The University of Michigan is one of the best public universities in the country, and their Ross School of Business is a major part of that, seen as one of the top schools in the country. While it’s located a long way from the financial hubs of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, it sends plenty of graduates to both, and has earned its reputation.
Of course, this same reputation makes it quite competitive for admissions, especially for out-of-state students. In this article, we’re going to break down a particular part of that admissions process, namely the Ross Artifact, part of their supplement. We’ll cover what it is and why they want it, then go over an example from a past Ivy Scholars student, so you can understand how you can answer this question yourself. Let’s get started!
The Ross Supplement
Each college within the broader University of Michigan handles admissions separately. Most ask only for the overall application, but the Ross School of Business wants more; namely a pair of additional essays. Given the amount of interest Ross receives, this makes sense; they both want to make sure students are serious enough about attending to be willing to write two more short essays, and have more information to go off of when evaluating students.
The supplement asks for the following two essays:
- Choose a current event or issue in your community and discuss the business implications. Propose a solution that incorporates business principles or practices. The review panel will look for creativity, drawing connections, and originality. (Please limit this response to approximately 500 words.)
- Upload a document or artifact that represents something significant about your life to show your learning in action. Describe how your artifact demonstrates your learning in action. (250 words)
The first of these is an irregular essay perhaps, but it is an essay still, much like you would find at any other college, even if the prompt is unique. It’s a great place for you to show off your passion for business, and any bright ideas you might have for your future endeavors in the field.
The second prompt, however, is far strangers, and throws many students for a loop. They ask for an image, and then writing describing it. This is unique; Rice asks for an image, yes, but the only thing that really compares to this is arts supplements; it’s not something anyone really expects to find in a business school’s application.
Why Does Ross Have This Supplement?
They do not give a specific reason; their page does share examples of what they accept, but doesn’t dive deep into their motivations for asking for such a thing. We can, however, glean some information based on what they highlight, and what they give as past examples of exemplary work.
The first prompt is to delve into your understanding of and approach to business. Ross, as with every school, wants students who will contribute significant things, both while they are students and after they graduate, and they use this first prompt to judge your current understanding of business, and your ambitions within that broader field. This isn’t an essay asking why you want to study business, but much more a dive into your understanding of it.
The second item is much more intended to understand you, as a person and student. It doesn’t need to be related to business at all (though it certainly can be). Unlike the first essay, this one can much more easily re-use material from another application, with the caveat that you then need an item, a picture, to upload alongside it.
It is this second part that creates the most challenge for students; if you don’t intend to study art, then you likely never expected to need some visual representation of what you’ve done and how it showcases your personality. This is, however, a great chance to show off aspects of yourself that you otherwise would not get to in the admissions process.
A Ross Artifact Example
We aren’t going to share an example of a Ross artifact directly, out of respect for our students’ privacy, but you can see some on University of Michigan’s website. We will, however, include an example of what a student wrote for this essay, and a brief description of what they included for their artifact, along with a selection of other artifact descriptions from students past.
Example
After an hour of intense debating, my eyes were locked on the judge’s hand as he wrote his vote on the ballot. “Great round. It was close, but I vote for the affirmative.” The corners of my mouth turned down involuntarily. Losing the round meant that I couldn’t qualify for state for another three weeks. I knew that in order to qualify, I would have to work more diligently than ever.
The artifact I have submitted is a rebuttal redo from the round I lost. In a rebuttal redo, debaters get together and remodel their unsatisfactory round, adding the judge’s feedback while the other debater listens and offers feedback. After a few days of contemplating the judge’s comments, I called my friend and asked her to be my redo partner.
Although this recording is only nine minutes long, it accurately reflects my learning process. Analyzing and applying the judge’s comments, I added “weighing” arguments and additional responses to the “framework”. After delivering the redo to Charly, I absorbed her observations and applied them to future debate rounds. After countless redos, I successfully qualified for state. I am eager to employ the same process of learning in college.
Artifact Analysis
This is a short essay, at merely 250 words, but is a chance for you to show off aspects of your interests and values you have not had the chance to cover yet elsewhere in your application. In the example above, the student chose to focus on an example outside of business; namely, their experience as a debater.
Debate is an interesting activity, partway between sport and academic endeavor, but the point of this essay and the submitted artifact in this case is not to highlight the thrill of victory over the author’s competitors. Instead, it focuses on a less-viewed aspect, how the author responds to failure, and how they learned from and built upon the lessons of that.
There is a brief discussion of what the artifact is; this is important to provide context, especially if it is something the judges may be unfamiliar with. A photo of you playing baseball is likely to be self-explanatory, other images may need more context. In this case, the student needed to explain what the artifact itself was, and then its significance in the realm of debate. This can be important; admissions officers know a lot, but they won’t know the particulars of every activity. If your artifact is related to something niche, or relies on understanding of the workings of a very particular field, then you will also need to include context like this.
Note that any description of what an artifact is should be brief; you only have 250 words for this essay, and the bulk should be spent on why this artifact is important; not what it is so much as what it symbolizes for you.
In the example above, the author explains how this artifact showcases their response to a failure, and how they learned from and built upon this failure. This is a way for them to demonstrate their values and resilience, and also to showcase a side of themselves that admissions officers like seeing.
You will encounter failure in college; at some point things will go wrong, and you’ll bomb a test, have a catastrophic lab, or write an essay that completely misses the mark. What’s important is how you respond to that failure when it occurs, learning and growing from it, rather than letting it overwhelm you. This essay does a good job of that, showcasing the author’s resilience.
Your own essay doesn’t need to showcase this specific value; indeed, you can highlight any particular aspect of your personality you feel is worth showing to admissions officers. This can reuse another essay you wrote, highlighting your leadership, or an extracurricular you excelled in, or some other aspect of your life and skills worth noting. This can be related to business, but does not need to be.
Choosing an Artifact
Your own choice of artifact can be almost any image, from photograph to schematics to certificate; the point is not the image itself, but the story behind it. When you apply to college, you are telling admissions officers the story of you, and the point of this artifact is to contribute to this story.
You should begin by picking what story you want to tell, and then choose an artifact based on that, rather than the reverse. If you have already written another essay exemplifying one of your values or activities for another college that you haven’t already discussed in your University of Michigan application, then you can definitely adapt that. You will need to add to the essay to explain what the artifact is and how it relates to your message, but the core of the essay can remain the same.
As always, we advocate never doing more work than you have to; working smarter is the best way to reduce the stress of the college application season.
Final Thoughts
The University of Michigan is an excellent school, and their business program is one of the best in the country. As with every great program, admissions are competitive, all the more so because of the unusual approach they take to the essays they ask for. We hope this article has given you the insight you need to understand the Ross artifact, and how you can best represent yourself in your application to the university.
Every application has a lot of moving parts, and the Ross artifact is just one of the things you’ll need to keep track of when you apply. If you are looking for help writing your own essays to Ross, or on polishing any other aspect of your application, then Ivy Scholars can help. Our mentors are experts at every aspect of college admissions, and have seen plenty of students get into Michigan. Schedule a free consultation today to learn more; we’re always happy to hear from you.
