Answering Those Quirky MBA Applicant Questions
Maria |
August 3, 2022

If you’re an aspiring MBA applicant who’s been to different forums, from Reddit to Quora, you will find this episode of Business Casual interesting.

Our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline will discuss the following questions that John has collected from different forums;

  1. What is a better option for a student –  to become a doctor, a certified accountant, an MBA, or work in any IT field?
  2. What is the average number of candidates shortlisted for interviews by top b-schools like Harvard, Wharton, and Kellogg?
  3. Should I refuse to go to Harvard Business School as I don’t want to work 70 hours a week?
  4. What percentage of applicants get admitted to Columbia Business School?
  5. Is a top business school like Harvard, Wharton, or Stanford worth going to?

And one personal question from John:

What do you think Trump learned at Wharton?

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.390] – John

Welcome to Business Casual, the weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne with Poets and Quants, and I have my co host in the studio with me. Our virtual studio, that is, is Maria Wich Vila, who is the founder of Applicant Lab, and Caroline Diarte Edwards, the co founder of Fortuna Admissions and the former head of admissions at INSEAD in beautiful Fountain, Blow and Singapore and Dubai, places all over the place and San Francisco. Now, for that matter, one of the things I do in this, I’m going to tell you, is a guilty pleasure of mine is spend time on two platforms in particular to keep in touch with the MBA market at kind of a different level. I spend time on Quora, which is a platform where people are able to ask questions and get them answered. And then I spend time on the reddit board for MBAs. And on Sunday morning, it was a rainy morning here in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I spent a few hours on Quora answering questions, and I thought it would be great fun if I could get the greater wisdom from my two colleagues here, Maria and Caroline, on these questions.

 

[00:01:27.540] – John

Now, some of them, admittedly, are either misinformed or uninformed, but they’re kind of interesting, and I think a lot of people would be interested in the answers. The first one I answered, and this is kind of interesting to get Maria and Caroline’s take on, is what is a better option for a student to become a doctor, a certified accountant, an MBA or any IT field? Now, I basically said the question is better answered by you don’t choose      a field because you’re going to make more money in it, tap into your interests and passions and choosing what you would be good at. But I wonder, Maria, what would you make of a question like this?

 

[00:02:13.450] – Maria

I feel so sad for whoever asks that question because it’s really, first of all, those are such radically different paths that you could follow in your life. And second of all, you’re going to an anonymous internet message board where it’s half the time or 95% of the time, it’s the blind leaving the blind. I think you really need to assess what it is that you value and what you want out of life and oh, my gosh, okay, I will take a stab at it. I think, first of all, you have to assess what do you enjoy doing? What sort of problems do you want to solve? I think that that’s the fundamental question. What sorts of challenges do you enjoy solving? What sorts of puzzles do you enjoy putting together? If it’s somebody’s health, then maybe you should become a doctor. And if it’s debits and credits and depreciation, maybe you should become an accountant. I will say so instead of just bashing this poor, genuine, earnest question, ask her. What I will do is I will think to myself, okay, what if my younger brother were asking me this question, or if my son were asking me this question.

 

[00:03:20.030] – Maria

And I think accountants, I suspect that the accounting field is going to become increasingly automated over the next several decades. So I’m not saying that no one will ever need human accountants, but I do think that that is probably something that I would not advise someone to go into if they’re looking for long term a long term career stability. I also think that you have to have a very certain type of mind to enjoy accounting, right? It’s because some people call it would find it very boring and repetitive, whereas other people would say, well, this is actually they would find comfort in that sort of this lack of variability. Relatively speaking, I think medicine is an interesting one because there used to be this idea that medicine was the way to riches, and that can still be true. But my understanding is that with the health insurance companies, my understanding, and of course I’m saying this is a complete outsider with no basis for making this payment, but I’m going to do it anyway my understanding is that the health care industry is one in which the health insurance companies are the ones making all the money and doctors are making less and less.

