MBA Program Hopes Online Game Will Lure Recruits with Prizes
Can an online game offering thousands of dollars in prizes reverse the slide in master of business administration applications?
The University of Rochester certainly hopes so. Starting Sept. 26, potential M.B.A. applicants to Rochester's William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration will begin playing a business-simulation game that promises a full scholarship of more than $70,000 to the winner, plus smaller scholarships for the runners-up. The goal is to attract top-notch applicants who may never have heard of the Simon School but find the game, and the scholarship money, enticing. "We hope to get a little viral marketing going so that people spread the word that Simon is an innovative place worth taking a look at," says Dean Mark Zupan.
Resorting to contests and prizes shows just how tough times are for full-time M.B.A. programs. The Graduate Management Admission Council reports that 72% of full-time M.B.A. programs experienced an application decline this year as more people opted to keep their jobs and seek a part-time, executive or online M.B.A. degree instead.
The Simon School contest may seem gimmicky, but it does measure participants' business skills. The Nyenrode business school in the Netherlands pulled off a much more blatant publicity stunt in March with an eBay auction for admission to its M.B.A. program.
Simon's business-strategy contest resulted from a challenge put to students on the school's advisory council to concoct ways to improve the M.B.A. program. As an incentive, alumni kicked in $10,000, half for the students with the best proposal and half to implement their idea.
Several student projects focused on the application slump, which clearly is the most pressing issue at Simon. Applications were down 23% this year, following a 24% drop in 2004. This fall, the incoming class of about 110 students compares with 150 last year and 185 in 2003. "These are the toughest years in management education I have ever seen," says Dr. Zupan.
Other schools are calling on students to help promote their M.B.A. programs. Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, which has attracted fewer applications the past few years, enlists students to send handwritten letters to promising prospects, touting the M.B.A. program and describing life at Kelley. "We find that students communicate with greater credibility," says Daniel Smith, dean of the Kelley School.
Cameron Oskvig, one of the advisory group students who dreamed up Simon's online contest, believes M.B.A. programs must figure out more creative ways to woo potential students beyond usual advertising and information fairs. With the simulation, he says, Simon can collect the names of dozens of promising applicants and follow with personalized pitches.
In the first phase of the competition, contestants will play an introduction-to-marketing game. The highest scorers will advance to a second, more difficult round of online business challenges. Finalists remaining after the second round will then visit the Rochester campus to make presentations to an admissions committee.
Michelle Schwartz, another member of the student team, says she hopes it not only will raise awareness of Simon but will also help erase the school's "stigma as a top-10-reject school," attracting students who fail to make the cut at Wharton, Columbia, Dartmouth and other prestigious schools.
Another student team surveyed prospective M.B.A.s who never bothered to apply to Simon and concluded that they were deterred most by the school's upstate New York location. Indeed, many of the students who enroll seem eager to escape their surroundings. Recruiters in this year's Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive ranking of business schools gave Simon's M.B.A.s one of their highest ratings for their willingness to relocate after graduation.
In response to negative perceptions about location, administrators are making their marketing approach more regional. They are increasingly promoting Simon to nearby liberal-arts colleges where students are presumably less concerned about the location and weather. "But if you've lived all your life in San Diego, you envision these 30-foot snowdrifts," says Dr. Zupan. "When I worked at the University of Southern California, we always lost a few applicants from other parts of the country because of earthquake fears."
The dean plans to institutionalize the advisory group project this year as a three-credit course called "Improving the Simon School" that will be open to all students. "Students have a strong stake in the school's improvement and sometimes see stuff that administrators who have been in their jobs for a long time are missing," says Dr. Zupan. "A fresh set of eyes can be wonderfully creative. It's like the old adage, 'Out of the mouths of babes.' "
He offered a similar school-improvement course while dean of the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. Students' ideas ranged from enhancing Arizona's international-exchange programs to strengthening the alumni network to buying an ice rink for students to run as a learning laboratory. That latter proposal intrigued the school's board of advisers, but to Dr. Zupan's relief it never received funding. "We would have been the only business school in North America to run an ice rink," he says, "and in the Sonoran Desert of all places."
