I just read a very calming interview on Poets & Quants with the Admissions Director from Stanford, Derrick Bolton. We all know how obsessive business school applicants get during the application season, and a lot of the times we don't really get insight into how an admissions director or committee views our obsessiveness, but there was a quote in this article that made me smile.
The comment was made: I understand how obsessive people can be in trying to get into a Stanford or any top MBA program.
The response was: You won’t believe it. Robin Mamlet, who was dean of undergraduate admissions, told me a great story one time about how she was talking to a group of parents and said something like, ‘Stanford is looking for the kid who stays up all night reading a book because he can’t put the book down.’ And the next year, there were all these essays from kids who stayed up all night reading books. That kind of thing happens all the time and I really worry about it. Maybe I take this too seriously but there is so much potential for everything I say to be taken out of context by the people who read it and these poor kids are so stressed out. You simply can’t imagine how much pressure they have on them.
They have a full-time job, which most of them are excelling at and which makes an incredible demand on their time. They are trying to maintain some form of family or community involvement. And then we add this process on top of that, which adds hours and hours. And if we believe estimates, they are spending additional time with consultants going through the process. If I believed that (that half of Stanford’s applicants are using admissions consultants), I would just start charging $2,000 per application fee and give them consulting services myself. Why would I let all that margin slip away? If I had $2,000 per application, we could staff up and provide lots of detailed guidance throughout the process.
So then I thought back to how true this statement was. I know I have spent countless hours trying to decipher a comment that an admissions officer has said to me... a friend... at an information session... and even in an online chat transcript. It's very draining as I've said many times before. I even altered my profile in some ways by taking classes simply from a comment that was made at some point.
When I was reading this interview I was like "phew... I think they understand." I guess all along I figured they knew, but to hear it confirmed was calming. Granted I don't know if knowing this information now would make me change anything if I had to do it all over again, which thankfully I do not, but I do think I may have thought into comments a little less.
No comments:
Post a Comment