 

[00:04:17.740] – Maria

And also to become a doctor, you now need twelve years. You need to specialize, and then you need to do all these different rotational things. And I remember in my old neighborhood, there was a doctor who lived across the street from us, and she was something like $700,000 in debt or something. And so you’re like, wow, she will eventually make that back. But also, I just don’t think you shouldn’t go for like an MBA if you’re not interested in business. I think I’ve told this story before. I’ve got a good friend from college who was a humanities major who went to work for one of the elite business consulting firms out of college and could not give two cent two shakes of a labs tail. What, I don’t know. She couldn’t care it less about business. And so she didn’t do well because she didn’t care. She hated it. So if you want some sort of overarching opinions on some of those different paths, but just sort of look inside and please don’t ask the internet, and please don’t go with just what your parents want.

 

[00:05:21.380] – John

Yeah, very good. And let’s face it, so many people wash out on the pre med courses in college, like biology and things where they just don’t do well, and they basically enter wanting to be a doctor, and it never really happens. And you’re right, it takes a very long time and a very big investment of yourself to even become a doctor. You’d be earning a lot of money out of an MBA program long before you ever see any real money as a doctor. And let’s face it, I’m just going to say this. I may be wrong, but in terms of just hard work and even intelligence, doesn’t it take more to be a doctor than it would be to get an MBA degree? Not that all doctors are smart, because, believe me, I’ve encountered a good number of them and I wondered how in the world, if they get the diploma, they hang on their wall. But, hey, it’s true. I would assume, Caroline, that you pretty much agree with what Maria said.

 

[00:06:31.730] – Caroline

Yeah. I wonder if the person asking that question was Indian, because it sounds like the sort of discussion some of my Indian friends would have around the dinner table. Often parents are looking for their kids to get a profession and head in one of those directions. And I would definitely agree that it’s important to pursue the path that is most interesting for you. I could never have contemplated becoming a doctor. I’m far too squeamish. I’m hoping that in my family, one of the next generation will pursue that path, because my sister is a doctor and it’s very useful having someone in the doctor. Someone in the family is a doctor. I have to say, I’m often on the phone to her about something or other, so definitely we’re going to need doctors, so let’s not discourage people from going down that path. But yes, certainly in the US, in particular, it’s an incredibly expensive proposition to pursue medical studies. My sister did most of her education in the UK and didn’t have to take on any debt at all to qualify. A very different picture in the US, for sure. As regards accounting, I know quite a few people who did accounting because I started my career at Arthur Anderson, where a lot of people had accounting backgrounds or were pursuing the accounting qualification.

 

[00:07:54.270] – Caroline

That wasn’t a direction that particularly interested me and I focused on the consulting side. But I can certainly see how it gives you a really good education to start your career. If you’re interested in working in business and gives you an understanding, a lot of the financial fundamentals, which is very useful. Right. And those principles remain true. So whether or not you continue a profession, continue accounting, I think that sort of educational background can be very useful in a lot of different capacities in a career in business.

 

[00:08:34.390] – John

There are a lot of people who are doctors and a lot of people who are accountants and software engineers who end up getting MBAs. Right?

 

[00:08:42.220] – Caroline

Yeah, absolutely. As you know, I’m a huge fan of the MBA, and for me, I think it’s something that just gives you a lot of options in a way that many other postgraduate degrees might not give you. There’s just so many different directions that you can go in after doing an MBA. And the wonderful thing as well about an MBA is that you don’t have to redo it at a specific point in time. Right. Some people do it very early, in the early to mid twenty s, and some people come to it later on. It might do an executive MBA a bit later on. So I think there’s a lot of options with the MBA that it’s something that you can turn to at different points in your career. And once you’ve got that, it’s a great platform and gives you a fantastic educational, fantastic credential, and a fantastic network that can take you in a lot of different directions. And in an economy where people will need to invent themselves and reinvent themselves probably many times over, that sort of flexibility that a postgraduate degree can give you I think is incredibly valuable.

