The head of admissions for a business school can wield enormous influence over an MBA program: after all, a business school is only as good as the people it lets in, and these gatekeepers need to juggle a ton of different stakeholders (applicants, current students, professors, corporate recruiters, and alumni), all while trying to choose the best candidates out of a pool of often nearly-perfect (and, often very similar on paper!) applicants.

A number of MBA admissions heads / senior staffers have recently left their posts (Kirsten Moss at Stanford GSB, Chad Losee at Harvard Business School, Soojin Kwon and Diana Economy at Michigan Ross, Amanda Carlson at Columbia Business School… all of this on top of Kate Smith from Northwestern Kellogg leaving her post last year!). Many of these  leaders have spent many years in these roles… so what might account for the seemingly-sudden turnover? 

In this episode of the Poets and Quants podcast, Business Casual, John, Caroline, and Maria discuss these sudden changes, speculate on why they might be happening, and predict what this might mean for current applicants.