How To Choose The Right School When You Have Multiple Offers
Maria |
May 1, 2024

In the latest episode of Business Casual, the hosts explore the complexities of choosing the right MBA program from multiple offers. They emphasize focusing on long-term career benefits over short-term financial incentives like scholarships. Caroline and Maria advise that applicants should deeply explore the career outcomes and student club activities of potential programs to ensure alignment with their long-term goals.

The conversation also touches on the psychological aspects of making such a significant decision, encouraging applicants to commit fully to their chosen path without regrets. They highlight the importance of campus visits and community engagement as pivotal in making an informed choice. This episode is a valuable guide for prospective MBA students navigating the complexities of multiple admissions offers, urging them to consider the broader impact of their educational choices.

 

 

 

 

 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.370] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast. We, meaning Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila, my two co-hosts, are in that period of time where you may be the envy of all your friends because you have multiple offers. The hard part about being so wanted by business schools is choosing which one to go to. We want to talk a little bit about how do you choose among several offers? What framework should you be using? What additional due diligence might you undertake to make the right decision for you? We’ll start with Caroline because one of her colleagues, Judith Silverman-Hodera, has just written an article on this, which I think all of you will find helpful, and it’s called Seven Tips on How to Choose Between MBA Offers. Caroline, what’s your general advice?

[00:01:12.650] – Caroline

Well, so I think that It’s important to think about the long term benefits of where you’re going to go. And often when people are applying, they have an idea in their mind of what their ranking of the various schools is. So they may be applying to five or six schools, and perhaps they get into three or four, and they may have a sense of which is their preferred choice during the application process. But then sometimes people’s minds get swayed when the decisions come rolling in and they get scholarship offers from some of those schools and not others. It’s often the case, or it can often be the case, that people get into their top choice school, but without any scholarship, and then they get into other schools. Often it’s because those schools know that the candidate is a really strong candidate, so they may get offers, scholarship offers from schools that are further down their list, and so might start to second guess their priorities. In most cases, I think it still makes sense for the candidate to go for the school that was their first choice originally. It’s important to think about really the long term benefits of the program and not just the short term cost and to weigh up the return on investment in the long term.

[00:02:31.690] – Caroline

Presumably, someone who’s gone through this process has done quite a bit of reflection and research, hopefully, before they get to the point of getting decisions. If they had a school in mind as their top choice, it’s likely that that school is therefore the best fit for their career aspirations. It’s likely the best fit in terms of the community and the network that they’re building. And those are all things that pay off not just in the short term, but in the long term. And so usually I encourage candidates not to be too heavily swayed by scholarship offers and to stick with their original plan unless they’re really from peer schools. So that sometimes happens where candidates get offers from two or three schools in the M7, and one has given them a scholarship offer and one hasn’t. And there may not be much to choose between those options. So I had a candidate recently who was choosing between Wharton and Kellogg and had a very nice scholarship offer from Kellogg and plans to go into consulting. Kellogg is a great school if you wanted to go into consulting. And if you get a substantial scholarship, then that is quite hard to turn down.

[00:03:50.600] – Caroline

I think if the career outcome and the long term benefit is pretty much the same, then it’s fine to be swayed by those scholarship offers, but otherwise, try to focus on the long term benefits.

[00:04:03.070] – John

Yeah, true. And that’s a good example of a choice in a way, because while Wharton may historically be always better ranked, Kellogg as a school that funnels tremendous numbers of students to the consulting field, and I mean MBV, is a great bet. If they’re willing to pay part of your tuition or all of your tuition, that’s a no-brainer. Also, I will say that Kellogg tends to be a school with a very friendly, welcoming, embracing culture. Wharton has the reputation, given its finance bent, to attract a lot of more people with sharper elbows. I think culturally, that could play a role as well. Maria, I’m sure you’ve counseled some of your folks in this cycle over this school or that school. Bring us into some of those decisions.

[00:05:04.600] – Maria

Absolutely. I think one of the most important things is to, as Caroline said, keep your eyes on the long term prize and think about the whole reason you’re doing this is to benefit your career in some way, whether it’s to advance in your existing career or pivot to a new career, you’re getting an MBA at the end of the day to help your career. So all else being equal, the first thing you should do is really look at the career outcomes of the different schools. This could be looking at, well, hopefully you would have done this already, but sometimes life gets in the way. But hopefully, you will have access to the career reports for the schools, and you will see what percentage of people immediately after go into certain fields. Perhaps almost more importantly, look at the clubs. Reach out to the clubs for whatever your longer term career interest is. Because in the short term, a lot of people end up funneling themselves into either banking or consulting, but they don’t stay there in the long term. After three, five years in, say, consulting, that’s when they’re like, Okay, now it’s time for me to do what I really want to do.

