Harvard’s New MBA Admissions Chief + The MBA Grads To Watch
Maria |
September 17, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts explore the appointment of Rupal Gadhia as the new Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at Harvard Business School. Despite her unconventional background—being a Harvard MBA alumni from the Class of 2004 with no prior admissions experience—her selection signals a unique approach by the institution. 

The hosts speculate on potential changes she might introduce to the admissions process, emphasizing her role as a public-facing program ambassador and highlighting the alignment of her marketing and brand management background with the school’s vision. 

Furthermore, the podcast showcases successful career transitions of MBA graduates and underscores how MBA programs attract diverse students, challenging the conventional MBA stereotype and emphasizing the value of this diversity in business education. Tune in for valuable insights.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.130] – John

Hi everyone. It’s John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co hosts Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Big news over at Harvard Business School this past week. They finally named a new managing director of MBA, admissions and Financial Aid. It’s something of a surprising pick in a way, because this individual has no recruiting or admissions experience whatsoever. But she is a Harvard MBA alum from the Class of 2004. Her name is Rupal Gadhia and she currently works, at least for the last eleven months, for Shark Ninja. I have a vacuum from Shark Ninja and maybe you have one too. Actually it works pretty well. I’m kind of happy with that one. She is actually in charge of global Marketing for their know their robots, meaning their vacuum. And so she was picked as the new managing director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid. She will start in October. In fact, she’ll start when Harvard actually sends out its interview invites for Round One candidates. So obviously she will not be involved in any way in the selection process for Round One candidates. But I’m wondering what Maria and Caroline think about what possible changes she could make and whether or not those changes could even be applicable for Round Two when she will in fact be involved.

[00:01:38.630] – John

Maria, what do you think?

[00:01:41.010] – Maria

Yeah, I think in terms of substantial changes, I would not expect anything know, any differences to say, the rubric or how they choose, whom to invite to interview and then from there whom to give an offer of admission to. I mean, first of all, it would be quite strange for there to be a difference between Round One and Round Two of the same year. So right off the bat, I don’t think HBS would want to provide a different lens or a different type of admissions process for people depending on which round they applied in. That doesn’t feel fair to me. I think that’s part of the reason, for example, why they’re not accepting the GMAT Focus Exam, right? They want to make things as level of a playing field as possible and given the timing of that exam so for that same reason, I don’t know that if she were to come in and want to suddenly, completely change the essay or completely change how they assess for leadership or what have you. I don’t think that that would happen between round one and round two. I think the HBS Admissions Office is full of lifers, basically.

[00:02:42.200] – Maria

There are a lot of people there who have been there for 10, 15, 20 years in some cases or more. And so what I like about that is that I do think it gives the Admissions Office an opportunity to bring in a fresh face as the Head of Admissions while also making sure that there is this institutional knowledge in place such that there won’t be a radical difference. All of a sudden, it’s not going to be like, oh, submit some finger paints and here’s a Rorschach test of ink blocks. What do you think? And that’s how we’re going to pick people. I don’t anticipate anything like that. And I do think that the HBS has honed its admissions process down to a pretty well oiled machine. So I would expect that in the immediate term her impact may be more outwardly facing. That is being a face of the brand, being someone who is trying to communicate to people who are applying and trying to convey. To them the value of the MBA in general and the HBS MBA in particular, and trying to be more of a public facing liaison. Know Chad, as well meaning as he was and as talented as he was, I do think that he maybe perhaps did not relish that role of essentially being an ambassador for the program.

[00:03:53.210] – Maria

Or if he did, he did not maybe show it as actively as he could have. So if I had to say, okay, what’s the one thing I think we’ll see from her in the first few months? I think it might be something more along those lines as opposed to a changing of how they assess candidates.

[00:04:08.630] – John

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense, including it makes sense of her background. I mean, her entire career has largely been in marketing and brand management. And we know when Harvard Business School put a call out to its alumni and said they’re still looking for a managing director of MBA admissions, it was explicitly stated that they wanted someone with sort of marketing or branding expertise. So she certainly fits that bill. And it almost suggests that Harvard thinks that’s a real need right now, for whatever reason. Now, Caroline, you’ve held this job, you held it at INSEAD as someone coming new into it. I would imagine, as Caroline suggested, know, particularly if you don’t have admissions experience, what you want to do is just basically learn the job and go through a full cycle without making any changes whatsoever. Is that right?

