A Checklist For Round 1 MBA Applicants + What To Expect On Campus This Fall
Maria |
August 24, 2021

With Round 1 deadlines approaching and everyone’s racing to get applications completed, what are the things that you should make sure you’re doing before you hit the submit button? 

Listen in and find out what’s on Maria and Caroline’s checklist for this year’s round 1 application and what advice they give to applicants who are preparing their applications so they aren’t stressing at the last minute. 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.630] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome back to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants with my co host Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline of course is the former director of Admissions at INSEAD and a co founder of Fortuna Admissions, as well as a worldwide traveler just back from a very big and exciting trip in Turkey and Greece, and I don’t know where else. Maria, of course, is the founder of ApplicantLab and a homebody, taking care of her family in Los Angeles and wishing she could travel the world.

 

[00:00:50.030] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. Super jealous.

 

[00:00:53.150] – John

And if you missed us last week, it’s my fault. I did an eight day cross-country trip with my wife, my dog, and her cat in our SUV from California to Virginia, where I am moving. So it was a terrific trip. Really enjoyed it. Highlight, definitely. Zion National Park, where we took a really wonderful hike with our dog one morning with smooth sailing all the way. Not much traffic across the country, which kind of surprised me given the fact that everyone’s been locked up and I thought they’d be many more people traveling on the highways. And it really wasn’t true. We have no traffic whatsoever, except, of course, to get out of the Bay Area and up to Tahoe. That was the only traffic we hit. Okay, so the big thing right now, I think, for anyone who’s interested in business education is number one, the return to class. Many MBA cohorts have begun the journey toward an MBA in this past week or two through orientation programs. And the story in general is, despite the worry over the Delta variant, most schools in the US at least are going to have face to face classes this fall, at least to start, they will require in most cases that you be fully vaccinated and prove it.

 

[00:02:21.100] – John

You will probably have to wear a mask every time you’re on campus and in class, and you probably will be tested for COVID every week. But for now, everyone’s getting back to if you want to call that normal, they’re getting back to that, which is actually a good sign. And of course, I would imagine that by the end of the year, many students might end up with boosters because that’s the way it looks to be going. And then, of course, the other big news is that in two weeks, around one, application deadlines for the class of 2023 begin to basically fall like dominoes. While there are some schools that have application deadlines before September 8, Oxford has around one deadline of September 1, and Duke has an early action deadline of September 2. Harvard and Wharton are the first big ones for Round 1 September 8. Cornell is in on that date with an early action deadline as well as the round one for the one year MBA. The next day is Stanford. The next day is London Business School. September 13, Cambridge the 14th, Yale the 15th, Northwestern Kellogg and NYU Stern, and then they just sort of blow up like that.

 

[00:03:41.490] – John

Michigan Ross on September 20, Chicago Booth on the 23rd, Berkeley on the 23rd as well, along with Emery and Dartmouth on the 20th, along with Georgetown and MIT right after that on the 28th. So with those deadlines that really start to come fast and furious in two weeks, I wanted to ask both my cohosts, what’s the checklist? What are the things that you should make sure you’re doing before you hit the submit button? Maria, what’s your checklist for your applicants?

 

[00:04:15.290] – Maria

Well, I think the number one first thing people need to do is to log into the application forms themselves and go through page by page and start filling them out. I think sometimes applicants might Google, okay, what are the application essays I need to write, and they spend so much time focus on the essays, and then when they go to login and hit submit, it’s kind of this shocking and dismissing experience of, oh, my gosh, there’s a hundred little forms in here that I need to fill out. And it’s not just like your name and your address. It’s all sorts of things, like a little blurb about post MBA goals or there’s even sometimes schools have many essays that they don’t formally publish on their essays page that are hidden inside the application form. So Berkeley Haas this year snuck one in a 250 word essay, I believe, on diversity and inclusion. It’s inside the application form. 250 words is like a mini essay, and yet it’s not on there. At least as of the other day, it was not on their main site. So if you don’t log into that application form early, you’re not even going to know until you log in.

 

[00:05:16.440] – Maria

And let’s say you’ve got a few hours to go before the deadline, which I don’t recommend. You should try to submit a day or two before, but human nature and human nature. And so then you’re like, oh, my gosh, there’s so much extra stuff I have to fill in. So I would say if you’re looking for, like a mental break from your essay writing and editing, jump into those application forms, fill out all those little boxes first so that way you can focus. There are no negative surprises, and you can focus on other things.

 

[00:05:41.850] – John

That’s a great idea. And boy sneaky of Berkeley to stick that 250 word mini essay into the application. And I bet you there are a lot of little surprises like that in every little application that you can find. Caroline, what comes to mind on top of your checklist?

 

[00:06:02.070] – Caroline

Yeah, definitely work on the application form earlier rather than later. And I have to say that when I was reviewing applications at it yet you would often see too frequently where to get applications, where the candidates obviously spent a lot of time, as Maria said, fine tuning their essays and then sort of thrown together the application form the night before. And it’s very apparent to the file reader, and it just looks sloppy. And there are lots of things to check, and it may look fairly straightforward, but people do make mistakes. You need to, for example, cross check the data on your application form or the dates that you’ve got there that that cross checks with what you’ve got on your resume. And remember that it’s often the application form that the file reader will look at first. So that’s really important to sort of setting the stage for your application as a whole. And I often advise candidates to start working on the application form right at the start of the process, even alongside the essays or sometimes even before the essays, because it’s important to understand what is it that they’re going to see it first and then they’re going to turn to your essays.

 

[00:07:13.210] – Caroline

Right. So if you’ve worked on things the other way around, then you might be missing some important context that is going to be very present in their minds as they’ve looked at the application form first. So it’s really important to pay a lot of attention to that and then otherwise, at this stage, hopefully, you’ve got most of your materials together by now. So proofreading is really important and get a fresh set of eyes, because when you’ve been working on this for so long, as many applicants have, it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees. And you can miss some silly mistakes because you’ve looked at it so many times and not so obvious to you anymore. And someone else that will jump out to a fresh set of eyes and then otherwise recommenders. You should be checking in with your recommenders and making sure that they’re on track to submit on time. Hopefully you’ve already had several discussions with them. You’ve briefed them on the process, you’ve had some good discussions about what they’re going to say about you, and perhaps they will have drafted that and be ready to hit submit as well.

