How Many Business Schools Should You Apply To?
Maria |
October 26, 2022

Applying to several business schools is a wise move because it spreads out your risk and, presumably, increases your chance of being accepted. But as we all know, and you probably already know if you’ve been doing your homework, it’s more difficult than that. While the first things a candidate may think about are things like cost, rating, and location. There are many other things they should give consideration to, including, most importantly, their own self-evaluation.

Although the answer to the question “How many business schools should I apply to?” will undoubtedly vary from applicant to applicant, it is still crucial to pay attention to what the experts have to say.

So listen in! Because our hosts from Business Casual will discuss why MBA applicants would be well served by concentrating on applying to business schools where they’d be a good fit rather than setting a target to send out a specific number of applications.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.440] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets of Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my cohosts Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Villa. We’re going to address a question that every applicant to business school confronts. How many schools should you actually apply to? Obviously, there’s no magic number for anyone, but we’re going to talk about whether the old strategy of having a couple of safety schools, a couple of reschools and a couple of schools that are more or less in the pocket still applies to people in this admission season. Caroline, what do you think? How many business schools should, in fact, an applicant apply to?

[00:00:51.640] – Caroline

It depends on lots of things. Right. So it depends how far in advance the Canada is preparing. It’s easy to apply to more schools if you start the process well ahead of time. So, beginning of September, I spoke with a candidate who suddenly decided he wanted to apply to a couple of extra schools and it was like two weeks before the deadline. He hasn’t started anything, so that’s not very realistic. Schools are very adept at figuring out if you’ve thrown an application together at the last minute, you might think that you fold them, but believe me, you won’t. Right. Because they are very skilled at reading between the lines. And so if your application is not well thought through, just don’t bother. It’s better to wait, it’s better to apply when you have given the application time to develop and mature. Otherwise you’re just short changing yourself. And then it depends when in the season you’re starting. If you are starting in Round One, then you could feasibly apply to potentially two, three, four schools in round one. Really? Four schools? You need to be working well in advance, several months in advance if you’re going to do that well.

[00:02:07.660] – Caroline

And then you could apply to a similar number of schools in Round two and then potentially even round Three for some schools. Right. So some candidates may be able to do good applications for perhaps up to ten schools in one season. But it does depend on how far in advance you’re starting the process and whereabouts in the season we are in school.

[00:02:30.460] – John

This feels like overkill to me. Is it?

[00:02:33.030] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:02:33.480] – Caroline

So it’s also important to have done your research and apply to schools where you genuinely feel like there’s a good fit for you. Right. And so ten schools might well be pushing it. There may not be ten schools where the community is a great fit for you. The overall program is ideal for you. So it’s true that you might not find ten different schools that correspond to exactly what you’re looking for. I think most candidates can find four or five schools that resonate with them and would be great options for them. That shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as you keep an open mind. Sometimes candidates get way too fixated on certain brand names or such location, and again, you know, might be shortchanging themselves because they’re ruling out options without really seriously considering the value that some other schools could bring to them.

[00:03:32.610] – John

Right, and I wonder your typical client would apply to how many schools would you think?

[00:03:38.730] – Caroline

Well, it depends where they’re applying. So I personally work a lot with candidates applying to INSEAD, and it’s quite common that candidates applying to inched may apply to a couple of other schools, but it often doesn’t go much beyond two or three other schools because in Sierra is quite a unique experience and it’s obviously a very international school. It’s a one year program, you have a campus exchange opportunities, et cetera. So I think if you’re applying to the international schools, your list might be shorter than if you’re applying to the US schools where there may be more options that could bring you similar benefits.

[00:04:19.770] – John

Right.

[00:04:20.160] – Caroline

So I would say for the US schools, our clients are typically applying to four or five schools, and sometimes they may do that work with us, and then they may apply to additional schools by themselves because the work that we do with them on a handful of schools will give them a fantastic foundation that they can then work from to apply to additional schools by themselves.

[00:04:43.690] – John

Maria, what’s your take on this?

[00:04:45.690] – Maria

Well, I agree. I think people should pretty much apply to as many schools as they think they can comfortably juggle. Under no circumstances should you only apply to two schools or three schools, especially if those schools are Harvard, Stanford and Wharton, unless you’re totally fine with being a reapplicant in the future. That’s what I tell people when they’re like, no, I’m only applying to Harvard and Stanford because those are the only two schools I’m interested in. I’m like, yeah, cool. They might not be interested in you, though. So some people are sometimes like, no, but you don’t understand me, I really want to go to Stanford. And I’m like, oh boy, I bet they’re excited to hear that. It’s a question of they want you. So anyway. Look. If you’re sort of younger in your career and you think. I’m just going to shoot my shot and see what happens and I’m okay. Reapplying in the future. Then sure. Apply to only a couple of schools. But if you’re serious about getting in this year. In this cycle. I do like to see people apply to at least four to six schools and you know.

