Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / Live Admissions Q&A: Laurel Grodman of Yale SoM

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Live Admissions Q&A: Laurel Grodman of Yale SoM · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and you are about to hear a mini episode of the show that is part of a series of Admissions director interviews I conducted at the annual GMAT conference, which took place in New Orleans this year. The GMAC conference brings together admissions directors and other admissions professionals from leading business schools across the globe. So, obviously, it's a great opportunity for folks like me to kind of get. Get their attention and talk with admissions directors and get all the latest on anything going on with the application process. So I sat down with admissions directors from a number of schools, and I asked them questions about how their team looks at artificial intelligence and its use in the application process. We talked about video in the application process. A lot of schools using kind of video interviews, online things these days, and also just general trends in the applicant pool and some other just admissions tips that they wanted to offer our audience. These are short. They're ten minutes long. And I just had a lot of fun connecting with these admissions directors, many of whom are friends I've known for 20 years now working in this industry. So please sit back and enjoy. And I will say, pardon the background noise. I mean, these are kind of man on the street type interviews. I was grabbing admissions directors right and left and taking them to the lobby of the hotel to kind of have a quick conversation. So you'll hear, you know, things rattling around in the background. Whatever, but just enjoy. And, yeah, a lot of great advice. So, these are must listen if you're applying to any of these schools.
• 1:39
  Speaker B: All right. It's Graham. I'm here at the GMAT conference, and I've caught up with Laurel Grodman from Yale Som. Laurel, what's your title?
• 1:47
  Speaker C: I'm assistant dean for admissions for our MBA and asset management programs.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: Okay, well, I appreciate you making time. I know that you have, like, a million things you could be doing here at the conference. I just had three questions for you, and the first one is about, you know, the subject that everyone's talking about, which is artificial intelligence. I'm just wondering, like, does Yale offer any guidance to people who are applying about the use of these tools? Because people are using chat, GPT, and. Yeah. So what's the take from admissions on that?
• 2:13
  Speaker C: Yeah, I'm really excited to have a chance to talk about this, because it is one of the things that we thought a lot about in prepping for our application launch this year, and felt like it was really time to put something out there that was a little bit more instructive. Give a little bit more guidance. So we did issue for the first time an AI statement in our instructions with the intention of giving guidance to folks about how they might consider using AI. And so our approach is more about sort of guidance and support than anything punitive. We're not sort of looking to suss out who's using it and eliminate them from contention, but really to guide people on how to use it productively. And so the advice that we give is think about it the way that you would a trusted friend. So if you are thinking about the content in your application, that you might get the advice or the input from someone else, things like an essay or written, or really written components, you might ask a friend to help you brainstorm, to bounce ideas off of them, to help you refine your thinking. And maybe on the other end of things, after you've written an essay, you might get another set of eyes just to make sure. Does this make sense? Is the grammar there? Is there anything that's unclear? So I think those are the same ways that it makes sense to use AI to refine your thinking, to refine sort of the end product, but you wouldn't have your friend write your essay for you. And so I think it's the same with chat GPT. And with that, the other area that we give some advice on is sort of the spoken component. So for us, that's video questions and then your interview. So the advice that we give there is simply don't. So the same way you wouldn't have your friends sit in and give your interview for you. We're really looking to have an authentic engagement with you. And no matter how kind of subtle you might think it is to have some AI generated notes off the side, it's never coming off the way that you would intend it. So again, I think it's fine for idea generation and kind of getting your own story straight in your mind, but when it comes to the spoken components, I would definitely plan to go in on your own kind of note free and let that flow. And the neat thing I think about our AI statement is we actually developed it with the help of chat GPT. I started by asking chat GPT a few prompts about how would you develop a university admission statement on AI, and spat out a few things. And I asked it a few more questions, discovered is it was good for helping me kind of frame my thinking and came up with some ideas I might not have otherwise, in sort of what the benefits or detriments of using AI would be. But ultimately I had to do a lot of wordsmithing to get it to represent our kind of offices thinking on the matter, which I thought was great because that's a lot like an essay, right? Like, you can use it for generating ideas and kind of iterating, but in the end, you know, writing had to be ours and it has to be yours.
