All You Need To Know About The New GMAT
Maria |
March 23, 2023

With the upcoming changes to the GMAT format, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed and unsure of where to start. 

In the latest episode of Business Casual, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline break down the upcoming changes to the GMAT format and discuss how they could impact your business school applications. They will cover everything from the removal of the writing Analytical Writing Assessment to Integrated Reasoning section’s removal for something called Data Insights.

Whether you’re a seasoned test-taker or just starting your GMAT journey, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to succeed in their business school applications.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.610] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast co hosts Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. The big news right now is the new GMAT exam. GMAC, the administrator of the test, has announced that it will release a newly updated, shorter, or light version of the GMAT later this year. It’s going to be dramatically different than the current test. Among other things, it’s going to be shortened to almost by nearly an hour, and it will eliminate the writing requirement in the GMAT, the writing Analytical Writing Assessment. It will be composed of three sections, each 45 minutes long, quant, verbal, and then the Integrated Reasoning section will be removed for something called Data Insights. Ultimately, I think the reason for the test is simple. GMAC has been losing market share for quite some time to GRE. Standardized testing as a whole is viewed to be a friction point, another hurdle that applicants have to overcome before they apply. And to the extent that that is making fewer people apply to business school. That is a problem at a time when particularly domestic applicants to full time MBA programs have been declining for some time.

 

[00:01:37.410] – John

So I wonder, Maria, is this something you welcome? And Caroline, is this something you welcome, having been the former admissions director at INSEAD who very much relied on the GMAT test, who wants to take it first?

 

[00:01:53.840] – Caroline

Yeah, we’ve discussed this before. Right. I think referring back to our previous conversation, I think we’ve pretty much called this change. We discussed the fact that it’s a very long test, right? It’s 4 hours. I don’t think it necessarily needed to be 4 hours. The GMAT already had launched the executive assessment, which is a much shorter format and seems to be pretty effective for schools in helping them to assess candidates for the executive MBA. So given that success, it seemed like there was an opportunity for the GMAT for GMAC to shorten their test. And as you say, I think it’s a competitive response. Right. And I think this goes back to several years ago, when GMAC took the contract away from ETS to administer the test and gave it to Pearson View. And so ETS, in order to win back market share, started pushing the GRE. Right. So in some ways, GMAT created this monster and created this competition by shifting the market dynamics when they changed that contract several years ago. So they’ve faced competition from the growth of the GRE, also now, of course, increasingly test waivers. So candidates feeling that they don’t need to take the test, I think they feel that if you can make the test less intimidating, then why not?

 

[00:03:30.210] – Caroline

So I’m certainly in favor of that, making it more approachable for candidates. And I think another factor is also that, and this may not have filtered through much yet, but it will do gradually. In the US. At least, students have been very used to taking standardized tests because of the undergraduate market and taking the Sat or the act to get into undergraduate programs. And so now that there are more and more colleges that are test optional or won’t accept tests for undergraduate programs, there’ll be more and more students coming into the system for graduate programs that have never taken a standardized test. So they will also be less inclined to take a standardized test to get into a graduate school. And the idea of taking a four hour test will be even more horrific. So I think the schools will have to be more flexible in future because they’ll be dealing with a different market than they have dealt with in the past.

 

[00:04:40.490] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. Maria, your take.

 

[00:04:43.580] – Maria

Yeah, I agree with all of that. And I think if I were to put on my admissions hat, this is in a way, a good way to almost get a bit of a respite from the GMAT arms race that has been happening these past several, several years, right where the GMAT is such a key part of particularly the US News Ranking. And, yeah, they say they also collect the GRE, but when you go to the US. News ranking site, they don’t show the GRE. You have to dig for that number. But the GMAT, the average GMAT is right there, front and center. And I think that a lot of schools have thus been trying to game the rankings a bit by focusing so much on that average GMAT score that I think other things perhaps have been lost in the process. And so now if we’ve got a third score, I mean, this season is going to be bonkers for admissions officers because they’re going to have either four potential things. They’re going to have a test waiver, people applying without a test. They’re going to have people applying with the old GMAT, people applying with the GRE.

