Pictured from left to right are Daniel McCartney, Baylis Beard, and Casey Brown. Courtesy photo
When Daniel McCartney, Jessica Schleder, Casey Brown, and Baylis Beard stepped foot on the campus of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business last year they immediately noticed something that didn’t sit well with them. Only 32% of their incoming classmates slated to graduate in 2019 were women. At a time when many leading business schools have made progress in recruiting more women into their MBA programs, the four students felt Marshall was lagging.
After all, among the country’s most elite schools, 11 enrolled at least 40% women last year, led by Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which each reported 44%. Only a handful of schools among Marshall’s peers were less than that 32%, with Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in the cellar at 27%.
The students, who first met at Marshall’s Graduate Women In Business group, even researched how gender parity stacked up at the different graduate schools within USC. The results were similar. “We were shocked to see that even the engineering school had more women than the business school,” Brown says. So they decided to do whatever they could to help Marshall reach gender parity. “We thought, if we want to reach 50% and hit gender parity at Marshall, we have to do it,” McCartney adds. “We can’t rely on the school. We had to push it.”
HOW MARSHALL BECAME THE FIRST MAJOR U.S. SCHOOL TO REACH GENDER PARITY
Those early conversations led to a result that even surprised the students: This year, the Marshall School of Business has become the first major business school in the U.S. to reach gender parity in its full-time MBA program (see USC Marshall Reaches Gender Parity). The school reported that 52% of its incoming MBA students this fall will be women, a whopping 20-point percentage jump from that 32% last year. The back story on how the school was able to achieve this goal, well ahead of the students’ initial aspirations, is an inspiring tale of student activism, hard work and dedication. Ultimately, the students would deliver a highly detailed 14-page report that served as a blueprint for Marshall’s breakthrough.
It began with courtyard chats. The four would talk to anyone and everyone they could about what they thought could improve the process of getting women to enroll at USC Marshall. Then, they held organized coffee chats. And then came a survey to students in the Class of 2017. With a goal of getting Marshall’s full-time MBA program to gender parity by the year 2030, the team set out to better understand what barriers they were up against.
Some 73% of the survey respondents believed that reaching gender parity was either “important” or “very important.” The vast majority of the class believed men and women had good relationships at Marshall and that USC, in general, was a safe place for women. The problem? Most women reported that they were unaware of the school’s programming specifically designed for women, including the Marshall’s Women’s Weekend, which invites accepted and prospective students to USC Marshall to learn more about the school.
SURVEY OF CLASSMATES LED TO IMPORTANT INSIGHTS
When the group asked classmates how Marshall could improve its chances of enrolling more women, the suggestions came in fast and furious, with highly valuable insights. “During admissions and acceptance,” wrote one respondent, “I did not see any presence about inclusion, despite being a Forte member. I myself was a Forte member but I saw so much more representation from schools like Cornell, NYU, Columbia, UC Berkeley.”
Added another: “I’m not aware of being invited to participate in any programs around the diversity and inclusion of women during the admissions process or after acceptance. Once enrolled, it was the initiative of my female classmates that brought the women of our core together to support each other.”
One respondent urged better and deeper communication. “Have women stories from Marshall MBA or Alumni (just like Forte) to help women who are apprehensive feel they can do it too. When you hear from a cohort of women who are empowered, happy, strong, and successful it can be powerful. No matter how much Marshall says we have 30% women, we partner with Forte, we have a women’s resources, etc., it doesn’t carry as much weight compared to hearing from the women in the program. People relate to stories and others like them. This matters.”
PLAYING CATCHUP TO MANY OTHER ELITE MBA PROGRAMS
Many of the elite business schools have been striving for gender parity for the past five years since 2012, when only three of the top 25 schools had 40% or more women enrolled. In 2015, a similar student-led initiative cropped up at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business after consecutive incoming classes with women representing 29% and 32% of the class. The work there — and at many other schools — has led to surges in women enrolling at elite business schools. Last fall, 17 Forté Foundation member schools reported having at least 40% women in their incoming classes. This year, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management hit a record on women, reaching 46%. But no school had hit the 50% mark.
