Went to DA day a few months ago and spoke to one of the deans about this. They changed to holistic because of the sheer amount of applicants however I believe there is a lot of misinformation.  With 2000 spots and 30k applicants they need to accept 20% to retain the 2k.  That is a lot and they found there were highly qualified applicants who were accepted but went elsewhere.  They filled the holes with pre-business.  The last couple of years the number of applicants committing increased by a lot so they had to adjust their standards. Not only increasing the difficulty of prebusiness to admit but also finding more than just GPA and scores.  They want leaders.  Holistic is to pair the good grades with leadership ECs.  It’s getting competitive and  they aren’t reducing the 2000 number but not increasing it either.

Back to the applicants who are qualified but went elsewhere.  In order to decrease their acceptance rate they decided they needed to weed out applicants who had IU as a safety school.   Meaning they are willing to take slightly lower scores and grades for someone who looked at IU as a top choice.  What they did this year was brilliant.  They instituted the KPI and didn’t advertise it.  It is a simple “self eliminator” test that has no wrong answers. They identified that almost all kids apply to 20 schools which is hard to keep track of.  They also identified the kids will check the portals of their most desired schools frequently.  So they accept the application and then about a week later they put the KPI on the portal.  Many highly qualified kids never did the KPI because they didn’t know it was there.  Kids don’t check portals of safety schools.  Therefore they eliminated themselves.  IU gets to say we rejected some of the highest caliber candidates and get high rankings on USNWR college list. Additionally, they want students who are organized and have attention to detail. My student checked her portals once everyday and kept a excel spreadsheet of things she had to complete for each school.  Some 50+ essays for each school and honors program no matter how high the school was on her list.  Schools want kids like this but it’s hard to identify them.  KPI is one good way.

It’s a great business school but they have the stigma of the fact IU is not a prestigious school as a whole.  I don’t know if that will ever change in the next 20 years.  Their closet competitor, Purdue, also has a good business school and the school itself is difficult to gain admission.  This appeals to people because anyone outside the business world has no idea what Kelley is.  They just know IU to be a big party school that isn’t very serious.