Cornell MBA Taps into LinkedIn to Ease Admissions Process: MBA News

By Tim Dhoul Updated Aug 27, 2019

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Cornell Johnson to start new trend in MBA admissions?

Cornell MBA Taps into LinkedIn to Ease Admissions Process: MBA News main image

Prospective Cornell MBA students can now draw on their LinkedIn profiles when filling out their application forms for the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

The option to prefill part of the Cornell MBA admissions form with information garnered from LinkedIn has been included to speed up the procedure. However, it also grants the university access to a person’s full profile which, “allows us to see the candidate the same way their professional peers do, or headhunters do,” Ann Richards, interim director of admissions and director of financial aid at Cornell Johnson, told Inside Higher Ed.

Cornell Johnson claims to be the first higher education institution – let alone business school – to utilize LinkedIn in this way. This is something LinkedIn could neither confirm nor deny, as the school’s MBA admissions form is making use of the website’s open platform – used by at least 30,000 other sites for uses that are difficult to track.

Cornell Johnson to start new trend in MBA admissions?

Regardless of whether or not it’s the first, the option to make use of your LinkedIn profile to secure a place on the Cornell MBA could instigate a new trend.

“LinkedIn works particularly well for MBA candidates because the majority of them have full-time work experience, sometimes five to seven years of full-time work experience,” Richards explained.

The benefits of LinkedIn in growing a professional network are well-documented and, in a press release, Cornell Johnson confirms that its MBA admissions officers are interested in how an individual builds a network and stands out from the crowd through their use of the site.

The decision to open up Cornell Johnson’s admissions to LinkedIn came after a successful test-run on the one-year MBA program available at Cornell Tech in New York City, which enrolled its inaugural class in May.

The feature can now be used on both the one and two-year Cornell MBA programs, although the school was quick to point out that you would not be putting yourself at any disadvantage by not making use of the new feature.

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Tim Dhoul

Tim is a writer with a background in consumer journalism and charity communications. He trained as a journalist in the UK and holds degrees in history (BA) and Latin American studies (MA).