Selections Interview with Mark Case, Director of Career Development, Yale School of Management

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Selections: How closely do you work with admissions staff in deciding what kind of candidates will fit your school best?
Case: I work very closely with admission. Generally speaking, I am a member of Yale School of Management’s (SOM’s) admission policy committee. We meet several times during the academic year to assess candidate applicants and to make “admit” or “reject” decisions. We really see admissions and career services as an input-output combination. And if we are not reading off the same page, it typically spells trouble for the type of class that gets admitted.

Selections: Could you elaborate on that? What would happen if you were not on the same page?
Case: We want to create a balanced class, a class that is not “vanilla.” We want a class that has not only the intellect and the ability to do the course work, but also a class that can be placed in the marketplace. And that does not come without certain risks in the profiles of people we admit, because no two people are alike. We attempt to reach an agreement on the degree of risk we are willing to take on an individual, be it an academic risk or a placement risk or whatever, so that we are creating a class that learns from each other, as well as from the academic and administrative support resources.

Specifically, I read the files of those applicants whose work history or lack thereof is questionable. If there is any doubt as to whether an applicant’s career goals may not mesh with the standards that my admissions colleagues are attempting to set, I read the file. I also, in the spring, do an audit of each class in terms of the bottom 10 percent with respect to their performance in on-campus interviews. I take the feedback that we have available from on-campus recruiters, and admissions pulls the files of those individuals. I look for common themes and trends in their—perhaps their academic preparation, their work preparation, the way they described themselves in essays, to see if there is anything that we need to be more cognizant of when we are admitting the next year’s class. I prepare this audit for the admissions department every year.

Selections: Have you always worked so closely with admissions?
Case: No. It has just been within the last three years. Three years ago, I initiated this audit because there were some fairly identifiable trends in the way people did or did not prepare for interviews, and I wanted to explore whether these types of performance deficiencies could be spotted in the way people were describing themselves in their admissions applications.

I have been on the admissions policy committee for four or five years.

Selections: Do you feel the audit and your participation in admissions have helped to improve or change things?
Case: I would like to think that it has. Changes in the profile of a class are implemented one brick at a time. Over a longer period of time, I would hope the input that I provide helps, to some extent, change the profile of the class for the better. But there are lots of different bricks that have to get put into the building. Really, that is why the admissions policy committee exists. The other people on the committee are the dean, the dean of students, and several key faculty members, as well as the admissions staff.

Selections: Who is the ideal applicant? What qualities and characteristics does your school look for? How does the school gauge them?
Case: The stated mission of Yale SOM is to educate leaders for business and society. Because of this, we favor applicants who are intellectually curious, have a strong record of academic accomplishment, and have demonstrated emotional maturity in their decision making. They need to demonstrate a professional maturity in their work experience. There needs to be demonstrated leadership, as well as the potential for greater leadership capability and a self-reliance in both their work and life choices. In other words, these are people who have a great deal of confidence in their ability to be leaders and a great capacity for learning and producing as a result of that intellectual curiosity.

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