 

[00:08:22.030] – Caroline

But that’s also an area where applicants do come unstuck at the time of deadlines. You cannot control the candidate when your recommended is going to dedicate some time and actually get the work done and hit submit. So you need to be checking in with them constantly and sort of managing upwards to make sure that they are on track with their part of the picture.

 

[00:08:46.010] – John

Do schools generally give a little bit of a Grace period for recommendation letters if they don’t come in right on the deadline time, or how does it generally work?

 

[00:08:56.020] – Caroline

Yeah, in my experience, they will, but it creates a lot of stress for the candidate. Right. So it doesn’t necessarily create a good impression with the school. But the schools understand that it’s not entirely under your control. Most schools will give you a few days grace, but you don’t really want to be in that position if you can at all avoid it.

 

[00:09:16.860] – John

Exactly. And I want to come back to what Maria said. Don’t wait until this specific time or five minutes before this specific time for the actual deadline because you never know what can happen. There could be some sort of glitch, there’s a thunderstorm, you lost your Internet connection, there’s any number of calamities that could occur, and it could be totally unexpected and can blow your shot. So it is wise, isn’t it, to try to submit a day or two before the actual specific hour deadline that every school post on its website. Right.

 

[00:09:56.450] – Caroline

And that takes some of the stress, hopefully out of the process as well.

 

[00:10:00.210] – John

Yeah, exactly. I wonder how many people actually wait to that. Like how many people actually file their application within 1 hour of the actual deadline. I would bet a pretty big chunk of people do that more than it should be. Yeah, exactly.

 

[00:10:18.830] – Maria

I mean, in the past, sometimes there would be times where the application system would go down just from an overwhelming amount of traffic in that last minute. I think the school I mean, that was several years ago. So hopefully now with advances in cloud computing and whatever, that’s not such a problem. But still.

 

[00:10:35.090] 

Yikes.

 

[00:10:36.350] – John

Yeah. Even if our website, we would produce the ranking and our site would go down because too many people would come in and want to read it immediately. And I’m sure that was true at many business schools in the early days. Now that’s a rare occurrence, but still, you can never tell. You just don’t know. And with all the hacking and all the other kind of crazy things that go on in the Internet, I think the earlier the better, no matter what. Now, any other things on the checklist that may be even less obvious than what we’ve talked about?

 

[00:11:09.690] – Caroline

Well, I would say, as Maria had mentioned, it’s good to go back to the school website and go through the form and also double check all the requirements because as Maria said, it may have maybe a few months since you actually went through and looked at double checking the deadlines, all of the documentation you need to provide. And it does vary a bit by school. So just go back to those school websites and just double check that you’ve got everything ready and you’ve got all your Ducks in a row and you haven’t accidentally mistaken one deadline for another or made any errors that could affect you at the last minute.

 

[00:11:51.140] – John

It’s always good to double check that one digit off on the standardized test score code for the school could throw your application into a chaotic place, right?

 

[00:12:04.320] – Caroline

Yes. It’s good to double check everything given the States here. And then I would say once you’ve got most of your materials ready, then I would start thinking about interviews. Right. And preparing yourself for that hoping that you will get to the interview stage and start thinking about the questions that you could get and sort of mentally preparing yourself for that process.

 

[00:12:32.810] – John

Right. Exactly. Now, many applicants sort of have a two tier strategy. You typically might apply to the schools you really want to get into in round one, and then you might apply to your second set of schools in round two. And I wonder from both of you, what do you think about that strategy? Number one and number two, when you actually begin your round two applications, should you be incredibly optimistic that you’re going to get into Harvard, Stanford, London or INSEAD in round one and wait, essentially to get rejected before you start your round two applications, or should there be some overlap? What do both of you suggest?

 

[00:13:19.310] – Caroline

Go ahead.

 

[00:13:20.690] – Maria

Thanks. I think we should apply to your top choices first, because I think sometimes people think, well, I’m going to apply to some slightly schools that I’m not quite as excited about just to try to get that admission in hand for round one. And then if I do, well, then I’ll shoot for the stars in round two. But the problem is that the deposit deadlines for round one are normally around February, and you’re not even going to know if you’ve got an interview invites at some of the other schools until just that point or perhaps even after. And so every year I hear people say things like, well, can I just ask them to delay the deposit deadline until after I hear back from my first call? I’m like, no, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m being a little cynical, but I feel like there’s a reason why the deposit deadline is before the notification deadlines for the other schools. They want to know for sure, like, okay, put your money where your mouth is. You said in your essay that we are your first choice because that’s what everyone does, even if it’s not your first choice.

 

[00:14:21.010] – Maria

And so great. Now pony up the money. For some candidates, if you’re an investment banker, the deposits say $2,000. No big deal. But for other candidates, especially those in developing economies, it’s a really agonizing moment of do I take the boat in the hand and pay 1000, $2,000 6000 if it’s Columbia early decision? I’ve heard some of the European programs perhaps even have higher deposits? Or do I roll the dice and wait to see if I get that interview invite or if the interview goes well? So I would say apply to your top choices first, maybe work. Hopefully you started enough in advance. You can start working on a lot of applications simultaneously because the more applications you work on, the easier it gets. Once you get that first one out of the way, you start to get into a bit more of a rhythm. And then in terms of getting ready for round two, I like to tell people, look, maybe take a week or two off for round one. Veg out, right? Watch Netflix, eat ice cream, just sort of clear it from day. But then it’s just start because on your round two list, because honestly, even if you get invited to interview, you’re actually in worse shape in a sense, because you’re not going to find out if you got rejected until, say, February, I’m sorry, December 12 or December 15.

