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Inside Michigan's Ross: Notes from an Admissions Webinar

7 minutes ago

2 min read

On October 21, I attended a webinar with Admissions Dean Blaire Moody Rideout of the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Here are the highlights for students considering Ross, or Michigan in general.

Collaboration comes first

Ross blends Midwestern friendliness with healthy competition, but collaboration is the priority. Cohorts of 80 to 90 students keep classes small and team-centered, within a university that spends over $2 billion a year on research.

Every student gets Bloomberg access, and the Finance Lab offers FactSet, available at only five business schools. Courses now teach AI tools for financial modeling, technology and operations, and Excel macros.

Is Ross the right path?

The BBA is a broad, professional management degree built on hands-on skills. BBA graduates typically don't need an MBA unless an employer pays for or recommends it, and MBA programs prefer three to five years of work experience anyway. Of the BBA's 120 credits, 54 are liberal arts.

Ross isn't the only route to studying business, and job outcomes are similar either way. Michigan's economics major is more theoretical, with no accounting or finance courses. The School of Information offers a data science track. Tax law or accounting may fit other plans. Students should apply based on what they want to do with their interests.

No need to have it all figured out!

The first-year course BA 100 introduces every concentration, so students can explore a few specializations. Finance recruiting starts in the first semester of sophomore year.

What Ross looks for

Strong curriculum: four years of core subjects, two of a language, three each of natural and social science. However, we know that most admitted applicants have completed four years of every core subject.
Note: New AP Business courses are electives, not math courses.
Engagement: Part-time jobs and leadership stand out; internships and business clubs aren't required.
Reflective writing: Showing genuine curiosity matters more than naming professors.

The application includes a personal artifact, such as a portfolio (blogs, videos, articles, websites) or a business case. Skip research jargon: name a problem, propose a solution, and show multiple perspectives. Small community issues work best, like falling yearbook sales or a local GameStop closing. One musical theatre student with no business experience wrote about decisions she made in her theatre program. Today she holds a top business job in New York.

The takeaway

This parallels what the admissions team at UT Austin told us in their webinar: Dean Rideout and Ross value curious, collaborative problem solvers, wherever that curiosity began.