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Journey to my MBA

Thursday, September 08, 2005

My Job: Managing B-School Admissions of Chicago GSB

My Job: Managing B-School Admissions

Note: from Dave - Some of you may recall that Ms. Martinelli is a recent transfer from Wharton to Chicago GSB this year.

By STEPHEN GROCER
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

From The Wall Street Journal Online


For most people involved in M.B.A. programs, September means heading back to campus, but for Rosemaria Martinelli, it means hitting the road.

This September, Ms. Martinelli, associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, is expected to fly overnight to Mumbai, India, for a reception. The next day, it's off to New Delhi and then Bangalore for a day each, meeting alumni and would-be applicants. From Bangalore, the next stop is Karachi, Pakistan, after which she plans to catch a 3 a.m. flight back to Chicago for two days before setting off to Belgium. Finally, it's back to the U.S. for a swing up the East Coast.

"Between September and October, I am fairly well jet-lagged. You are traveling every day, meeting alumni, talking to prospective students, not getting a lot of sleep and eating a lot of airplane food, which can be disastrous," says Ms. Martinelli, 45.

It's the start of a yearly cycle of business-school admissions departments, says Ms. Martinelli. By its end in June, she says, she and her staff of 20 typically will have reviewed about 3,500 applications and admitted about 800 students. In the years she's been working in b-school admissions, she says she's found the job rewarding and fun, despite its often intense pace.

Her career path was hardly typical, she says. After graduating from Northwestern University with a master's degree in music in 1984, Ms. Martinelli spent the next 11 years as a professional opera singer, playing smaller houses in Philadelphia, New York, Sarasota, Fla., and Europe.

"I am a pragmatic kind of person, and I made a promise to myself that if I wasn't really singing in the A or B houses by 35, it was time for me to start thinking about what was next for me in my career," Ms. Martinelli says.

So in 1995, after a four-month tour of Europe, she moved back to Philadelphia, where she'd lived on and off since graduating. As a favor for a woman in her church, she took a temp job in the office of the president of the University of Pennsylvania. She eventually parlayed the stint into a staff-assistant position and in October 1998 became associate director of admissions at the Wharton School. In May 2000, she was promoted to director of admissions and financial aid when the prior director left. She moved to Chicago GSB in May.

"In some ways, this is what I was meant to do -- to be a helper of people," she says. "I enjoy trying to help people line up their passions with the tools they need to be successful."

The nitty-gritty of the work begins when her travel schedule winds down in October, and Ms. Martinelli focuses more on applications, reading every one, and counseling students.

"I am looking for diamonds in the rough," she says.

As the admissions process advances, her workdays lengthen. During the summer months, she says, she might arrive at the office at 8:30 a.m. and leave at about 6:30 p.m. But by January, her hours grow longer and more intense.

"When one of the deadlines is approaching, and I live here and am eating Maalox so my stomach doesn't fall apart, the pace can be a little bit unending," she says.

And when she does leave the office, she often is bringing applications home.

During those months, Ms. Martinelli also must keep her staff motivated. To try to make things fun, she creates games, such as friendly competitions to see who can review the most applications or find the best quotes in the applications.

The busiest months, Ms. Martinelli says, are January and February, when the first round of students have been admitted, and the next two rounds are still being evaluated. That means that at the same time she is counseling admitted students, she's still reading applications and doing student recruitment.


"I will get on the phone with 'admits' for 30 or 40 minutes," Ms. Martinelli says. "Now you multiply that by 800, and you know what you're getting yourself into. But it is a critical component, because ultimately I want students who believe the GSB is right for them and want to give them all the information they need to help them make the right decision."

The pace might ease slightly over the next few months, she says, but deadlines remain for the second and third round. Not until June and graduation does Ms. Martinelli feel she can take a breath. But there is still plenty to do, she says.

"We are getting ready for that class to arrive on campus and, plus, you have to do strategy sometime," Ms. Martinelli says.

That means lots of meetings during the summer, she says, while updating the school's marketing materials.

Then it all starts over again, and Ms. Martinelli heads out on the road.

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