 

[00:15:41.640] – Maria

And then if you wait until then, you only have two weeks left to get your recommenders, to quickly file the recommendations with these other schools, and you have to quickly throw together a bunch of essays. It’s just not worth it. So just give yourself a little break, but then just get ready for that plan B, plan C, and you’ll thank yourself later.

 

[00:16:03.230] – John

Good advice, Caroline.

 

[00:16:05.070] – Caroline

Yeah, I agree. And I think in some cases, even more important to be clear about your motivations to the school for the school and to communicate that clearly in your application for round two to round one. Because, of course, the schools know that a lot of people are applying in round two because they’ve been dinged from their top school top choices in round in round one. So they know that they are likely to be not your top choice and nobody wants to be the second choice.

 

[00:16:37.230] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:16:37.530] – Caroline

The sort of backup option. And schools are very sensitive to this, and they don’t want to be you’re coming there because you didn’t get in anywhere else rather than actually you’re genuinely motivated for that particular school. So in round two, even more than in round one, it’s critical to convey that commitment and engagement with that school. And that’s not something that you can Cook up overnight. And the schools see plenty of applications from people who have sort of thrown it together over the Christmas New Year break because they’ve had a nasty surprise in round one, and they’re now sort of throwing together some applications at the last minute for round two, and they will get short shrift in the process. So you can’t fake that kind of knowledge of the program and sense of affinity with the school. And that’s something that you have to build up over time through your research, through your networking. So you should really be starting that now rather than waiting until you’ve been dinged by around one school.

 

[00:17:45.530] – John

And let me bring up one of the sensitive issues about applying to business school for many applicants, not all, but let’s say your recommender is not your direct supervisor at work and your employer does not know that you are applying to business schools. And really you want to get out of there. And now that you’re ready to apply and you’re hitting the submit button, it becomes very obvious at least if you get accepted. When do you prepare your employer for the possibility that you may be making a departure soon and going back to school because some employers actually have feelings and they may feel somewhat rejected by your personal ambition to leave and go to school. How do you handle that at this point, or just keep quiet until you get accepted? Maria.

 

[00:18:43.430] – Maria

Yeah. So I think absolutely keep quiet until you get accepted. Because if you don’t get in anywhere and your boss knows that your heart is not really in it just like no, school wants to be anyone’s second choice. An employer doesn’t want to be your last choice. They want you to be committed and dedicated. So definitely don’t let if you are in a situation where your boss is not supportive or your company is not supportive of you pursuing the NBA, keep quiet. And then in terms of letting them know, I think it depends a little bit on your honestly, like what you want to do, your risk tolerance and your financial situation. I personally quit a few months before business school, and I just traveled. I just backpacked through Southeast Asia and Central Europe because I love to travel and I also travel cheap. So I was able to do that because that matters a lot to me. And other people are now doing pre MBA internships to bolster their job prospects once they get to campus. One funny story about letting your employer know. So my boss was very supportive of my quest for business school, and I was working in Hong Kong at the time, and I had no idea.

 

[00:19:51.000] – Maria

I thought it was like the US system where two weeks notice, you don’t even need to technically give two weeks notice is just sort of considered to be a courtesy. So I submitted my two weeks notice to HR and they’re like, well, that’s great. But your contract, you have a two months. It’s different in Asia. It’s actually three months. You should have let us know, like three months ago. Thank goodness. My boss, who was wonderful, she sort of told a little fib. And she’s like, well, Maria told me three months ago that she was leaving, which is sort of true because I needed her recommendations. She had to sort of cover for me and be like, oh, she actually did say it. So please let her go.

 

[00:20:29.210] – John

Love that story. Caroline, I wonder if you have a similar story.

 

[00:20:32.940] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s great advice. Check your job contract.

 

[00:20:38.330] – John

Yeah. Really?

 

[00:20:40.850] – Caroline

Well, when I was applying to business school, I was working at Arthur Anderson. It was the year when the Enron crisis had hit.

 

[00:20:47.140] – John

Oh, my.

 

[00:20:47.960] – Caroline

So it was a very interesting year. It was like the Chinese curse. May you live an interesting time. So the whole firm was imploding around me while I was applying to business school.

 

[00:20:59.580] – John

Wow.

 

[00:21:00.490] – Caroline

And before I left, I was actually on second from the London office of Anderson to the Paris office and found myself in the bizarre situation of having a contract with London office which had joined Deloitte. And I was actually working for Ernst and Young in Paris. All rather strange. So I don’t think anyone was very worried about notice periods at that point, but my bosses and my colleagues knew that I was applying and so they were all fully supportive of me heading off, and I had secured sponsorship from the firm and of course, all that unwound as well with the implosion of Anderson. But yeah, I think it’s great if you can take some time off, as Maria did before going to business school, because it’s pretty intense and you’ve probably been working incredibly hard, right. If you’re a successful young professional heading off to a top business school, I’m sure you have a pretty busy hectic lifestyle. And how often do you get the opportunity to take more than a week or two off and do something different? And it’s not going to have any impact on any negative impacts on your resume or your options.

 

[00:22:14.930] – Caroline

So I think if you can at all take advantage of that time to do something different and perhaps go backpacking around the world, as Maria did.

 

[00:22:24.340] – John

And Caroline, you would agree with Maria, who basically said, hey, don’t tell your employer, unless of course, they’re a recommender, which is the case many times about your departure unless you’re certain you’re actually going to go to business school.

 

[00:22:41.550] – Caroline

Yeah. So if you haven’t told them and they haven’t been part of the process, I don’t think there’s any need to, especially if you’re applying at this early stage because it’s quite far down the line that you would actually be leaving and heading off to business school. So good idea to check your contractual obligations. And as Maria said, it can vary quite a bit around the world.

