Show Summary

Alex Lawrence, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at UCLA Anderson School of Management, describes the program’s offerings. Students are offered a customizable curriculum with a wide range of elective courses and specializations. The program also includes a capstone project and focuses on developing leadership skills. The summer quarter provides students with foundational elements and an opportunity to get acclimated to the program. The program also offers a business creation program for students with an entrepreneurial mindset and an applied management research project for students to work on real business challenges. Alex discusses the flexible testing policy and shares who should take the test. Alex also highlights the program’s values and how applicants can demonstrate them in resumes, letters of recommendation, and interviews. 

Show Notes

Welcome to the 592nd episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. 

Before we get to our wonderful guest, I want to invite you to take advantage of a fantastic tool at Accepted, the MBA Admissions Quiz. Are you ready to apply to your dream MBA programs? Are you competitive at those programs? Accepted’s MBA admissions quiz can give you a quick reality check. Just go to www.accepted.com/MBAquiz, complete the quiz, and you’ll not only get an assessment, but tips on how to improve your qualifications. Plus it’s all free. 

It gives me great pleasure to have back on Admissions Straight Talk, Alex Lawrence, Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at UCLA Anderson School of Management, which just happens to be where I earned my MBA. Alex is a fellow Anderson alum who earned his MBA in 1999. Prior to that, he earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. After earning his MBA, he worked in management consulting for four years and then returned to UCLA Anderson as Director of the Riordan Program. In 2012, he became first the Director, and then later the Assistant Dean for MBA admissions. 

Alex, welcome back to Admissions Straight Talk. [2:33]

Good morning, how are you?

I’m great. How are you doing? [2:38]

I’m doing exceptionally well. Had a three-mile hike this morning, dropping the kids off at high school. It’s 75 degrees here in LA at the time of the recording. You can’t necessarily see it, but it’s a great day.

Can you start by giving us an overview of the Anderson full-time MBA program for those listeners who aren’t that familiar with it and focus on its more distinctive elements? [3:00]

Absolutely. UCLA Anderson is a traditional, two-year, full-time MBA program. We actually start in the summer. We just started our third week of classes with incoming take. Our students are on a quarter system, so they do have a summer internship opportunity between their first and second year. Like other schools, we have a core curriculum. But one of the distinctive elements is that our students have the opportunity to participate in a customizable curriculum that includes many sets of elective courses as well as specializations that really help students, folks on aligning with their career goals. Every student must complete a capstone project that you and I went through many years ago. There are a lot more options now, Linda, that I know we’re going to get into. They even do things on a global scale or if students choose to go the entrepreneurial route, they can do the business creation option, or the BCO. And then the other part that I would highlight to, or say one of distinctive elements is our leadership at Anderson integrates our transformative leadership framework where our students really get a chance to help them develop their leadership skills throughout the program, that would even include one-on-one mentorship throughout their time at Anderson, if they choose to do so. So those are a few of the distinctive elements and I haven’t even talked about the whole big piece about being here in southern California and all that is involved with that, but I’m sure we’re going to get into that too.

You mentioned the summer quarter before the first year. What does it cover? Why have it? When does it start? [4:45]

We started incorporating the summer program just a few years ago. We looked at from a strategic standpoint of how we can get our students better prepared academically for the professional pursuits. Of course, on the social side. So this incoming class, as an example, they start on July 29th. So it’s typically the end of July, using UCLA’s summer program quarter system. The students are really working on some foundational elements to get started. I was speaking with a student this morning. She has an accounting class that she’s enrolled in. She also has a marketing class.

Students have an opportunity to choose from that set of core classes, but then also they get awareness and exposure to our current management team on what are the choices that they said they wanted to do in their MBA application. Do a little bit more of a deeper dive into that. But then there’s also sort of the orientation elements that you might imagine, first day of school getting acclimated to the school, some norms, people getting an opportunity to learn other classmates in their sections. We have four sections of students, so that’s what the typical summer session will look like. And then the fall quarter begins towards the latter part of September and runs through the normal quarter system program we have here at UCLA.

