Owen is a very welcoming community.  Every student’s ideas and backgrounds are valuable.  Owen is very much like a “family” – faculty members are very willing to help students and students work together (not in competition) to help each other achieve their individual goals.  Also, the city of Nashville has been ranked the Friendliest City in America.  Nashville is a beautiful, clean, safe city that is large enough (1.3 million people) to have a lot of social life but not too large to be overcrowded or polluted.  The cost of living in Nashville is also very low compared to the rest of the U.S.

I know that Business Week ranking is also very important. We are making continuous improvements in this school for the last two years. As a result, we got a lot of turnover. For example, we integrated admission and career management in order to better understand incoming students, current students, and alumni and better help students achieve their career goal. There are more micro level improvements like that in Owen.

I understand that for the international students ranking is an important factor in deciding which schools to apply. However, actually there are so many other things which really matter for your school life. For example, culture of the school, environment, level of comfort with peer students, communication with faculty and staff, and supports from professors. Ranking does not take these things into consideration. I would like to ask international students to look at these things closely as well as rankings. You may be able to see these factors by communicating with admission office, current students and alumni or by visiting campus.

Owen is always looking to improve the School and to increase the opportunities for our students.  One way that we are doing that is to aggressively increase our visibility with companies.  Vanderbilt University has always had a strong reputation in the United States and we have formed many close relationships with companies.  To grow and strengthen our ties to top companies and to expand our reputation in other countries, Owen’s Dean – Jim Bradford - spends much of his time visiting executives at top companies around the world.  In the past year he has personally visited nearly 200 companies.

While we do not expect any radical changes in admission policy this year compared to previous years, we are hoping to increase the size of the incoming class from 160 last year to 180 entering 2007.  The percentage of international students will likely remain about 25%.  As with last year we will again be paying close attention to the English ability of our international students.  We expect our international students to fully participate in class discussions and to be active members of the clubs and other School activities.  Strong English skills make it more likely that the international students will participate and interact completely with their U.S. classmates.

Because of the collaborative nature of the school it is very important for every student to participate in class discussions and in the School activities outside of the classroom.  Owen students learn a great deal from each other in addition to learning from the professors.  Our Japanese students typically come to Owen with a lot of excellent experience; we expect that they will share their experience with the other students.  It is very important that all of our students learn about different cultures and about how business is conducted in other countries.  We want all of our students to contribute to Owen activities and to be full members of our “family”.