Harvard’s New MBA Class Profile + Should Finding A Life Partner Be Another Reason To Get An MBA?
Maria |
August 31, 2021

What does it take to get into one of the highest ranked and most selective business schools in the world of MBAs, Maria’s alma mater – Harvard Business School?

HBS recently enrolled its largest class in history. In this week’s episode of Business Casual, hosts John, Maria and Caroline dig into the class profile including the average GMAT, GPA and demographics and talk about the contributing factors as to why this class is the largest ever. 

The team also tackles a fun topic that occasionally comes up in various message boards – should you pursue an MBA with the objective of finding a spouse/life partner? 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.750] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards, and Maria Wich Vila. Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab and Caroline, of course, is the former head of admissions at INSEAD and a co founder of Fortuna Admissions. This week, we’re going to talk about two things. Harvard Business School recently disclosed their new class profile, and the big headline is that they’ve enrolled the largest single class of MBAs in the school’s history, 1010 1st year MBA students will get into that in some detail, along with other aspects of the class profile and whether or not it’s a reflection of the entering classes overall at other schools this year. And then we’re going to also talk about a fun topic that I think a lot of people might get a kick out of. It’s a bit of entertainment as well. I’m an obsessive reader of Reddit as pertains to business schools, and there was a recent post on there, and I’m just going to read the headline because it’s intriguing enough and we’re going to talk about this and have some fun with it later on.

[00:01:24.990] – John

Is it dumb to pursue an MBA, at least in part to find a wife? We will neutralize that and say in part to find a spouse, taking it from both angles. And we’ll have a really, I think, lively discussion about that topic with Maria and Caroline. But first, the Harvard Business School class of 2023 profile just in rough terms. There was a increase in application volume to 9773 applicants. That’s a pretty big jump. And I will say that while it’s 5%, Wharton was up two and a half and Wharton Kellogg actually was down 20%. A lot of us expected that number to actually be higher. It’s not a record at Harvard. It is the largest application volume in four years. I believe we expected it to be higher largely because Harvard did not participate in the big implications last year due to the pandemic, largely because it’s two deadlines pretty much ended before the pandemic really hit the United States. So everyone was thinking, oh, this could be a record year for Harvard, including myself. And it turns out that it was not. However, the school did get 10.7 candidates for every available seat in the class.

[00:02:50.690] – John

And the reason why there are so many more than 1000 students who joined the Harvard Business School class of 2023 is because 100 of them deferred from last year due to the pandemic. So if you recall, last year was unusually low for Harvard 732 students when it typically enrolls a class of 930. The school is expecting similarly sized class next year when another 100 deferrals will come into the crop. So, Caroline, what do you make of all this?

[00:03:27.160] – Caroline

We knew that they were going to have a bigger class coming in. I think it’s great that they have maintained pretty good diversity despite the increasing numbers. I think it’s very impressive that they still got a 730 GMAT, given all of the disruption with test taking over the past year. And a lot of people had to take the online test, which wasn’t necessarily as easy to do as the traditional test. A lot of test centers were closed, people had to sort of cancel dates. Just the accessibility of the test was much lower over the past year. And so on average, I’d imagine Canada not been able to take it as many times, or if they’re going to retake, they might not have been able to retake as they may have done in the past. So maintaining 730 despite that context is quite extraordinary. So I think that GMAT is just one data point.

[00:04:21.550] 

Right.

[00:04:21.860] – Caroline

But I think it shows that it’s an incredibly strong class academically and speaks to the wonderful pool of candidates that they attract and their ability to really sort of cherry pick the best out of that.

[00:04:37.020] – John

Yeah. And that 730 has been pretty stable over quite a few years now as a median for the class at Harvard. Interestingly enough, I’ll just point out that for whatever reason, Wharton actually has a 740 median GMAT score this year, which blows my mind since ten points higher than Harvard and a 733 average. Some people think that Wharton is over indexing standardized test scores. Caroline, actually, you have another theory on this, which is that a disproportionate share of financial candidates tend to apply to Warden, given its reputation and finance, and those people are more quant heavy and are likely to score higher. That’s your reasoning, right?