The summer quarter is like a six, seven week quarter and you take two classes? [6:18]

Right, exactly. And then there are some more micro-sessions that feed into what I was describing earlier at the leadership at Anderson. So begin an opportunity to again build on those things, they go through an intercultural development inventory where they understand how they work with people who are not like their own backgrounds, and have those conversations whether they be difficult and helping each other. So all that aspect of building out a team.

Why have this pre-quarter quarter? [7:00]

Great question. I think about my own experiences when I was going through, you would start orientation like the end of August and go through two weeks to get acclimated to the program, and the next thing you know in the fall quarter you’re taking four core classes, you’re trying to get ready for their career recruitment aspect. You’re just trying to get settled into this new experience. When we had a task force look at and get feedback from the students, what were some of the say pain points or areas of opportunity to improve?

We thought that by leveraging the summer quarter experience, the students aren’t taking say a full suite of core classes, like the four that I mentioned. They can get more exposure to the career aspects so that when companies come on campus to do employer briefings in the fall quarter, the students are a lot more calm, a lot more ready, more prepared professionally, socially. They have some of those foundation courses that I mentioned earlier. So what we’ve seen by serving students who’ve gone through the program, of course they didn’t have the experience of going through say the fall quarter experience like I described. They are like, “Wow, this has just been amazing.”

Because we have students coming from outside the country, outside of the state who are still in some senses getting their housing organized, which is fine, but can you imagine trying to balance that and then taking courses at the same time in the old system? But we’ve gotten great feedback and from what we’ve seen, even the students are better prepared for the career opportunities when they’re going through the recruiting aspect for things like investment banking, management consulting or some of those other elements where you’ll see employer briefings really on campus starting right away. You and I know, it seems like every year things get pushed up a little bit earlier and earlier.

It goes faster and faster. The quarter system is pretty fast. I did itundergrad and graduate. [8:51]

You and I are cut from the same stone, so to speak.

I was speaking with an incoming student earlier and that person has friends starting their MBA experience at other schools and while that person’s explaining the experiences thus far, the other friends are just like, “Really? I haven’t even talked to our career management center yet. It sounds like you’ve gotten to know 150 people in the class already through all the different activities.” And at that point it was just like August 4th when they connected with them. So like I said before, based on our data and results from past classes, everybody’s been really thumbs up about the implementation that we did years ago.

I would also assume that the fact that they can take these core courses earlier not only builds their foundation for business but allows them to specialize earlier, so they’re more prepared for their internship. [10:22]

Yes, that’s exactly the point. Many individuals maybe not have a deep knowledge of all the specializations that we provide, but then like you said, they’re building this foundation through the core classes. Maybe they go even deeper dive into, like I said, maybe something like they’re definitely going to do investment banking. Then when they start seeing the specialization of elective courses, then they can start using that customizable core selection that I described earlier. And like you say, even be more prepared for this recruiting aspect, let alone the summer internship opportunity, they’ll have these courses under their belt and a knowledge of awareness.

You touched on the business creation program and applied management research, which was a field study in my day. What are they? [11:11]

Yes. So the Business Creation Program is for those students who have an entrepreneurial mindset. It does satisfy the capstone requirement that I described earlier in order to graduate. There are some prerequisite courses for students that participants can work in teams if they have an idea to develop and test the business hypothesis, conduct research really to create strategic business or implementation plans around this idea that they have. It’s really a great hands-on experience for students who want to go in that area. Many of those entrepreneurial students do not do say the traditional, so-called summer internship of working with a company. So that’s the business creation program that works in partnership with our Venture Accelerator and our PriceCcenter for Entrepreneurial Studies. And then the Applied Management Research project, or AMR, formerly known as field study. It was that same name when I was in school.

It’s really a great opportunity for students to, again, get a hands-on experience with a corporate partner who has a real business challenge. And to work from a strategic sense over the course of six months on this, again, this idea of like, “Okay, where’s this company want to take, say, an ideal, or a product, or from a strategic sense to the next level?” You and I were talking earlier and I was saying how it’s more global now. Our students who participate in the AMR have a chance to work with companies that are overseas. I’ve seen students work with clients in South America, Asia, Europe.

