Rutgers University’s Rutgers Business School
Rutgers Business School
The take: The Flex MBA, which is the part-time program at Rutgers Business School, has seen a drop in applications as well. “We have fewer people each semester – it’s just going down and down,” says Rita Galen, director of admissions at the business school. “I’ve been wondering if it was just us. Is someone saying something about us online? Our ranking went up, and we thought that would help, but it didn’t.”
She says she doesn’t know why this has been happening, and disclosed that of the three admission terms, summer application rates have stayed about the same, while fall and spring rates have plummeted. “It’s very frustrating. Sometimes we think we’ve just exhausted everyone in the area. But of course we require a certain amount of work experience, so there are newly qualified people each year.”
The response: Applications to the traditional, full-time MBA at Rutgers have also gone down slightly, but at nowhere near the rate of the part-time program. Galen says that she isn’t sure, at this point, what approaches they’ll take if the downward trend continues. “A lot of people come to our open houses each year, so we’re probably going to go after them – people who visit but who haven’t applied yet. They’re more likely to want to attend. I don’t know what else though. We’ve done everything we can to counter it.”
DON’T MISS: Should You Go Full-Time or Part-Time? or Why I Don’t Want A Part-Time MBA
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