[00:05:03.100] – Caroline

Yeah, I think so. I think she’s going to have a big learning curve because she doesn’t have the admissions background. But as you said, she’s got really interesting professional experience as well as a broad range of experience across a number of different organizations and employers. So I think that background will be very useful. It does look like, given her profile is quite different from the people that they’ve put in that role before. It does suggest that they’re looking for a fresh approach and as you know, they’ve put the emphasis in the hiring process on marketing sales experience. So I think Maria is absolutely spot on that they are looking for someone who is a more visible and vocal ambassador for the program and who will be more sort of public face for HBS in recruiting. You know, I imagine that there’s no sort of burning platform that she has to deal with. It’s a very well oiled machine HBS admissions. So I think she will have the luxury of a bit of time to get her feet under the table, get to know everyone, understand the background and understand the history and understand all the processes before she makes any radical decisions about things that she wants to do differently.

[00:06:18.710] – John

Yeah, and let’s face it, even Chad, who had been in that job for six years, he was a former bank consultant who had worked closely with the former dean at Harvard Business School in the dean’s office and was well liked by the dean and got the job largely because of it. Frankly, over the six years he was in the job, he made two changes that were of some significance. One, he eliminated the round three deadline. No big deal. I mean, I think Harvard got roughly 10% of his applications in Round Three. It did mean that peer schools to Harvard were missing out on late people who filed who were of high quality, some I would guess would be of higher quality than even some of their admits because Stanford and Wharton and other peer schools were getting a look at them when Harvard no longer was. And then the other big change he made was just simply putting a word limit on an essay that had been unlimited in the number of words you could apply. And then he did make Harvard admissions less transparent. His predecessor in the job was more forthcoming about data in her blog on admissions, trying to demystify an anxiety ridden process.

[00:07:37.960] – John

So it’ll be interesting to see if Rupal will bring back round Three, if she’ll change any of the essay requirements, and if she will be a bit more transparent and take the curtain away a little bit more. And I’m not talking about major decisions here. I’m talking about how many applications did you receive, how many people did you admit, what was your acceptance rate? I mean, basic stuff that Harvard in the end tends to provide much later to US news for its ranking, but holds close to the best under Chad, I think, know the school can be much more transparent. Now, the other thing that’s interesting to me is she is the first woman or person in admissions at Harvard of Indian descent. And why I mentioned that is because is now has had two consecutive deans of the school, both born in India. Rupal wasn’t born in India. She was actually born in Rochester, but her parents are Indian and basically went to Rochester as refugees from Africa. And I wonder if the fact that we’ve now seen two Indian born deans at Harvard Business School and now the first admissions director who is of Indian descent, will we see the school open up a bit more for Indian candidates?

[00:09:00.180] – John

We know that is the most overpopulated part of the applicant pool, not only at Harvard, but at all the elite MBA programs. And I’m wondering if you make a difference. You think that will make a difference? Because I do think that when Harvard had a Mormon in the job as dean, and I should mention that there were a bunch of senior faculty in leadership positions who were Mormons under that dean, there was an increase in the number of Mormons accepted to Harvard Business School in the MBA program. Maria, do you think this could have any impact on Indian applicants? The door might open a little bit wider for them.

[00:09:42.330] – Maria

I’m not sure that it would, because I still think that the criteria that are used to assess applicants probably going to be pretty similar. If I had to pick, if you said, okay, Maria, she is definitely going to impact things for one group of people. What is it going to be? Maybe the children of immigrants, like first gen, but that’s also currently a very heavily overrepresented group in the applicant pool. If I had to pick, I would actually say younger applicants, because she did enter HBS quite early in her career. I believe she only had one year of work experience upon entering, which is quite uncommon. And so if I had to pick any group that I think will benefit, it might be those earlier career applicants.

[00:10:25.110] – John

Yeah, I mean, the other interesting thing about her is she went not only did she only have one year of work experience, but she has an undergraduate degree from a school that is not considered highly selective, kettering University, which actually was originally set up by General Motors as a feeder to the General Motors Corporation and then split off from them. Which may mean that she could be more open to people who have undergraduate degrees from less elite places. Because once you look at the feeder colleges and universities and employers to Harvard Business School, you see a heavy emphasis on the Ivies, on the public IVs, on the near IVs. With very little emphasis on state universities and public universities. And that has always been somewhat surprising considering all the talk about how the school has a very open and holistic and admissions process. It’s really based on merit and nothing else. Do you think that that could be possible, Caroline? That she would be much more open to people without highly selective undergraduate degrees?

