Five days after a critical story on Wharton was published in The Wall Street Journal, director of MBA admissions and financial aid Ankur Kumar has resigned her job.
《华尔街日报》（The Wall Street Journal）日前发表了一篇有关沃顿商学院（Wharton）的评论文章。文章发表五天之后，沃顿商学院MBA招生及助学金事务主任安库尔•库马尔宣布辞职。
Kumar, who had been in the position for just two years, apparently told staff last week that she was resigning. In a note to colleagues on Wednesday -- two days before the publication of theJournal article -- Kumar said she had been "pursuing several different opportunities in New York City in the past few months."
库马尔担任这个职务仅有两年时间，她在九月底对同事表示自己将要辞职。《华尔街日报》的文章发表前两天，库马尔曾经给同事发信息，称她自己在“过去几个月，一直在纽约市寻找其他工作机会。”
In a blog post today to Wharton's prospective applicants, Kumar announced that her last day would be Oct. 4. "As they say, all good things must come to an end, and after nearly five years -- and one of the most professionally and personally rewarding experiences -- it's time for new adventures," wrote Kumar.
库马尔本月初发表了一篇面向沃顿商学院潜在申请者的博客，她表示自己在沃顿商学院的任期将到10月4日结束。库马尔写道：“俗话说，天下没有不散的筵席。我在这里度过了五年左右时间，现在是时候开始新的探险了。这五年也是对我的职业和个人最有价值的一段时光。”
The timing of her announcement is both unusual and awkward, coming only one day after Wharton's round one deadline. "It's like Santa Claus quitting on Dec. 24th after spending the summer touring shopping malls around the world asking toddlers what they wanted for Christmas," said Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com and an MBA admissions consultant.
她宣布辞职的时机不同寻常，而且不合时宜，因为在此之前一天，沃顿商学院刚刚结束了第一轮招生。入学申请咨询公司HBSGuru.com创始人、MBA入学申请顾问桑迪•克瑞斯伯格说：“这就好比圣诞老人夏天到世界各地的购物中心，问小朋友们圣诞节想要什么，然后到12月24日平安夜这天却宣布辞职一样。”
"This is not a decision I made impetuously; I did not want to start an application cycle that I could not commit to finishing. Nothing would be less fair to you, to my team, the school, and our alumni and other important stakeholders. It has been an absolute privilege to serve my alma mater in this role and a true honor to bring five incredible classes to the MBA program."
“辞职并不是心血来潮的决定；我不想开始一轮我无法保证能够完成的入学申请周期。这对于诸位、我的团队、学校、我们的校友以及其他重要的利益相关者们而言都是一个公平的决定。能够为我的母校服务是我无上的荣耀，能为学校招来五个出类拔萃的班级也让我倍感自豪。”
Kumar's abrupt resignation means that the school will end up having five different admission directors in just eight years, a highly unusual amount of turnover at such a prominent business school. Her predecessor, J.J. Cutler, also left in 2011 after serving for two years, only to return to Aramark where he had previously worked as a marketing executive. Thomas Caleel took over the job in 2005 with the departure of Rose Martinelli, who left for the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. But Caleel left within three years, in 2008.
库马尔的突然辞职意味着沃顿商学院在八年内先后有过五位招生主任。在这样一所久负盛名的商学院，这样的人员流动频率很不寻常。库马尔的前任J.J.卡特勒在学院任职两年后，于2011年离职，回到他之前工作的爱玛客公司（Aramark）担任营销总监。2005年，罗斯•马蒂内利离开沃顿商学院，前往芝加哥大学布斯商学院（University of Chicago's Booth School of Business），由汤姆斯•凯利尔接任招生主任一职。而凯利尔在三年后也选择了离开。
In an Oct. 2 memo to students and faculty, Wharton School Dean Tom Robertson said that the admissions team will continue to operate under Maryellen Lamb, the school's former careers director, who was named deputy vice dean in September for MBA admissions, financial aid, and career management.
沃顿商学院院长汤姆•罗伯逊在10月2日给学生和教职员工的公告中称，招生团队将在学院前就业办公室主任玛丽琳•莱布的带领下继续正常运营。玛丽琳•莱布于今年九月被提名为代理副院长，负责MBA招生、助学金和职业管理。
To her credit, Kumar helped lead Wharton to record female enrollment, even when applications were declining. For years, the percentage of women enrolled in top-ranked business schools stubbornly remained in the 33% to 36% range. Kumar helped Wharton assume a lead over all top schools three years ago by putting together an incoming class that was 40% female. The following year, she did even better, pushing the number of first-year women to 45% of the class. "It's a pretty significant accomplishment, especially during a downward trend in application volume," added Stacey Oyler, an admissions consultant with Clear Admit.
