BBA class in China

Just wanted to note here that I will be accompanying 35 students from Jim Walsh's BBA class to China during the next two weeks. I figure that my recent furious rate of posting will decrease and someone might notice and wonder what's going on. I will try to post some comments in my other blog (for those of you who might care).

Slacking seniors in high school: beware

Recently, there was a real nice article in the New York Times describing how colleges are dealing with admitted students whose grades during their senior year have fallen off dramatically. It seems that universities are really cracking down so that students don’t waste their senior year. The University of Michigan is specifically mentioned for the steps that it is taking.

First steps toward success in college

I have been reading a lot of online posts recently about choosing a college, about going to a specific university, and about the relative ease or difficulty or prestige (or lack of same) between different schools. And mixed among those stories are the comments made by students saying “I got good grades in high school and I got a really high test score, so how hard can college classes really be?” Well, I’m here to tell you right now that they’re hard enough.

A couple of months ago I looked at the first semester business school grades (after one year of LS&A classes) of 120 BBAs here in light of their high school grades. The main finding might shock some people (but only served to confirm what I had believed): Students who do really well in high school (i.e., GPA of 3.9+ and an A in AP Calculus) can do really well at Ross but also can struggle to maintain a 2.0 GPA, and sometimes even fail to maintain that.

The first steps that any student can take toward success in college are the following:

• Forget how impressive your high school academic record was,
• Respect your peers (because they probably had a record as good as or better than yours),
• Respect your professors (because they were the smart kid in some high school and then some college class 5 to 15 or more years ago), and
• Respect the material (even if it looks something like what you studied in high school, you’re going to be tested on it differently in college).

The sooner that you realize that what you did in high school doesn’t count for much when you’re in college the better off you’ll be. We are all glad that you were an excellent student in high school. We are thrilled that you participated in so many extracurricular activities and contributed so much to your community. These are all wonderful things. All of them have gone into making you what you are today. Let’s sit back and enjoy thinking about them for a minute.

Okay, that was quite enjoyable.

Now let’s get back to the current situation. Those accomplishments don’t count for anything tomorrow when you’re sitting in a college classroom (or later when you have a job) — it will all be about what you do at that time, how you contribute to that community, how you compete and cooperate with those students. This isn’t really anything special to the college admissions process. This is how it will be for the rest of your life so you might as well get used to it. What you have accomplished is what has gotten you to where you are today, but what you accomplish today determines where you will be tomorrow.

Our changing admissions rate

I recently received a question from a student related to the recent change in the admissions rate from 47% (for the class of rising juniors that we admitted last summer) to 30-35% (for the class of rising sophomores that we will be admitting this summer). The question is the following: “Does this mean the average GPA is going to go up and getting in is going to get a lot harder really fast?”

Short answer (that probably doesn’t answer the intent of the original question): I have no idea if the GPA is going to go up this year and I won’t until the end of June when we’re all done.

I would be really surprised if it’s going to get that much harder to get in that quickly. The rate changed so much this year because our whole structure for accepting applications from UM students changed. We used to accept applications from sophomores. These students had taken Econ101, Econ102, Math115, and one (or both) intro accounting classes. By the time these courses were done, it was pretty clear to students 1) whether or not they were interested in business, and 2) whether or not they could succeed in and would like taking business classes. The result of these two factors was that students self-selected themselves out of applying to business by the end of their sophomore years. There are now fewer classes for convincing students not to apply to Ross, so the end result is that Ross receives more applications. I believe it’s currently the case that there are no more students entering UM at the beginning of their freshman year who are interested in business than there were a couple of years ago. The difference in the number of applications is that fewer of these students have been convinced not to apply to Ross. I hope this changes in future years (that is, I hope that the number of applications goes up because more students are interested in business), but I don’t believe it has happened yet (though it may have).

Now, in several years if my plan for global domination succeeds (evil laugh echoes off the walls of my imposing maize & blue castle), then it might be the case that applications will be up because there simply are more students entering UM with a plan for studying business. But I don’t think we’re there just yet.