 

[00:05:42.710] – Maria

And now in Round Two, only because if the test nobody knows if the test is going to come out in the summer, in the spring, or in the winter, but if it comes out out at any point after, say, August, then presumably it’ll be too late for anyone in Round One to take it. So now you’re going to have some people in Round One who weren’t able to take the test and some people in Round Two who were able to take the test. And so I don’t even know how to do the apples to apples comparison there. So from a usage of the test as an apples to apples comparison of someone’s intellectual horsepower, I think it’s going to be a big mess. But if I’m an admissions officer and I’ve got some candidates, that it’s. Now apples and papayas and oranges and cumquats. Like, we got all kinds of things in the mix now. So I don’t know how to compare that. But from that perspective, that would be annoying. But if I am an admissions officer and I want to accept someone into my program whom I might otherwise hesitate to, if they had a low GMAT score, and I might think like, oh man, they might drag down my average, and what are the cascading effects of that?

 

[00:06:40.110] – Maria

Now? I can just say, like, well, this is a brand new it’s a brand new test and nobody knows what it means and what are the percentiles, and we’re not going to have that same intuition the way we do. If somebody says, oh, that person has a 740 on the GMAT, all of us immediately intuitively know that that’s a good score. But now if you have a 37.6 on the new or whatever that grading score, we don’t know. Nobody’s going to have a real intuition of it. And so I think that gives the schools a useful excuse to still require a test and yet not be so beholden to achieving a certain number. I think it’s a good middle ground for them where we understand that the original GMAT was just way too big of an ask. But this way, look, it’s the new friendly GMAT, so surely you can take the friendly GMAT Mr. Or Ms. Applicant. And so hopefully it won’t be too big of an ask, but we’ll still free them from the shackles of the aim for the 730 average.

 

[00:07:38.070] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. Do you think that making the test shorter will result in any increase in applicants to graduate management education or not?

 

[00:07:50.550] – Caroline

I’m sure that’s what they’re hoping is that it will reverse the decline in GMAT takers. So time will tell. Right. I think that the trends are against them. Right. Because schools are increasingly becoming more flexible with test requirements, and I don’t think that the candidates will continue to take the GRE. That continues to be a good option. So perhaps it will, to a certain extent, reverse the decline in GMAT test taking. I’m sure that’s why they’re doing this. So yeah, hopefully it will bring some more candidates into the pool. That’s certainly a positive thing. So we’ll have to wait and see what happens. But that’s got to be the goal here.

 

[00:08:37.860] – John

Yeah. There’s some speculation that they could retake some market share from GRE because GRE is a bit more constrained in altering its test and making it shorter because it applies to a lot of different graduate schools, not only business. So they may have more difficulty shortening the test to match this competitive move by GMAT. The other thing is, this is something that’s been in development at GMAC for at least two years. The person who is bringing it to fruition had been in charge of the project as Chief Product Officer of the organization, as now CEO, newly elected as a result of conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, from program directors, faculty, and deans. They even spoke to thousands of candidates. They had live focus groups and all this kind of thing, but we don’t know how it will play out, right, because they haven’t actually tested it in the field. They’ve done some simulations that suggest the correlation is as strong to your ability to easily master the core curriculum and the quantum, but it hasn’t been time tested with real people over years of being in MBA programs and seeing how those people perform after they’ve been admitted.

 

[00:09:59.970] – John

So that’s a big question mark as well. So we don’t know how that will turn out. I’m assuming that the psychometricians at GMAC kind of know what they’re doing and that the correlation will be as strong as it has been for the longer test. But they’re also thinking that it increases the relevance of the test because there’s greater diversity among the candidates today than previously. And they’re applying to a much broader mix of programs using these standardized tests. So they actually think that this new test is more relevant to both the diversity of the candidates and the mix of programs, which is kind of interesting to me. I don’t think it removes the anxiety and the dread that almost everyone feels when entering either an exam room or turning on your computer to take the test. Do you think it’s going to relieve any anxiety. Maria?

 

[00:10:58.840] – Maria

Well, first of all, if I’m someone who hates writing essays, it’s certainly going to relieve that level of anxiety. So I think it’s going to relieve some anxiety insofar as my understanding is that they are removing certain test topics altogether, some of which may or may not have been of any use at all. I think geometry is being removed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really use geometry ever. I think from that perspective, I think there will be less, not only the shorter duration, but I think, the shorter scope. And I welcome the increase in what used to be called the integrated reasoning type questions, because those are, I think, more useful and more representative of what someone in a business environment does need to analyze. So I think it will be less. There will always be anxiety, of course, but I think there would be if you if you told someone you have to take this one or this other, the first test or the new test, I think there would be more anxiety for taking the current test.