 

[00:23:06.050] – John

It’s not unlike dating, is it? If you’re dating someone and then suddenly you go on Match.com? I wouldn’t think that you should tell people you’re going to match.com. Now, first off, you shouldn’t be going on match.com if you’re dating someone. But in a way, isn’t applying to business school while you’re fully employed? Isn’t it kind of like going on Match.com because you’re literally vying for the attention of different schools to have a journey with them, and meantime, you may be in a relationship as you would be with your employer. So I think Maria’s advice is very good here. Don’t let them know even if you’re looking for your job.

 

[00:23:54.760] – Maria

Even if you’re not applying to business school, if you start interviewing for another job, you don’t go to your boss and be like, hey, I’ve got a cool job interview tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be.

 

[00:24:04.090] – John

Yeah, it’s really true. Okay, one last thing for all those folks who are starting their MBA programs this fall who may already be enroute to campus or are in an orientation program right now, if each of you could do it over again, what’s the one thing you wish you knew before you started your MBA program that would be helpful to new students this fall.

 

[00:24:31.590] – Maria

Maria, I was pretty naive about the role that socializing and partying played in the MBA experience. I’m a nerd, so I was like, boom, I’m just staying home and reading all my cases every night. And so I wish I would have prioritized socializing a little bit more. So I would tell people, like, whatever, your grades in business school don’t really it’s not like you’re going to apply to business school again. Very few employers even care about your grades. Many schools even have grade non disclosure. So even if you have good grades, you don’t have to tell them. Or if you have bad grades, you don’t have to tell them. So I would have lightened up a little on the academics prioritize that networking from day one. Exactly. There’s like no Dean in the world that wants me to figure just don’t study so hard. But really, I think if I could do it again, that’s something I would have done.

 

[00:25:21.750] – John

Yeah. Instead of calling it socialized and we’ll call it networking, there we go. That euphemism helps.

 

[00:25:29.390] – Maria

Very informal network.

 

[00:25:32.510] – John

Caroline, what’s the one thing you would suggest?

 

[00:25:35.210] – Caroline

Well, looking back, I think that especially with a program like intel, it goes so fast and I hadn’t anticipated quite how quickly that year would flash before me. So I think that I could probably have done a bit more before joining the program to do things like preparing my job search. And I know that the school does mobilize students and admits more now to sort of get things started early on in the process. But I think that when you applying to business school and you’re heading off a whole year or even two years seems like a very long time. But it’s such an intensive experience and there are so many different opportunities to choose from. You can’t do everything. As Maria said, you have to make some trade offs. And I think it’s useful to really think carefully before you go to business school about how you want to focus your time, what your priorities are, and anything you can do beforehand that’s going to sort of help you front load things, especially if you’re doing a one year program, that’s going to be very helpful.

 

[00:26:41.330] – John

Great advice. So for all of you who are about to embark on your second year of an MBA program, if you’re in a two year MBA program or for all of you who are starting, good luck. Have a wonderful journey. Embrace it fully. Take advantage of it. Make sure you are getting to know as many of your classmates and hearing all their wonderful and interesting stories and learning from them as you can. And then for all of you who are racing to get everything completed for the round one deadline, good luck as well. We hope you’re able to put your best foot forward, and we hope we gave you a little bit of good advice for your own checklist before you hit the submit button. This is John Byrne you’ve been listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast.

 

A Checklist For Round 1 MBA Applicants + What To Expect On Campus This Fall
Maria |
August 24, 2021

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Well hello everyone, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants, welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-hosts Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Today we have a special guest, Heidi Hillis from Fortuna Admissions. She is based in Australia, is a senior expert coach for Fortuna, and has three degrees, all from Stanford, a BA in English literature, that’s my degree, an MA in Russian studies, and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business. And we have Heidi here to discuss some really fascinating research. Here’s what Fortuna did. They dug into the last Two class profiles of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

That’s the class of ‘23 and the class of ‘24. They looked up all these folks on LinkedIn to identify a little bit more about their backgrounds, including their former employers and their places of undergraduate education to come up with an incredible analysis. Heidi, welcome.

[00:00:46] Heidi Hillis: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

[00:00:48] John Byrne: Heidi, what is, what are the big takeaways from your deep dive discovery?

[00:00:54] Heidi Hillis: It’s hard to know even where to start. I think there’s a quite a few interesting kind of trends that we’ve seen that have taken place over the years. We were mentioning before the call that traditionally there hadn’t been, 10 years ago, if you’d looked, you wouldn’t have seen so many tech companies represented, but now there’s a big presence of tech companies who are feeding a lot of these MBA programs in Stanford in particular.

I think that the thing that was really interesting was, looking, not just at where the companies that were feeding the students, the applicants to Stanford. When they were working there, when they were applying, but actually the paths that they took prior to their current job.

So how many people were working, if you look at McKinsey, for example, or Bain and BCG, those are obviously companies that feed a lot of applicants to the program, but we found 20%, which seemed to be normal of, the class came from consulting, but if you actually look into the numbers in their background, You would see that actually 37 percent of these two classes had worked at McKinsey sometime prior, or actually in consulting, so it was, it’s The kind of the patterns that are behind, what you would normally see in terms of what Stanford tells us.

So you get a sense of the paths that people have taken. And so that’s something that was really interesting to see.

[00:02:16] John Byrne: Absolutely. And of course, this is this analysis goes so far beyond what any applicant would learn by simply looking at the class profile that the school up because, this level of detail is never available to people.

[00:02:33] Heidi Hillis: No, and yeah, for example, you could see that, Stanford will say that they have around, each year around 50 percent of applicants are international, which is a great statistic and gives you lots of hope if you are an international student. But when you dig into the numbers, you actually understand that.

75 percent of the people who get into Stanford actually went to a U. S. University. So even if you’re international, it does have does seem to have kind of an advantage of having been educated in the U. S. That seems to be something that they look for. However, I think. The concentration of universities in the U.

S. that are feeding to Stanford is something also that, if you’re looking at it, you might find a little bit dis, disconcerting. There’s a few programs that are really, obviously the top. Programs as you would expect places like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the Ivies but if you look at the international universities very diverse from all over the world, really lots of people from different places, which is also really interesting.