So, what does this all mean? To me, it means that students this year competed with basically the same number of UM students that they did in the past — it’s just that more of them hadn’t removed themselves from consideration by Ross.

What’s the end result of this in the short run? I believe that the UM GPA of admitted students won’t change by a significant amount this year; it didn’t change much last year. Further, I don’t believe that getting into Ross is going to be any harder than it was in the past — as long as you take into account the fact that we now have a two-phase admissions process. I believe this might have made it slightly more difficult to get in for the average student because we might have (I hope) gotten the attention of more highly attractive high school students and subsequently gotten them to apply to Ross simply because they could get in right out of high school. But the data for this certainly isn’t in yet. We probably won’t have an answer to this question for another couple of years.

So, if you assume that half of our preferred admit class are made up of applications from students who would not have applied to or chosen to attend UM/Ross without the PA program, then that would mean that we have 50 fewer spots for our usual set of (historically, very high quality) applicants. Given that, you might think that next year it would be harder to get into Ross.

But have you considered the fact that we have already thought through this and might be thinking of increasing the size of the BBA Program? If that were to happen, then it might not end up being any more difficult to get into Ross than it was before — it might just end up being a larger (really high quality) program than it was before. (We of course would like, in this scenario, to be both larger and higher quality.) Now, don’t go thinking that the Dean or I have approved this change for next year. We haven’t even discussed it. I am simply saying that this type of change is at least going to be considered. (I haven’t presented the reasons for not getting bigger — and these are fairly reasonable — so don’t think it’s a straight-forward case for increasing the size.) And what matters to you is that it is a complete and total unknown at this point so don’t think that you can guess what we’re going to do by deciphering my writing. (“Oh, he’s clearly not going to make it bigger! I should give up!” or “It’s definitely going to get bigger. I can just cruise from here and wait for my acceptance letter.” No. Resist the temptation!) Because even I have no idea what we’re going to do.

So, don’t despair. Just do what you think you should do in order to increase your chances of getting in. Continue to get advice. But do what you can to ensure that your record is high quality, apply to the program, and let the chips fall where they may. You won’t help anything by worrying about this type of detail.

How to find good classes and professors

Recently a student asked me what resources are available to him to find good classes and good professors. I asked my advisors, who in turn asked some students, and got a variety of answers. I have combined what I know with what they told me and this is what I have come up with.

• Public sites. Students said that they are careful to note how many people rated the professor (obviously not much impact with just a few ratings). Also, remember that students who go to these sites tend to have strong feelings one way or the other.
  • RateMyProfessors.com
  • RateYourProf.com
• UM sites.
  • Course evaluation forms: The Michigan Student Assembly has a form (for current UM students) that allows you to search through the data collected on the official course evaluation forms that professors hand out at the end of the semester.
  • Course evaluations: If you’re a Ross student and are interested in Ross professors, then use this site that is provided by the school to get course evaluation data.
• Word of mouth: This is what students mostly rely on. (They should at least use the Ross advisors.)
• Ross Student Advisors: If you are a Ross student, then you should definitely check in with an advisor when you are choosing your classes. They have sat in on many classes, have gotten feedback from many previous students, and understand how different courses relate to each other. They also have a broad and fairly deep understanding of the LS&A and engineering curriculums.

This seems to be the range of resources that students use to find good classes and good professors. I will update this list if I learn of other resources.

The concept of an MBA feeder school

I have heard several discussions recently about the attractiveness of schools, and in rating a school higher because it is an “MBA feeder” school. The way that the rankings usually have it is that a “good” MBA feeder school has a high percentage of its graduates attend an MBA program; you can guess what a school might look like for it to rank low on this scale. I gotta tell you that I do not understand why this is used as a way to rank undergraduate business schools. And don’t think this is just sour grapes. Ross generally does well on such rankings.