“A lot of deadlines have been set on 2020, and I am just hopeful there is a school out there that will hit that mark,” Forté Foundation Executive Director Elissa Sangster told Poets&Quants last fall. We are on a positive trend, and I don’t see that turning. This progress demonstrates that gender parity is not a pipe dream.”
“Forty percent is a place where women are no longer feeling like the minority,” she added. “It’s a welcoming environment versus 25%. Even if we are not at 50% yet, we’re getting close. There is a race to get there. Wharton and a few other schools have taken a leadership position and the others at the top have followed. Schools are taking it very seriously and they want to see this milestone of gender parity reached.”
Still, besides the women-led clubs on campuses, such as the Graduate Women in Business, and the fledgling “Manbassador” clubs popping up, most of the work to actually enroll more women has been centered in admissions offices.
Women representation at the top business schools and other graduate programs at USC. Graph from 50 by 30 Initiative report
With hard data in hand, the USC Marshall students began looking at what other schools with at least 40% women were doing. The team learned that the majority of those schools had separate webpages dedicated to women. “The website is the first touch-point in the admissions process and the face of the school,” according to the team’s robust 14-page report.
Many other schools used their web presence smartly to appeal to young professional women. The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business highlighted the fact that 62% of the graduate student clubs on campus are led by women. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management advertised weekly coffee on-campus chats every Monday and Friday as well as a Preview Day exclusively for women that included mock classes and a Q&A by career management staffers exclusively for women. The University of Washington’s Foster School of Business played up the fact that the Princeton Review ranked the school second in having the best resources for women. UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business prominently featured a video of an MBA student whose questioning of the status quo led to the student-led gender equity initiative at the school.
While USC already had a page dedicated to women at Marshall, the students concluded that it was challenging to find and did not live where it could have the most impact under the admissions section. What’s more, the students agreed that Marshall’s website should feature profiles of current female students and alumni, host school-sponsored gender equity events and initiatives, and, put an emphasis on one-one-one touch-points for women from regularly scheduled coffee and lunch chats to webinars and happy hour social events. “Most importantly, women need more, direct programs that facilitate conversations between prospective women and current women,” according to the report. “Women reported that the biggest informational influence in choosing Marshall was talking with current women in the program.”
The study also found that many schools with higher percentages of female MBA students featured profiles of women students and/or faculty. The schools that routinely did this included Stnaford, Booth, MIT Sloan, Columbia, UCLA Anderson, NYU Stern, UNC Kenan-Flagler and Emory Goizueta. “By highlighting what women are doing for women, these schools display a deep sense of community, inclusivity and support that many prospective women are looking for in a business school,” the report concluded. The Marshall students also discovered that three quarters of the schools with public initiatives and centers to increase gender equity and/or women’s progress have achieved female MBA enrollments topping 40%.
Students at the USC Marshall full-time MBA orientation Monday, July 23 at Town & Gown. (Photo/William Vasta)
THE PUSH ON THE ADMINISTRATION
Armed with the data — and an action plan to boot — the team went to the administration. Conversations with the administration at Marshall started off slow, McCartney says. “It was a slow build where we had to gain our own credibility,” McCartney admits. But as the team gathered the data and put together reports, talks with professors, deans, and the admissions office picked up. And when the data was compiled into the report, the conversations quickly became serious, McCartney says.
“That showed the administration that we were serious and we had something that they would want,” he says. “I think it came down to walking a fine line that we wanted to do this with the administration, but we were also going to do it no matter what.”
The team says the administration deserves the “lion’s share of the credit,” but also agreed it was the initial student-led activism not just from them, but dozens of other Marshall students, that led to the emphasis on enrolling more women.
“We were able to make it a movement enough to be a priority, and they were able to run with the priority,” McCartney says. “It was students pushing the administration. But then it was the administration taking that pressure and turning it into action. That is what really made this happen.”
‘IF THERE’S ONLY X AMOUNT OF WOMEN AND HALF OF THEM GET INTO HARVARD….’
