By Linh Tat
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The Anderson School at UCLA is attracting more diverse
applicants, but it still seems less appealing to women.
Students entering the Masters in Business Administration program
this fall were up against the second-highest applicant pool in the
school’s history.
For the 330 available spots, 4,563 people applied to the
program, down from last year’s 4,926 applicants. But with a
15.1 percent acceptance rate, The Anderson School is still
considered one of the most selective business programs in the
nation, school officials said.
“There are several reasons we think applications have
increased over time,” said Bill Broesamle, associate dean of
the M.B.A. program. “This school is seen as well-connected to
the high-tech and biotechnological field in addition to the media,
entertainment, and communication.”
He said many applicants are attracted to the school because of
its location in Southern California, which is blooming with such
businesses.
Though the number of applicants are rising, they are still
predominantly men. Only 29 percent of the original applicants and
30 percent of admitted students this year were women, said Linda
Baldwin, director of admissions to the M.B.A. program.
Broesamle said that in 1985, the percentage of women at The
Anderson School peaked at 38 percent. By 1995, women comprised 30
percent of the program.
“Other professional fields like medicine and law have
about an equal proportion of women and men. That is not true in
business school. We don’t know why,” Broesamle
said.
“Certainly our women graduates do extremely well, so
it’s not a matter of women finding less opportunities when
they graduate,” he said.
Some women may be deterred from enrolling because most students
enroll in business programs in their late 20s, which coincides with
the time many women consider starting a family, said Lynn Lipinski,
a spokeswoman for The Anderson School.
The average grade point average of admitted students the past
two years was 3.6. Also, applicants this year averaged 702 out of a
possible score of 800 on the Graduate Management Admission Test
““ up 12 points from last year, placing those students in the
97th percentile.
This year, 15 of the admitted students hold a medical or law
degree, and seven have doctorate degrees.
“People are going to be very credentialed in the next few
decades, marrying the business degree with other degrees,”
Baldwin said.
Additionally, 24 percent of last year’s entering students
held an undergraduate degree in business. Economics and engineering
students followed suit, with both disciplines making up another 21
percent each of the overall admittance pool.
“You will see increasingly the percentage of people coming
from other areas rather than simply business,” Baldwin said.
“You’ll find people with technical backgrounds who want
to be in the policy- and decision-making world. Engineers find this
is their vehicle to participate in the new economy or to be owners
and entrepreneurs.”
While some applicants think fewer students are accepted to a
graduate school on the same campus from which they earned their
undergraduate degree, Baldwin said the admissions office does
accept UCLA students.
But, she added, the school receives more applications from UC
Berkeley and Stanford students.
“You see a lot of reversed north-south trend,”
Baldwin said. “People who went to schools in Northern
California apply to schools in Southern California. They already
know what it’s like in the north. They’re interested in
seeing a different environment.”
The average age of entering students this year is 27.6, but
admissions officers look more at the applicants’ experience
than age, Baldwin said.
“Too often most college students think it’s the age
number, but it’s never the number,” she said.
“It’s always a much more qualitative thing called the
experience and the focus one has in wanting this educational
experience.”