[00:11:41.870] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s an interesting point. And also it’s become much more difficult to get into those Ivy League universities over the past 10, 20 years. Right. So the admissions rates have dropped. The competition is kind of extreme, which means that you also have incredibly capable, talented young people who are not necessarily getting into the Ivy League anymore, who may have done so a generation earlier, and they are going to those other universities that you mentioned, the public universities and so on. So I think it would make a lot of sense for schools like Harvard to have a broader perspective on where they’re drawing talent from in that context.

[00:12:29.970] – John

Yep. In any case, new face, new voice for Harvard admissions. We’ll look forward to hearing from her and what her initial thoughts are in our story on Know, Harvard Business School released a PR kind of style interview, but it does provide some interesting details about her life and the different transitions she’s made as a Harvard MBA in the world of work, including details on her family. She has two kids and a husband, which is why she in fact moved to Boston in the first place from New York City. Seems a very likable person. I’m sure she’ll do a fine job at Harvard Business School. But the bottom line here is no worries to any of the current applicants. We don’t think anything at all will change in this cycle because she’s moving in with no admissions experience to speak of or recruiting experience. Sometimes business schools hire corporate types to lead admissions, but more often than not, they played a role in recruiting MBAs at their companies. This is not the case here. So she does have a learning curve. And I think the first year she’s going to probably just sit in, take advantage of all the experience her team has at the Harvard Business School, and move from there before she makes any kind of significant decisions on admissions.

[00:14:00.190] – John

So the other thing we wanted to turn to is every year we recognize MBAs to Watch. These are graduates in a given year who we think are exceptional for a number of different reasons. Could be the leadership roles they already had at their schools, could be their academic credentials that they graduated at the top of their class, could be just because they’re unusual and they added a lot to the MBA experience with their classmates. So our MBAs to Watch story really was a pretty big one. Had a lot of candidates in it, a lot of profiles, and I asked Maria and Caroline to pick out a few. And let’s just talk about some of the unusual graduates of the class of 2023. Maria, what were your favorites?

[00:14:51.290] – Maria

Well, I mean, it’s a long and very accomplished list. So, as a side note, if anyone right now is stressing over submitting their round one applications and they’re looking for a palate, cleanser, mentally sort of a way to distract themselves, it’s quite a rabbit hole. It was really hard for me to pick who I was going to talk about, but one of the first people that jumped out at me was Elizabeth Shia from Georgetown McDonough. And the first reason full disclosure the first reason I was drawn to her is because she is from Baltimore, Maryland, and I am also from Baltimore, Maryland. All right, let’s go. O’s, we love it there. Han so, first of all, I was like, oh, Baltimore cool. Let me click on her. But the reason I really wanted to highlight her is that her background? I love the fact that she was able to use McDonough to make a career switch. And actually, as I was thinking about all the folks that I chose to perhaps highlight today, one of the things that I liked a lot was a lot of them were able to use the MBA to really pivot their careers, even if they didn’t go necessarily to the fanciest schools.

[00:15:52.580] – Maria

I mean, whenever we are on this podcast and we are complaining and ripping apart the rankings and how they can be useful but they’re not the be all and end all, I think there is this perception that, oh, if you don’t go to a school that’s ranked top five, top ten, m seven, whatever, then you might as well not go. But nothing could be further from the truth. And one of the things that I found fascinating about her profile is that her undergraduate studies were in sort of the public health domain. And then after she graduated from college, she worked for what appears to be a logistics firm. But she was able to use the Georgetown MBA to pivot into real estate. And Georgetown is one of those schools that has a real gem of a real estate program, and a lot of folks out there don’t necessarily realize or value it for that. And so I just wanted to highlight her because I’m excited that she was able to just take those resources at McDonough, make the most of them. And now she has a job in the real estate industry in New York City.

[00:16:48.870] – Maria

So the other stereotype being that, well, if I go to a school like To, I will only be able to get jobs in DC. And jobs in other cities will not be available to me. But she is proof that it is indeed possible with some hustle, elbow grease and brains. And so I was very impressed in particular with her.

[00:17:06.630] – John

Yeah, I love stories like that because after know, in an ideal world, so many people go and pursue an MBA for the purposes of transforming their lives, and we immediately think, yes, transforming their professional life and making a big career switch. But frankly, there’s a personal transformation as well in how you can grow as a person and learn to work with others more effectively and learn to lead others as. And incidentally, she didn’t only go and work in real estate, she went to work for Tishman Spire, which is the real estate firm in New York City.

