From the Assistant Dean for Admissions: What Happens after You Hit ‘Submit’

With our January 7 MBA application deadline behind us, the Yale SOM Admissions team is turning in earnest to the difficult but important task of reviewing the many wonderful applications we received in this round. Much is written about the “front end” of the application process—how to prepare an application and how best to present your candidacy. But you might be less familiar with what happens once you’ve hit “submit” after months of reflecting, refining, and reworking each component of your application to make it the most accurate possible representation of yourself, your accomplishments, and your aspirations. Just as we do our best to demystify the application as you prepare your candidacy, I want to take some time to give you a sense of what happens to your application once it is out of your hands and into ours.

Hopefully from having gone through the process you already have a sense that we put a great deal of thought into how our application is constructed. Our guiding principle is only to ask questions that are relevant to evaluating an applicant’s candidacy, and this allows you to focus your efforts on what the committee is looking to learn about you. You can read more about the philosophy behind our approach in a previous post.

We think carefully not only about what questions we ask, but also when we ask them. We seek different, complementary pieces of information throughout the process. We also seek to move beyond the traditional application to include different media (such as video) and different modes of evaluation (such as the behavioral assessment) in an effort to broaden what we’re learning about you. We want to get to know the whole person in reviewing applications, not just rely on reductive metrics like grades and test scores.

Our overarching goal is to create an application process that is fairer, more consistent, more accessible, and open to a more diverse set of applicants. And this continues after you hit “submit.” Your application will be reviewed by at least two members of the Admissions Committee, and some applications will be discussed in committee on more than one occasion. We bring applications to committee multiple times in another effort to reduce bias in the process and to ensure that our decisions are based on the merits of the candidacy and not such transient things as when the application came to committee, what mood we were in, and what candidate was discussed immediately beforehand.

As we dig in to our Round 2 applicant pool and review your candidacies, please know that we greatly appreciate the opportunity to get to know you through this process and look forward to continuing to do so as we craft the Yale SOM Class of 2023.

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