MBA News: U.S. B-Schools Increasing Overseas Recruiting

As a response to the improved quality of overseas business schools, the high expense of American schools and the tough U.S. employment situation, many U.S. business schools are seeing a decline in foreign applications and are thus stepping up their international recruiting efforts. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, schools are now sending more admissions officers and alumni to recruit abroad in countries such as Japan, Korea, India, Russia, Peru and Germany. The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is even focusing on recruiting in new places, such as Turkey and countries in Africa, and is asking their students who do international internships to represent them at various recruiting events while overseas. At Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business, where international applications fell from 38% for the class of 2011 to 27% for the class of 2012, the school participated in an online career fair in April in hopes of drawing more international candidates. Business schools in general certainly want to see high international enrollment to help boost prestige and global credibility, but the admissions office in particular also needs to keep their applications numbers up and yield high, because both are factors in the ever important rankings.