"Like a choir, [the Harvard Business School is] always looking for different voices," former HBS Dean John H. McArthur told an audience of Harvard Extension School students at Emerson Hall last night.

Sitting among the group of about 10 students, McArthur led a lively 90-minute discussion of topics ranging from business school admissions to health care reform to his own career as dean.

McArthur explained how the need to assemble classes containing diverse viewpoints and experiences can work against applicants from the College to HBS.

"If we get 1,000 applicants from Harvard College, they can walk on water and we still can't take them all," he said.

Specific courses of study are not important in admissions decisions, he said.

"Take what's fun, what turns you on.... You can't find any correlation between what courses people take and how they do in business," he said.

McArthur said that, as dean, he took a special interest in the 30 to 40 applicants each year who had never attended college at all.

"Our kind of school ought to be willing to take risks with people, because it doesn't affect us," said McArthur. "We can redefine standards. It's not like law school, where it's much more like a formula."

Turning to national issues, McArthur discussed his extensive involvement in health-care reform as head of the merger between two of Harvard's teaching hospitals: the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

"Health care costs are out of control," he said. "Health care costs add $60 to the cost of a G.E. refrigerator; in a lot of countries you can buy a whole refrigerator for that."

The problem is particularly bad locally, McArthur said.

"Massachusetts has probably the most acute problem with excess beds in the country," he told the audience. "The 53 hospitals within Route 495 are run at about 15 percent of capacity. And hospitals, like oil refineries and airlines, have costs that are largely fixed."

McArthur said his involvement with the local hospitals stemmed from his interest in helping organizations in crisis.

"I've spent a lot of time with failing organizations because I enjoy it" he said. "I don't get ulcers.