[00:05:24.280] – Caroline

Yeah. I mean, it’s just got such an amazing reputation. Right. For finance, and I do think it tends to attract people with a strong quantum background and perhaps a slightly disproportionate percentage of those candidates, and therefore they’re going to have a very high, incredibly high average scheme and the applicant pool to start with. So I think it’s driven by that perhaps more so than over indexing the GMAT.

[00:05:51.210] – John

Yes. And then the undergraduate GPA for Harvard’s new class is 3.69, and that’s just a Weebly down from the 3.7 from the previous year, but nicely above Wharton at 3.6, and Kellogg is at 3.7 pretty much the same. Let’s face it, Maria, this is your alma mater. What do you think of these numbers? 46% women, 37% international?

[00:06:17.570] – Maria

Yeah, I think the international percentage is roughly the same as it has been in previous years. So I’m glad to see that the Pandemic has not severely limited international students ability to join the class. I’m excited to see slow but steady progress on the female student front. I think it’s fantastic that it does keep sort of inching upwards every year. One of the things that I was happiest to see is that I think almost 30% of the class was admitted with a GRE score, and this is something that we admissions consultants have been telling people for years because there are so many rumors out there on the message boards that are not true. And one of them is that like, oh, my gosh, if you apply with a GRE score, you are going to put yourself at a disadvantage. And if you’re really serious about this, you’ll apply with a GMAT score. And I think maybe 1520 years ago that was correct. But now it’s not. And so even three years ago, the entering class of 2020, 15% of the class submitted a GRE score, and this year it’s 29. So almost 30. So let’s do the quick math and say it’s double.

[00:07:27.770] – Maria

So twice as many people are in the class now with the GRE score. And so I think that that is hopefully of some relief to people who find the GMAT format to not be their strongest, to not allow them to show off their strongest academic skills. So I was really pleased to see that.

[00:07:47.550] – John

Yeah, I asked Chad Losing about that yesterday. We did an interview based on the numbers that came out, and he said, I hope the message is getting out that we’re really, truly agnostic when it comes to a standardized test. So applicants really should take the exam that allows them to put their best foot forward. And he’s also attributing the increase to a greater diversity of people who are coming in from all different kinds of backgrounds to get an MBA, since the GRE obviously is more accepted for other grants may be thinking about, okay, do I get a master’s in public policy or master’s another topic that’s not necessarily business. And then they may be thinking, okay, but what about business? And the GRE allows that flexibility. And therefore, in that net, you might catch people who you otherwise would miss with the GMAT, which is his logic on why it’s increased so much in recent years. And clearly they have no preference whatsoever. So you’re right. And yet you go on a lot of these discussion boards and you’ll see people say, no, you got to do the GMAT. It’s the preferred tasks. And you’re right, it used to be that was the case.

[00:09:00.130] – John

No longer is true beyond the numbers, in a way, you look at these numbers that come out in class profiles and they kind of sell these classes short. And this is what I mean by it. We know that the people who are attracted to business education at this level are truly exceptional. They come from every walk of life. They have amazing accomplishments already. Most of them have about five years of work experience. And they’ve done really fascinating, interesting things. So when you look at these numbers, GMAT’s GRE’s, percentage of acceptance, class size, women, international, underrepresented, minorities, GPAs. They kind of undersell the magic of a business school. Maria, do you agree?

[00:09:47.450] – Maria

Well, yeah. I mean, that’s the same reason why not to keep bashing on message boards, but that’s the same reason why when someone posts on a message board like, I have a seven point 20 GMAT and a 3.6 GPA and whatever, like, what are my chances of getting in? And it’s like it’s so much more than that. It goes so far beyond those numbers, which is of great disappointment to people who are maybe not so Proactive in their lives, but who happen to be good test takers. But it is great news to people who go out there and make things happen, and they perhaps are not so strong at things like standardized tests. So it’s really looking analyzing like, oh, it’s 730 versus 733. And what are the tea leaves say about that? What does that say about my chances of getting into one school versus another? Do I need a three point higher average GMAT to get into Wharton? But no, it really comes down to I like to use the I don’t know if you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is a psychological concept that you need. Like, you can’t really care about your emotional spiritual.