[00:17:45.980] – Maria

Yes, it’s a very impressive firm. And speaking of the personal transformation, she also noted that one of her favorite classes at Georgetown was one on meditation and leadership. So presumably the role that mindfulness can play in our job as leaders, and that’s something that is universally applicable regardless of which industry or position you follow afterwards.

[00:18:05.690] – John

Yeah, totally. You got to love that. And you got to love, incidentally, that there is such a course in an MBA school on meditation and leadership. You got to love it. It’s great.

[00:18:15.860] – Maria

I love it. I do love it.

[00:18:19.310] – John

Caroline, you have a favorite.

[00:18:21.730] – Caroline

Yeah. So one of the first ones that jumped out at me was Melissa Belleck. So she is at the Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson. She’s actually a scholarship holder at the school, or she’s just graduated. I guess she got a scholarship for her achievements during the program. So she’s from Montreal, which is a city that I have spent quite a bit of time in, I love very much. She’s a McGill graduate, great school, and she’s an entrepreneur at heart. So she talks about how she had a number of money making ventures when she was a teenager. She started a fitness company for women while she was in college. So not surprising that she was drawn to Babson, which is, of course, well known as being a great school for entrepreneurs. But when she graduated from McGill, she moved to Silicon Valley. So she was just down the road from Me in Redwood City, and I was really impressed that she moved there by herself without a job, not knowing anyone. So she literally just rocked up, I guess, with her suitcase, and she built a successful career here. So she joined a high growth software company.

[00:19:36.870] – Caroline

She started out really at the bottom of the ladder. She was sales rep, doing 100 cold calls a day for anyone who’s ever done cold calls. I mean, that is really a trial by fire. But she did very well. She rose up the ladder and more recently has been handling or was handling enterprise sales accounts. Babson. She was co president of the Tech Club, amongst other various other activities, and her post MBA plans, she’s moving back to Canada and she’s passionate about climate tech. So she wants to leverage the power of tech to mitigate climate change. And she would like to be an investor. And actually, Melissa, if you’re listening, you should ping me because my husband is a climate tech investor. So I’d be happy to connect you if that would be helpful. And anyway, the person at the school who wrote about her said that they really loved her contagious and positive energy, and I think that comes across in the profile. So I really, really liked Melissa.

[00:20:39.080] – John

That’s terrific. Also, I love her. Mean, obviously, I think this generation is far more interested in trying to land jobs that have some societal impact. Climate change and the environmental destruction that has occurred on the planet is way up there, if not number one, as the primary concern, other than probably the prevention of nuclear war of our society. And I see many MBAs wanting to enter this field in many business schools, loading up on courses, changing curricula, adding faculty, starting student clubs, and having conferences all around sustainability. So I think that’s also a positive thing. And you’re right. I mean, this is someone who’s worked really hard, and I think she’s a great bet for really having a great, successful career. Incidentally, we have 135 people that we’re recognizing in this feature from 77 schools all over the world. Maria, I know you picked out another one. Why don’t you go with yet another favorite of yours this year?

[00:22:00.170] – Caroline

Sure.

[00:22:00.940] – Maria

So someone else. And it was hard to choose, but another person that did jump out at me was Michelle Weingartner from the Ohio State Fisher College of Business. So, Michelle, first of all, the fact that she chose to invest in herself by getting an Know, her pre MBA experience was she was working at a nursing college, I believe, in their admissions office. So really not at all a typical background. So sometimes when folks fret about, well, I come from a nontraditional background, will a business school take me? They will. They are interested. You can absolutely bring a lot to the table with that nontraditional background. I’m also very impressed that she has three children and they were young during the years that she was getting the MBA. And in her profile, she talked about having to get up sometimes at four in the morning in order to study in the morning, get her kids out the door to school, go to class, come back, pick them up. And so, Michelle, my hat is off to you, because I don’t think I would have been able to do done. I don’t think I could do three kids in general.

