Sally Blount on Solving the Female CEO Conundrum
Just one year after setting the the Fortune 500 female CEO record, numbers are already declining.
Northwestern Kellogg MBA Class of 2020: 46 Percent Women, 27 Percent U.S. Minorities
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management announced today that women will make up 46 percent of the incoming two-year, full-time MBA Class of 2020. That’s a four-percentage point jump over last year and a record high for the school. U.S. minorities are also up—comprising 27 percent of this year’s first-year students, as compared to 25 percent last year. Meanwhile, average GMAT (732) and GPA (3.6) were identical to last year. Class size also remained constant at 478.
“I am very, very thrilled with the diversity of the class,” Melissa Rapp, Kellogg Director of Admissions for full-time MBA and MSMS programs, told Clear Admit. “And not just because of the percentages but also the quality of candidates across the board,” she said. International students will make up 34 percent of the incoming class, drawn from 46 countries around the globe, a modest one-percentage point decline amid soft overall international applicant volume to U.S. schools.
Rapp pledged that she and her team will keep striving to attract the most diverse classes possible. “I firmly believe that diversity in the classroom leads to better learning and a more impactful experience for every student who is here,” she said.
Steady State Elsewhere Is Great
For the past six years Kellogg’s average GMAT score has been on the rise, climbing from 708 in 2012 to 732 last year. Rapp said she is not at all concerned to have it remain static at 732 this year. “That our average GMAT and GPA have stayed the same shows that we continue to attract a really outstanding pool of applicants year after year,” she said.
Average undergraduate GPA also didn’t budge—coming in at 3.6 for now the third year running. As for what applicants studied while in college, 50 percent of this year’s incoming class majored in business or economics, up from 49 percent last year and 45 percent the year before that. STEM majors fell slightly to 29 percent, down from 30 percent the year before. Humanities majors both this year and last made up the remaining 26 percent.
Varied Professional Experience
In terms of pre-MBA work experience, approximately one in four incoming Kellogg students—24 percent—come from consulting, down from 27 percent last year. Another 19 percent come from the financial services industry, also a slight decrease from last year’s 20 percent.
Up this year? Students who have worked in tech/communications grew from 12 to 13 percent. “I think the changes that we see in our class really reflect the changes that we see in the business world,” Rapp said. “There are more people from tech, which is not surprising for anyone since there is more tech in the world than there ever has been.” Students with government/education/nonprofit experience also increased, from 7 to 9 percent.
Overall Rapp is pleased to see Kellogg continuing to attract a wide range of students from across functions and industries. “The variety continues to be very strong both in terms of our incoming students and our outgoing graduates,” she added. “Again, those differences and that diversity is what makes the Kellogg experience so strong.”
Kellogg’s Efforts to Support Women May Off
By far the biggest news today is that Kellogg has come closer than ever before to gender parity with its newest incoming class. USC Marshall School of Business made headlines last month by becoming the first leading business school to cross the 50/50 mark—women will make up 52 percent of the Marshall Class of 2020, a staggering 20-percentage-point jump over last year. At UT Austin’s McCombs School, which has also shared a preliminary Class of 2020 profile, the percentage of women slipped year over year, from 40 to 38 percent. And at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, which welcomed it new Class of 2020 students to campus last week, women make up 33 percent, a five-point gain over last year.
“It’s really pretty exciting,” said Rapp of Kellogg’s 46 percent women. She credits the gains in female enrollment in part to the vision and leadership of outgoing Kellogg Dean Sally Blount, who served as dean from 2010 until she stepped this past spring.
Kellogg has also called on its current female students, including members of the Kellogg’s student-led Women’s Business Association (WBA), to take part in admissions outreach activities in hopes that they can forge meaningful connections with prospective female candidates early in their exploration process.
Melissa Rapp, Kellogg Director of Admissions for the full-time MBA and MSMS programs.
New this year, the school also convened its inaugural Global Women’s Summit in May. More than 1,200 women participated “live”—with 800 at Kellogg’s Global Hub in Evanston and the rest via extension events in London, Hong Kong, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, and Chicago hosted by companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks. Over the course of the two-day event, the #KelloggWomen hashtag was trending in Chicago and generated 2.7 million overall impressions. “The breadth of engagement the summit allowed for provided a really nice bridge from prospectives to current students to our alumnae population,” Rapp said.