[00:10:51.670] – Maria

Wellbeing, if further down on this pyramid, you’re starving to death or freezing to death. And it’s the same thing with admissions. Like, yeah, hey, you have to show academic strength, but that’s sort of table stakes. And then beyond that, it really to go up that ladder or up that pyramid. Increasingly it gets harder and harder because you have to show more and more ability to make an impact outside of yourself.

[00:11:14.580] – John

True.

[00:11:15.020] – Maria

And that’s something that these stats will never capture.

[00:11:17.760] – John

Yeah. And Chad made a point of saying, look, the standardized test score and the GPA help us triangulate his word, who is ready for a rigorous academic program? But both of those data points are only two in a holistic admissions process. And I think that’s especially true at Harvard in most schools that are looking at great MBA candidates. Any other comments on the application volume? Are you, Caroline, a little surprised that it still fell far short of record levels given the fact that Harvard didn’t participate in the pandemic boom last year?

[00:11:59.330] – Caroline

Well, I do think the market has slowed a little bit compared to the huge surge that we saw in the spring of last year. So there was an outpouring of applications then, and it’s cyclical, right. It was not going to be it was not sustainable that the levels would stay at that level. And as you said, Harvard didn’t participate really in that surge to the same extent given that they didn’t have a deadline that fell around at that time when it was the start of the pandemic. And there were lots of applications being thrown out left, right, and center. But it doesn’t really affect them right, because they have such tremendous volume anyway. And it’s not really about the volume. It’s about the quality. And they clearly have incredibly consistent quality coming in. And I do think I saw that when I was at INSEAD, that often when there’s an increase in volume, those additional applications are not always of the same quality as the steady stream of really strong candidates that come through every single year.

[00:13:11.680] 

Right.

[00:13:11.950] – Caroline

So when you get a big surgeon application on average, sometimes the volume drops a little bit. But they have this just incredible pipeline of wonderful people who are applying every year. Right. And so I don’t think they would be very concerned about a few percentage points up here or down there year by year. They still have this hugely successful pipeline that’s coming through, regardless of those variations.

[00:13:43.410] – John

True. It’s worth pointing out because I mentioned earlier that Kellogg’s applications plunged 20% in the same period when Harvard went up 5%. But the year before Kellogg’s applications were up 54% broke the score previously. Where the apps are up this past year, two and a half percent. The earlier year, they’re up 21%. So there is a bit of a roller coaster effect here, which actually Harvard more or less evaded by not participating in the pandemic induced boost applications last year because deadlines were early and they didn’t extend them and they didn’t provide any waivers of GMAT’s or GREs as other schools did. All in all, the big thing, of course, is I think it really is two headlines, probably largest class ever, over 1000 students, which meant that Harvard added another section to accommodate that large number. And that will occur again next year. And then the following year they’ll go back to normal. And then the big rise in the GRE test takers 29%, up from 12% four years ago. That’s quite a big increase, which shows increasing acceptance of G area as an alternative to the GMAT in business school admissions. Now the other thing, and we were discussing discussion boards as well comes from one of the discussion boards at Reddit on MBAs.

[00:15:14.790] – John

And it just attracted my attention because I have heard over the years that many people actually go and get an MBA, not just to find a partner in life, but it is a sort of secondary reason. And so for this one gentleman to ask, is it dumb to pursue an MBA, at least in part to find a wife? I found that kind of fun and interesting. And he said, I’m going to read his post going to be honest, I’ve worked in careers, I’d be in private equity after graduating from College that haven’t really given me a chance to hang out with my friends, let alone date. While my main goal is to pursue an MBA, which would allow me upward mobility in the PE world, I definitely am also thinking about how it would be a great place to find like minded, driven people sharing similar goals. Is this super dumb or idealistic? Are most people doing MBAs already married? Maria, let’s start with you about this, because after all, I believe you met your husband at Harvard Business School.

[00:16:22.280] – Maria

I did. And I can tell you I did not enter business school with that as my goal. But I can tell you a lot of other women did. I think a lot of people in general do, especially the people who work in these crazy intensive analyst programs where, yeah, like, you don’t even get Thanksgiving off. So what makes you think you’re going to get a chance to date people? I remember vividly one of the first or second week of school, the women of my section had a lady’s brunch. And I remember going and being a little bit horrified at how many of them were just overtly. Like, yeah, I’m here to find a husband. And I think a lot of women were very open about that. The rest of us call them that. They’re there for the Mrs degree and not the MBA. Yeah, it was pretty funny. And I was like, wow, I’m actually here to learn. And the irony is that some of the women, many of the women who were there explicitly to try to find a husband did not find one in their two years. And I was not trying to find a husband.

