Do you have any general advice for applicants considering Darden's MBA
program?
I do – visit us! Since one of our distinguishing characteristics is the
strong community and the classroom experience focused around the case
method, when students visit, they decide pretty quickly "This is for me!" or
the opposite, "No, not quite right for me." When you visit Darden, you self
select.
You encourage applicants to visit Darden and interview prior to
submitting an application. What do you advise for international students who
may not be able to get to campus?
We would still require an interview with alumni in the applicant's home
location. We will definitely facilitate that.
As part of their due
diligence, I strongly encourage applicants to seek out alumni to learn more
about Darden and to get a picture of the experience that they can't get
firsthand. It is all about interacting with someone from Darden.
We spend as
much time in the interview making sure applicants understand Darden and the
Darden difference as we do interviewing them. We have also doubled the
number of receptions we are hosting this fall, and are engaging alumni in a
much broader way to help us reach out to prospective students.
Do you have any programs targeted to specific population groups?
We are a member of the Consortium [The Consortium for Graduate Study in
Management], so we are at all the Consortium events.
We are also one of the founding
members of the Forté Foundation. A member of the
admissions committee, Wendy Huber,
is the vice-chairman of the
Executive Board of Forté this year.
We
are also reaching out to military applicants. We find that companies are
very interested in people who have great leadership experience,
and the military offers this. We are also
seeing more applications from people with a little bit less experience –
and even superstars with no experience.
We would like potential applicants
to look less at averages in terms of age and experience, and consider more
whether now is the right time for an MBA for them and their career
objective.
Are you are looking for specific characteristics in prospective students
that translate into successful career searches?
It really boils down to leadership, teamwork, an ability to get things done
with and through others, and, most importantly, great communication skills.
Something else that is very important
to Darden, is this notion of passion and fire. You should ask yourself if you
have the intense desire to make a difference in whatever it is you are
doing. We are looking for people who have evidence of that already.
To what degree do you want to see short-term and long-term career focus
in an incoming student?
We haven't done the studies, but we believe that about 80% of the career
objectives that are written on admissions applications change by graduation.
Therefore, applicants should be able to make connections between the transitions
they've made. They should be able to tell us "This is why I'm coming to
Darden to get this MBA, and here's what I expect to do with it." We don't
expect applicants to know exactly what they expect to do with an MBA, but we
want them to have a really good hypothesis. After they get here, we will
help advance whatever that objective might be.
Do you have any advice to applicants who want a significant career
change?
Come to Darden! In your first week at Darden, we have two class streams that
assist in career planning. One is leadership, and the other is personal and
career self-assessment to help you reach conclusions about yourself that
will be important to your future plans.
We also conduct a series of career discovery forums
and professional development classes where we
first coach students
in writing an objective. We want to help them understand themselves and
understand their career options. We help them break down what they like to
do so they can target positions that match their personalities.
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