How Competitive Will MBA Admissions Be In 2021-2022?
Maria |
September 7, 2021

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline debate whether or not this year’s admission session will be less or more competitive than the previous ones, considering the number of variables that influence the candidate pool.

They also discuss law school vs. business school and which is more competitive given Harvard Law School had more applicants than Harvard Business School this year for the first time in years. 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.510] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with our co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. Maria, of course, is the founder of Applicant Lab and a Harvard MBA. And Caroline is the former admissions director of INSEAD, an alum of the school, and the cofounder of Fortuna Admissions. So two things for this week that we want to discuss. We had predicted that this past admission season would likely be the most competitive ever. And when we think about competitiveness, what we really think about are the basic stats, GPAs, GMAT’s and selectivity, the acceptance rate based on the number of applications received versus admits and the seats available in a given class, it turns out to have been much more mixed. So we want to put that into perspective and we want to make a prediction about this coming admissions season and whether or not it will be as competitive as this last one has been or less. So the other thing we want to tackle is law school versus business school. For the first time in many years, Harvard Law School drew more applicants than Harvard Business School.

[00:01:27.600] – John

The admit rate is lower than it is at the business school, and that’s a total reversal of what it had been. More telling, perhaps, is that the law school received 17.8 applicants for every classroom seat this past year, while Harvard had 10.7 candidates for its seats. But let’s turn first to this past admission season. And Caroline, do you think it was more competitive than the previous season but still fall short of being the most competitive season ever?

[00:02:04.200] – Caroline

Yeah, I don’t think it was the deluge of applications that we thought it might be, but it was an incredibly competitive season. It’s very difficult to know. Right, because there were so many variables last year that were creating changes in the applicant pool, challenges for international applicants thinking about potentially studying in the US or in other countries that sort of put a damper on things, challenges taking the tests, the test centers being closed, and then the online test. Some people weren’t very happy with the online version of GMAT. There were a lot of different things going on. It’s difficult to dissect exactly how that impacted the actor Paul at different schools, but I do think that in general, more people threw their hat into the ring than might have otherwise done had we not had the pandemic and the various changes that threw leaks into turmoil last year. So I do think it was a very competitive season, but very challenging for the schools because some people were applying in a rather speculative manner. So not necessarily some of that additional volume would not have been at the highest quality, and then some of those accidents would not have been the most committed applicants either.

[00:03:19.760] – Caroline

So very difficult for the schools to manage their yield in the context of so much volatility so certainly a very interesting season. The job market bounced back faster than we expected. Right. So when there’s a strong job market, typically business school applications volume can be a bit depressed because people are getting great job offers and they’re getting promotions and they don’t feel the need to go back to business school straight away. And so I think that strengthening of the job market more rapidly than you would normally see after an economic downturn meant that there wasn’t such a dramatic increase in application volume after all, which in many ways, actually, I think it’s a good thing because the problem is if you have a huge surge in application volume, it can sometimes be followed by a big dip. Right. Because people who might have otherwise applied in twelve months time or in two years, suddenly everyone applies at once, and then that can mean that it’s drying up your pipeline for future cycles. And so it’s not always a good thing that there’s a big surge in application involved at one time.

[00:04:30.060] – John

And Maria, what was your take on this past admission season? Of course, we’re still waiting for some schools to report.

[00:04:36.770] – Maria

Yeah. Like Caroline said, there are so many variables and so many unprecedented variables that I think last year was very competitive. I think this year is also going to be a difficult to predict year, because I think on the one hand, we’re going to have a lot of reapplicants who last year applied during the very competitive year last year, who might have otherwise gotten in but who didn’t get in. And so now they’re reapplying this year. So I think it also shifted forward in terms of pipeline. I think it might have also in some ways shifted forward very competitive candidates to this season. But I think this year will be equal to or maybe even lower volumes than last year, because with the world kind of well, at least we were hoping a few months ago that the world would be back to normal. Now in some parts of the world, it’s not going back to normal as quickly as one would hope. But in general, I think that this downturn was not one that was due to some sort of systemic weakness in the overall economy. It was sort of this external shock event that does have there is a way out if enough people were to comply with it.

[00:05:45.210] – Maria

And so I think that that’s why the recovery in the economy has been so much faster. And so I think the impact on business schools will also be faster. I think it’s going to level out relatively quickly.