[00:05:41.910] – Maria

The amount of work that you have to do. Sometimes you can find schools that have similar essays. Some schools make it definitely easier for you to apply to them than others. So schools that might have easier essays or schools that might have a robust, for example, student ambassador program where it’s very easy for me to set up a call with someone and ask them all my questions and learn about the school pretty quickly. It’s a lot easier to apply to a school like that for schools that may be a little bit more opaque or schools that may have more complicated essays. I think one of the things we were talking about was, is there such a thing as a safety school versus a comfortable school versus a slam dunk school? And I think it depends on which tier of schools you’re talking about. So if you’re talking about schools, I don’t know, let’s just throw a number out there ranked sort of 15 to 30th or below that area, then I think you can be a little bit more comfortable with, okay, if my GMAT score is very competitive, if my work experience is competitive, then I have a pretty good shot.

[00:06:44.230] – Maria

I don’t think there’s anything as a guaranteed, guaranteed slam dug pretty much for anyone. But as you get into the more elite a school is, the higher the bar it sets for proven leadership and proven accomplishment. And so given that, I think it’s impossible for pretty much anyone to say, oh, this is going to be, oh, Wharton is going to be my safety school, like, yikes, it probably isn’t. And I’d much rather have you apply to lots of schools now, and then later on say, oh, I wasted all this time because maria told me to apply to extra schools, and I got into Wharton anyway, and I wasted all my time. I’d rather have you be grumpy at me for that, then only apply to one school and not get in, and then now find yourself a year having to wait an entire other year to now reengage. And I also think part of what leads me to say this is that I do think that the schools are looking for also for fit. So it’s not this linear thing where, well, if you get into one school that’s higher ranked, you’re definitely getting into a school that’s lower ranked.

[00:07:47.550] – Maria

You know, Columbia has been they have a rolling admissions process, and they have been issuing acceptances and rejections for the past several weeks, and people who have gotten interview invites to harvard and to booth have been gotten rejected from Columbia. So it’s not necessarily on this, like, linear scale where people say, well, columbia is going to be my safety school. Well, I don’t know about that. So I think that a lot of it is that sincerity does come through. And as Caroline said, if you just throw together a quick, yes, I want to come to your school because your school has classes and I want to learn business and your school teaches business. If it’s like that, then it doesn’t matter if you’re not getting in because you couldn’t even be bothered to put in the effort to get to know us. So I think that it’s better I don’t think you should apply to 400 schools, but I also think that you should apply it’s better to spread out your risk. But every time you do spread out your risk, make sure you do a bare minimum of research, student outreach, really looking deeply at what the school offers and unique things that it has to make your application there as specific as possible.

[00:08:55.390] – John

OK, so let’s say someone is going to apply to six schools and they’ve given themselves enough time to apply to six schools. Should they in fact pick two reaches, two targets and two safety schools? Or is it not as simple as that? Maria.

[00:09:12.150] – Maria

I don’t know if it’s quite as simple as that because it depends what those six schools are. So because so many people do tend to at least start this process, most people starting the process think, oh, I’m going to apply to Stanford, Wharton and Harvard. And then frequently they do a little more research and they realize, oh, maybe that’s not great use of my time. But let’s say that most people start off with that as their list, then the other schools should definitely be you have to ask yourself, really, why am I doing this? What is it that I’m hoping to get at the end of it? If it’s, let’s say I want to transition to a job in the technology space and I want to work at Amazon, then look at the other schools that can equally just as well get you that job at Amazon. If you want to work in real estate, look at other schools. Yeah, Columbia Wharton is a really good school for real estate. Columbia is really good. But you know what, NYU can probably get you similar opportunities in real estate. So I think that’s when it’s up to you, the more work you put into researching the schools that are more likely to get you where you want to go, that’s going to pay dividends.

[00:10:15.700] – Maria

Because not only is that sincerity going to come through, as we said before, but also when you make your case to the school of why that school is a good fit for you, your logic is going to be a lot more airtight because you’re going to say, well, you guys specialize. NYU has a fintech specialization and that’s exactly where I want to go in my career. If I’m an NYU officer and I’m reading that, I’m thinking, wow, my school actually can help this person get where they want to go, versus if it’s a more generic argument or if it’s somebody who’s looking for something that maybe my school is not so good at. So I get why we want to make this as simplistic as possible. Yes, look at the GMAT score and then deduct 20 and then whatever, put it through this formula and that’s your safety school. But I think your safer schools should be schools that have higher acceptance rates, but that still offer something that logically makes sense for you. Because if the story doesn’t make sense, then even you might be surprised that even your safety school, your quote unquote safety school doesn’t let you in.