虽然商学院入学申请人数在下降，但多亏库马尔的功劳，女性入学人数创下了历史记录。多年来，顶级商学院录取的女性比例始终保持在33%至36%之间。三年前，库马尔招收了一个女性占40%的班级，帮助沃顿商学院领先于其他所有顶级商学院。第二年，她更是将一年级新生的女生比例提高到45%。入学顾问公司Clear Admit的入学顾问史黛丝•奥伊勒补充说：“这是非常了不起的成就，尤其是在总申请人数减少的趋势下。”
And though applications continued to decline this past year, the MBA class that entered this fall boasts record GMAT scores -- an average of 725, up seven points from the previous year.
虽然沃顿商学院去年的入学申请人数持续减少，但今年秋入学的MBA班级的GMAT平均分却达到了创纪录的725分，比之前一年高出了7分。
Still, for Kumar, who joined Wharton's admissions staff as senior associate director in 2009, it has been a turbulent ride. In the past five years, applications to Wharton's MBA program have fallen by 17.2%. Kumar had earlier attributed the decline to new competition from B-schools in Europe and Asia. But while many rival schools also suffered declines, the falloffs have not been nearly as steep, and in the past year, applications to many peer schools have turned around. Not at Wharton, where the school had a 5.8% drop in applications. Rival Chicago Booth reported a 10% increase. Finance rival and powerhouse Columbia Business School had a 7% rise, and Harvard was also up, by a more modest 4%.
库马尔于2009年加入沃顿商学院的招生团队，担任高级副主任。对她而言，这也是一段动荡不安的经历。过去五年，沃顿商学院MBA入学申请人数减少了17.2%。库马尔曾将这种状况归因于亚洲和欧洲商学院的竞争。虽然许多竞争对手也出现了申请人数下滑的情况，但情况都没有沃顿那么严重。去年，许多商学院的申请人数都有所回升。但沃顿商学院却依然下滑了5.8%。竞争对手芝加哥布斯商学院的入学申请人数增加了10%。收入方面的竞争对手、著名的哥伦比亚商学院（Columbia Business School）增加了7%，哈佛商学院（Harvard）也增加了4%。
More importantly, perhaps, there have been a series of miscues by the school's admissions office in recent years. In 2010, Wharton's confidential instructions to its alumni interviewers -- along with the behavioral interview questions -- had been leaked and were being sold to applicants by some admissions consultants. The leaked slideshow included all six questions, suggestions for follow-ups, as well as detailed guidelines for how to grade the applicants' answers. The upshot: applicants who were willing to pay for help were getting inside information that made it far more likely they would do well in the crucial interview session, the final hurdle to an acceptance.
更重要的是，近几年沃顿商学院招生办公室出现了一系列的失误。2010年，沃顿商学院机密的面试官指导材料以及行为面试问题泄露，一些入学咨询公司将这些资料出售给了申请者。被泄密的幻灯片中包括六个问题，跟进的提问建议，以如何对申请者的回答进行打分的详细标准。泄密事件后果是：愿意花钱接受培训的申请者将从这些顾问那里获得内幕信息，从而大大提高面试成功的可能性。而面试是横亘在申请者面前的最后一道录取障碍。
It was under Kumar that Wharton decided to no longer use second-year students as first readers on MBA applications, a move that some students felt disenfranchised them from the admissions process. It was telling, too, that a major change in admissions policy last year was announced not by Kumar but Karl T. Ulrich, Wharton's vice dean for innovation. That change, the introduction of a novel team-based discussion component to the admissions process, may have led to at least part of the fall in this past year's applications to Wharton, turning off applicants who speak English as a second language.
在库马尔的影响下，沃顿商学院决定不再由二年级学生进行MBA申请的第一轮面试，此举被许多学生认为，是剥夺了他们参与录取过程的权利。据称，去年沃顿商学院对招生政策进行了大规模改革，结果是由创新副院长卡尔•T•乌尔里希、而不是库马尔公布的。此次改革在录取过程中增加了新颖的小组讨论部分，将以英语为第二语言的申请者拒之门外，或许是导致商学院申请人数下滑的原因之一。
Some applicants also privately groused that the new test required that they return to Wharton on set dates and times that were often inconvenient for them when traveling from afar. And this year, essay questions for applicants drew ridicule from some MBA admission consultants. Sandy Kreisberg of HBSGuru.com called them "dullsville made worse by confusion."