 

[00:09:58.300] – John

Yeah. In fact, on Friday, I went to Washington, DC. And interviewed three executive MBA students. One was a pharmacist, one was a doctor. So there you go. Here’s another interesting question. I kind of like this question, even though it may seem not all that relevant to the applicant. Although, just for the sake of curiosity, I’m sure that everyone wonders what the answer to this question is. And here it is. What is the average number of candidates shortlisted for interview by top b-schools like Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg. So this person wants to know what percentage of the applicants actually get an interview. Now, Maria, do you have any data on that?

 

[00:10:46.120] – Maria

Well, I would defer to Caroline here, but I thought the general rule of thumb is that on average, if you get invited to interview, there’s roughly a 50% chance of getting in. So just take the acceptance rate and double it. And that would be my back of the envelope way. But Caroline, what do you think?

 

[00:11:00.430] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s what I would say as well. In most cases, the vast majority of candidates are being weeded out pre interview. So if you’ve got to interview stage, they consider that on paper you are potentially very good fit with the score. So your chances of getting in a dramatically shot up if you get to.

 

[00:11:21.500] – John

Interview stage, what percentage of the applicants do you think are interviewed at top schools? Is it roughly 20%?

 

[00:11:30.040] – Caroline

Well, it depends on as Maria said, it depends on what the admissions rate is. But post interview, I would agree that it’s probably roughly one in two.

 

[00:11:46.350] – John

I said that. Look, in a typical year, Harvard Business School gets just under 10,000 applications. And the scuttlebutt is that about 1800 candidates are invited to an HBS interview by the admission staffers every year. So that’s about 18% of those who apply. And then, as Caroline and Ridge has said, roughly 50% to 60% of those candidates are actually admitted. And I think these numbers would really vary from school to school. Larson dependent on yield, right? Because if your yield is lower than some other schools, it typically is other than Stanford, you’re going to need to interview more people and you’re going to need to admit more, so the percentages would change. Do you guys agree with that?

 

[00:12:35.260] – Caroline

Yeah, absolutely. So schools will plan how many people they want to interview, taking into account what they expect, what they forecast for their yield. And yields will vary a little bit year to year for any given score. But in most cases, it won’t vary dramatically unless you have something like the pandemic. Hopefully we’re not going to see that again in a hurry. They will make their own assumptions about their expectations for their yield and then calculate the number of candidates they need to interview accordingly.

 

[00:13:12.390] – John

Now, here is a question Maria has to ask, because I mean, it has to answer, sorry. Because Maria is an alum of Harvard Business School, and this is a question that’s going to make you laugh out loud. Should I refuse to go to Harvard Business School as I don’t want to work 70 hours a week?

 

[00:13:32.190] – Maria

Yes, please don’t apply. I mean, what kind of a weird question is that? It’s like saying, Should I refuse to marry George Clooney? Because I don’t feel like traveling all over the world. I’ve seen you guys. It’s just not good enough for me. So sorry, George. What kind of a question is that? I don’t want to go. Okay, again, let me put myself in more charitable shoes. I think that there is a misconception that if you want to, that business school dooms you to a life of 100 hours work weeks and this sharp elbowed capitalistic rat race, and it certainly can. If that’s what you want, the MBA is a great way to get that. But I also think that the MBA gives you a ton of flexibility, as Caroline was just mentioning. And even you, John, you just said that you had met some executive MBAs who are doctors and pharmacists. It just gives you so much flexibility to try to pursue the kind of life that you want. And for example, right now, Caroline and I are entrepreneurs. But perhaps later in our careers, when our kids are a little bit older, we may wish to try to go back into some sort of a corporate setting.