[00:11:18.190] – John

Yeah, I mean, I would think that any school that rejects 75% or more of its applicants every year has to be considered a rich school for most candidates, no matter what your GMAT’s, GPAs or background is. So that would include Stanford, Chicago, Booth, Wharton, Northwestern, Kellogg, Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Berkeley, Yale, and Duke in Michigan and NYU. Stern and then any school above 25, I would say, could be a target school for many people, like Virginia, Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, maybe USC. And any school that’s accepting 40% and above might be a safety school. Of course, all of this changes based on your own individual attributes. So if you’re scoring an average score on the GMAT, which is something like 570, this goes out the window entirely, because those are not going to be your reach, your target, or your safety schools. For European candidates. Caroline, you mentioned that many only apply to a couple of schools, in part because there are fewer options in Europe, and in part because someone may want a particular cultural experience. If you’re in love with France and Paris, you’re going to apply to, say, if you’re in love with Spain, you might apply to Ise and Ie and so on.

[00:12:54.210] – John

And if you’re a real global candidate and totally committed to an international career, you might go to NZ in London. But what’s your sense of the choice of Reach, target, and safety schools?

[00:13:10.500] – Caroline

Yeah, I think within that subset of international schools, I mean, there are some options, right. In Seattle, London Business School are often reaches for many candidates, but there are many competitor schools who have sought to I mean, frankly, they’ve sought to emulate the London Business School formula right. With very international cohorts and an international platform for recruitment. So Oxford, Cambridge, HEC, Ie I would put those in the category of great options for candidates who might not quite make it into in Seattle, London Business School. I would say also that your personal timing makes a difference. So I encourage candidates to start this process if they’re not sure about when is the best time, when is the optimal time for them to apply it? Is it two years into their career? Is it three years into their career? Is it four years into their career? It’s better to err on the side of applying a bit too early than a bit too late. And if you are on the early side, then you could take the risk of just applying to your reach and target schools right, without having any safety schools, because you know that you could go through another cycle next year and reapply to those schools and add some other schools to your list.

[00:14:41.590] – Caroline

So I think that whereas someone who is reaching their late twenty s a very advanced stage of 28, 29 and applying to business school remember those days. So if they are a little bit further advanced in their career. They may want to spread their bets more widely in that season because they might have reached a point when it’s the optimal time. They’ve got their best chance now, and a year later they might not look like such a fantastic candidate to some schools. So in that case, they might want to really think very carefully about that set of scores. As you said, reach, target realistic and then some safety skills. But if you’re applying earlier, then you could just focus on those more competitive schools.

[00:15:36.570] – John

The other issue here, and I think you raised it earlier, Caroline, is the round strategy. So if you’re going to actually say, okay, I’m going to apply to some reach schools, some target schools, and some safety schools, wouldn’t your reach schools naturally be in round one?

[00:15:52.990] – Caroline

Well, yes, although you’ve got to keep in mind that a lot of other schools get a deluge of applications in round two and they’re well aware that those people really had their heart set on more competitive schools and have been rejected and now turning their attention elsewhere. That’s often the case that candidates will do that. But just be aware of how you manage around two applications because schools are very conscious that many of those candidates have applied very much as a sort of second option, second choice, and have not put a lot of time and effort into researching the school and considering that fit with the school, and they will have a very careful eye out for that. So you almost need to show the love more to your round two schools than to your round one schools because they are somewhat suspicious of your motives in round two.

[00:16:51.040] – John

What about the psychology of applying? Okay, we know that in sports, people who are very successful begin to manifest the results. In other words, they actually think about being incredibly positive about the outcomes on the field in a way to motivate them and to throw all of themselves into the game. I wonder if in fact, the strategy of saying, okay, I’m going to pick a couple of read schools, a couple of target schools, and a couple of safety schools is a detriment to the level of confidence and positivity that you need to get into one of these super elite schools.

[00:17:31.030] – Maria

Maria no, because if you’re strong enough to get into one of these elite schools, you’re probably going to get in regardless. What’s more of a detriment is thinking that Stanford is a slam dunk and then not getting in and then applying to some other similarly competitive schools around too, and then not getting into them. So there’s bound to be disappointment all around, but I’d rather have that disappointment be I didn’t get into my first choice school, but I got into a great school versus I didn’t get into any schools. And just a quick note on the rounds, round one versus round Two. I think one thing that I would definitely not recommend is every once in a while I encounter someone who says, well, I applied to my safer schools in Round two. And then based on how that if I have really good results, then that will give me the confidence to apply to the more elite schools in Round one. The only tricky thing with that is that the deposit deadlines for the Round one schools are going to happen before you get your notifications from the Round two schools. So you might have a school that you’re excited about, but not like super excited about, and then you get invited to interview for your dream school in Round two.

