Donahue)    USA
9    Yale    USA
10    IE Business School    ESP
11    NYU  (Stern)    USA
12    UNC (Kenan-Flagler)    USA
13    The George Washington University    USA
14    ESADE Business School    ESP
15    RSM    NED
16    Calgary (Haskayne)    CAN
17    ITESM (EGADE Monterrey)    MEX
18    New  Mexico  (Anderson)    USA
19    *Brandeis  (Heller)    USA
20    Colorado, Boulder (Leeds)

Seeing alternatives is always valuable because it makes one look at something from a new perspective. For that reason alone, for those interested in applying to MBA programs with strong social responsibility content, “The Global 100″ is worthy of serious consideration. The same is true of The Aspen Institute Guide to Socially Responsible MBA Programs: 2008-2009. The book brings life to the data found at www.beyondgreypinstripes.org. It highlights socially responsibility related core and elective courses, institutes and centers, annual events, other events, student clubs and programs, and, where applicable, faculty pioneers. While The Aspen Institute Guide could not possibly include every potentially relevant aspect of the program, it does quite a good job of providing a solid introduction.

The summaries are very good, but the analysis of each program is rather limited. While the ranking analysis is available on www.beyondgreypinstripes.org, I think the authors needed to make the book stand on its own. Unfortunately at an analytical level it does not.  Actually I was surprised to see that the book did not even include “The Global 100″ rankings. I think this is rather unfortunate because readers will have to refer to www.beyondgreypinstripes.org  because they will not find “The Global 100″ in The Aspen Institute Guide.

But that is not my chief criticism. Rather I found “The Bottom Line,” The Aspen Institute Guide’s attempt at analysis to be quite useless. Instead of providing some sort of a real analytical narrative about the program, the only analysis is a set of comments that simply represent data:
“We applied a statistical analysis to determine the relative strength of each along a few select criteria…We then make qualitative remarks using the flowing terms to reflect precise statistical scores:

• Truly Extraordinary-given to schools that scored more than one standard deviation above average
• Excellent- given to schools that scored between average and one standard deviation above average
• Good-given to schools that scored between one standard deviation below average and average” (P. 12)

The result is that the comments are so standardized as to be almost useless. Compare “Global 100″ #1 Stanford GSB and #10 IE:

Stanford: “Compared to other business schools in our survey, Stanford University offers a truly extraordinary number of courses featuring relevant content, and does a truly extraordinary job in those courses explicitly addressing how mainstream business improves the world. Stanford University requires 23 core course featuring relevant content.” (p. 144)

IE: “Compared to other business schools in our survey, IE Business School offers a truly extraordinary number of courses featuring relevant content, and does a truly extraordinary job in those courses explicitly addressing how mainstream business improves the world. IE Business School requires 40 core course featuring relevant content.” (p. 144)

It would be better to have the data behind such comments than to have this qualitative version of it.  After all any applicant who can’t handle a few numbers is going to have a difficult time getting a decent GMAT score, not to mention surviving business school.

What is also missing is an analytical section that reflected real expertise and not mere statistical conclusions. If the objective of the guide is to be, as its authors hope, a guide that prospective students, the business education community, and recruiters will use (p. 10), it had better provide all three intended audiences with some guidance to and not just a summary of programs.

I should point out that there is also some inconsistency between “The Global 100″ and The Aspen Institute Guide. The most extreme example from my perspective was that HBS, while not part of “The Global 100,” received “Bottom Line” comments that are in no significant way different from Stanford GSB or IE:

“Compared to other business schools in our survey, Harvard University offers a truly extraordinary number of courses featuring relevant content, and does a truly extraordinary job in those courses explicitly addressing how mainstream business improves the world. Harvard University requires 9 core course featuring relevant content.” (p. 79)

If CBE is to be the authority on socially responsible business programs, it needs to create a consistent set of publications so that applicants, schools, recruiters, and even admissions consultants like myself will be looking at CBE as setting the standard for the evaluation and ranking of socially responsible B-schools.

On a more positive note, I wanted to mention that The Aspen Institute Guide includes very useful appendices on MBA concentrations, joint MBA degrees, and a geographical breakdown of the location of the programs that will assist with school selection.

I would recommend the guide to those who are interested in exploring their options for a socially responsible MBA education, but it is only a first step. In addition to it, you must certainly look at CBE’s two great websites (mentioned above) as well as The 2007 Net Impact Student Guide to Graduate Business Programs. I hope that future editions of The Aspen Institute Guide to Socially Responsible MBA Programs will include introductory essays, perhaps by some of the faculty pioneers, as well as a greater analysis of how each MBA program creates a socially responsible business education, and also some qualitative-based comparisons between programs. Given the ever expanding number of MBA applicants who have a social responsibility agenda, I am confident that The Aspen Institute Guide will become a standard resource for many future applicants.
-Adam Markus
http://adammarkus.com/
http://adam-markus.blogspot.com/