[00:06:04.770] – Maria

I’m going to go back into industry in health care or real estate or whatever it is that they want to do. If they have gone to a school that has a very strong pocket of students who are very interested in one given industry, then the likelihood of that network being useful for you in the future is that much greater. If you haven’t already, do some research into the student club. Let’s say it’s real estate. Go to the real estate club website. Is it abandoned or is it updated all the time? Do they have weekly lunch and learns? Do they have a conference? Or is it just three people? This site last updated five years ago. That’s an exaggerated example, of course. But Try to get a sense, try to talk to students in the different career clubs. I think that’s one of the first things that you should pay attention to, because at the end of the day, that is why you’re doing this. Then if, in fact, some schools are essentially the same in terms of what those outcomes could be, then that’s when other things such as culture, even location, I think, could play a role.

[00:07:08.030] – Maria

I mean, it’s true that every top business school does send its alumni out to the four corners of the globe, but they do also tend to settle in certain areas. Inertion is a powerful thing, and so people do sometimes tend to settle closer to where the school is based. Or, for example, if they were doing a project during the school year with a given company, it’s a lot easier if you’re based in Chicago and you want to do some external project during your MBA in a given industry, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to do a project with another Chicago-based company, and then that might lead to a job offer in Chicago. Then the next thing you know, maybe you weren’t planning on living in Chicago, but three years go by and now you’re in Chicago. I would also think about location. Then in terms of culture, if you haven’t already visited, try to go to the visit for the visit weekends. Because I have found I have recently had some folks who have had… It’s funny when your inbox, you’ve got the visit weekends and you’ve got one person coming in and saying, I went to two different schools’ visit weekends this past weekend, and it totally swayed me in the direction of School A.

[00:08:13.240] – Maria

Then another person went to the exact same two visit weekends, and they’re like, Oh, my gosh, School B is the one for me. I’m just the diplomatic person in the middle. I’m like, Sounds great. They’re both wonderful. You can’t go wrong. But it really is eye-opening, I for some folks to, once you go beyond the brochure and the website, when you’re the one actually in the consumer’s seat making the choice, it does behoove you to dig a little bit deeper and try to get that feel for who are your classmates going to be.

[00:08:47.010] – John

Yeah, so true. I wonder, I’d love to hear what you two think of asking ChatGPT. The prompt might be something like, I’m a student who values friendships and relationships. I enjoy running and acting in theater. I ultimately want to pursue a career in blank, in sustainability, let’s say. I’ve been accepted to these three schools for their full-time MBA programs, which one would be the best fit for me? What do you think of that? Caroline?

[00:09:29.420] – Caroline

Well, it might give you some interesting points, but I wouldn’t outsource my decision to ChatGPT. I think ChatGPT can be useful for coming up with checklists of what are the things to take into account because it’s drawing on such extensive resources. I don’t think it can necessarily tailor the decision to your individual case as well as you can because it doesn’t know you and everything that’s behind those few points that you’ve mentioned. But it can give you some really good bullet points of, well, here’s why this could be good. And may have some points in there that you might otherwise have forgotten about or overlooked. So I think it can be a useful resource when you’re doing, especially when you’re doing research and perhaps during this reflection process, when you’re choosing between offers, it’s good to dig into that research again. But I think I think the problem with those tools is that it can’t peer into your soul and really doesn’t know you very well as an individual yet. It can’t read what’s going on in your mind yet. Maybe it will.

[00:10:44.860] – Maria

I was going to say, not yet. It will soon. Six months from now, check back.

[00:10:49.380] – Caroline

For the time being, I don’t think it necessarily tailors that thing particularly well to an individual, but it can be a useful resource for research.

[00:10:58.190] – John

Now, Maria, do you share Caroline’s skepticism?

[00:11:01.450] – Maria

Of course. I’m less diplomatic about things. I will say, look, I think ChatGPT, to Caroline’s point, I do think that for some students who are applying, let’s say, from overseas, who might not be able to easily get to the US for these welcome weekends that we mentioned previously, or perhaps you’ve not been able to travel to visit the various campuses, I do think that maybe something ChatGPT could at least point out things that you had never thought of. For example, I live in Los Angeles, and people always tend to put UCLA and USA together in the same breath. They lump them together. But they’re pretty different schools, and they’re in very different locations. Usc is very urban, near downtown LA, which has its pros and its cons, versus UCLA is a beautiful, more suburban feel, lush campus. I think somebody said, what have you said? Something like jogging. If you said something like jogging, if I like to jog is one of my hobbies. Interestingly enough, I think UCLA would be a much, much stronger school. If that’s really something that matters to you, there’s going to be a lot more jogging along Sunset Boulevards than there is in downtown Los Angeles.