Still, there are multiple variables many business schools have to overcome when striving for gender parity, the team admits. For one, Beard says, it comes down to the stage of life as well as timing and money. “The cost was a thing,” she says of her own personal journey to B-school, a point affirmed in her talks with some of her fellow women in the program. “The time that a woman is thinking about business schools is often also the time they are thinking about marriage and family,” she adds. “That initial decision of having to maybe choose between the two could be tough.”
Plus, Brown adds, the schools ranked 15th to 25th are fighting an uphill battle against such higher-ranked schools as Wharton and Kellogg, or Harvard and Stanford. There’s little evidence that more women are actually in the overall MBA applicant pool so that schools with more brand power have an advantage over others in increasing female enrollment. In fact, several second-tier business schools have seen the percentage of women in their MBA programs drop to levels unseen in ten or more years as more selective schools dipped deeper into the applicant pool. “If there’s only X amount of women and half of them get into Harvard, it’s pretty hard to make that case not to go to Harvard. And that definitely plays into it,” explains Brown.
“One of the biggest problems is yield (the percentage of admitted applicants who enroll),” according to the students’ report. “Women historically have decided to attend other schools. While this may be due to scholarship money in some cases, our survey results indicate that the decision to go elsewhere is fueled by the lack of visibility of existing resources (such as the Women’s Weekend — 66% of women students surveyed did not know about it) and lack of personal touch-points in the admissions process. Our prospective women want and need more information about being a woman at Marshall.”
The leadership team for the USC Marshall chapter of Graduate Women in Business. Courtesy photo
MORE AGGRESSIVELY PROMOTING A DIALED UP WOMEN’S WELCOME WEEKEND
The tipping point for Marshall, the team believes, came down to Women’s Welcome weekend held last January. According to Brown, the organizers loaded the event with first- and second-year students — both men and women. “We had tons of other men in our program that were just so invested in this issue. Surprisingly to me, to be frank,” Brown says. The prospective students attending were able to ask questions first-hand to current students and get a real sense of the lay of the land for women at USC Marshall. “From there we stayed connected monthly with each of the women that attended,” she adds.
Marshall’s Director of MBA Admissions concurs that the increased communication and contact with admitted and prospective students played a heavy hand in the school’s ability to reach gender parity.
“Our students pretty aggressively recruited people we liked and especially people we admitted,” Bouffides told Poets&Quants last month. “We have a lot of women involved in the ambassador group and our Graduate Women in Business club also helped to convince people to come.
“It strikes me that the quality in the overall pool was the strongest that I have seen and stronger than last year,” he added. “Had I known last year that the cycle would end up with 2,000 applicants maybe we could have done better. So some of it is processes. Some of it is the terrific work of our students and staff, and there’s probably a little luck in there.”
‘WE WANT TO PUT PRESSURE ON THE OTHER SCHOOLS’
The work paid off. The school increased total applications slightly to 2,017 for this year’s incoming class compared to 1,998. Average GMAT scores and GPAs also ticked up slightly while jumping 20 full percentage points in women enrolled. Yield for women surged to 40.1% from 31.3% for last year’s entering class. Overall, Marshall’s yield for its full-time MBA program last year was 38.7%.
But the work is not done, the team says.
“The mistake a lot of business schools make is they get a tremendous amount of lip service,” McCartney says, referencing the commonality of touting things like Manbassadors and women in leadership roles, even if the percentage of women in the program is still small. “If you want to change culture, you have to have 50% women. Then the culture will change almost instantaneously.”
And now the USC team is looking to see if other top business schools to follow suit.
“We want this to be across the U.S. This isn’t a USC problem, it’s an all business school problem and we want to increase the pipeline,” McCartney says. “We want to put pressure on the other schools. I want every dean and administration to know that next year, they should want to come in second (to Marshall) with most amount of women enrolled.”
To read the team’s full report, go here. And for the team’s PowerPoint presentation, go here.
DON’T MISS: USC MARSHALL REACHES GENDER PARITY or MBA PROGRAMS WITH THE MOST WOMEN
The post The Untold Story Behind Marshall’s Gender Parity MBA Breakthrough appeared first on Poets&Quants.
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