And I know, again, I can only talk from my own experiences. But even I would say some of the students who focus on management consulting, I really enjoyed the experience and looking at the feedback from students, not just focused on consulting. It’s really a great opportunity from a professional standpoint for our students to give these professional presentations with corporate executives who will test their ideas and theories. Of course, the students who have a faculty director who is guiding them. So they’ll go through the different phases of research while meeting the client, collecting research, going out into the field, traveling overseas. And then many of the presentations are facilitated in March of their second year, so that winter quarter of final delivery.

I realize that teamwork is a big part of the Anderson experience overall. Of course, many jobs involve a lot of teamwork. The teamwork experience was a very valuable one when I was at Anderson. [13:58]

I didn’t touch on this, but some of the benefits could be and have been where some students working in partnership with these companies, internships come out of those full-time offers sometimes come out of those as well, short-term projects as well. And of course, obviously building out one’s network as part of the process too. 

Let’s turn to the admissions part of things, which is obviously what you’re in charge of. Anderson has a flexible testing policy. Could you review which tests are acceptable? And can you discuss the test-optional policy? Who will strengthen their candidacy by taking a test? [15:08]

So I’ll go with the first question about which test we accept. Because there’s been a lot of changes over the last year within our office as well as outside of that, so now we accept the GMAT, the GMAT Focus, the GRE, and the EA, or executive assessment. So I think I covered all of those that we do accept. And then as it pertains to the test optional policy, we allow candidates to apply without a test. We give them an opportunity in a short text field to describe, if they’re a candidate, see why they’re applying without a test score. And from what we’ve seen, especially over this last year of admitting our students, the ones that we’ve seen and have admitted successfully to our program are those who have been able to explain other aspects of, say, their profile. Where it clearly shows that they have, say, the quantitative rigor to handle our program.

You asked about which one should take a test, the advice that we would say is that when… Again, you look at one’s profile, if they think that their academic and perhaps their professional profile is lighter from that quantitative rigor standpoint or maybe they weren’t as successful, especially on the academic side, taking a test is a great way to give the committee some assurances about the individual being able to be successful in our academic classes. Now, we all know it’s not just about test scores, it’s a holistic process, but focusing on the testing aspect, we would advise that anybody who wants to go test optional route or take a test, we’re always going to be looking for say, success in that area, being able to handle the quantitative rigor of our academic coursework.

Do you see UCLA Anderson either on an individual basis or sometime in the future requiring the writing assessment that GMAC is going to come out with to go along with the GMAT Focus? [17:20]

Yeah, that’s a great question. I remember being at the nexus of many of those conversations with leadership at GMAC and other of my peers in the industry. I won’t say definitely yes or no.

I think we do a great job, and again, this being our first intake, and we’re going to be doing studies to see how well these candidates are doing without say that writing assessment aspect. We’ve done extensive research over the years of looking at, say, some candidates don’t have those high, high GMAT overall scores that we’ve done research and looked at that writing element in the past and have gotten assurances when they’ve scored at say a certain level. So in absence of that, we’ve also looked at other parts of the application this past year saying, okay, with this new GMAT Focus for the candidates that we did admit, we looked at other parts of their application to give us assurances about what that looks like.

Anderson is quite clear about what it values. From the website it says, “Share success, think fearlessly, drive change. Applicants who share those values will be naturally drawn to Anderson.” I think that’s part of the point of putting it out there so clearly. How can applicants show those qualities, show that they share the values via the application, giving the future focus of the essays and their tight word limits? [18:33]

You’re asking me great questions here to get the word out. I always advise students or prospective candidates that think about the entire application. You want to use all of the real estate. So back to your point about the values, the shared success, think fearlessly, drive change. There’s ways to perhaps show any of those elements in the different parts, like your resume. Your resume should tell a story professionally as well as the experiences outside of the workplace. What communities do you play a part in? What leadership roles do you participate in? Where can you make an impact?

The letters of recommendation – the best letters of recommendation – are the ones where the candidate has worked with that recommender, perhaps giving them a brag sheet so that recommender really knows why they’re applying to business school, what areas of improvement that they can work on, why are they a great candidate? Candidates should definitely not be writing the letters of recommendation. So we’ll see elements from that too. And for those who are afforded an interview, then there’s a great opportunity because it is a blind interview, to have a casual conversation with the second-year MBA student. Where again, we have trained all our interviews to again explore those values. Because those are the kind of competitive candidates that we want to admit and come on our campus and make our environment better.