Kellogg also this year hosted its third-annual Women’s Leadership Seminar, a unique five-week lineup for second-year MBA students combining lectures, workshops, networking events, and alumni panels on recruiting issues women face. “The goal is to ensure that our high-potential women are equipped to pursue and navigate careers that have deep personal and professional meaning,” Rapp said.
“This combination of everything from lunch and learns to seminars to summits really helps the women here know that Kellogg understands the unique situation they are in and the challenges they will face on their journey to become impactful leaders and is proactively talking about that and helping them navigate that.”
Those Kellogg women, it seems, have been doing a good job of helping prospective female applicants see Kellogg as a place they want to be, too.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
Northwestern Kellogg Names Kathleen Hagerty Interim Dean
Following last year’s surprising announcement that Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management dean Sally Blount will step down from her role, provost Jonathan Holloway has announced that Kathleen Hagerty will serve as the interim dean while the school continues its search for a long-term replacement.
Blount, one of the only female deans to ever lead an M7 business school, has left behind an extraordinary legacy of fundraising and academic development. Her replacement certainly has big shoes to fill.
Holloway believes that Hagerty will do an excellent job in her new position as interim dean. “I am confident that Kathleen will provide a seamless transition when dean Blount steps down later this summer and until we conclude our search,” Holloway said.
Both Hagerty’s record of service and pedigree—including a Berkeley Haas MBA and a Stanford Ph.D.—may prove that the confidence is not misplaced.
Kellogg’s New Interim Dean Kathleen Hagerty
Hagerty has been with Northwestern Kellogg in a teaching or leadership position for more than 30 years. She currently holds the First Chicago Professorship in Finance, and her research focuses on the micro-structure of securities markets, disclosure regulation, insider trader regulation, and the efficacy of self-regulatory organizations. Hagerty’s research has been published in various books as well as in prestigious finance journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Financial Intermediation.
Hagerty currently serves as the senior associate dean of faculty and research at Kellogg, a position she previously held from 2010 to 2015. She also has occupied various other leadership positions during her time at Northwestern, including two terms as chair of the finance department and a two-year term as faculty director of Kellogg’s Ph.D. programs.
Hagerty has also gained a reputation as an excellent scholar and respected faculty leader who can attract and retain world-class academic talent in an extremely competitive market. In addition, she has contributed immensely to the development of various academic programs for both graduate and undergraduate students at Kellogg.
Hagerty shared her thoughts about being appointed interim dean:
“I’m honored to assume this role and add to the myriad accomplishments of the Kellogg team under Dean Blount’s leadership. I look forward to partnering with faculty colleagues, as well as our staff, students, alumni and broader community, to create knowledge and educate the next generation of business leaders.”
Blount, who officially steps down on August 31, is quite happy with the announcement of Hagerty as the interim dean, describing her as a valuable member of the Kellogg community.
“As a long-time member of the Kellogg faculty, no one knows the school better or has a stronger commitment to our mission than Kathleen,” Blount remarked.
She continued, “She is a deep believer in business education and a highly effective leader. I’m confident that she will maintain Kellogg’s upward trajectory and ensure continuity of everything we love about Kellogg.”
After she completes her term as interim dean, Hagerty will move into the Northwestern University Office of the Provost and serve as associate provost for faculty. In this new role, she will support about 3,700 faculty members as well as develop and execute the strategic vision of faculty.
Given her knowledge of the Kellogg community and its various members, Hagerty will be able to continue the work that dean Blount has done over the past seven years and create a rock solid foundation for the next dean, whenever they may arrive. Stay tuned with Clear Admit as the search for the next Northwestern Kellogg dean continues.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
Don Jacobs, Visionary Former Kellogg Dean, Passes Away at 90
Some sad news out of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management — Don Jacobs, Kellogg’s dean from 1975 until 2001 and professor of finance since 1957, recently passed away. Continue reading…
Kellogg Welcomes New MBAs at CIM 2014
This article was originally sourced from the post on Kellogg’s news & events site, “CIM Week 2014.”
The Kellogg School of Management kicked off the 2014 school year with Complete Immersion in Management (CIM) Week. The week long happening welcomes the incoming class of MBAs to Northwestern and what lies ahead on their MBA path. Continue reading…
