stat help

Irina Fedorova

Horton MBA Program

Executive Summary

Horton School of Business has been undergoing some significant changes over the past five years in its effort to attract better-quality applicants and build its reputation. In order to execute this task effectively, it is important to acknowledge that admissions procedures require different approach to ensure that the quality of admitted MBA students increases, as well as to ensure that these students will perform well within Horton Program.

The admission committee asked me to help Horton School of Business analyze student’s data over the past two years, and to determine set of qualifications required for admission process considering importance of retaining a minimum yearly admission of 60 students.

This report will focus on evaluation of suggested minimum requirements for admittance, an undergraduate GPA of 2.75 and GMAT score of 580. First, I will perform calculations to determine if suggested requirements yield the sufficient number of admitted students per year. Then I will determine the minimum UGPA and GMAT scores required to admit at least 60 MBA candidates. Lastly, I will highlight other factors that will allow Horton School of Business to determine the success of the prospective candidates in the MBA program. Performed analysis and set of new requirements will help Horton to build its reputation and create a competitive program while still maintaining a minimum number of admitted students per year.

Analysis

In order to determine the most representative and valid set of admissions requirements possible for Horton, it is important to first base the decisions of admission team on the value of a single variable. Analysis on student’s data from the past two years suggests that the best factor of success in the Horton MBA program is UGPA score (Figure 1). Taking that in consideration, we can now predict the lowest GMAT score required to be admitted into Horton MBA program. Sorting data set by UGPA and then by GMAT reveals that minimum required GMAT score was 530.

Table1

The admission committee proposed using minimum required score of 580 for GMAT and 2.75 for undergraduate GPA. Performed analysis revealed that73 students will be able to satisfy minimum admission criteria’s. It is now confirmed that combination of GMAT score and undergraduate GPA may enable Horton School of Business to improve minimum admissions requirements for its MBA program. However, data analysis suggest that the best factor of success is UGPA. Therefore, it will be better for Horton Business Scholl if admission committee consider using UGPA of 2.75 and GMAT score of 530. Proposed admission criteria’s will allow 74 quality students to be accepted to the program. While new set of qualifications doesn’t demonstrate significant difference in the total number of accepted MBA candidates, it can potentially enable Horton School of Business to increase number of quality students accepted to MBA program in the future.

Furthermore, evaluation of data set using non-n regression analysis revealed that p-value of all of the coefficients including GMAT, UGPA, MAJOR-1, MAJOR-2 are about zero. That simply means that all of the above-mentioned coefficients directly impact MBA GPA score (Table1). Correlation and covariance of the student data variables (Figure 1), undergraduate major and undergraduate school rating may be factors contributing to admission requirements.

Table 1

Predictor	Coef	SE Coef	T	P
Constant	1.5604	0.1464	10.66	0.000
GMAT	0.0025917	0.0002932	8.84	0.000
UGPA	0.21297	0.04961	4.29	0.000
UG_MAJ = 1	-0.51490	0.03874	-13.29	0.000
UG_MAJ = 2	-0.59059	0.05132	-11.51	0.000

Conclusion

In order for Horton School of business to obtain a minimum number of 60 students per year in its MBA program, it is important that admission committee adjust minimum GMAT requirement to 530 and keep UGPA requirement of 2.75. New admission criteria’s will enable the business school to cover its expenses while creating competitive edge for the prospective MBA candidates. In determining whether admitted students will be successful in the program, it is important to have a minimum GPA of 3.2 (Chart 1) or higher. In order to better predict success of the students within MBA program, it would be helpful to know additional information such as work experience and professional certifications. Additionally, a larger sample size of student data from other business schools can demonstrate further correlation to the MBA GPA. Lastly, it is highly important to determine what success means to graduate students as majority of them define success by the salary they would get after graduating from MBA program.

Appendix

Chart 1