The Anderson website says that the answers to the essay questions should complement the information in the rest of the application, which is kind of what you just said now. Does that imply that the reviewers read the essays last because otherwise they might not have the context? [20:31]

So the short answer is no.

And I say that because I’m also one that reads applications, right?

Many times I may start with the essays themselves, I just want to get a good sense. And there’s ways depending on if somebody would say, “Okay, I’m just going to read the resume first.” To see what their storyline is [inaudible 00:21:23] to that. Or some may say, “I’m going to read the letters of recommendation.” Again, it being a holistic review process, many people are going to be reading the application in and of itself. Again, that does not imply necessarily what you were asking earlier, if somebody waits till the end to use that part of the application in and of itself.

Because again, I can talk from my personal experience where after reading the essays… And again, our prompts have changed over the years. And of course we have that part about short-term or long-term career goals, have a different perspective on a candidate. Next thing you know, I start reading about through the storyline about their resume, their letters of recommendation. I’m like, “Okay.” And the pieces are starting to come together. And I know we may be talking about too later on about reviewers, but next thing you have different people in the room, “What’d you think of this candidate?” It’s like, “Oh, I was surprised by this part because after our reading the essay.” 

I’ve never worked in an admissions office. I’ve worked as an admissions consultant for over 30 years. But I think if I were to review an application or when I review an application for a client, I would start with their resume. Just to get that snapshot of where they’ve been, and then I’d go through it. I don’t know if I’d go to the essays next or the form, but I’d probably start with their resume. That’s what I think I would do. 

How many people will review an application before deciding whom to interview? [22:51]

Fantastic question again. I’m going to give you the entire process. At a minimum, two or three individuals. There’s no screening, because of the fact, like I was saying earlier, we want to have different perspectives. We just don’t want to say because somebody works at a specific firm or a specific test score that they should be automatically admitted. Because again, they’re different. When I look at my team, we’ve got decades of experience. So they’ve seen a lot of candidates over the years and the different profiles and working with our student affairs team, seeing how students are successful in different ways in the classroom, outside the classroom. And what different profiles bring to the campus environment.

We’ll have two or three people, at a minimum, look at that before advocating for an interview and then just going forward with that entire process. The interview, it is a blind interview. It’s conducted by a second year MBA student who’s been trained by our Admissions Ambassador Corps, or AAC. And in that interviewing process, it’s more of a conversation, a casual one. They’re definitely going to talk about, “Please walk me through your resume.” They’re going to ask, “Why Anderson? How are you going to add value to the campus? What do you think you’re excited about if you’re admitted to the program?” Because at the end of the day, this same MBA student interviewer could be on one of these teams that you and I were talking about earlier.

And at the end of the day, we try to build as diverse of a class as possible, as competitive one, as talented in many different ways. Once we get that interview report, then you’re going to have a number of more people looking at that application. A second reader, myself, I will read the application. We have a faculty committee, and then finally we have UCLA graduate division look at the applications for a final approval and in a more higher level way. So there is a lot of eyeballs looking at applications. So I have no grand illusions of my role in all this as being the one who admits and denies people, because it takes a team, puts together these great classes that we’ve had.

What do you feel about applicants using ChatGPT or artificial intelligence in the application? Is it unintelligent to do so? What’s okay and isn’t? [25:18]

We recognize that candidates get help from resources in a number of different ways. They talk to friends and families, students, alumni; they possibly may work with admissions consultants; they use rankings reports. So here you have this new technology, this new resource as part of that process. So we are not slapping people on the hands to say, “You cannot use AI.” But at the end of the day, we are very clear in the fact that the work should be your own. And I’ll be honest with you, Linda, we can tell when it is not someone’s authentic work. It’s just going to show through, like we were talking about it earlier, there’s a lot of pieces of your application.