 

[00:14:43.790] – Maria

Who knows? And so the MBA does give you that flexibility. I can say we talked a couple of episodes ago to someone who had given birth during business school and had a child. I think a lot of women do ratchet down their careers when their children are at a certain age. And so there certainly is no it’s not like you graduate and they’re like, okay, we’re not going to hand you the diploma. Are you going to work at least 70 hours a week? No. Okay. We’re pulling it away from your hands. Like, what? So I can understand where that stereotype can come from. And there are certainly people who do work 70 hours a week, although I do think that eventually, even the most ambitious person, eventually age starts to take over and your brain and your body are unable to support that much longer. But yes, please don’t think that getting an MBA necessarily requires you to work a zillion hours a week.

 

[00:15:38.740] – John

Yeah, and working long hours is not a they’re directly correlated with an MBA from Harvard Business School. All MBAs at almost any school are going to put in good number of hours. You’re going to work hard because if you’re smart and ambitious enough to get into a major MBA program, I would think that you’d want to throw yourself into your work and would greatly enjoy it and it becomes less work and more, frankly, fun and personally fulfilling and an opportunity for you to grow on every level.

 

[00:16:12.090] – Maria

It’s almost like a chicken and an egg thing where business schools will accept people who have that passion and that drive to begin with. So if you apply to Harvard Business School and you’re like, well, the one thing I don’t want to do is work on anything, it might not work out for you admissions wise.

 

[00:16:27.070] – John

And for what it’s worth, we had published some research on how many hours MBAs actually put into their jobs. These are largely newly hired MBA, so you have to take that into account. At BCG, for example, the MBA average average is 63 hours a week. At Bain is 58. Incidentally, at places like General Electric, Pepco for three MBA are working 45 to 43 hours a week. And if you want to know who works, MBA is harder than any other firm, it’s Goldman Sachs. People responding to the survey from Goldman Sachs with an MBA claim they work 86 hours a week on average.

 

[00:17:10.270] – Caroline

Gruesome. I think you’re right that there. Are seasons for everything, and if you’re passionate about what you do, there will be times when you are happy to work long hours. Right?

 

[00:17:22.320] – Caroline

There’s something you just really want to get done and you have energy for that. I don’t particularly have the energy or the time to do that anymore, but I’ve been there and done that and I would have to do that at the time. I think also that an MBA, as you said, just gives you options. So from my sample of acquaintances and former colleagues and friends and so on, I do think that people who have MBAs are generally more satisfied with their careers because they are able to make choices. And if they’re not happy with what they’re doing, they move and they go and do something else. If they’re working Goldman Sachs or somewhere and they’re doing ridiculous hours and they’ve just got to the point where they don’t want to do that anymore, then they have other opportunities, right? There’s lots of other things that they can do. So people don’t get stuck in situations in jobs that they’re not happy with. And I think perhaps sometimes they do, but I just see that happening much less frequently amongst friends who have former colleagues who have MBAs than people who don’t, because it gives you the option value that you can switch.

 

[00:18:34.130] – Caroline

And I think that means, as an end result, that people are generally more likely to be happy with their lifestyle and how much they’re working.

 

[00:18:43.810] – John

Very true. Now, here’s a question that on the surface seems, well, kind of obvious in terms of what the answer might be, but it’s less than obvious for sure what percentage of applicants get admitted to Columbia Business School. Now, you think if you go and look at the class profile and you just do the percentages, you’ll find the admit rate, right? But in fact, Columbia is a school with two different intakes. They take in their largest number of full time MBAs in August, and then they have a smaller cohort that enters in January for an accelerated program. Now, what’s interesting is the overall rate of acceptance at the school is quite low. In fact, it’s 18.6%. But if you look at the admin rate for those who apply for the August entry, it’s down to 15.7%. And that, incidentally, is the rate that Columbia Business School gives to US. News and World Report. So when you look at the US News and World Report numbers, it’ll be the lower number, 15.7, not the higher overall rate of 18.6%. So now what’s interesting is, okay, well, if the overall rate is higher than the August rate, that means that the January cohort must have a much larger acceptance rate.

 

[00:20:08.630] – John

And indeed it does. Last year, there are only 267 applicants admitted out of a total of 502 candidates. But that comes to an acceptance rate of listen to this 53.2% versus the 15.7% in August. Big difference, more than three times the acceptance rate in January as opposed to August. I wonder if there’s similar changes like that, like an INSEAD, which also has more than one intake.

