The Wall Street Journal this week ran excerpts from an interesting interview with Derrick Bolton, assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. With an acceptance rate of just 7 percent for this fall’s incoming class, Stanford is one of the most competitive MBA programs out there, so it pays to pay attention when Bolton shares his thoughts on the application process.
Bolton, himself a Stanford grad (MBA ’98), revealed in the interview with the Journal that his team will not put an application aside in the event that a prospective applicant’s GMAT score is below a certain number. “That would rob us of a lot of talent,” he says. His team uses the GMAT as a helpful indicator of how prospective applicants can perform in the first year, but they take a holistic approach, reviewing each candidate from an academic, professional and personal perspective. Of course, that places on candidates the difficult job of opening up and telling their whole story to a group of strangers, he adds.
As to whether he thinks admissions consultants aid candidates in the admissions process, Bolton acknowledged that some candidates look to consultants to provide coaching or guidance that they are in a unique position to deliver having worked with a wide range of other candidates. Applicants should ask themselves, “How can someone who doesn’t know you help you be a more authentic version of yourself?” Bolton advises. He allows that consultants who are asking the right questions probably can do just that.
Candidates can get too caught up worrying about scores and essays, he says, but instead they should spend more time thinking about who they ask to serve as references. “They often think about it from the perspective of, ‘I need to pick three references who show different aspects of my personality,’ not from the perspective of, ‘I need to pick three people who are going to be my strongest advocates.’” Bolton says.
As to the diversity of the Stanford GSB class, Bolton attributes it to the fact that he makes 397 individual decisions rather than checking boxes with regard to industry mix, gender or anything else. “If I’m doing my job well, in terms of bringing in people who think about the world in different ways, it necessarily will reflect itself in the check-the-box metrics,” he says.
For the complete Wall Street Journal interview with Derrick Bolton, click here.
Read the full article: Stanford MBA Admissions Director Shares Admissions Tips in Wall Street Journal Interview