Columbia Business School’s Michael Robinson
Twenty years ago, Michael Robinson was a successful music publicist who counted among his clients Shaggy, the Jamaican musician, singer, and DJ. Robinson, himself a native of Jamaica but a resident of New York City for many years, spent more than a decade in the music biz and did the press for Shaggy’s 1995 platinum-selling, Grammy-winning album Boombastic. The young publicist’s path seemed set.
He had never even heard of a MBA. But by the late 1990s, big changes were underway in the hip-hop scene, and “the music kind of went in a direction where I didn’t want it to go.” It became more about materialism, more violent, more misogynistic. He was done — but what was next? Trying to figure out what to do with his life, Robinson settled on business school — and being a New Yorker, he applied to Columbia.
“I consider myself a young man who found his way eventually,” says Robinson, who proudly describes himself as “a ’90s hip-hop guy.” “At the time I applied to Columbia, I did not know one person who had an MBA — not one. My friends were writers and producers and more on the creative side. So I had nothing in terms of admissions or application advice — but despite that, I was able to get in. My story was a little different, and I am very thankful for that.”
Robinson graduated from Columbia Business School in 2001, but he didn’t just earn a MBA — he found a place to make a career, taking a position with the admissions team a year later. Sixteen years later, he’s still helping Columbia pick the hundreds of new MBA candidates that it admits every year. “I love what I do,” says Robinson, whose current title is associate director of MBA admissions. “And more importantly, I like talking to young people and helping them figure out what the next step is in their life.”
THE VALUE OF VALUES IN ADMISSIONS, AND THE STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY
Michael Robinson of Columbia Business School
Columbia recently released its latest class profile and the big news was the average GMAT score, which jumped eight points to a record 732. But when Robinson talks about the admissions process at CBS, he de-emphasizes numbers and data and instead stresses the importance of values — “values that have been honed and developed over our 100-year history.” In particular he talks about how diversity results in better decision making, a process he calls “magic.”
“When you put together smart, accomplished young professionals from fifty to sixty countries who speak dozens of languages, magic happens,” Robinson tells Poets&Quants, citing a recent New York Times op-ed by Steven Johnson that explains how the decision-making process that comes from diverse groups is harder to do but better for all in the end.
“Homogeneous groups,” Johnson writes, “whether they are united by ethnic background, gender or some other commonality like politics, tend to come to decisions too quickly. They settle early on a most-likely scenario and don’t question their assumptions, since everyone at the table seems to agree with the broad outline of the interpretation.
“A 2008 study led by (Columbia) management professor Katherine Phillips using a similar investigative structure revealed an additional, seemingly counterintuitive finding: While the more diverse groups were better at reaching the truth, they were also far less confident in the decisions they made. They were both more likely to be right and, at the same time, more open to the idea that they might be wrong.”
Yes, Columbia’s average GMAT score is high and rising. But Robinson says it’s the students at the lower end of the spectrum who often intrigue him more. “I’m actually more interested in the people who are in the 500s and the 600s,” he says, “because if you listen to those stories, those people have the most amazing stories. I’ve been here 16 years and I’ve seen some amazing things.”
THOUGHTS ON DEAN GLENN HUBBARD STEPPING DOWN
When Poets&Quants reported last week that long-time CBS Dean Glenn Hubbard intends to step down, Robinson reflected on the impact Hubbard has had his own career at the school — and the fact that he, Robinson, now is one of the longest-serving members of Columbia’s administration.
“When I heard the news,” he says, “my immediate reaction was a mix of sadness and pride. Sadness because Dean Hubbard was stepping down and pride because of how we have grown as an institution under his leadership. There’s a word that’s top of mind for me right now, and that is ‘stewardship,’ defined as ‘the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.’ Dean Hubbard to me embodied good stewardship: from raising over a billion dollars, to fostering a more collaborative and interdisciplinary approach to academics, to placing more emphasis on diversity.
“And since I view things through the lens of admissions, Dean Hubbard provides a great example for our students and young alumni, many of whom will run and lead organizations one day. They too should aspire to be builders of enterprise and good stewards of that enterprise.
“Yes, he will still teach here, but I will miss his leadership.”
(See our Q&A with Michael Robinson, edited for length and clarity, in the following pages.)
Columbia Business School. Courtesy photo
You got out of the music business in the late 1990s. Why?
I started at Columbia in 1999, and that was right before Napster. Pretty much the year I started, the industry started to decline dramatically. I always say that this generation listens to more music than any other generation, but they just don’t want to pay for it. So it’s a lot more complicated in terms of business model.
After getting your MBA in 2001, did you join the Columbia admissions team right away?
I joined the following year. I graduated during the recession that started in 2001, and I was working in media strategy for Panasonic and ended up losing my job. Initially, I thought I would do a short stint in admissions until I figured out what my next step would be, and 16 years later I’m still here. I love what I do, and more importantly, I like talking to young people and helping them figure out what the next step is in their life.