 

[00:11:55.450] – John

Yeah. Now, many of the details about the test have yet to be released. On March 28, GMAC is coming out with an announcement that will give a little more detail about the test and the timetable along with the pricing. Will it be cheaper because it’s shorter. Or will they maintain the price structure, or will it in fact be more expensive because it’s brand new? We don’t know. What we do know that has been leaked on poets and quants, I might add, is that the quantitative reasoning section will be reduced by ten questions to 21 from the current 31 questions, which is how they’re reducing the time it takes to complete that section to 45 minutes from 62 minutes. The verbal reasoning portion of the test is being cut by 13 questions to 23 from 36. And then on this Data Insights portion, which replaces the integrated reasoning piece, they’re going to boost it by eight questions to 20 from twelve, and increase the time devoted to that part of the test by 50% to 45 minutes from 30 minutes. And I think this is where they think the test will be more relevant for what schools expect today on things like data sufficiency, multi source reasoning, table analysis, graphics interpretation, and other things that get at the more analytical nature of what MBA programs are teaching today. So that will be really interesting. Do you think it makes the test less valuable for an admissions officer, Caroline, having used this test as an admission service?

 

[00:13:44.870] – Caroline

Well, as Maria said, there’s going to be a transition period where there’s going to be some guesswork to do, right? Because they won’t know. They won’t have any point of comparison with any historical data to be able to see, okay, well, this person has this score, and how does someone with that score typically perform on our program? It’s a blank sheet of paper, right? So they will be admitting people based on the data that they’re getting from GMAC about how that score correlates with previous GMAT scores. And then they’ll be cross checking that with candidate academic track records from their undergraduate degree. They’ll be looking at their profile holistically and cross checking very carefully. So I think it will take them, they’ll have to spend a bit of extra time scrutinizing profiles to be sure that they have the academic requirements, because that’s very important. Schools do not want to admit candidates who are going to struggle academically, right? That’s an absolute nightmare. If you admit a student, and I’ve seen it happen, right? Candidates who students who come in, who with the best will in the world, doesn’t matter how motivated you are, if you don’t have the academic ability, you’re going to struggle in the classroom.

 

[00:15:13.830] – Caroline

It’s a bad experience for you, it’s a bad experience for the school. And it does happen that people don’t get through the program, right? And it’s a total mess. So nobody wants that to happen. And so they will be spending extra time scrutinizing those new scores and the profiles and seeing how those scores cross check with other elements of the profile to make sure that they feel confident. But as you say, GMAC has a huge amount of experience in developing these tests. I’m sure that they have done a lot of they’ve kicked the tires on this. I’m sure that they have done a lot of work with the schools. They’ve done this in consultation with the schools. So I’m sure that they have a pretty high level of confidence that when they roll this out, that the schools can rely on this. And likewise, the schools wouldn’t have let them go ahead with it, right, if they didn’t feel confident that this was going to be a positive move for them. I would expect that it will be a positive move and that whilst there will be some extra scrutiny required in the first season or so after that, I’m sure that it will be a very positive thing from the admissions office’s perspective.

 

[00:16:45.330] – John

Yeah. And just circling back to what you said earlier, Caroline, I’m sure one of the worst days an admissions officer can have at a school is when a professor walks in and says, how in the world did you admit this student?

 

[00:16:59.910] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s a mess when that happens. Nobody wants that to happen. Right? And the school works with the students to help them get through. But you really want to avoid the situation where someone starts to struggle, right. You want to get people in that classroom who are going to be successful. That’s the goal. And candidates get frustrated that they get rejected on academic criteria. But at the end of the day, you are applying to an academic program. And no matter how professionally successful you are, you do need to meet those academic criteria, because you do need to be able to demonstrate that you’re going to flourish academically, because it’s not going to benefit you and it’s not going to benefit the school, and it’s not going to benefit your classmates if you can’t keep up.

 

[00:18:00.330] – John

Maria, for you. For candidates who will be applying either in Round One, Round Two, or even Round Three in the next cycle, what should their strategy be based on this news from GMAC? Should they prepare for the current version for the end of the year? Probably on Round One applications, they will have no other choice. Do they prepare anyway for the tougher test? And then if the newer version comes out in time for Round two, do they basically take the new test and feel that they’ll be over prepared for it by preparing for the current one? What’s your advice?