[00:17:22.890] – Maria

And I did. So I don’t know what that says about how the universe works, but yeah, I met my husband. We met through the Entertainment and Media Club because that was my former industry and his former and current industry. But we started I got interested in him because I was the humor editor for the weekly campus newspaper. And he submitted something that was so funny it made me laugh out loud. And I sent it to a friend of mine. I was like, this is the funniest thing ever. And normally there had been another guy named Mark Taylor who had always written something funny. And I was like, man, Mark really outdid himself with this one. This is the best thing he’s written yet. And then I looked at the byline and I’m like, wait a minute. Larry Wasserman that guy from the Entertainment and Media Club. He wrote that. And so then at the next Entertainment and Media Club event, I was like, that thing you wrote last week was the funniest thing I’ve read. And we’re going to be friends. I’ve decided we’re going to be friends. And so he was like, okay. And then now almost 20 years later, here we are, Married, Child, Mortgage.

[00:18:24.140] – Maria

Right. The whole thing.

[00:18:24.970] – Caroline

Wonderful story.

[00:18:28.070] – John

And Caroline, although you didn’t meet your husband in business school, you did meet him by going to business school and being in Singapore.

[00:18:36.800] – Caroline

Yes, that’s right. So we had met actually ten years before I went to INSEAD, but then coincided again when I started on the campus in Singapore because he was then working in Singapore. And that’s when our paths crossed the game. So we started dating in January when I started the program. And I remember one of my male classmates complaining that they only had 20% women and it wasn’t there if the 20% women started dating people outside of a student cohort. So, yeah, I have to thank for bringing us together again. Of course, his mother tells the story differently and believes that I was pursuing him internationally for ten years in the intervening period and finally managed to call him in Singapore.

[00:19:33.630] – Maria

Okay, whatever.

[00:19:37.510] – John

One of the comments on this board says, I’m going to read this because this is fun. I love the fact that you’re being honest about this because it’s something a lot of people consider but don’t like to divulge, especially not men. I graduated in 2020 and we took stock of all the couples in our class. Out of 30 couples, four are now engaged. 13 isn’t bad. I also met my boyfriend in school and will likely get engaged next year. However, business school dating is extremely tricky and fraught. I have a lot of thoughts on it. Any thoughts long or two years?

[00:20:12.610] – Caroline

Well, it can get a little bit claustrophobic, right? Because you’re all together all of the time and the relationships can get quite complex and you can be in a team together.

[00:20:24.600] – Maria

Right.

[00:20:24.890] – Caroline

You’re in a classroom together. So sometimes, if it’s a bit of a roller coaster, it’s not always easy being in the same place as that person all day and all night. Right. Because it’s a very intense experience being a business school. So, yes, it’s not always easy, for sure.

[00:20:43.570] – Maria

And the advice that I always give people is try your best to not date anyone in your section or your cohort if you are in a forced environment where, say, for one semester you are in the same classes with everyone, especially at a place like HBS. For that entire first year, you’re in the same classes with everyone. Caroline is so good at finding diplomatic words. I’ve always admired that she used the word claustrophobic. I would say it can be super crazy awkward. This happened in my section, like two people sort of casually dated, but one of them didn’t know it was casual and the other one thought it was casual, and then so it ended up breaking up and being and then that happened in like end of September. And then they had the whole rest of the academic year stuck in class together. And so if things go south, like maybe hold off or at least wait because my husband was a different year than I was. So we didn’t have that sort of thing. But we did sort of keep it on the down low at first, just because you just don’t want rumors to fly.

[00:21:51.730] – Maria

And we were like, we don’t know if this is going to work and you never know if it’s going to work at first. And the funny thing is that we kept it on the down low for a few months and then a mutual friend of ours tried to set us up on a blind date. And he said to Larry, he’s like, there’s this first year girl that I think would be great for you. And he’s like, there’s a guy I know in my class that I think, can I set you guys up not realizing that we had already come to that same conclusion ourselves?