[00:18:39.120] – Maria

But, uh oh, now you have to pay a $3,000 deposit and commit to attend your Round one. So just think about that. That’s a very sort of you’re like, what deposit deadlines? What does that have to do with my application strategy? But every year around March, I get a ton of emails from people. I was so excited, I got into this one school in Round one, and I’m waiting to hear back from the dream school, what do I do? And I’m like, you’re going to have to pay the money or risk ending up with nothing. So just be aware of that as a strategy. Don’t try to do just safety schools because then you might end up with nothing.

[00:19:16.610] – John

And a lot of people who apply to Columbia, for example, on early decision and end up having to pay a very high deposit may reevaluate that if they get into a Harvard of Stanford or Wharton later on, which I’m sure both of you have seen candidates in that very same position. And Columbia demands a very large deposit on those early decision admits they do.

[00:19:40.860] – Maria

Because they know that a lot of them might get into another school and turn them down and so they get their pound of flesh. And I am fine with Columbia doing that. I am perfectly fine. If these people are applying and saying that it’s their number one choice and they’re not going to fly anywhere else and then they end up doing it, go for it, Columbia. Get as much money from them as you can because at least you end up with a little bit of money from these folks.

[00:20:05.670] – John

So my takeaway here is that it’s really up to the individual and when the individual begins to prepare their applications, but in general, it seems like most people do four to six applications. In general, it’s a good idea not to only go to the super highly selective schools because it’s so selective and in some cases random, because so many people are highly qualified in those applicant pools to get in that you can’t just it’s not a gimmick, it’s not a no brainer. You just can’t expect to stroll into any of those super elite schools where the acceptance rates are my God, under 15%, it’s really hard. And you’re right, if you do apply early, you have the opportunity to be a reapplicant. And we know from data that’s been disclosed by the Harvard Business School in the past that really decent number of reapplicants actually get in the Harvard Business School, some of whom actually applied more than twice. But you better have a good story to tell on the second or third go around. And for sure, I’m thinking that in some cases, maybe it’s not a good policy to have the old undergraduate strategy of safety target and reach schools.

[00:21:29.160] – John

Because for some people, if you already earned a good amount of money, let’s say you work for a venture capital fund or a private equity firm, or you’re in hedge funds and you’re pulling down close to 200 grand or more, that should probably impact your choice of schools. I mean, obviously you don’t want to quit a job like that and go to a T 15, T 20, T 25 business school for an MBA. You’re going to aim pretty much for schools that might be in the reach category. Isn’t that right, Maria?

[00:22:02.950] – Maria

Right. But that’s why I think a little earlier I mentioned asking yourself, what is the outcome I want from my time in business school? If it’s a short term outcome, lots of schools might be able to get you that short term outcome, and maybe only five can get you that outcome, maybe only two can get you that outcome. So if you’re looking at it from that perspective, then yeah, if the outcome is, I want to, I’m in venture capital, for example, and so I need an elite MBA, you might be better off just not getting an MBA. There are lots of people who just simply don’t get MBAs who are high achievers and use those two years instead to advance their careers and they end up in just a senior positions, if not more senior than people who took the time off for business school. So, yes, in that situation, don’t bother applying to the other school because your alternative is so much stronger. But if your alternative is, no, I really want to go to business school, my alternative is I want to staying in my engineering job, that really doesn’t appeal to me.

[00:22:56.650] – Maria

I don’t want to do it anymore. Then you do have to be more prudent and spread your risk around.

[00:23:02.140] – John

Yeah, makes total sense. Caroline, makes sense to you as well, right?

[00:23:06.340] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. It’s always an individual choice, right. And it’s important to invest a lot of time in reflecting in this process, as Maria said, to think about what are your short term goals, what are your longer term goals, and really invest significant time in getting to know the schools beyond the superficial level of.

[00:23:32.440] – Maria

My.

[00:23:32.830] – Caroline

Colleague has been there and I’ve heard such great things about it and it’s a fantastic brand name, right? You really need to sort of get under the hood of the program and understand all the different elements. And it is a complex decision with many different variables and you should think very carefully about what are the variables that are really important to you before you put all that effort and money and time into the application process.

[00:24:01.760] – John

Yeah, totally. Well, there you have it. Don’t apply to one or two places if you want to get an MBA or apply to one or two places if you’re not sure about the MBA, you’re making a lot of money and you could advance very nicely in your current career, in your current place. It may not well be worth it. Alright. Hey, thank you for joining us. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
How Many Business Schools Should You Apply To?
Maria |
October 26, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

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