CentreCourt Draws Hundreds To SF

centrecourt mba festival

The meet and greet time at the CentreCourt MBA Festival. Photo by Nathan Allen

Deans and admissions officials often spoke of the culture at their schools.

“At Haas, we’ve taken a real strong stand around some principles — things like confidence without attitude,” Lyons said. “This is not a school that wants to admit people who are confident with arrogance,” he continued. “It’s just not where we come from. It’s not the leadership style we occupy.”

centrecourt mba festival

Christopher Aleman, the associate director of MBA admissions at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management meets with participants. Photo by Nathan Allen

Many top admissions directors met with festival participants. Kirsten Moss, the newly named assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at Stanford’s GSB, spoke on the panel at the end of her third week on the job.

“The people who are reading your applications for us, they are staff. Many of them have their MBAs. Many of them came from Stanford,” said Moss, who emphasized her staff will look for detailed examples of leadership efforts.

“Please speak to specific details about what your accomplishments are,” Moss continued. “I know at least for us, that folks have spent many years looking at people from your industry and know how to understand it and want to know the nuances of what you’ve accomplished in that space.”

Many European schools sent representatives to the CentreCourt MBA Festival. Photo by Nathan Allen

“The reality is, this is all about you. And the time you take and the introspection you do, a wonderful application will fall out of that,” Mabley said, noting the importance of research and self-reflection before applying to business school. “Not what matters to you in terms of what sounds good to a business school, but what really matters to you and why you want to go to business school,” she explained.

centrecourt mba festival

Tuck Dean Matthew Slaughter manned the Tuck table for the entire three hours of the meet and greet time. Photo by Nathan Allen

“For us, first and foremost, what we look for people to capture in the application process is authenticity from the students who aren’t trying to out-think or out-game the process,” said Kurt Ahlm, the associate dean of student recruitment and admissions at Chicago Booth.

centrecourt mba festival

An overhead look of the meet and greet time during the CentreCourt MBA Festival in San Francisco. Photo by Nathan Allen

“My job is to make sure that each of you, when I’m looking through your applications, I’m finding that evidence of how curious you are and what you’ve been thinking about — both in your essays and your recommendations.” — Kirsten Moss

“I don’t want unicorns. Leadership doesn’t come from a socioeconomic status.” — Kirsten Moss

Moss said the average GMAT score for the incoming full-time MBA class at Stanford will be “hovering” around 740. “That’s hard for me, honestly. Because I don’t want to send the message that you have to have a 740 in order to apply. But let’s face it, we’re taking 5%.”

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