And I’ll tell you from my experience, I’ve read say essays or other parts of the application, and then I’ll get the interview report and I’m like, “This just doesn’t make sense.” Because in the application they were talking about they want to go, and I’m just going to name an industry here, “I definitely want to go into consulting.” And they’ve laid out this argument and then they get an interview and they’re like, “I’m definitely want to go into investment banking.” And I’m like, “Okay, maybe they’ve had a shift in interest since they applied and had the interview three weeks later.”

But having said all that, again, putting in something like ChatGPT, or Copilot, or whatever, it may be, helpful, but the work that should be submitted should be authentic. It should be their own. And at the end of the day, between the interviewing and all the other committees I described, we can figure out which ones are authentic or not. And that’s not just on the AI space, but again, over years of other things, consultants or other people who may possibly have a stronger influence on one’s submitting the materials.

We had a client several years ago who came to us after getting rejected and worked with one consultant, Esmeralda, and he gave her one of his applications that had been rejected. And she said to him, “I would’ve rejected you too.” He says, “Why?” She said, “Because you said you wanted to do entrepreneurship and you had nothing entrepreneurial in your background. It didn’t make sense. I would’ve rejected you also.” So he says, “Well, all my friends told me that that was the cool thing to do, to say I want to be an entrepreneur.” And she says, “Well, it doesn’t make any sense given your background.” He says, “Well, what I really want to do is go into financial services and investment banking.” She says, “Well, that makes sense, given your background. Say what you’re really interested in.” [27:25]

Yeah. Don’t tell us what you think we want to hear. Right?

That’s why we modify our prompts and admissions practices every year. Not from this big overhaul, but we want to get to know more about you. And you identified earlier it’s just like, wow, you don’t give, in some cases, a lot of text or characters for one to share that well, they have the entire application to share their story about that. And just one final example on that whole talking about authentics. 

The letters of recommendation piece. I said it earlier, yeah, the candidate should not be writing the letters or recommendation. But sometimes we’ll get those come in and we have all this technology, it’s like, “Oh, I came from the same computer as the applicant. No wonder this sounds like such a glowing letter of recommendation.”

What is the interview like at Anderson? You’ve mentioned that it was conversational and it’s blind. Just to clarify for listeners blind means a person hasn’t seen the application. All they really have is the resume. Is that correct? [29:42]

That is correct.

They receive the resume within a certain timeframe, 24 to 48 hours after the applicant has already scheduled their time, which is most convenient for both parties. It could be in-person or virtual, and like I mentioned before, next thing you know, they’re sitting down over a 30, 35 minute conversation, or possibly longer in some cases because sometimes they’re having such a good time. I’m knocking on the door and saying, “Hey, you got your next interviewee.” They just get lost in it. Then the interviewer will do an interview right up for us and submit that within a 20 to 48 hour timeframe. And then all the other parts of the admissions process, like I described earlier, start back in motion.

Okay. What advice do you have for re-applicants to Anderson? [30:45]

One thing is that we definitely want people who may not have been admitted for different reasons. We definitely want you to reapply. It is a slimmed down version of the application, so you’re not submitting all the materials all over again. However, what I will say is that we want those individuals to do some self-reflection and look at some of those elements that we provide and showcase, like class profiles, out there. So that they can see whether it be like say, on these testing scores, or GPAs, or work experience. They can see where they fit in some of those different spectrums. I would strongly advise those re-applicants to engage with us again, because there’s opportunities to participate in one-on-one coffee chats with our Admissions  Ambassador Corps.

You give feedback? [31:38]

While they won’t necessarily get feedback directly from their application, they can give them their perspective on how they were successful from applying. We have in the past given feedback directly in a window of time. This past year, we weren’t able to do so, but that’s something we have done in the past. But my point being just they should re-engage with us.

Because again, some of them, they can see, okay, when I look at my GPA and from the advice that we already give on our website and our information sessions, it’s like, “Hey, if you’re lower on the spectrum with your GPA, here’s a great opportunity.” Like we were talking about earlier, give the committee some confidence if I have a strong test score. Or you only have six months of work experience, but when you look at our spectrum of the average range of work experience is four to five years, even north of five years. Maybe that candidate says, “I’m not going to reapply this year, I’ll wait for another year.”

