Ask the AdCom: Fun Facts About Your School

Hey everybody! We’re back with another installment of “Ask the AdCom,” where we share a wide range of tips, trivia, and advice from admissions team members from a dozen top business schools. Since AdCom members are human, too, we know our readers will enjoy seeing  a different side of what makes these guys tick.

This fun space is not really about the application process but more about real-life topics, like what’s a good book to readbest place to study, where you can find a killer meal near campus, and all the fun stuff happening at b-school that creates those lifelong, cherished memories for MBA students.

We hope you become inspired, too!

Ask the AdCom

Today’s question is: What’s a fun fact that most people don’t know about your school?

Judi Byers, Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, asked Sydney Chernish, MBA ’16, who said: “Cornell is home to one of the five copies of the Gettysburg Address, illuminated manuscripts, an ice cream production line, and a large brain collection. Any person, any study!”

Shari Hubert, Associate Dean of MBA Admissions  at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, mentions Hoya Saxa, the school’s mantra, which means “What Rocks” (Hoya is Ancient Greek for what and Saxa is Latin for rocks).

“For the 14th-oldest university and the oldest Jesuit university in the United States to have a very modern, millennial sounding mantra – that was developed in the late 1800s — is fun, yet oxymoronic at the same time,” says Hubert.

Also of note: 100% of the construction funding for the Rafik Hariri Building (McDonough School of Business), which opened in 2009, came from alumni donations.

Morgan Bernstein, Executive Director of Full-Time MBA Admissions at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, informs us that Haas was founded in 1898 with the financial support of a woman, Cora Jane Flood. It was the second b-school founded in the United States.

Kelly R. Wilson, Executive Director of Admissions at CMU Tepper School of Business, says that artificial intelligence, computer science and management science (data-driven decision making) were founded at the Tepper School or by Tepper School faculty.

 Allison Jamison, Admissions Director at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explains that Fuqua was founded by a grant from JB Fuqua.  “Mr. Fuqua grew up on a farm in Virginia, and sent a letter to Duke University asking if the school would send him some books from its library.

“The lending relationship continued for many years, and while Mr. Fuqua never went to college, he educated himself and became a multi-millionaire businessman.  His donation to Duke University was used to found the business school named in his honor.”

John Roeder, Assistant Dean Graduate Admissions at SMU Cox School of Business, reminisces about the time when George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush visited Southern Methodist University in 2013 for the opening of the Bush Library at SMU.

“It marked only the second time in U.S. history that 5 current or former U.S. presidents were in the same location at the same time,” Roeder says. “Being two blocks away from the Bush Library, the Cox school had a front-row seat of the festivities.”

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Such interesting trivia, right? Look out for the #AskAdCom in our social media channels, and we’ll see you again next week when we check in to Ask the AdCom about their famous alumni.

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