[00:03:38] John Byrne: Yeah I tell you, one of the things that struck me in the data is how consistent it is. 10 years ago, we did the same exercise at Stanford and a bunch of other. Schools from Harvard and Dartmouth and Columbia and talk and a few others and back 10 years ago, we found that 25. 2 percent of the class of 2013 were from Ivy League colleges.

And the Ivy League 8 schools, not including Stanford. And if you included Stanford, it would have been 32. 6%. So now, let’s move forward to your data. And in 23, 30. 7 percent went to Ivy League schools, even above the 25. 2. And in 24, 27. 9 percent went to Ivy League schools. So it looks like Stanford has gotten even a little bit more elitist than it was.

Yeah,

[00:04:41] Heidi Hillis: It’s, it is it’s what the data says, right? Obviously, this is a sample. We have 80 percent of the two classes. So we don’t know where those other people went. And that might skew the data a little bit in another direction. But it is, if you look at there’s 15 schools, that include the Ivy’s and then you have UC Berkeley and obviously Stanford that really are contributing, 49 percent of the class of 23, 47. 3 percent of the class of 24. So that is a pretty heavy concentration and But, if you actually look into the data, you see a lot of people also, each of these is actually an individual story.

You see a lot of people who come from other schools as well. So it’s not like you have to give up hope if you come from a different school. I see a lot of individual stories that, from the whole range of U. S. schools that really are feeding into Stanford. So I think what the data doesn’t also tell you, unfortunately, is how many of these Of people from these backgrounds are actually applying.

So

[00:05:39] John Byrne: good point.

[00:05:40] Heidi Hillis: It’s it’s hard to know. And sometimes I think people this is. A path that a lot of people who go to these schools plan to take from the very beginning. So I would see, it would be interesting to know that I don’t know that we will ever find that out. But, um, that’s something to keep in mind as well.

[00:05:56] John Byrne: Yeah. And that’s a fair point. Because how reflective are these results of the applicant pool reflective of an elitist attitude probably a combination of if I had to guess, but, it is what it is, and these institutions obviously are great filters, so you come from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and you go to Harvard or Stanford or Penn, and you pass through a fine filter, and it makes you less of a admissions risk than if you went to, frankly, the University of Kentucky and worked for a company that no one knows of.

That’s just the reality of elite MBA admissions, right?

[00:06:40] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. And so you will see that the people who are not going, you’ll see a lot of the people who you would, the profiles that you would expect, the Harvard undergrad that then goes to Goldman that then was working at a PE firm.

That’s a really typical profile that you’ll see. But you’ll also see some really, unique and interesting ones, which I think, Okay. Helps you understand that if you don’t have that path, you also have a real chance at these schools, and maybe even more of a chance, again, not knowing, how many of those Goldman P.

E. Harvard grads are applying. So I’m thinking of the guy that I saw who he went to UPenn undergrad, studied engineering, started out a kind of pretty typical path working in private equity, but then made a big pivot to work for go to Poland where he was working in a real estate investment firm and the head coach of the Polish lacrosse team.

So you have really interesting profiles like that, that you can see that. aren’t necessarily taking that typical path. And sometimes that really does help you stand out.

[00:07:42] John Byrne: True. Maria, what surprised you most about the data?

[00:07:48] Maria Wich-Vila: Wow. I think we already covered, the, one of the biggest ones was the number, the percentage of people who would had some sort of either their undergraduate or graduate education within the United States.

Intuitively, I had felt that was true. And sometimes when I try to, give some honest, tough love to applicants from certain countries, and they’ll say, oh, but Maria, I think you’re being a little too pessimistic. After all, X percent of the applicants at these schools are international, and Y percent are from a certain geography internationally.

I’ll say yes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all Solely from that area. A lot of them are, do have significant international educational experiences. I think another, speaking of the international piece the percentage of people who had significant international work experience as well was something else that really jumped out at me.

Because it would signal to me that Stanford really does value this global perspective both within probably its domestic applicants and also its international applicants. So I thought that was also a really interesting piece of data that jumped out at me.

[00:08:52] John Byrne: Now remind me what percentage was that?

[00:08:56] Heidi Hillis: People who are international

[00:08:58] John Byrne: who have had international work experience.

[00:09:01] Heidi Hillis: I think it was 30%.

[00:09:02] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty

[00:09:04] John Byrne: impressive.

[00:09:04] Caroline Diarte Edwards: 30%, which I was thrilled to see. As well as coming from in Seattle and Europe. Obviously the international schools put a heavy emphasis on international experience and I hadn’t fully appreciated that. A school like Stanford would also.

really value that to the same extent. And it’s great to see that candidates are making the effort to get outside of the U. S. and get international experience because I think you gain so much from that exposure. And you bring more to the classroom if you’ve got that experience. I know that both Maria and Heidi.

I’ve worked outside of the home countries as well. Pre MBA and I think that you just have so much more to contribute to the whole experience. And it was great to see that 30%.

[00:09:50] John Byrne: What else struck you, Caroline?

[00:09:53] Caroline Diarte Edwards: We talked about the concentration of academic institutions, and I was also surprised about the concentration in employers.

So while there is a very long list of employers where the students have worked pre MBA when you dig into the career paths that they’ve taken there is some interesting concentration. Heidi had noted that the reports that There are 26 companies that account for nearly one third of the class in terms of where they were working right before Stanford.

But when you look at their whole career history, those same 26 companies represent over 60 percent of the class. So that is, yeah, that’s quite extraordinary that so many of the class have experience of working at quite a short list of companies.

[00:10:46] Heidi Hillis: I think that’s reflective of, if you really think about it, you have a lot of these companies.

You’re talking about the Goldmans and the Morgan Stanley and McKinsey that have really large programs that recruit out of undergrad that are really training grounds for. A lot of people that then on to do, work in industry or go on to work for in finance in particular, a lot of people starting out at some of these bulge bracket banks and then going into.

