Selections Interview with Michelle Jacobson, Director of Graduate Business Programs at the Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University

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Selections: Tell me about what you do.
Jacobson: I am director for more than just the MBA program. I am director for the MBA, master’s in labor human resources, master’s in accounting, and the Ph.D program.

I have been director for three years. Admissions is a large part of my job. I have an associate director for admissions and for student services. The associate director for admissions has just come on board.

We have 11 people in our office. We all share the reading of files. We meet weekly to make decisions. We typically recruit for a class of about 150 students in the full-time. We are rolling out a brand new part-time program. That starts in June. We are recruiting a class of 160. The admission criteria are the same for full-time and part-time. We don’t have separate standards for each program.

Selections: Who is the ideal applicant? What qualities and characteristics do you look for? How do you gauge them?
Jacobson: The ideal candidate is someone who has a clear idea of why they are interested in an MBA. Somebody who has shown some maturity in career goals and outlook, who has demonstrated strong team-oriented skills. That is an important component for what we look for. People need to have a solid idea of why they want to do an MBA program and why they want to do it at the Fisher College of Business. So we are looking for the same types of people lots of schools are looking for: motivated, bright, capable, talented. People who want to take their experiential base and couple that with graduate education to prepare them for the position that they are looking for. Team is clearly a focus for us so they can make contributions to their community and company.

Selections: How do you gauge these qualities?
Jacobson: We ask questions in our essays. As we advertise, we try to explain clearly the type of student we are looking for. We are a smaller program with a team component. We are clear about what average GMAT score and what the average years of work experience is. So, hopefully, people have researched us and they know the profile of our typical student. That doesn’t mean we won’t admit people to the right or left of that profile. But we are hoping people, as they are researching, that they will narrow their search to include us if they meet that profile or a template of that. Then we ask very specific questions in our application: “Why do you want an MBA?” We also ask them to give us an example of when they worked with a team. This is the very first essay question. The fact that it is first says something. I’ll just read you the question: “The Fisher College of Business MBA program places a heavy emphasis on building teams. What from your past demonstrates your leadership, your ability to work with others, and your skill in resolving conflict?” We ask them to limit their answer to one page. If somebody can give us an example, I don’t care if it is from their undergraduate experience, their volunteer work, their work. Dealing with people is a very important part of being successful and being able to resolve conflict. We don’t doesn’t necessarily look for examples where people have won their point. How people approach this essay is what we look at, as well as what they have to say.

We interview all applicants we are interested in, whether we are interested in admitting them or interested in knowing more about them. The interview is a half day here. It is also a time to interview with one of our staff members, as well as with a student ambassador. The students’ questions are also geared toward team focus. If an applicant can’t come in because they are international or for some other reason, then we conduct it over the phone. The interviews become part of the file.

Student ambassadors ask questions that are broken down into categories. The first category is teamwork. We ask questions on teamwork, and the students are trained so they know the types of follow-up questions to ask. The second category is focus and motivation: “Why do you want an MBA? Why are you considering the Fisher College of Business?” We have people with very interesting backgrounds who want an MBA. They take this question, and it is so interesting how they respond to it. We have someone who was an international male model. We have someone who was a chef on a yacht.

How they answer that question—“How did you come to desire an MBA?”—is not always typical. But that is why team is so important. We want people from diverse backgrounds. The third major category is stress management. Then ethics. Then communications skills.

The student interviewers do this as graduate assistantships. We have six at this point. They apply for the job. They are people who went through the process themselves. They are motivated because they went through the process and they want to help make the process better and maintain the high caliber of students. They don’t want people to come in who don’t seem to want to be here. The students don’t have the applicant’s GPA or GMAT. They only have the résumé, and they know they are interested in the program and that the admissions committee is interested in having more information about the applicant. The job of admissions is handled by admissions professionals, but we incorporate what the student ambassadors learn from their interviews.

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