MBA招生新招数：游戏比赛
网络游戏提供的数千美元奖金能否扭转商学院MBA申请人数下滑的势头呢？
罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)无疑希望答案是肯定的。从9月26日开始，罗切斯特大学William E. Simon商学院的MBA申请人将开始玩一种商业模拟游戏，冠军将赢得超过7万美元的全额奖学金，第二名也将获得数额稍低的奖学金。游戏比赛的目的就是要吸引那些高素质的申请人，他们可能从来没有听说过Simon商学院，但却被这个游戏以及丰厚的奖学金吸引。“我们希望通过这种有些特别的方式宣传自己，让人们觉得Simon商学院是一个注重创新的地方，值得考虑。”院长马克?朱潘(Mark Zupan)说。
靠游戏比赛和奖金来吸引生源，由此可见全日制MBA项目的日子可不怎么好过。美国管理类研究生录取委员会(The Graduate Management Admission Council, 简称：GMAC)的报告显示，今年有72%的全日制MBA项目的申请人数出现下降，更多的人选择一边工作一边攻读高管MBA或是网上MBA学位。
以游戏吸引申请者似乎像是Simon商学院搞的一个噱头，不过它毕竟能确确实实地衡量游戏玩家的商业才能。而荷兰Nyenrode商学院今年3月份在eBay搞的MBA录取拍卖，更是引起了舆论的哗然。
Simon商学院的这个商业策略游戏源于一项竞赛，就是让学生们加入商学院顾问委员会，为如何改进MBA项目荐言献策。作为对学生的激励，商学院的校友们为比赛捐助了1万美元，其中一半用于奖励那些提供了最佳建议的学生，另一半则用于将他们的建议付诸实施。
一些学生项目将重点放在申请人数下滑上，这显然正是Simon商学院面临的最大问题。今年，Simon商学院的申请人数减少了23%，去年减少了24%。今年秋季入学的学生只有110人，而去年有150人，2003年多达185人。朱潘表示，“这是我所见过的管理专业最为艰难的一年。”
其他学校则号召学生去帮助宣传各自的MBA项目。在过去几年中，印第安纳大学(Indiana University) Kelley商学院的申请人数逐年减少，于是学院号召学生亲笔写信向其他人推荐它的MBA课程，描绘美好的就业前景，并介绍这里的校园生活。Kelley商学院院长丹尼尔?史密斯(Daniel Smith)说：“我们发现通过学生进行宣传更可信。”
卡梅伦?奥斯科维奇(Cameron Oskvig)是Simon商学院顾问委员会的学生成员之一，他参与策划了这次游戏比赛。他认为，除了常用的广告宣传外，MBA项目必须寻到更有创意的方式来推销自己。他说，通过游戏模拟，Simon商学院可以挑选出一些有潜质的申请人，对他们进行个性化的测试。
在比赛的第一个阶段，游戏参与者将进行有关营销基本知识的游戏，得分最高者进入第二轮，接受难度更大的网络电子商务的挑战。第二轮过后的幸存者将有幸前往罗切斯特大学校园，并在录取委员会面前做个人陈述。
米歇尔?施瓦茨(Michelle Schwartz)也是顾问委员会的学生成员，她表示，希望游戏不仅能提高Simon商学院的知名度，而且还能够帮助学校洗去“十大录取率最低的商学院”的恶名，吸引那些被沃顿(Wharton)、哥伦比亚(Columbia)、达特茅斯大学(Dartmouth)等优秀学府拒绝的申请者。
另一个学生组织对从未考虑Simon商学院的申请人进行了调查，他们发现，这些申请人多数是因为Simon商学院的位置离纽约太远了。事实上，多数被录取的学生似乎都很想逃离身处的环境。在今年接受《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)和Harris Interactive调查的企业雇主对商学院的排名中，Simon商学院的MBA学生获得了雇主们的最高评价，因为他们在毕业后愿意被派往其他地方工作。
面对人们对学校位置的不佳印象，学校管理层将市场宣传的重点转移到地区而不是全国。他们越来越多地到附近的文科大学宣传Simon商学院，那里的学生似乎应该对位置和天气不那么在意。“不过，如果你一辈子都生活在圣地牙哥，你会考虑一下这里30英尺厚的积雪，”朱潘说，“当我在南加州大学(University of Southern California)工作的时候，每年都有其他地方的学生因为害怕地震而不愿意申请这个学校。”
朱潘计划今年将顾问委员会的项目制度化，把它变成一个有3个学分的课程，名为“完善Simon商学院”，并向所有的学生开放。“学院的进步与学生息息相关，有时候学生们能看到一些管理者长期忽略的问题，”朱潘说，新鲜的视角能带来新的创意和思路。
当他在亚利桑那大学(University of Arizona) Eller管理学院担任院长的时候，也曾推出过类似课程。学生们提出了各种各样提高学院质量的点子，包括增加国际交流、加强校友联系、为学生建立溜冰场作为学习实验室等等。最后一条建议引起了学校顾问委员会的兴趣，不过让朱潘庆幸的是，所需资金一直没有到位。“否则我们将成为北美唯一一所经营溜冰场的商学院，”他说道，“而且还是在索诺兰沙漠里。”