 

[00:20:44.560] – Caroline

Caroline yeah, I’m surprised there’s that bigger difference. So at INSEAD, there is a slightly smaller applicant pool, typically for January than September, but then the yield is higher for January than September because people are less likely to be applying to other programs at the same time because there are a few other options to apply to if you’re looking for a January entry. And so the admissions rate works out to being almost exactly the same, the offer rate. So I’m surprised. I expected that there would be some difference at Columbia. I would also say that they probably see a more targeted pool for that January intake and perhaps a more better qualified poll because it’s not such an obvious choice. And people are perhaps very carefully thinking through their options and why they’re applying. If they are choosing that specific intake, it’s a little bit different from the obvious choices if you’re applying to business school. And therefore, I think people might have thought through their choice a little bit more carefully if they’re applying for that January entry. Than some people who are applying and throwing their hat in the ring for September entries.

 

[00:22:04.850] – Caroline

And so I would suspect that the January intake, Paul, is on average, slightly better qualified than the September intake.

 

[00:22:14.090] – John

Now, I’m going to not throw out to you some of the other questions that I answered. For example, what did Trump learn at Wharton? What factors does hospitals will consider when reviewing the applicants? How is the master’s in management at London Business School? I’m not going to bore you with these ones, or is it possible to get into work business school with a 3.2 GPA? But I am going to ask the two of you this question. Is a top business school like Harvard, Wharton, Stanford worth going to? Now, we are true advocates for business education and of course, we think, absolutely it’s worth going too. But Maria and Caroline, what do you think?

 

[00:23:02.630] – Maria

Maybe an interesting question to examine would be when would it not be worth going? Perhaps that’s the way to look at it. Yeah, I think it would not be worth going if you are really not passionate at all about business and you don’t plan to apply the lessons that you learn if you go to business school and then you decide to become, I don’t know, a psychotherapist, but even then you would use the MBA to build your practice. The general management degree is called general management because it’s generally very useful to know. But, yeah, I guess if you don’t really plan on doing anything with the degree, then it wouldn’t be worth it. But again, it’s just so useful. In my social circle, I’ve got friends who are screenwriters who have MBAs and doctors who have MBAs and all kinds of people who have MBAs, and even if they’re not using the MBA knowledge every day, it’s still such a solid background to have. But I do think, like, look, if you’re just doing it because you want to check a box and then sit around and watch Netflix all day, then maybe you could do that without going 200 grand into debt.

 

[00:24:14.510] – John

Caroline yeah, I agree.

 

[00:24:17.460] – Caroline

It’s not obvious in what scenario wouldn’t be useful, because generally schools are pretty good at weeding out people who apply where their motivation isn’t particularly strong. Right. I mean, that’s part of the evaluation process. They’re looking at why you want to do the program and what you’re going to get out of it and how you’re going to use it in the future. And they want people who are going to make the most of it. So you’d have to assume that someone has sort of pulled the wall over the eyes of the admissions committee going to go there and they’re not going to get any value out of it. I would say that I’ve seen a few people go after business school who have gone because they’re sponsored by McKinsey Baine or BCG and they’re not terribly enthusiastic about it. But they see it as sort of a stepping stone in their career that is expected of them. And I think that’s a bit of a shame because perhaps that place would have been more useful for someone who is truly motivated and really comes to the experience wanting to suck every last I owe for value out of it.

 

[00:25:23.820] – Caroline

And I have seen some people who don’t embrace the opportunities as much as others because of that factor and also some people who are going because they’re from a very wealthy family. The Trumps of this world had going because daddy’s paying for it and they don’t necessarily have to get that degree and they don’t necessarily going to use the knowledge that they gain because everything’s kind of been given to them already. So there are some scenarios where people will not use that degree, perhaps a great deal and sometimes those people do still get right.