[00:05:56.610] – John

Yeah. When you look at the schools that have already announced their number, it is a mixed bag. Word was up two and a half, Harvard up 5% in applications, Kellogg 20%, Columbia was down a little bit. Not a lot. You had increases at Yale, Duke, Cornell, Anderson, Duke and Cornell. They were on the order of 12%, you pretty much had across the board increases in GMAT class hours, but in many cases that was because the GMAT scores had plummeted the year before when the pandemic hit hardest and the market flooded with applicants and probably applicants that were having trouble getting a good test result when the switch was to the online test. So you got Wharton, they’re up eleven points on their class average. For the GM, you look at eleven points, UVA Darden up twelve, Cornell up ten, UCLA up eight, Yale up six, and Dartmouth, they stayed the same at Kellogg, which saw that 20% plunge in applications because it had such a massive increase the year before, and the median at Harvard remain the same. So I think you’re right. I think while it’s still fairly competitive, I don’t think we’re going to see a bloodbath.

[00:07:24.360] – John

Someone out there was asking, I think a legitimate question about whether or not they’d be an admissions bloodbath in this season would be incredibly competitive. And I wonder, too, what kind of activity the two of you are seeing. Maria Applicant Lab for round one deadlines, and Caroline, for your consulting firm, for people preparing for round one.

[00:07:49.310] – Maria

Yeah, for me, I think the volumes are up a little. I think the biggest change, though, is less in volume and more in how early people decided to start to get ready. I think the rumors of last year’s challenging environment trickled through, and so I think a lot of people decided to get started much earlier than they might otherwise. And I think that there’s a little bit more anxiety and uncertainty in the applicant pool just because of the variability of the past year or two.

[00:08:18.600] – John

Yeah, that makes sense. Caroline, are you seeing stabilization of the growth you saw the previous year for round one?

[00:08:27.620] – Caroline

Yeah, we’re seeing similar volumes, so I think it’s going to be strong, but I don’t think it’ll be up versus last year.

[00:08:34.220] – John

Right.

[00:08:35.020] – Caroline

And I agree with Maria. We saw a lot of people signing up very early. It seems to get earlier every year, and that’s a good thing.

[00:08:43.360] 

Right.

[00:08:43.540] – Caroline

I think it’s good to start earlier rather than later, but definitely a lot of people are getting serious about their applications in the spring this year.

[00:08:51.950] – John

Caroline, do you think, as Maria does, that we’re going to see a surge of reapplicants in this new round?

[00:08:59.110] – Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s somewhat inevitable after a very competitive and a bit of a crazy season and the disruption of last year, that there will be people who didn’t get into a school of their choice last year and therefore reapplying now. So that can raise the level of competition overall because often they are very well prepared candidates. Right. They’ve been through the cycle. Once they’ve learned from that process, they’ve probably hopefully reflected on why they didn’t get in the first time round, and hopefully they’re coming back with a better application next time round. So they can often be incredibly strong applicants. And, of course, the school the schools just take them seriously because they understand that if you’re reapplying, you’re serious about this, you’re really motivated, you really want to go to that school if you’re coming back a second time. And sometimes people even apply more than two times. Right. So the schools do credit those applicants for their commitment and motivation, and that can give them some additional credibility and therefore create strong competition for the fresh batch of applicants.

[00:10:07.830] – John

Yes. Now, neither of you think there was a so-called bloodbath in the 2021 admissions cycle, right?

[00:10:15.620] – Caroline

It wasn’t. No. I mean, it was definitely a very competitive year, but great candidates were still getting into great schools. So I think the level of competition was a bit higher than usual. But I don’t think it was sort of completely extreme.

[00:10:34.490] – John

You take that same position, right?

[00:10:36.570] – Caroline

Yeah.

[00:10:36.980] – Maria

I wouldn’t call it a bloodbath, but I did see some people who I think in prior years with fewer applicants and a little bit less competition, I think in prior years, they might have gotten into school that perhaps they didn’t get into last year. So then they were stuck with the difficult choice of do I take the bird in the hand, or do I turn down that one school and then reapply next year to my dream school with nobody really knows what’s going to happen, it’s hard to advise them on what to do.

[00:11:04.440] – John

Yeah. Exactly. What did you find that they did? Did they hold off or did they decide just to go?

[00:11:11.020] – Maria

I think most people decided to go. Well, personally, there is just so much variability on a regular year, much less than a year. So I tend to say take the bird in the hand. There are so many amazing schools. You’re going to get similar, if not identical, opportunities at most top schools, et cetera, et cetera. And also with the return to in person learning, which has happened this year, I think that a lot of the doubts from previous years are no longer, you know, you might as well just go. You’re going to have a great time, you’re going to get a great education, and you’re going to have a great outcome pretty much regardless of where you go, because at the end of the day, it’s the person that makes the career, not the school. And so if you hustle and network and prepare for certain types of interviews, you’re going to get certain types of jobs regardless of if you’re at a fancier school or not. That’s my opinion. So I think a lot of them took it. But I also was like, I don’t know. You don’t know what’s going to happen next year.

[00:12:09.210] – Maria

Just grab it.

[00:12:12.810] – John

Seize the day.

[00:12:14.500] – Maria

That’s right. Car pay, acceptance.