I don’t consider myself a gatekeeper, I’m just part of a team that is ably led by (Assistant Dean of Admissions) Amanda Carlson, whose leadership style empowers people. She doesn’t mind who gets the credit.
What else has kept you in Columbia admissions so long?
Michael Robinson, right, with Jamaican artist Shaggy. Courtesy photo
I wear a social justice lens on my sleeve. Many of the people I worked with in music, it was the first time they had made money legally. When their popularity started to wane, some of them started to do things that they should not do. So you learn that access to opportunity is not broadly distributed. But you all learn that talent is everywhere. The fact that here at Columbia I have some sort of voice in trying to provide more access to opportunity is something that really keeps me grounded, and it comes from a place when I was a young person and saw lots of young people who were very smart and very driven, the most ambitious people I’ve ever met, and still it was very hard to make it. So hard.
But again, they were mostly outside of the educational system, and without music they just didn’t have anything else. So I keep that as part of my makeup. And one of the things that has happened in the time that I have been at Columbia — and this has happened at all the top schools as well — is that there is a growing social sector in terms of social entrepreneurship and social responsibility. That’s a growing piece of what we do. So I get excited when I hear someone say “I want to use the MBA to help transform education,” or, “I want to use the MBA to transform the way healthcare is delivered in the country where I’m from, because I grew up in rural name-the-country and I lost a parent or aunt or uncle because of inadequate healthcare because of things that people in the West think are relatively simple.” Things like that keep me going.
What do you tell people about Columbia who are inclined toward roles with social responsibility?
I try not to say “Columbia is the right choice for them,” what I tend to do is explain what our values are. I explain our value proposition, and then I listen to them, and then hopefully there’s a meeting of the minds. In the end, you want that young person to become their best self as a leader, and if they decide that we are the right place, that’s a wonderful thing.
To build on what I said about the social sector, I think one of the key things that has happened in recent years with the Tamer Center (for Social Enterprise), is there has been more funding through that family, so it’s possible to get up to 10 years of loan forgiveness. The reality is, our kids are graduating with about $100,000 in debt, right? So that limits your choices. So then what does the institution need to do to make outcomes more realistic for people, where they can have a good life and pay their loans back if they borrowed to go to school? So we have to act as well. And I think we have.
Columbia Business School. Courtesy photo
Columbia’s applications were down 2.6% this year. Did the admissions team make any adjustments in response to the reduced number of applications? And what can you tell P&Q‘s readers about the 8-point increase in CBS’ average GMAT score, up to 732?
No. We had a slight drop in applications, but you’re still talking about over 6,000 applications to build a class. The pool is strong. If you’re looking at a pool where the typical GMAT average is 710 or so, the pool is strong. I think our results are reflective of what’s happening in this space.
As far as the GMAT, you’re talking to someone who has issues with what’s happening. If someone sees the headline and it says “732,” they say, “What does that mean? Does it mean I have no shot to get in to Columbia because I don’t have that kind of GMAT score?” If you look at people who achieve high executive function, people who are leaders at very high levels, those who are the most effective are not necessarily the people that have the highest IQ. They have things where they’re really strong in terms of emotional intelligence, social intelligence; they can convince people to provide them with resources, they can convince people to join teams, they can convince and motivate to change direction in mid-stream, and so on. What really drives success? I think it’s the non-quantitative factors.
Look at the GMAT. It is literally a quant test with a verbal component, and the quant piece is work that a good high school math student has learned. So if you said to me the best way to identify the best leader is to give them a high school math test with a verbal and logic component, and the person that gets the best score is the best leader — that’s not true. So what’s the balance?
I’m actually more interested in the people who are in the 500s and the 600s, because if you listen to those stories, those people have the most amazing stories. I’ve been here 16 years and I’ve seen some amazing things.
But the GMAT is still what draws attention, from applicants, from press, from others.
I noticed from your story that we are tied (in average GMAT) with Wharton and Kellogg. There is a top-10 group, and there is a top-three, and we want to be in that place. It’s a place that is reflective of what we’re seeing — test scores definitely have increased from the time when I was taking the test myself. I’m not sure I’d get into Columbia right now! And that’s a very real thing, too. But we want to be in the top three in terms of test scores. There is no discussion about that whatsoever. But you have a process, and you start your process and you end up in a certain place.
There has been a big push thankfully for gender parity and so on, and many of the top schools are over 40%. When I started, it was weird to see a school above 35%. That’s a good thing, right? So last year we were 41% and this year we are 39%. That wasn’t intentional either, but we’re making the best decisions for our class. All of which is to say, we don’t have a quota system or anything like that. The GMAT and the other measures are just the way things shook out.
But in the end, I want to judge what we do in 2020 and 2018 by what our students, who are then alums, do in 10 years, on 15 years, in 20 years. And we want them to be the kind of people who are adding real value to the organizations that they are a part of. But also we want them to be good people who make their world a better place.
The Columbia admissions team, photographed in 2015. Michael Robinson is front row, second from left; Amanda Carlson, currently assistant dean of admissions, is third from left. File photo
If we’re not making 732 the headline, how about going the other direction? What’s the lowest GMAT score in this fall’s incoming class?
