World Business

With applications increasing, some business schools are planning greater degree of seats. Others remain wary

By Alysa Teichman

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There may be some good news for business-school applicants worried about more competition for slots in MBA programs. With the recession driving more students to business schools, numerous programs are considering increasing the number of seats in their classes, according to a fresh survey conducted by Kaplan Inc. WPO.

Kaplan surveyed 245 B-school admissions officers in August and found that more than moiety were considering increasing program volume, more by up to 25%. The types of schools allowing for expansion ranged from top series to less selective programs, according to Jennifer Kedrowski, Kaplan’s director of graduate programs.

"We do feel that it is a potential silver lining in terms of the competitive admissions cycle just now," Kedrowski said. The rank dimensions survey was conducted after Kaplan establish 75% of schools report a more competitive admissions process than three years ago.

"A lot of the upper part of a plant schools are reporting increases in applications," Kedrowski said. "It’s a tough environment, but it might be a good time to apply inasmuch as some schools are considering the strong demand for MBAs and thinking it might be worth increasing class size," she said.

Adding seats in general condition of affairs of high demand (BusinessWeek.com, 8/27/08) and increasing revenues from paying bodies sounds single, only the decision to grow requires cause of a range of issues—including diminished school wealth due to shrinking endowments, fiscal assist requirements in a weakened regulation, and the effects on program quality.

Which means that some schools that are making allowance for growing are doing it cautiously. For instance, Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management will expand as plenteous as 15% next year, the maximum it can to bar within faculty and building constraints and maintain its quality from spent years. The gymnasium currently admits 87 students to its full-time MBA program.

"Responding too aggressively might strain the rule," said Maurice Harris, the associate dean of graduate programs. "This expanded perseverance pool is occurring at a time when our endowments are weakened seeing that most of our endowment is invested in assets that have lost their value. While we wish again future students, our ability to provide generous fiscal aid packages becomes more challenged."

At the same time, Whitman will focus on expanding its Master of Science program of 27 students more intensely this year by around 30%. In this one-year program, MS students are required to enter with specialized bachelor’s degrees in business subjects like monetary theory and accounting and go directly to second year electives with MBA students.

Another program that is growing is the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business, which has been adding seats at a rate of 10% for the last three years. Greg MacDonald, the charged with execution monitor of admissions and administration related he hopes to cap off the 180-student program at 250 in two years. While Simon’s administrators did not anticipate a recession then they wrote their strategic plan in 2005-2006, MacDonald said the weakened economy and uptick in applicants is only helping the school "acquire some really virtue talent."

On the other side of the equation, Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth’session Tuck School of Business advocates care class sizes constant and driving up the quality of the student body in competitive years for admissions. Danos said that many of the top-tier schools will not consider expansion, despite the temptation that increased qualified applicants may induce.

"If you are all of a sudden going to double your greatness or add students, you’re bound to reduce character," Danos said.

Danos also said he thinks programs that expand moreover much exist disposed not be able to sustain their growth. "Eventually if the recession is deep, fewer people will be applying," he said.

And in this landscape, where not at all one knows exactly how the economy volition pan out, more schools are putting their decisions to expand adhering hold to the time when they can fully assess the number and quality of applicants this year. "Our jobs are not to stay the door closed. If there is an increase in qualified candidates applying, we’re going to be in actual possession of to do something, whether that means slightly larger classrooms or hard to arrange for more sessions of a particular class," said Stuart Lipper, the associate dean of academic programs at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business, where in that place is a wait-and-see attitude towards expansion. "We’ve been doing this for a long time and oftentimes have to react to changes in the marketplace," he said.

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