也有申请者私下抱怨称，新的考试要求他们在预定日期和时间返回沃顿商学院，这为远隔千里的申请者们带来了诸多不便。今年，针对申请者的问答题目招致了许多MBA入学咨询公司的讥讽。HBSGuru.com的桑迪•克瑞斯伯格形容这些题目“无聊乏味，混乱不堪。”
"Even after you explain to clients that the first question wants you to talk about what Wharton can do for you, both professionally and personally, and the second one wants you to talk about what you can contribute to Wharton, they still gag and say 'what is the difference?'" he said. "They are right, of course, in the grand scheme of all possible questions, this is hairsplitting, unimaginative, Wharton-centric (in a bad way) and not likely to capture any new or interesting information about applicants."
他说：“即使你对客户解释了第一个问题是希望你回答，沃顿商学院在职业与个人方面能给你做些什么，第二个问题是希望你谈谈自己能给沃顿商学院带来什么，可他们还是会打趣道：‘两者有什么区别？’他们是对的，所有这些泛泛而谈的问题都在吹毛求疵，缺乏想象力，完全以沃顿商学院为中心（以不好的方式），不可能从申请者那里获取任何新鲜有趣的信息。”
Some consultants believe that Kumar's departure signals deeper issues for the school and its place among the world's elite MBA programs. Fewer students are taking jobs in fields that were once Wharton's mainstay -- investment banking and investment management. And Kumar isn't the only top official to leave in recent years. In June of last year, Yale University's School of Management hired away a highly admired long-time leader at Wharton, Anjani Jain. For Wharton, it was a major loss: Jain had a career at Wharton for over 26 years, spending 10 years as vice dean of the MBA program and his final two years there as the vice dean of the MBA program for executives.
许多入学顾问认为，库马尔的辞职表明这家商学院内部存在更深层次的问题，也表明了它在全球顶尖MBA课程中的地位。沃顿商学院曾经的支柱行业是投资银行和投资管理，可如今在这些领域找到工作的学生越来越少。库马尔并不是近几年离职的唯一一位高管。去年6月份，耶鲁大学管理学院（Yale University's School of Management）挖走了沃顿一位德高望重的领导人恩贾尼•贾恩。这是沃顿的一大损失：贾恩在沃顿工作了超过26年，担任负责MBA课程的副院长已有10年时间，在学院的最后两年担任高管MBA课程副院长。
"The bottom line is that Ankur is taking the fall for a lot of macro issues that she can do nothing about," said Jeremy Shinewald, founder of mbaMission, a leading admissions consulting firm. "Wharton is being affected by so many factors, some significant and others subtle. For example, on the significant side, Columbia and Chicago's brand strengths have improved tremendously in the last decade. The opportunities available upon graduation are now basically the same as those at Wharton -- so some applicants are just choosing the city they like more and New York and Chicago are winning that battle.
著名入学咨询公司mbaMission的创始人杰瑞米•施恩瓦尔德说：“究其根源，安库尔辞职是因为一些她无法解决的更大的问题。沃顿商学院受到诸多因素的影响，有的非常明显，而有些则较为微妙。比如，明显的因素包括，哥伦比亚与芝加哥的品牌实力在过去十年大幅提升。这两所学校为毕业生提供的机会与沃顿商学院基本相当——所以，许多申请者就会选择他们更喜欢的城市，纽约和芝加哥自然会得到更多青睐。”
"On the subtler side," added Shinewald, "Of course, there is the 'fall of Wall Street story' and the fact that HBS and Stanford are creating more headline-grabbing start-ups. All of that said, the Journal article really upset alumni and set off alarms with the administration.... Now, the hard work begins."
施恩瓦尔德说：“而微妙的因素自然是‘华尔街的风光不再’，还有哈佛商学院和斯坦福创造了更多吸引媒体关注的初创公司。尽管如此，《华尔街日报》的文章还是让沃顿的校友们很是不满，同时为管理层敲响了警钟……现在，艰苦的工作才刚刚开始。”
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