[00:12:18.810] – Caroline

I like that.

[00:12:20.970] – John

I like that. Law school versus business school. I think that for some people, this is actually a consideration, even a debate. And we know law school had been on the Wayne for a number of years, even much more than business schools before the pandemic increase. And in many cases this past year, we’ve seen historic rises at the elite law schools and application volume, but they’re climbing out of a big hole, recovering from a much deeper and sustained dip than B schools. But what was interesting to me is seeing that Harvard Law School was up a third in application this past year, nearly 10,000, while the Harvard business goal was up a mere 5%. And Harvard Law School drew more applicants for fewer positions than the business school and, in fact, cut its admit rate nearly in half, from 12.9% to 6.9%, when the Harvard Business School admit rate is around 9%. I’m wondering, Maria, when you were on campus, could you tell the law school students from the MBA students?

[00:13:32.100] – Maria

I couldn’t, but I don’t know that there was a whole lot of cross registration. I mean, I did take a business law class my second year, which was the hardest, most intensive class, I think one of the hardest classes offered at the school. And so I wouldn’t have had any law school students enrolled in that because why? I don’t know that I had a lot of cross registrants in general in most of my classes, but that could have just been because of the classes I took. So, no, if there weren’t any, I couldn’t tell. But I do think that I did. Well, there were a few where it was just the case method is just such a unique style of managing a classroom and discussing a topic that I do think that some of them you could sort of tell maybe sometimes that they weren’t quite sure what to do, and they would raise their hand and then talk for 20 minutes and you’re like, no, stop. But aside from that, you really couldn’t tell.

[00:14:22.790] – John

And there was a general belief, though, that as law school applications were really in the tank for quite a few years, they really dramatically dropped many schools, reduced their enrollments. There were some law schools that went out of business. There was a sense that had become more of the all purpose degree and that many people who would have gone to law school in past years decided to go to business school instead. And I think there’s a certain number of people who actually think about either one. And I wonder, Caroline, what advice you might have for people who know they want a graduate degree, they know they want a professional degree, and they’re deciding between a law school degree and a business school degree. What kind of advice would you give them?

[00:15:05.800] – Caroline

Well, I’m a little bit biased. I looked at becoming a lawyer at one stage and did some internships and found it frankly rather dull. So I personally have a preference for the curriculum that you get at business school rather than law school. I find it much more interesting and much broader. But having said that, law school is also a great foundation. It’s a well trodden path as well, especially in the US. It can open a lot of doors. If you get into a great school, that’s a fabulous credential to have. I think that some of this may be driven by people coming out of undergraduate and looking to get their post graduate degree straight away. Right. Because they’re going straight into law school, whereas with business school in vast majority of cases, you need to go off and get at least two or three years of work experience first. And I think there is a trend of students coming out of an undergrad and wanting to continue their education and secure their master’s degree straight away. We’re certainly seeing that in Europe with the growth of master’s degrees and people going straight into Masters from undergrad in much larger volumes than had been the case in the past.

[00:16:21.070] – Caroline

So I think that law school is benefiting from that, that they’re getting great applicants, wonderful undergrads who just want to get on with their education and get their graduate degree straight away and don’t want to have to wait another few years and also face the uncertainty of whether they will get into business school at later dates. They apply to law school, they get into a great school, then they’re gone. Right. They’re off the business school market earlier. And that’s also why the business schools launch the two plus two types of programs to compete with that and to try to secure some of those great students who would be considering going straight to graduate school after their undergrad. So giving them the option to secure their place at business school at the same time, at an earlier stage, at the same time that they would be securing a place at law school.

[00:17:18.010] – John

Looking at the Harvard Law School class profile that was just published, it’s pretty darn impressive. I mean, the class GPA is 3.92 versus the Harvard Business School GPA is 3.69. Lsat scores. We’re at a historic high 174, where we know the GMAT scores at Harvard remain the same. There are 19 Fulbright scholars in the law school class, just remarkably impressive group of people. And of course, they enroll a smaller class than the business school, a little over 500 students compared to the more than 1000 that were enrolled, which is the largest class ever in the history of the Harvard Business School this year. But do you think law school students are naturally smarter than business school students.

[00:18:14.210] – Caroline

Obviously, fantastic academic credentials.

[00:18:16.750] 

Right.

[00:18:17.110] – Caroline

I think those are amazing statistics that you just reeled off about the qualifications of the class. But I don’t think that there’s necessarily any huge difference between someone who goes to business school versus someone who goes to law school. But perhaps the emphasis at that stage and admission is a little bit more on academics.

[00:18:40.780] – Maria

Right.

[00:18:41.100] – Caroline

Because when you’re being in business school, there’s much more weight on the work experience. So that is a huge part of why people get in. And fantastic academic credentials are not going to get you alone, are not going to get you into business school.