But at the end of the day, we want people to apply when they’re ready. You described the example earlier about somebody writing what they thought we should hear, the same thing, just apply when you’re ready. When you think you’re going to be the best and most competitive applicant, because candidates don’t know in a given year what the application volume is going to look like, what we receive. So it may have been one of those scenarios where, wow, in any given year, you are going to be ready, but you have to determine that yourself.

If you were thinking ahead to apply in 2026-2027, so you’re not planning to apply this cycle, what are the one or two things that you should be doing to prepare yourself to apply in a later cycle? [33:09]

Absolutely. I love this question because when you’re talking about applying in 2026-2027, there’s a lot of time for activity, but there’s not a lot of time in one sense. So what I mean by that is here’s a great opportunity from the research standpoint is to talk to school officials. So whether that be engaging with the student community, and I described some of those activities that we provide from a campus experience, do a campus tour, one-on-one coffee chats, sit in on a class. There’s a number of more ways to engage with us that showcase on our website. Part of that research too is, and I said it, is researching the campus.

Again, hopefully if it’s somewhat easy, if you’re domestic. I know sometimes even our international candidates may use summer holiday to come and check out UCLA and Southern California. But if you can’t make it to the campus, take advantage of the virtual opportunities too. We have a virtual tour and many of those things as well. The other part of that is, again, we were talking about the whole testing policy. If you decide that you are going to submit a test score, here’s a great opportunity to buckle down, study. I haven’t met anybody yet who said, “I was able to roll out of bed and just take the test, I got a perfect score.” It does require some preparation because maybe you have to take it more than once. Okay.

Don’t forget too, start thinking about the people who you would want to advocate for you or the letters of recommendation, and then again, these are some more nuts and bolts parts of it. But we’re going to ask for your transcript, we’re going to be one of those schools that we’re going to ask for a lot of these materials upfront in order for us to move forward with your candidacy. We can’t take it on faith that, “Oh, I got a 4.3 GPA at UCLA.” And just trust you and admit you. So there’s a lot of things that you can do, but I didn’t want to be too facetious in the saying that there’s a lot of time, there’s not a lot of time.

When you look at the academic year orwhen many of these on-campus activities occur, especially for UCLA, we’re looking really at a window of time of September to May,  where everything’s in full production. Because then once summer comes around, students go off into their summer internship, which there’s nothing wrong with coming here in the summertime. It’s just not as, like I said, the same resource and opportunities. And finally, just engage with us, when you look at our calendar of activities… I know I said earlier, I’m based here in Los Angeles right now, but I have somebody who’s in Taiwan, somebody who’s in San Francisco, somebody who’s on the East Coast engaging with some partner vendors or even doing our own information sessions. So we’re coming to you as much as you can come to us, so there’s plenty of time, but start building a plan with the end in mind and then work backwards.

Is engagement with UCLA a factor in the evaluation process? [36:30]

No. However, I will say that engagement with us does matter because we do record all those interactions. And I would say today’s prospective candidates, they’re good. When they’re coming and they’re engaging with the office, but all those things matter. So whether you’re talking to an admissions officer or a student administrative assistant or whatever, be professional, be courteous. Because all those things, those observations, I won’t say they go into the file, but students will come and say, “Hey, I have a great candidate who I just met. I just wanted to let you know.” And we’re like, “Okay.” And we take all those interactions, we just put them in a file. We get unsolicited letters of recommendation from alumni and things of that, so it’s fine, we just got to capture all of that information. And those are reflections of, again, possibly being a part of our community, which we want to make sure that we’re respectful for all the community members.

I also want to point out two key benefits to engagement. One, the applicant knows they’re making a wise decision. And two, they can present their interest in UCLA Anderson and their fit much more intelligently if they know more about it. [37:47]

Yes, absolutely. Like you said, somebody who’s applying in ’26, ’27 or whenever, after a while, you’re just like, wow, you get all these different perspectives, all these different experiences. Many times I see people getting excited, especially if they’re not living in the area. It’s like, “Wow, what could life look like for me as a student at a top MBA program, living in Los Angeles on a campus that is research oriented, has this diverse group of people of different backgrounds, work experiences?” And like, “Wow, I’m so excited just to apply, let alone the part about being admitted.” Then you go through this other euphoria possibly of like, “Oh my gosh, now I know where I’m going to be for the next two years. How do I plan? Where do I want to live? What kind of lifestyle I want to have?” All these things. It’s just like, “Oh my gosh.” It just starts opening up. But it all starts with having a plan, doing that engagement that you just so eloquently put out.

