One Way Business Schools Attract Black Students: With Black Students

As corporations seek to hire more minorities, business schools continue to lag way behind on diversity measures

Nate Kumapayi

Photographer: Fernando Decillis/Bloomberg Business
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Nate Kumapayi thought he might have trouble getting into business school. His grade point average was unremarkable, his Graduate Management Admission Test scores were middling, and his résumé consisted of two years of entry-level sales jobs.

He's a persuasive talker, though, and wooed interviewers at several top schools. He told them how he’d decided to get a MBA after starting conversations with executives who came into the AT&T retail store where he worked, and discovering how many of them did business with an MBA in hand. He emphasized how selling phones for AT&T honed his knack for getting people to buy things.