• 5:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, all that makes, like, a lot.
• 5:17
  Speaker A: Of sense to me because I've used.
• 5:18
  Speaker B: It as well within, you know, clear admit stuff, like just to sort of help generate ideas or, you know, like a marketing brief or, you know, it's really useful for that. But then I always find I have to, like, wordsmith it and it just yet never has the right sort of character behind it or so. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that you guys have weighed in on that. I think it'll be really helpful because candidates are definitely wondering and they don't want to be in violation of some rule or whatever. So I think that's great advice. You talked about video actually a second ago, and so I want to ask you there, like, do you guys, you have a video component of your application process? When does it happen and what is it, and what are you looking for there?
• 5:55
  Speaker C: Yeah, we've actually, we've had this for well over a decade at this point, and it continues to and has always come after you hit submit. So basically, after you hit submit, you have a couple more things you have to do. One of them is the video questions. It only takes about 30 minutes max to do, but it is a series of three questions. You'll hear a prompt delivered by someone from our admissions team. You'll hear the prompt you'll have, depending on it, either 20 or 30 seconds to formulate a response in your head, and then again, depending on the question, either 60 or 90 seconds to deliver your response. It is not meant to be a case or a trick question or a riddle or anything like that. It's the same preparation you would do for a job interview or your MBA interviews, just sort of knowing yourself, knowing your story, knowing your resume, and being able to just articulate yourself on your feet, which is an important skill in an MBA classroom and in life in general. And so it helps us better, again, assess that dimension of your profile. And then for non native english speakers, it obviously gives us a live sample of spoken language. We don't have a testing requirement. We don't require the ToEFl or the ielts. We use this as what's been for us a really effective screener for that piece as well.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: I can't help but think that these types of video questions are super useful, especially in just terms of getting the authentic candidate, but also, like, you can't possibly meet with everyone and do a regular interview with everyone, and so you get at least, like, a snippet of who that person is a little bit.
• 7:38
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, everyone that we move forward with to be admitted obviously gets into interview as well. But it gives us more than one human's point of view on this person as well, rather than having to rely on just who you happen to get as an interviewer in that given day, gives us another piece of material that the entire team can then react to.
• 8:01
  Speaker B: Okay, and you said there are three questions, but I'm assuming that there's, like, a data bank of many questions, or is it the same three, like everyone gets, right?
• 8:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, I know there's a bank of questions. So, you know, two people are unlikely to get the exact same combination.
• 8:16
  Speaker B: Okay, that's great. Last question, and then I'll let you get back to the conference. Anything you're seeing with respect to the. So you've just admitted a class or you're close to finalizing the class for. It's gonna start in the fall.
• 8:26
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 8:27
  Speaker B: Any trends in terms of, like, what they're saying they want to do with their. Or career or anything you're noting in the candidate pool?
• 8:33
  Speaker C: Yeah, I haven't seen any enormous shifts in the last couple of years. I mean, still probably. Consulting is, by and large, remains a very, very popular area for candidates, which is nothing new, which is a totally fine landing spot for lots of people post MBA. I think maybe over the last half a decade or so, we've definitely seen an uptick in just the tech element, even if people don't want to necessarily go work for Google or matter or whatever it might be. Fintech has been really popular, maybe sort of a tech bent to healthcare. So just an awareness of the role that technology plays in a lot of traditional MBA industries, I think, has certainly been prevalent.
• 9:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: And that takes us full circle, because we're talking about artificial intelligence at the top of our conversation. So, yeah, I do feel like it's sort of ubiquitous, and, yeah, I think.
• 9:25
  Speaker C: People wanting to be able to harness AI and other emerging technologies in applications to a lot of different industries.
• 9:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. All right, Laurel, thank you so much for doing this. I don't know if you ever listened to the show, but it's just great to have you on. I know that we haven't done this before, so it's just really great to connect.
• 9:42
  Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me.
• 9:43
  Speaker B: All right, sounds good.