Private equity or smaller firms. So the diversity within finance in terms of where they were working prior to MBA is quite large compared to consulting because there just aren’t as many consulting firms, but a lot of people in financing, a lot of different firms, but they, a lot of them really do start out in these training programs, these analyst programs that are so big and popular.

[00:11:34] John Byrne: Yeah, true. And looking back, I did this exercise as well. The feeder companies to Stanford 10 years ago in the class of 2023, 22. 8 percent from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and your data, 22. 5 percent work there. Incredible consistency over a 10 year period. When you look at the top six employers 10 years ago, they were McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and JP.

Morgan Chase. They accounted alone for 34 percent of all the students in the class of 20, 2013 at Stanford. In your data for 23 and 24 they account for 29. 8%, just a few percentage points less. So remarkable consistency. And I think you’re right, Heidi, this is a function of the fact that these firms bring in a lot of people who are analysts and actually expect them after 3 to 5 years to go to a top MBA school.

So there’s a good number of them in the applicant pool to choose from and let’s face it, they’re terrific candidates.

[00:12:46] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. I think another pool of really terrific candidates that you see, and I don’t know what the 2013 data was saying, but is the US military, which is really, I think, again, something that I felt having worked with lots of military candidates myself, understand that, Yeah, intuitively, I would have expected, but to see it in the data is actually really interesting.

You just see Stanford in particular, I think, is really looking for leadership potential, and it’s so hard to show that as an analyst, as a consultant, but as in the military, these people have such incredible leadership experience that it really helps them to stand out.

[00:13:23] John Byrne: Yeah. And let’s tell people what the data shows.

How many out of us military academies,

[00:13:28] Heidi Hillis: In all in total, we had, 20 over the two years. So that’s in the two classes that we found. So that’s, a pretty large number. And they come from all the different academies, right? So you’ll find them from different, not academies, in the army, navy and the marines.

So you’ll see that. And you also see quite a few, in the data we’ll, we see a lot from the Israeli military as well, but that’s actually a little bit difficult to because every Israeli does go into the military. So it’s they have that in their background. Any Israeli candidate would have Israeli military background as well, but again, that’s.

Place that people can really highlight their leadership. So you had eight people from who had been, who were Israeli and obviously had military experience where they were able to demonstrate significant impact and leadership prior to MBA.

[00:14:18] John Byrne: Yeah. In fact, 10 years ago, roughly 2%. of the class went to either West Point or the U.

S. Naval Academy. Good number of people actually from the military. Maria, any other observations?

[00:14:34] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, I was also surprised at the fact that within those top employers And when we look at the tech companies, it was Google and Facebook and Meta with a pretty large showing. Google was actually the fourth largest employer after the MBBs and, but then, I was expecting there to be an equal distribution amongst those famous large cap technology companies.

So I, I would have expected even representation amongst Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, et cetera. And yet. Apple and Amazon only had one or two people each versus Google at 25. So I thought that was really fascinating and it makes me wonder if perhaps it’s a function of maybe Google and Meta might give their younger talent more opportunities to lead impactful projects, perhaps.

I’m just guessing here, but maybe Apple and Amazon perhaps are more hierarchical. And maybe don’t give their younger talent so many opportunities, but I was really surprised by that. I would have expected a much more even distribution amongst the those famous those famous tech companies.

[00:15:40] John Byrne: Yeah. You’re right. And I crunched the numbers on the percentages and Google took three and a half percent of the two classes and that’s better than Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase. Facebook had 2. 7 percent and Microsoft at 1. 5, and I was shocked at Amazon because, Amazon is widely known as the largest single recruiter of MBAs in the past five years.

At one point, they were recruiting a thousand MBAs a year, but in, in one sense, maybe Amazon quite doesn’t really have the prestige. For Stanford MBAs who might rather work elsewhere, I think that might be is, you look at the employment reports at a lot of the other schools and Amazon is number one at a number of schools and very low percentage of people from Amazon going to Stanford.

We don’t know, of course, how many. Leaving Stanford and going back to Amazon, but it can’t be that many.

[00:16:41] Heidi Hillis: I wonder if there’s something about just a proximity effect here. You have the plate, like the meta and Google just being so close to Stanford, maybe it just, attracts more people applying because they.

They’re almost on campus and maybe, just being Amazon all over the world and different places could be not attracting as many. I don’t know.

[00:17:03] John Byrne: Yeah, true. The other thing, the analysis shows, and this is what you also gather from the more public class profile is really the remarkable diversity of talent that a school like Stanford can attract year after year.

It is, it blows you away, really. The quality and the diversity of people despite the concentration of undergraduate degree holders or company employers, it’s it’s really mind boggling, isn’t it?

[00:17:33] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, they come from everywhere and really interesting paths and even the people I think that, have those kind of typical paths, you see a lot of diversity within them as well.

So I think, even if you’re coming from a Goldman or a McKinsey having lived in another country or gone to done a fellowship abroad or running a non profit on the side. These things are actually what helped them to stand out. But you do see some really interesting, I think, profiles, too, of people who’ve just done, you get a sense of what it would be like to be in the Stanford classroom.

People from really unique and different backgrounds. People who come from all different countries and lawyers, doctors people who have run, nonprofits in developing countries people running large programs for places like Heineken or Amazon too. But, it’s a real diversity of backgrounds.

[00:18:27] John Byrne: Now, Heidi, I wonder if one is an applicant. Is this discouraging to read and here’s why if I’m not from Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and if I didn’t work for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google am I at a disadvantage and should I even try? Some people look at the data and come away with that conclusion.

[00:18:52] Heidi Hillis: I think it’s a reality check for a lot of people. I think it’s just, it’s really, it just helps people understand, what it, the difficulty of this, why it’s so competitive, but I think that there is, again, behind the kind of the percentages, you do look at these individual profiles and I would get, I would actually take a lot of hope from it if I were looking, as an applicant, because especially if you are.