 

[00:26:12.630] – Maria

One thing that did occur to me a second ago, as I thought about the question a little bit more is that we do have friends who right out of college were able to fit into a career that was what they were passionate about, what they were very good at. For example, we have friends who are investment bankers or who went to McKinsey or who ended up, in our case in the film industry. And these were very bright people who would have easily gotten into Stanford, the Harvard Wharton and INSEAD, had they applied. But they did the calculation and they realized that two years in the workforce would propel their careers forward more than taking two years out and then starting at a post MBA position. So I do think that if you are a young person who has graduated from college and you are already in a businessy type of job and your trajectory has already been very strong, then you may not need the MBA. Because now that I think about it more, I do know several people who, for example in banking spent those two years instead just climbing the ladder and so they were able to get jobs in private equity or what have you that much faster, right?

 

[00:27:27.750] – John

And obviously they’re going to be always exceptions in general. I think we all would answer the question in the affirmative. It is worth going though. Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, INSEAD. Any top business school. My sense of it is, look, you most likely enter a field you actually want to enter and get the job you really want as opposed just another job. You’ll be more professionally fulfilled and do more meaningful work. You’ll get to know other smart and ambitious people and create enduring friendships with them. You’ll learn not only the fundamentals of business, but also the frameworks that allow you to make challenging decisions with confidence, even when the underlying data is ambiguous and you will make more money and are less likely to be unemployed during your professional career, which all the research and data shows. So those are all really good reasons why it is a no brainer to attend to Harvard, Wharton or Stanford. That said, Maria’s point is well taken. There are some people right out of Undergrad who get a job that they love, they throw themselves into it and they do exceptionally well, and that’s where they want to be. And an MBA isn’t going to make much of a difference to their life or their career.

 

[00:28:41.070] – John

So obviously there are exceptions. And what do you have? Now? I’m just curious. Now I just got to ask, what do you think Trump learned at Wharton? Maria?

 

[00:28:55.290] – Maria

Oh, my gosh. Thanks for setting up this wonderful minefield, John. I really appreciate that. I’m not being asked to provide any sort of a controversial opinion. No, I mean, I am going to say I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that some of his professors were like, he didn’t really go to class and he didn’t really do a whole lot. And also, I think his father pulled some strings to get him in and so he might not have taken it very seriously. But I also think I’m trying to be charitable. I think sometimes people’s mental health may impact decisions that they make later on in life. And so maybe if you’re younger and you go to business school, you might learn certain things and have a certain experience and grow in a certain way, but then later on, if there are certain issues that cloud your judgment, then maybe we shouldn’t judge the business school based on someone who went there 50, 60, whatever, years ago.

 

[00:29:51.750] – John

Very true. Caroline, you want to venture an answer?

 

[00:29:55.360] – Caroline

Yeah, I suspect, as Maria said, that probably he was coasting along and having a jolly good social time and not engaging very much at all in his studies. So I don’t think he can hold anything against Water for what he has done since then. Right. So I’m sure he had great academic opportunities given to him and I suspect that he didn’t do much with that.

 

[00:30:21.450] – Maria

Caroline, people are saying that he was the best student ever. That’s right. People have said to me that I was the smartest person they’ve ever seen. They’re going to rename the school after, sorry, my impersonation isn’t very good, but.

 

[00:30:35.520] – John

You go, yes, he did very loudly say that he graduated first in his class.

 

[00:30:42.550] – Maria

Oh, God.

 

[00:30:43.440] – Caroline

How do you define that person at all?

 

[00:30:46.200] – John

Like many things that come out of that man’s mouth. All right, hey, well, thank you for being game on this. I think we had a little bit of fun with this one and I also think we’ve some enlightened answers and perspective on what some people are asking out there about the MBA in business school. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

 

Answering Those Quirky MBA Applicant Questions
Maria |
August 3, 2022

[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 โ€˜23 and the class of โ€˜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? Iโ€™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 โ€œscaled myselfโ€ by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read ourย rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!