Purpose of having freshman and sophomore admissions

The Ross School has two paths by which students can gain admission to the program. The first is the “preferred admit” program for high school seniors and the second is the standard program for college freshmen.

Our preferred admit program allows us to target those high school students who have both built a very attractive resume out of high school and know that they are interested in getting a business education. After gaining admission to this program, they can become full-fledged Ross students their sophomore year if they maintain a 3.3 GPA during their freshman year while taking several required classes (including microeconomics, freshman writing, and a math class).

The standard admissions program yields us several types of students, all of whom have done well at Ross in the past:

• Students who are late bloomers and distinguish themselves more in their college application than they did out of high school,
• Students who discovered their interest in business after enrolling at Michigan, and
• Students who, though they distinguished themselves in high school and were interested in business, were not chosen during the preferred admissions process. Unfortunately, there are lots of students who I would like to admit into the program out of high school that I simply don’t have slots for in the PA program. This means that they have to re-apply after their freshman year and I can only hope that they do so.

Concerning the relative sizes of the PA and standard admissions programs, I would like to balance them so that the third type is minimized while still allowing a strong and large group of the first and second types. It will probably be several years before we know what the proper balance should be between the two admissions paths. I have a feeling, though I am not sure, that there is an actual difference between the students in the two admissions paths — not in their performance or eventual career success but in their interests. We like the diversity of student interests that we have always had here at Ross, and I don’t want us to mess that up. If having two separate admissions routes helps us maintain our general diversity, then we’re going to have two admissions routes.

We have strength in finance, consulting, accounting, operations, marketing, etc. We have a strong job placement success in the Northeast and Midwest (because that’s where our students are generally interested in working) though we generally are able to provide some help in placing students wherever they want to go. I think this diversity is a strength of ours. I will continue to be a strong proponent of maintaining these two paths so that we can learn more about the strengths of each and maintain the diversity of our student body.