Maybe a little bit more of a big fish or small fish in a bigger pond or big fish in a smaller pond you go to Rice or you go to Purdue or, and you do really well, those are the people who, they’re definitely looking for that diversity of background as well as the international.

I think that’s really neat. think that, instead of looking at the data and saying, why not, why I shouldn’t even apply, it’s why not me look at these other profiles of people who have taken really unique paths that that do get in. So I think it is actually a Kind of a mix of both, it is a reality check for a lot of people, but it’s actually, there is so much diversity in the data as well.

I think also one thing that we haven’t really covered is about is just the prevalence of social impact in, that’s really taken hold of the class. I don’t, again, going back to your 2013 analysis, I’m not sure how easy it was to tell that, but a lot of you can see reflected in the both the types of organizations people are working for, but also their titles and the kinds of work that they’re doing that that there’s a huge 40 percent of the class of the two classes had some kind of social impact in their background.

Whether that’s, running their own nonprofit on the side or volunteering or. Running trans transformational kind of programs within companies that are, either in finance or consulting or in industry. That’s a big trend. I think that people can take heart from as well.

So if you’re working if you feel like you’re in an organization where you’re not getting the leadership that you. can use to highlight your potential for Stanford, that’s definitely a place you can go is working for in volunteer capacity for a non profit or on the board of a of some kind of foundation.

Those are the kinds of places that you can highlight your potential

[00:21:00] John Byrne: true. And I know we have a overrepresented part of every applicant pool at an elite business school are software engineers from India. And I wonder in your analysis, how many of them did you find from like the IITs?

[00:21:18] Heidi Hillis: That’s a good question. The IITs, it was again, it was one of these you have about 50 percent of classes internet, so 25 percent of the class. was educated outside of the US. The IITs are going to be up there. Let’s see from India, 2. 1 percent of the class came from India. So probably, I don’t know offhand exactly how many of those were IITs, but

[00:21:43] John Byrne: I’ve had a lot of them.

[00:21:45] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, probably a lot of them. Although I think, that’s the other thing is that people who come, to work with me from India, they feel like if they haven’t gone to IIT, then that’s going to be a disadvantage. But I think, you’ll find that there are, there’s representation of other universities as well.

Definitely.

[00:22:00] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I was just looking at the list of undergrad institutions. And for example, you’ve got Osmania University from Hyderabad. So it is not, it’s not all IIT. Okay.

[00:22:12] John Byrne: Yeah, exactly. And Caroline, 1 of the things about the institutions that are really represented here and that I don’t really see unless I missed it.

I didn’t see a Cambridge or an Oxford. Two of the best five universities in the world. And I wonder if that’s just a function of fewer people in the applicant pool or what? What do you think that could be about?

[00:22:36] Caroline Diarte Edwards: I had a look through the uk Institutions and you have got cambridge in there.

I think I also noticed. Bristol university there are a few different universities. So i’m aston university, which is not it’s not on a par with Oxford or Cambridge. So I think that speaks to the point that Heidi made that you don’t have to have been to an elite school to get into Stanford.

Aston is a good solid university, nothing wrong with Aston, but it’s not it’s not one of the top UK universities. So there’s definitely some interesting variety in the educational backgrounds of the students going to Stanford. And

[00:23:16] John Byrne: then, yeah, it is if you’re a big fish in a small pond, like Afton, you’ll you could still stand out in the pool.

[00:23:26] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely. There’s a lot of really interesting background, you have look hard on blue and you have Miami University and some really smaller universities abroad. I think. Again, it’s really, if you look at that, it does give you hope because it’s really what you do afterwards and if you, obviously, if you come from one of these schools, you probably want to be in the top, 5 percent of the graduating class, you want to show that you have the GPA that can support an academic background that they feel comfortable that you’ll be able to compete academically, but, and maybe that’s what you’re Offset by the, the GMA or the scores, you don’t know, we don’t have those on here.

But, um, the path post university really becomes much more important in those cases. What you’ve done since then where you’ve, how you’ve risen from starting at a entry level position to, running a division or heading a country group or something like that.

[00:24:21] John Byrne: And as far as Cordon Bleu goes, every good business program needs a Cordon Bleu, for God’s sake, right?

You want to eat well at those NBA parties, don’t you?

[00:24:32] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely.

[00:24:35] John Byrne: Maria, I’m sure that was true at Harvard.

[00:24:38] Maria Wich-Vila: I wasn’t the one doing the cooking but I certainly, I was certainly a member of the wine and cuisine society where I happily participated in the eating and consuming a part of that.

But to, to the point that we were just recently talking about. regarding being a big fish in a small pond. Not only have I seen it personally with applicants that I’ve worked with who did not attend these elite universities, but even many years ago, I attended a, an admissions conference where Kirsten Moss, who was the former head of admissions at Stanford, she actually told stories about how they’ve accepted people who even attended community college.

But within the context of that community college, they had really moved mountains. And she said that one of the things that they look for is, Within the context and the opportunities that you’ve been given, how much impact have you had? So maybe you don’t have an opportunity to go to Yale or MIT or IIT for your undergraduate, but whatever opportunity you have been given, have you grabbed that opportunity and really made the most of it and really driven change?

So she specifically called out, I believe, I believe there were two students that year at the GSB who had both started their educations, their higher educations at community college. Anything is possible. It really is about finding the people who, wherever they go, they jump in and make an impact.

[00:25:55] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that to that point, I think it can almost be a more difficult if you’ve gone to Harvard and then worked at one of these, gone on one of these paths because we know that there’s, that’s an overrepresented pool in the applicant pool to stand out among those to have had that, that pedigree sometimes can be a disadvantage, right?

If you haven’t done as much as you should have with that, or if you started at that high level to show that level of progress over the course of your career is actually a little bit more difficult. Okay. And coming from a community college and rising to, a country level manager in some places is actually puts you at a significant advantage, I would say.