[00:23:02.480] – Maria

My hat is also off to Caroline, who has four children, but I could not do the MBA and three young kids at the same time. That’s incredible. And then in the quote, when they sort of asked the faculty or the staff member, why did you select her professors wrote about how she was a fierce advocate for helping other people in her cohort get jobs, how she gave 110% to all of her assignments and things like that. I think it would have been very easy for someone to say, look, man, I’ve got three kids, I’m doing an MBA, I’m going to show myself a little grace and maybe I will work hard, but I will not kill myself for this. But it seems like Michelle is someone who just gives 110% to everything she does, and post graduation, she’s going to be going to a sort of management rotation program at JPMorgan. So, I mean, what a fantastic outcome. Well deserved, Michelle. And say hi to those three boys for me.

[00:24:01.680] – John

Yeah. And that’s what I love about these stories, in a way. They kind of destroy the stereotype, right? I mean, the bro at a PE firm or something, who then goes and yeah, they go to Harvard and then they go to another private equity firm or something like that. And they make tons of you know, there are a lot of people out there from all walks of life getting MBAs. Not at the schools that are exclusionary and elitist. Just really good MBA programs, learning really important things and then using that experience and that degree to really transform their opportunities and the trajectory of their careers. Which is really, frankly, why I love this field. Caroline, you have another one?

[00:24:50.640] – Caroline

Yeah. So I have one. If I may, I would like to suggest someone for your next article, MBA to Watch. So this is someone that popped into my mind as I was reading through these profiles and I’ve just been in touch with a colleague about this fantastic young man. So he’s called Tyler Jackson and he’s just joined the Wharton MBA program. And he popped into my mind because they’d actually made a really nice little video about him so, you know, obviously they think that he’s a wonderful candidate and a great ambassador for the program. So he’s the grandson of Sharecroppers. He grew up assuming that basically economic deprivation was the norm. He spent his spare time after school collecting scrap metal and at weekends he would be visiting uncles in prison. So pretty difficult background that he came from a childhood, he studied hard. He was a Division One football athlete and got to the US Air Force Academy and realized when he was there that the background he came from was not the norm for everyone and realized how people like him were affected by essentially institutionalized and systemic economic neglect. And so that’s something that he has really made his mission to address.

[00:26:13.590] – Caroline

And I’ll mention in a moment his career goals. So he went into the Air Force, he rose rapidly up the ranks. More recently, he was the chief of staff to the commander of Buckley Space Force Base in Denver, Colorado. And he’s done a lot of other things as well. He’s the kind of person who is always looking for ways that he can help other people. And there are lots and lots of examples of how he’s done this. But one example that I really liked was that during his time in the Air Force, he launched an initiative to address the attrition rate of black cadets and he reduced that attrition rate by half. So I thought that was really impressive. He’s had many awards over the years for his athleticism, for his leadership skills as a public speaker and as a military officer. And while he was in the Air Force, he also pursued a part time master’s in Public Administration at the University of Texas and he got a 3.92 GPA. And he says that his mission at Wharton is to learn how to use financial markets, business acumen and social capital to uplift my community and to build global relationships with people on a similar mission, as well as to host the best NFL watch parties.

[00:27:35.430] – Caroline

And he’s really got a fun side. And I think him and his wife will be wonderful hosts of a lot of great parties. At Wharton. So he wants to go into consulting post MBA, and he’s actually already secured a summer internship at Bain for next summer. And then he wants to launch a search fund with a goal of scaling SMEs into a conglomerate of businesses. And at the same time, giving back will be a very important part of his mission. He plans to mentor and sponsor at risk youth. He wants to do SME consulting for businesses in underserved communities. So, as my colleague Judith Hadara, who knows Tyler quite well, as she described him, he’s a true first generation hero. So I wanted to give a big shout out to Tyler and suggest that you put him in one of your future articles.

[00:28:29.580] – John

I think he is a must. That’s a no brainer. That’s a great story. I love hearing it. And I hope all of you love hearing these stories, too, because I think it just gives you an idea of the fact that there is no one cookie cutter MBA student. And when you enter these programs, you’ll immediately discover that any ideas or expectations that you had about the old saw, about highly competitive, sharp elbowed, masters of the universe types, yeah, you might find a few of them there. But the truth is, the diversity, the richness of backgrounds is kind of remarkable. These are people you will want at your dinner table throughout your life. So to the new Harvard Business School Head of Admissions. Good luck. We’re wishing the best for you in this change in your career and for all of you other MBAs to watch who are now embarked on your career. Or in the case of Tyler, who has just started the Wharton program, good luck to all of you. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to our weekly podcast, Business Casual.

Harvard’s New MBA Admissions Chief + The MBA Grads To Watch
Maria |
September 17, 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!