So when applicants had a question, they got that candid answer that often comes from a student who's already in the program. The third goal was to make sure that everyone was aware of the strides that we made from 1995 to start an integrated curriculum and how much success we were having with that. It ended up being that although some of the challenges were won, a lot of people still didn't know about the Illinois MBA and what our specialties are. Illinois is strong in accounting, finance, and marketing. The program also has a strong emphasis in technology.
Many schools use applicant recruiting as a chance to diversify classes.
Thirty-three percent of the class is female. The first thing I did was to recruit Paul Magelli, who used to work in admissions at Illinois and has been in the industry for over 30 years. He knows what students in various countries are looking for in an MBA program. Now we ensure that we visit Latin America and Europe. In Europe, Paul visited Paris twice, so that students knew about the Illinois MBA program and that we got the visibility that we knew we could gather in Europe.