[00:22:17.410] – Caroline

That’s so funny. Very protective of him.

[00:22:22.700] – Maria

I know, right? So I was like anyone I wrote in one of our class notes things like, if Omar ever tries to set you up with anyone, listen to him. He’s very good at this. But seriously, though, I think Sheryl Sandberg once said, and I disagree with a lot of Cheryl Sandberg’s things, but she did once say the most important career choice you can make is whom you marry. I think this is more important. I think for men. This person, let’s assume it’s a guy who’s working in PE is saying, I’m interested in a wife. Look, let’s be honest. The PE types, they could get the sort of trophy white model who has a paper mache business.

[00:23:04.440] – Caroline

You mean like us, Maria?

[00:23:05.970] – Maria

Like us? Well, I mean, we’ve got brains. It’s an audio only podcast. Yes, indeed. Both of us. Caroline models, but also with praise, if you know what I mean. Like a guy like a person like that doesn’t need there’s certainly no shortage of people with powerful positions who intentionally choose a spouse who is maybe they like being the smartest person in the room, and they don’t want a spouse who’s their intellectual equal, or they want a spouse that’s just going to sort of sit at home and take care of the kids. And that’s great. But if you are looking for a spouse who is going to be intelligent, who is going to be driven, who is going to be ambitious, business school or graduate school in general is a great place to go. And I would also advise that you start off by making friends with people, because even if you don’t date people who are in your MBA class, those people have friends, right? Those people may have friends in the MPA program or the public health program or other graduate schools within the broader University. So I know a lot of people who ended up marrying someone from the School of Public Health or someone from the School of Public Affairs, the Kennedy School.

[00:24:14.730] – Maria

So just cast a wide net. But yeah, if you’re looking for someone ambitious, business school is a great place to go. And I would say more so for women to find a guy who will be supportive of you, as opposed to if you marry someone who might want to try to hold you back or might sort of have these outdated ideas on gender roles. One final thing I will say is that I think the original post said something like, oh, are a lot of people married already? And so that I sort of missed the train. I think there are a lot of people who show up who are married, but it was interesting. There were several divorces in my section and people ended up marrying other people in the business school.

[00:24:53.630] – John

Can be bad for marriage.

[00:24:55.120] – Maria

It really can be right. And I think it can be well, it can be bad for marriage, especially for people who are from more traditional countries where they get married at a very young age. And especially it was interesting. This could just be a coincidence. But there were a couple of women I knew who had gotten married 1920 years of age in more traditional societies where women are not perhaps, maybe you might not be as respected as much and then they got to the States and they were like, wait a minute, this is great.

[00:25:23.410] – John

This is where MBA stands for married but available.

[00:25:26.560] – Maria

Married but available. I mean, some people did it. So anyway, just go with an open mind but don’t try to force it because then I think that just gets weird.

[00:25:37.630] – Caroline

It can be a good stress test for a marriage, but better to do that in your 20s than in your 40s when you got three kids in a big house mortgage, right? Better to find it out sooner than later.

[00:25:53.680] – Maria

Words of wisdom.

[00:25:55.050] – John

There’s a woman who really agrees with you, Maria. She says this definitely happens with MBA students. I’m not sure why people and she’s referring to other commenters on this discussion board are suggesting trying hinge or Tinder. The honest reality is that if you’re looking for an equally paired partner, it’s really hard to find someone of high quality via those apps or just by chance going to do an MBA for career. Also, to find a life partner, which is an equally major decision is valid. I’ve honestly thought the same because as a successful hiring woman in tech with certain values, it’s pretty difficult to also find someone with similar attitudes around lifestyle and ideas for our future. So I think this guy is onto something. I wouldn’t go to business school to find a spouse, but certainly it’s not a bad place to find someone who is like minded, ambitious, more thoughtful and curious about the world and wanting to have a meaningful role in it. So Maria and Caroline, thanks for great discussion. As always days. And to all of you out there, I hope you enjoyed this version of Business Casual. Join us next week. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Harvard’s New MBA Class Profile + Should Finding A Life Partner Be Another Reason To Get An MBA?
Maria |
August 31, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

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