Selections Interview with Derrick Bolton, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions, Stanford Business School

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Selections: Who is the ideal applicant? What qualities and characteristics do you look for? How do you gauge them?
Bolton: We get asked that all of the time at information sessions and we don’t have an ideal applicant. We really don’t. We build a class. We look more for intrinsic qualities. We look for someone who is caring, values community, gives back to society. It’s not only what someone will bring to the program but how the program can impact the person. That actually plays a significant role in determining who we are going to admit. We want to admit people who will get something from the experience. But as far as work experience or background or goals, we don’t have any particular one that is better than others. We get asked, “Is it better to have six years of experience at one company or three years at two companies?” We don’t care on that one. We look for diversity of experience. It is the idea of putting people with different temperaments and different talents together. That enriches discussions and forges friendships. We are looking at the entire package.

Selections: I read in the Stanford Daily that you’ve begun to admit some students straight from undergraduate institutions. Is this true? The story seemed to be saying that the focus on prior work experience is waning at Stanford. Is this the case?
Bolton: That is a mischaracterization. I can’t speak for all of the other business schools, but when I look at our applicant pool, we don’t see enough people in the 22- to 25-year-old range. We are flexible. And that is all we are saying. The message for 10 years has been, if you have no work experience, do not apply. But business school is not an experience that is tailor-made for someone who is 26.5 years old. We are just trying to make sure that people consider business school an option, even if they don’t have three or four years of work experience. We are not saying that everyone in our class is not going to have any work experience. We are saying that it is a personal decision when to go to business school.

What we are trying to do is get the people who, if they don’t go straight from undergrad, will never go. They will never go because they get on such an aggressive career track that the opportunity cost of taking two years out is too high because their employers value them. That is the kind of thing we are looking at. It is not only about the people you accept, it’s about the people you turn down, as well.

People wait because they think that is what we want, not because it is what is best for them. That has a big impact on our applicant pool. People begin to think that it is an admission policy and that is where we have the problems. People say, “Well you have to work for four years to get in Stanford.” And if they do work for four years and they do get in and no one who has only worked for two years gets in, that’s not because we don’t accept people with just two years of work experience. It’s because those people with two years of work experience don’t apply. So we are just trying to make sure that people consider business school an option, even if they don’t have four years of work experience.

Selections: What role does the GMAT play in the admissions process? What does a GMAT score tell you about an applicant?
Bolton: We don’t place that much emphasis on the GMAT. This is the problem. It is the one data point that the entire applicant pool will have that is comparable, aside from the cultural biases and so forth. It is the one data point that everyone in your entire applicant pool will have and it is useful from that perspective. But the vast majority of people who apply to Stanford are qualified to do the program academically. So for us, it is kind of a threshold. I am reluctant to use the word threshold because threshold implies that there is a minimum score, and that is not the case.

When I read files, I read the essays, and then I read letters of reference, and then I look at what the person has done and what the objective things are. But I always do that last. It’s not that big a deal to me. I think people read files differently. Some people will peel back the onion first and start with the achievements. By the time the file gets to me, there are no questions as to the qualifications of the person. I just try to figure out who this person really is. What has motivated him or her to do all of the things that are reflected in the work history and résumé.

Selections: What is the “art” of admissions, as you see it?
Bolton: I think admissions is much more art than science, but I am a nerd, and I will be the first to admit that. I love data. So we are trying to do a better job this year of collecting data on our admission readers and data on our admissions committee and on our interview process. I do agree that admissions is an art. It is an inherently and necessarily subjective process. We are choosing between applicants who are arguably similarly qualified on many objective measures. But I am a data nerd, so I would like to see if there is a difference between the people we admit who have a 760 GMAT and a 740 GMAT. This is something we haven’t spent a lot of time tracking. Now, this wouldn’t ever drive our decision, but it is something that I would like to get a better handle on. This is something that is running in the background. It would never drive us.

Selections: How closely do you work with career services and how much would you say you consider the eventual placement of applicants when you consider their applications?
Bolton: We don’t work with them at all. The only interaction that we have with career services comes early in the process, when we are reaching out to companies to try to get applicants. Sometimes they have relationships that we can leverage to reach out to potential applicants. That is the only time that career services is involved in the admissions process at all.

Selections: I’m seeing a trend in the industry for career services to be more involved in the admissions process. Why are they not involved at Stanford?
Bolton: You have to listen to a variety of institutional voices. That is my responsibility as the admissions director. I have to know what career services wants in a class, but I also have to know what alumni relations wants. I also have to know what the public management program wants and what the faculty wants. I don’t see why career services would be any more involved in the admissions process than any other group here that cares about the quality of the student body.

Selections: So you are not thinking about the eventual placement of applicants when you consider their application?
Bolton: No, because I am confident that if they can get into Stanford—and, I mean, I don’t want to sound arrogant, but we admit the best people and we are confident that we can help them achieve whatever they want to achieve. It doesn’t really matter what that is. It doesn’t matter if that is in biotech or if that is starting an NGO [nongovenmental organization] in Bolivia. Our alumni are around the world. We really want our applicants to follow their passions and not be constrained by our admissions process based on external feedback. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I think we admit the best people.

Also, we don’t want to miss the point of the education. Our focus is not on the first job out of business school. It’s about the education and finding a different way of looking at problems and it’s about the group of relationships that last you for a lifetime. Career is only a small part of who you are. That is why when you evaluate an applicant, you look at more than just work experience. You look at academic aptitude and achievements, you look at demonstrated leadership and managerial potential. You look at the specific contributions to diversity that the person brings. If all you are worried about is your career, then maybe an MBA is not the right thing to do because you have to forgo two years of income and time that you could be using to progress at your company. If all you are worried about is that first job, that is a short-sighted perspective. I may just be really lucky, because our dean’s view is that you run admissions and you do what is right.

We hate the rankings, by the way. We just detest them. I think they do a disservice to an applicant. For a publication to try to define the right school for everyone. Even when we are ranked number one, I would never say that Stanford is the number-one business school.

Selections: Has the economic downturn affected admissions or the number of people who are applying to your school?
Bolton: We don’t disclose application numbers until the end of the year because we have three rounds, and we really don’t know what the year will look like. The Stanford application process is so hard and it requires so much introspection and resolve to complete the application. The recommendations are different . . . The essays are much broader. It requires a great deal of initiative to complete. We don’t attract frivolous applicants who apply because the Nasdaq is down. Those are not the applicants we attract. But I am sure we will be up for the year. I have seen some schools say they are up 200 percent. I don’t believe all of those could be serious applicants.

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