The lowest GMAT is a 530. I won’t out the person but it’s someone I personally have met, and met multiple times. Typically, we will always have handful of people in the 500s, the low 600s, and there will be dozens of people with test scores in that range.
All of the people we admit typically have engaged with the admissions committee or an individual member at an event or on the road. They’ve spoken to current students or alumni and those alums have said something on their behalf. There’s a place in our process for personal advocacy, so we know the people we admit, or we try to know them as best we can. The people who are on the lower end of the spectrum, typically that’s just the test score dimension. There typically is an offset, so what you very rarely see is someone that has a low test score and also a very low GPA. In the end, we need to be confident that they are going to be OK in the classroom, and it’s irresponsible for any school to admit someone that they think is going to fail.
So we’re looking for that offset. And sometimes the offset could be supplemental coursework — there’s some people by the nature of their work, which is highly quantitative, they come in knowing how to evaluate companies. That person will typically be fine in the classroom. So were looking for things like that.
The people who are in the lower end of the spectrum, someone on the committee may go to bat for them. “I know their test score is 100 points lower, but this is why we need to bring them in.” But if you’re going to bring in someone who is a 650 and you’re turning down four or five people who have test scores in the 740 to 770 range, then the question you have to ask yourself is, “Why?” You have to have a good reason. Just anecdotally, some of the most impressive people in our class are in the bottom third of the class academically.
Columbia Business School. Courtesy photo
So applicants need to get your attention in some unique or creative way?
No. Sometimes I’m very fearful of the unique or creative application because someone will hear my words and say, “Oh, if I just do this, then that’s what Columbia is looking for.” And it’s not that. It’s literally what they did and what they accomplished that was just extraordinary. You see this person making a series of decisions that indicate they are preparing themselves to do something very, very special.
The people who do better in our process do more with a given set of inputs than their peer group — and they do it with a sense of humility, and they have a history of empowering others.
Amanda (Carlson), my boss, is a good example of what I’m talking about. She knows the names of the people who clean up our trash every day. She knows their names and she knows the names of their kids. There are not many bosses like that. And I’m talking to you because she shares the credit. When you have more leaders that do that, you want to work for that person. That person can build something very special.
I love to read and I love learning about American presidents. Even though I didn’t vote for him, there’s something about Ronald Reagan that I’ve always admired. He used to keep something on his desk in the Oval Office — a plaque, and the words resonated with me for many years. “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit.”
Building upon that, and part of what it means to be a leader, how often do you spend time listening to people who have a different point of view from your own? The more we do that, the more we engage in that way, the better we become. There’s something to be said about real empathy.
Related to topic of presidents — what are you hearing from international applicants regarding their concerns about coming to the U.S.? Is it common to hear those concerns?
Yes, it’s common. I’ve been doing admissions now for 16 years, and I’ve heard more concern and more questions about our political leadership in the last two than in the 14 years prior. That’s a fact.
But the thing is, it is not our job to be political, it is not our job to opine on immigration policy. I think what schools need to do, and what we do, is more affirmation of our own values. What does that mean? I have been a student or administrator here for a long time. I’ve seen it from the classroom and I’ve seen it as an observer: When you put people from 50-60 different countries — people who are smart, driven, accomplished, who speak dozens of languages — in a room, magic happens. It literally happens. I’ve seen it personally.
On top of that, there’s a growing body of research into how to make better decisions. One of our own, (management professor) Katherine Phillips, did a study in 2008 looking at the way people make decisions, and what she found was that diverse teams come up with a much more robust solution set from which you can basically make a better decision. The thing to be clear about is, it also makes a decision more difficult — if you want to make an easy, quick decision, put the people who look the same, speak the same language, same race, same gender, put them together. But with people who are different, and when you empower that difference, that group with the contrarian views will come up with better solution sets.
One of the things that happened recently was the temporary ban on people from certain countries. We had a young man in our class at the time who was from Sudan. His classmates voted him to be one of the co-presidents of the class. And the thing about this young person is, if you’re from Sudan, you cannot access any loans. So his family sold houses to finance his education. If you ever met this young man, you’d see he is one of the nicest men you’ve ever met. He graduated and he’s at Microsoft now. He’s a wonderful person. His father was imprisoned. His brother was tortured. So he is part of a pro-democracy movement in his country. And at one point our country made a decision that “You can’t come in.”
So his classmates voted him president, not because of the way he had suffered but because he’s a great person. The point is, his presence in our classroom made everyone around him better. And I could say the same thing for so many others, because again, the values that I have described are values that have been honed and developed over our 100-year history. We started in 1916, so we have seen for decades that when you have people from 50 countries in your class, it’s a good thing. When you have faculty, most of whom are either not from the U.S. or worked outside of the U.S., that is a good thing. It makes the world better.
DON’T MISS COLUMBIA GMATs SOAR 8 POINTS TO A RECORD 732 and COLUMBIA PROBED FOUR SEPARATE HARASSMENT CASES AT ITS B-SCHOOL IN ONE YEAR
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