Here are the different scenarios that I can come up with for a student who graduates from Ross:

• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, loves it, gets big raises. Happy with career. Never goes back to school. Might become president of the world, for all we know. Note that this counts as a negative in the MBA feeder school ranking since this person never gets an MBA.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, changes jobs and industries through personal contacts. Happy with new career. Never goes back to school. Note that this also counts as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets a masters degree in social work. Happy with career. This also counts as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets a Masters in Financial Engineering (from an engineering school) or a Masters in Supply Chain (from a business school!) or gets a J.D. (from a law school) and works in corporate law. All three of these count as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, loves it but can’t be promoted because of company policy that requires an MBA. Goes back to school. Student may or may not end up liking new job. This counts as a positive.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets an MBA. Student may or may not end up liking new job. This counts as a positive.

How is it that the first four don’t help Ross while the last two are good for us? It’s not whether or not a person changes careers or jobs. It’s not whether or not a person made a good career choice out of undergrad. It’s not whether or not a person goes back to school and ends up getting a job in business. It’s not how successful he or she is after getting the BBA. It’s not how successful he or she is after getting the MBA. The only things that count as positives are if a student graduates from our school and, for some reason, feels that he or she must get an MBA. It’s simply the fact that the BBA student ended up getting an MBA. This is the measure of success.

One way to ensure that a school does poorly on such a ranking is to place its graduates in jobs that they will love and will get promoted in. Two ways to ensure that a school does well on such a ranking is 1) to place its graduates in jobs that they will hate or 2) to place its graduates in companies that require MBAs in order to be promoted.

Does this make sense? Should this be something that influences how highly an undergraduate business program is ranked and, through its influence, how attractive the program is perceived to be?

If you did not get into Ross as a Preferred Admit

If you did not get into Ross as a Preferred Admit, don’t fret and don’t frown. We admitted less than 10% of the applicants to the program. (I would have been a borderline case for admissions; I have great sympathy for those of you who did not get admitted.) We turned down lots of applicants who, based on what I read in their applications, would have a very good chance of succeeding at Ross. (Should we be bigger? Maybe; we have to compete for space and resources with other Ross programs. Can we get bigger right now? No; the construction process makes it quite cramped right now — though this will be better 18 months from now.) When these same applicants apply next year, they will have a much better chance of being accepted. The acceptance rate for the 3-year program is more in the range of 30-35%.

The question becomes what the student should do in order to improve his or her chances of getting in next year. We will look at highlights from your high school application to UM (not to Ross; we don’t care one way or another if you applied to Ross out of high school) so you won’t lose “credit” for your good deeds from high school. Though we will note your high school accomplishments, we will focus on what you have accomplished since you graduated from high school. The following are some productive steps that you can take in the following year:

• This summer you should do something with your time that is productive in any way possible (paying job, volunteer, or whatever). When you do something, there’s a chance that you will have stories to tell later. And it is with these stories that you can convey a sense of who you are to other people.
• You should be sure that you get good grades next year. A 3.6 GPA is about the average for students entering the business school. Certainly, some admitted students have lower grades than this (it is an average, after all) but all other things being equal, it’s better to have higher grades than lower grades.
• Take Econ 101 and one math class (at least Math 115). If you perform well in analytic classes, it helps your chances of getting into Ross. If you take only analytic classes, that’s not so good. If you don’t take these two classes, then we won’t consider your transcript. Analytic skills are an important prerequisite to succeeding at Ross since so many of our classes build on this particular foundation.
• Take LS&A classes that interest you. You might find a double-major or minor opportunity. Or you might change your major! You just never know. But you’ll certainly do better in a class that you want to take.
• During school you should be involved in a couple of activities and/or projects that show that you can accomplish something

That’s about it. We’re looking for smart doers with different people mixing those two ingredients in different ratios. The clearer that you can make it that you fit this description, the better chance that you have of getting in.

Note the following: If you think that your grades don’t measure up but you have some other significant accomplishments that outweigh your grades, then please go ahead and apply to Ross if it’s what you have always wanted to do. Don’t let outsiders talk you out of it. Do all that you can do and let us make the admissions decision. Maybe you’ll get in and maybe you won’t — but at least you’ll know for sure.