 

[00:18:40.310] – Maria

I think it’s going to vary based on each individual person and what their strengths are as a test taker. So if they are someone who, let’s say they’ve done a few practice tests for the current GMAT, and the sections that we think are rumored to be eliminated are the parts that tend to trip them up, then it might be worth waiting for that next version to come along. I also can’t help but wonder if there will be quite a bit of leniency this year with the new light GMAT test. Because, Carol, no one’s going to know what to make of these scores. And so because of that, if I know I want to submit a test, maybe this new GMAT might be the right way to go. Because if nobody really knows how to make heads or tails of my score, and I’m not totally confident in my score. Maybe this is the great opportunity for me to try something experimental and hope that it is solid enough to get me in, but does not subject me to the same level of scrutiny as a standard GMAT or a GRE score. That having been said, I think if somebody is looking to apply in round one, if they are from an overrepresented group, and so it is therefore all the more important for them to apply in round one, I would not sit around and wait for the new test to come out.

 

[00:19:57.170] – Maria

If you are not confident in your skills in the GMAT, then I would advise you to simply switch to the GRE and move on with your plans, as usual. Because who knows, right? Maybe it will come out like they’re saying it’ll come out later this year. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if, for whatever reason, there’s a bug in the system and it doesn’t come out until next year? I would hate to have somebody sit around waiting just for this new test that may or may not happen, that may or may not have certain traits associated with it. So I think yeah, study for the GMAT or the GRE, as usual. I think it would take a certain amount of self awareness for someone to say, AHA, yes, the parts that will be on the new GMAT are probably things I am very good at, therefore I should wait. But that seems like a risky game in terms of the timing.

 

[00:20:40.920] – John

Yeah. I mean, on the surface of it, I’m thinking that if English is a second language for you, these test changes are to your advantage. Number one, there is no longer an analytical writing section that would have taken 30 minutes, and if English is a second language, that would have posed a special challenge. Number two, the verbal section of the test is being caught more than any other section by eliminating 13 different questions. So that’s got to help someone who is English as a second language. So I’m thinking that this could be especially helpful to people who are in other countries around the world and who have to face an English test to get into an elite business school. Caroline, you think that’s true?

 

[00:21:26.780] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s a very good point, John. There’s definitely a difference in, as you say, it is harder for someone who’s not a native English speaker to take the GMAT, and that is taken into account by the schools. But still, it is a big amount in decline for someone, and obviously they want to do well in the GMAT and prove their capability. It is definitely more difficult. I wouldn’t fancy taking the test myself in one of the foreign languages that I speak. Right. It’s bad enough taking it English, never mind a foreign language. I think that makes sense that switching the focus elements that are less language focused. Having said that, of course, when you do go to business school, a big part of the academic work is plowing through large volumes of material. And for preparing for classes, you will need to be able to read through cases pretty quickly. So the schools still need to be confident that whilst maybe you don’t necessarily master some subtleties of English grammar to the same extent, but you do need to be able to plow through vast quantities of English reading and be able to express yourself very coherently in the classroom.

 

[00:23:06.050] – Caroline

So that’s something that they still need to be very confident in. But there’s other ways that they can check that, right. It doesn’t necessarily just through the GMAT.

 

[00:23:14.610] – John

That’s true. And I will say one underrated aspect of the GMAT and studying for it, frankly, is that it is a step in the right direction of preparing you for a rigorous academic experience. For people who’ve been out of school for three to five years, just tackling the questions on a practice GMAT I think is terrific preparation for the quant in the core and the rigor in the program just to get you back into that frame of mind. And I think that’s often underappreciated by applicants who have to go through the grueling process of prepping for the test and crossing the fingers and hoping they. Get a 700 plus score to get into a really good school. But I think there’s value in that.

 

[00:24:04.820] – John

And I think that value will remain. With the shorter test. So there you have it. New GMAT will come out before the end of the year. We don’t know exactly when, but it’s a very big change. It’s really the most significant change in. The exam since it went from paper and pencil test to computer quite a few years ago. I think that in general, people are going to like this because it is shorter, it’s not as weighty, and after all, sitting down in the exam room or at your home on your computer for something like three and a half hours, once you include the breaks that you’re able to take, those are optional.

 

[00:24:51.700] – John

Breaks is a long haul. This reminds me of what D at Harvard Business Ball would often say when she shortened the number of essay questions required for admission to just one. She basically said, look, it’s not an essay writing contest to get into business school, and it shouldn’t be, which is why I was reducing the number of essay questions at Harvard down to only one. And it shouldn’t have to be. A ruling three and a half hour test that you have to pass to prove the simple thing that you can do a relatively easy math and calculus so that you don’t struggle through a quantum course in an MBA. Same kind of thing. There you have it. Well, thank you, Caroline and Maria, for your insights. And thank you to all of you out there who listen to us. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

 

All You Need To Know About The New GMAT
Maria |
March 23, 2023

[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!