Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Grades, Work Experience, or GMAT… what matters most?
Last week I had lunch with Tad Brinkerhoff, the Director in charge of recruiting for BYU’s MBA program. I met Tad last year on a MBA trip to New York and did a little bit of work with later on in setting up a prospective student visit program. Students who are interested in attending class and meeting with current students can come spend a few hours and really get a feel for the program. Brian Cutting is the student in charge of it – you can e-mail him at brian –at– briancutting.com if you’re interested.
Anyway, I met with Tad last week with people from ACE GMAT prep encourage him to tell prospective students about ACE’s GMAT course. He talked a bit about the admissions criteria and admitted that a great GMAT score is far more important than your GPA – and that the reason why is that it is pretty much the only criteria that is easy to compare across candidates. Because students come from such a variety of Universities and majors, a GPA is much harder to compare. He said that he encourages prospective students to spend a significant amount of time preparing for the GMAT – and that he finds it ironic that students anguish so much about grades when the GMAT matters so much more, and is easier to improve.
So, what about work experience? Although he didn’t come out and say it, there were a few things he said that indicated that having four years of solid work experience is even more attractive than a nice GMAT score. BYU is probably the only school that doesn’t count LDS mission experience – that is – unless you are a woman. In that case, Tad said they count it to encourage more female applicants.
Anyway, I met with Tad last week with people from ACE GMAT prep encourage him to tell prospective students about ACE’s GMAT course. He talked a bit about the admissions criteria and admitted that a great GMAT score is far more important than your GPA – and that the reason why is that it is pretty much the only criteria that is easy to compare across candidates. Because students come from such a variety of Universities and majors, a GPA is much harder to compare. He said that he encourages prospective students to spend a significant amount of time preparing for the GMAT – and that he finds it ironic that students anguish so much about grades when the GMAT matters so much more, and is easier to improve.
So, what about work experience? Although he didn’t come out and say it, there were a few things he said that indicated that having four years of solid work experience is even more attractive than a nice GMAT score. BYU is probably the only school that doesn’t count LDS mission experience – that is – unless you are a woman. In that case, Tad said they count it to encourage more female applicants.