[00:26:31] Maria Wich-Vila: Because it’s hard for those people, it’s hard for those people to stand out, but also I think some of them go on autopilot, right? I think some people are on this kind of achievement, elite achievement treadmill, where they’re not even really thinking about what do I want to do with my life?

They’re always reaching for whatever that next, what’s the best college to go to? It’s Harvard Princeton. Yeah. Okay. Now that I’m here, what’s the best employer to work for? It’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG and without actually perhaps stopping to think about what is my passion? What impact do I want to make in the world?

And so I feel sometimes those autopilot candidates, I feel a little bit bad for them because they’re doing everything quote unquote and yet sometimes when you speak with them, that passion just isn’t there. And I do think that may ultimately harm them in the very, very elite business school.

Admissions because business schools want people who are passionate because at the end of the day, in order to do hard things, you’re going to need passion at some point to get you through those low periods. And so I think that’s something business schools look for. And I do think that sometimes these.

These kind of autopilot candidates might sometimes be at a disadvantage.

[00:27:29] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that, to that point look in the data, when you look at it, you see so many people who’ve gone to McKinsey, Bain, Weasley, or Goldman, but then there’s a, you see a lot of success for people who’ve actually pivoted.

So those pivots that are post The second or third job really do show you that, if you’re if you get a candidate who’s coming from, still at McKinsey, okay, that’s fine. They have to be the top 5 percent of McKinsey, like they have to be going to get so many McKinsey applicants that the only the, you can look at the data in a couple ways.

One is, oh, my God, they took 12 people from McKinsey and the others. Oh, my God, they only took 12 people from McKinsey, right? That’s So if you want to be one of those 12, you have to be the top 12 in the world, right? Whereas if you’ve gone to McKinsey and then done an externship at a health care startup and then moved on to be a product manager at for health at Google, that kind of a path is definitely showing a little bit more, maybe risk taking, maybe ability to follow your passions.

So I think that. When I see candidates who come to me, for example, and they’re like, not thinking about applying now, but maybe in a year or two, I say, look for an externship, maybe think about pivoting out of one of these places and looking for some operational experience.

And because you see in the data that works.

[00:28:42] Maria Wich-Vila: And they’re doing themselves a service not only in terms of enhancing their admissions chances, but even just in terms of determining, what do I want to do with my career? If I do eventually want to go into industry, what functional role do I want to have?

What industry do I want to work in? So it’s, it actually benefits them in the long term to do that as well, even if they don’t go to business school. I think those secondments and externships and second job, post consulting jobs are extremely valuable. Totally agree with you.

[00:29:06] Caroline Diarte Edwards: And I’m sure they also bring more to the classroom as well.

I would think that’s also why Stanford is selecting some of those candidates, because not only have they worked at McKinsey, but they’ve also led a non profit in Africa or worked in private equity or whatever it is. So they have much more breadth that they can bring to the classroom. And I think that It’s seen as a very valuable contribution

[00:29:29] John Byrne: in Heidi.

Did you see that? The majority of the candidates to examined actually did work in more than one place, right?

[00:29:37] Heidi Hillis: Yes, most of them did. There were very few that, you see working at one place. And I would say that those are people that would have really risen through the ranks.

Someone who’s worked at Walmart and become, started in, I don’t know, in one state, but then to become a regional manager and things like that really are going to onto a global role. The people who have stayed at one place really have shown significant career progression within that.

And then the other people I think you do see a lot of movement. The big. The most typical would be from investment banking to private equity and then you do find in finance, there’s a little bit less kind of movement into other industries. You see a lot of people staying within finance, but within finance.

Yeah. Yeah. The other industries, especially consulting or other, tech, people are really moving into other places and it’s becoming, it is a little bit difficult. We have these categories that we’ve talked about, for example, healthcare, but it’s hard to categorize some of these companies.

Are they healthcare? Are they tech? There’s a lot of overlap. And so everything’s a little bit of tech in something nowadays. So whether it’s finance and fintech or education and ed tech or health care and health tech, these are all merging and combining. It’s hard to categorize them.

[00:30:53] John Byrne: So looking at the data here I wonder if you’ve seen your old classmates in the sense that these new people are very much like the people you went to school with at Stanford. I

[00:31:05] Heidi Hillis: put this out and it’s really interesting to a lot of my classmates downloaded the report and read it. And a lot of them came back and said, oh, boy, I would never get in now.

It’s these people are super impressive. I think that you see a lot of. It’s just become more and more competitive. And I think that with more information and more people every year applying, it is becoming really difficult. I think that you do see a lot of, I am encouraged by the diversity part of it that you see still Stanford.

I feel like they do take risks on some really interesting profiles and candidates that maybe some other schools are less likely to do. And so that’s what does give me. A lot of hope when I get some kind of really nontraditional candidate who wants to, their dream school is Stanford. I feel like, I say all the time, there’s a 6 percent chance.

You’re going to get in, but there’s 100 percent chance. You won’t get in if you don’t apply. So you’ve got to, you got to give it a go. And that’s, the attitude that we take to it.

[00:32:04] John Byrne: Indeed. So for all of you out there read Heidi’s article on our site, it’s called who gets in and why exclusive research.

Into Stanford GSB and I’ll tell you one conclusion I have about this is that, man, if you really want to get into Stanford, you need a Sherpa, and and Heidi would be a great Sherpa for you because the, just the profiles of these folks, where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished in their early lives is so remarkable that To compete against, in this pool for a spot in the class you need every possible advantage you can get.

And and having an expert guide you through this trip probably would be a really big advantage. So Heidi, thank you for sharing your insights with us and the research, the very cool research.

[00:33:01] Heidi Hillis: Thank you

[00:33:03] John Byrne: and for all of you out there. Good luck. And if you want to go to Stanford, you got to check out this report.

Okay. It will inspire you to up your game, even if you are from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or wherever McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google, you want to look at this report and you want to really think about. What it will really take to get in. I think it will inspire you, motivate you to really put your best foot forward.

Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants.

Maria

New around here? I’m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!