[00:19:00.040] – Maria

Very true.

[00:19:01.300] – John

And obviously more women. 54% of the Harvard Law School class is female, compared to 46% at the business school. 56% of the law school class. Incoming identify as people of color, foreign access of the roughly 27% of Harvard Business School, different kind of people are definitely attracted to law, even though they may never see the inside of a courtroom. Let’s face that, right. I mean, how many people from law school really become lawyers and state lawyers? Precious few, I think. Now, Maria, you also at one point considered law with business. What made the difference for you in choosing the NBA?

[00:19:46.230] – Maria

Well, I think to the point that you just made a few people have seen the inside of a courtroom. I spent the summer I thought I was going to do public interest law. And so after my freshman year of College, I spent a summer working for a domestic violence legal clinic where I was helping women file for protective orders. And I was going with them into the courtroom. And it was just the study of the law. I’m studying the law and seeing, okay, what are these women? How does the law work and what do you have to do to get something called an ex parquet order? And how does that work? But then the practice of it was so repetitive. I mean, it was just the same thing over and over again. And then the reality was that the police officers wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do. It was very discouraging. And so I enjoy studying law from an academic perspective, and it’s sort of a bunch of logic puzzles for me. But then the actual practice of it, I think, is a lot of arguing and yelling and putting a semicolon instead of a comma and making sure that all the terms are defined in, like, Appendix C, where there’s, like by constituent we mean, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:20:53.190] – Maria

And by revenue we mean. And it’s just like, oh, my God. So that was sort of off putting. I realized that it was just sort of every day was the same, was very similar. I’m surprised to see that. I think Caroline is on to something that I think there’s just been so much uncertainty in the past year and a half that I think a lot of people may be graduating from College just want some certainty of we’re not sure what’s going to happen with the pandemic. Let me just go straight to grad school. I do know that law school admissions are almost entirely based upon I believe there’s actually a formula, at least in the past when I looked into it, it’s actually like they literally take your GPA and your lSET score and run it through a formula. And that essentially tells you if you’re getting it or not. It has very little to do with your personal qualities, which I think would explain why there are so many sociopaths in Congress who went to law school. It checks out. So I think it’s not that the law school applicants are smarter. I think it’s just that the sort of if you are pre law, they basically tell you major in whatever the easiest thing is.

[00:21:58.190] – Maria

So that way you maximize your GPA and just study super hard for that LSAT, because not a whole lot else matters. But I’m surprised to see it because I feel like not only is the practice of law, I feel not as exciting, but I also feel like it’s very geographically limiting. Right. Like, if I want to move to Spain and if I studied law, I would have to have a very niche practice. You have to pass the bar exam in different States.

[00:22:24.750] – John

True. From one state to another without having to go through an exam to get to the bar. Right?

[00:22:32.550] – Maria

Exactly. And it’s not like an easy exam. It’s not like a walk in the park exam. I think maybe, Caroline’s, if I had to say why, I would go with Caroline’s hypothesis that it’s just people want certainty. And so let’s just park ourselves in law school for three years and see figure out our lives at that point.

[00:22:54.210] – John

That’s an expensive place to park. Very expensive. I mean, people complain about the cost of business school in an MBA over two or even a one year period. Imagine three years in law school. And yes, if you do hit the jackpot out of law school, particularly out of an elite school, you’re starting salaries 200,000. But nonetheless, if you’re smart enough and you get into a great consulting job or finance job, you’re close to 200. Over 200 anyway, with an MBA in two years. And there’s a lot more scholarship money at business schools than there is at law school, by far. So obviously, we’re all big advocates. And let’s just put that out there, okay?

[00:23:41.730] – Maria

Besides, there is no conflict of interest. There’s no crowd.

[00:23:49.210] – John

Does anybody love a lawyer? Come on.

[00:23:55.490] – Maria

What is it? Hate the sin, love the sinner. Lawyers are wonderful people, even if their jobs are not.

[00:24:02.960] – John

Okay, you must have some good friends or lawyers.

[00:24:07.610] – Maria

I do.

[00:24:08.870] – John

All right. But there you have it. Harvard Law is actually more competitive than Harvard Business School this past year, drawing more applicants with higher GPAs and lower admit rate, which is a surprise. It’s the first time in many years that has occurred, given the slump in lost call applications that was deep and far reaching for quite a few years. And then this coming competitive season for admissions, it will be as competitive as last year, given the increase in reapplicants and given what the early signs are, but we don’t expect it to be any more competitive and we see a stabilization in the market coming for this next admission season, which is right around the corner. All right, Maria, Caroline, thank you, as always, for your smart and thoughtful remarks. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
How Competitive Will MBA Admissions Be In 2021-2022?
Maria |
September 7, 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!