And also showing how the Anderson program will support your career goals. That’s what the essay questions focus on. [39:08]

Yes. And our dean, the career management center was telling the students on day one, trust the process, but you got to do the work, so let’s do this in partnership with each other because that’s why you’re going to business school. All our research shows that the number one reason why people are going to business school is career related. Of course, working on professional development, and all those things like that. But trusting the process and doing the work at the same time are, those are key elements. And we want to admit people who are going to be successful in that aspect and all things that are reasons why they’re going to business school. We don’t want to admit anybody and then have them fail in that sense.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [40:01]

Thanks for asking that question. You do a great job covering a lot of things. I guess I would say this year is that one question is why do I continue doing the work that I do?

You put my graduation year out there, which is fine. It’s all over the website, so they’re like, “Wow, that guy is a little seasoned.” What I would say is the reason why I’ve decided or continue to stay engaged here is that you mentioned how I made the pivot for management consulting into higher ed. And I was thinking that when you look at probably over the last 20 plus years, I’m a servant leader in the higher education space. From my time at Riordan, and even up until now, I’ve worked with individuals that span many age ranges. From high schooler up until younger professional, and I’ve seen this arc. I remember the freshmen in high school to years ago, to now today who graduated from an MBA program, whether it be even UCLA. And seen how they’ve grown personally, and professionally, and developmentally. And just even being on this UCLA campus, and I think that’s what resonates with my own personal values.

You look at UCLA, their legacy and its mission of teaching research and elevating the public mission to make the community society better, and a lot of my work feeds into that. So when I’m meeting candidates, first gen, international candidates, and just opening their eyes. The different experiences, information that they don’t know, fellowship opportunities or whatever. Like, “Oh my goodness. Wow.” And if I can be a connector in a lot of ways to those individuals, I can see a little bit of myself in that discovery period. Where just to make you laugh, I was much, much younger. I was like, “Who is Mackenzie? What is Mackenzie?” It’s like, wow, if I had known a lot earlier at 25, 26, I might’ve approached Mackenzie differently in just thinking about that. But again, I was an engineering nerd and I only wanted to talk about some firms and look at those things.

So again, just to wrap that up, just that part about why I’m at UCLA Anderson. I enjoy working with my colleagues here. Some are alumni of Anderson as well, and just seeing their dedication of getting back in a lot of different ways above and outside of the work that we’re committed to as employees. But I think that’s one thing that I enjoy because next thing you know… And I’m one of those homers, Linda, in the sense that I always wear UCLA gear. 

Thank you for joining me today. Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about Anderson’s full-time MBA program? [43:22]

Sure. They can go to www.anderson.ucla.edu. There’s a lot of great social media content and platforms out there too. We’re on LinkedIn, Instagram, believe it or not still on Facebook and Twitter. So there’s more you can do with that, but I always tell individuals, go to our website. There’s so much rich content there. Videos, student testimonials, day in the life of a student, alumni perspectives, faculty profiles. There’s just so much there that at least starting there and then start connecting the dots. You can even reach out to me. And like I said before, I love connecting people because if there’s a glimmer of something from the interest that they express, I’m like, “I know somebody you should speak with.” Because trust me, when they start talking to some of the people that we connected, those individuals are like, “Oh my gosh, love to talk to you about my experience.” Because they also had that same experience, somebody connected them to learn more. And they lived it, and now they just want to share how much joy they had from that experience.

Relevant Links:

• Anderson Full-time MBA 
• How an MBA from Anderson Helped this Career Switcher
• B-School for Good: Pursuing Social Impact Through UCLA Anderson’s Fully Employed MBA
• UCLA Anderson School of Management MBA Program Now STEM-Certified | Accepted

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• How to Get Accepted to Cornell Johnson MBA 
• How to Respond to the New Harvard MBA Essay Questions
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