[00:12:14.850] – Maria

That’s something that you might not ever pick up on unless you’re asking an artificial intelligence, these sorts of questions.

[00:12:25.080] – John

But how about in that case, a school that’s going to have a commencement? Because USA just announced that they will not have a commencement this year.

[00:12:32.430] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

[00:12:34.470] – John

It is pretty crazy and sad. But I have, and I’m sure both of you have, encountered candidates who’ve actually built elaborate spreadsheets. While it’s incredibly subjective, they’ve put a bunch of attributes on one side and then scored them based on what they think, what they’ve read, what conversations they’ve had. It can be anything from the student experience, the quality of the teaching, the quality of the faculty in a specific discipline, job prospects, career outcomes, and basically then added up the scores that they gave for each of the schools to which they were accepted and had some insights there. I’m sure both of you have seen that, right, Maria? You’ve seen people bring out the spreadsheet and try to make a calculation on this?

[00:13:30.890] – Maria

Sure. In fact, I usually have people make a list of the electives for a given part of business that they’re interested in, because while the schools are all very similar in the core courses that they offer, they can vary wildly in terms of the specific electives that they offer. For example, if you want to work in distressed debt investing, that’s a pretty niche thing. One school might cover it as part of a larger finance class. One school might have it as It’s its own separate class. Then another school like Columbia, where we actually know someone who runs a distressed debt investing firm during the day and then teaches at Columbia at night how to do that work. If you know what you really want to do, really now this is the time to dig into those electives and make them and put them in a spreadsheet and line them up side by side. Maybe even, I know this is extra work and I don’t like giving out homework, but I promise this isn’t busy work for its own sake. Maybe even dig into the syllabi for some of these classes in particular, because it’s one thing to say, Well, it’s a class in investing, or it’s a class in healthcare.

[00:14:37.920] – Maria

Healthcare is one that’s fuzzy. Sometimes healthcare as a class might delve into things like the US payer and insurance system, which might not be useful, or how to run a hospital versus another health care class might be more about how to invest in a new bionic knee. Lots of schools will have health care courses, but once you dig into the nitty-gritty, you see Oh, actually, there’s a slightly different flavor to each of these. I think that’s one of the things where you could definitely… A spreadsheet will definitely go a long way for you.

[00:15:08.750] – John

Yeah, that’s a good point. Caroline, are there certain attributes that you would suggest someone plug into a spreadsheet if they want to go that route?

[00:15:21.070] – Caroline

Well, so just in relation to what Maria was saying, there may be specific faculty that really excite you as well. One class, one school by an entrepreneurship professor may be very, very different from another class, another school, because the person teaching that class has very different experience and has a very different style in the classroom. And so it’s worth talking to some current students to get a sense for who are the best faculty and whether the courses that you’re looking to take are taught by a really strong faculty because there is some variation at every school. And so you might might be interested to find out who are the most highly rated faculty and whether those are professors that will be teaching the courses that you are interested in. So, yeah, I think it’s great to have to do all of that research. Hopefully, candidates have done some of that before they start the application process. And for anyone who’s actually thinking about applying in the upcoming season, we would encourage you to do all of that now because the more you dig into the details of the programs and what it is that makes the score stand out for you, the better prepared candidate you are.

[00:16:38.520] – Caroline

And that often comes across in applications, and that can make the difference between acceptance or rejection sometimes. Times because schools get a sense for whether you’re really motivated and whether you’ve actually done your due diligence or not. So great if you can put together your spreadsheet before you apply rather than afterwards. But it may be for some candidates also that they did the research several months ago and they’ve been knee deep in the application process and just busy with everything else that’s going on in their lives. They may have forgotten some of the points that they had in that originally. So it may be worth revisiting that and updating it and digging a bit deeper into some of the points. Also, some candidates just change their minds and get a different impression of the school during the application process. As Maria said, sometimes people go to admit days and come away with a different impression of the school than they had before that. And that can also happen at different points in the application process as well. That can happen during the interview process that a candidate may get very excited and much more excited about a school, or conversely, they might get turned off.

[00:17:51.800] – Caroline

So opinions can change during the process. So I think it’s good to revisit the original research that you did and and potentially dig in a bit more. And I think it’s also a great point that you made about the importance of visiting the campus if you possibly can. There’s so much information online, which is fantastic and very different from when I applied to business school a few years ago. And that’s such a great resource. But there is still no substitute for actually getting on campus and soaking up the atmosphere and chatting with people and just getting that gut feel for whether that’s the right environment for you. And yes, it may be pain to fly across the country or even fly internationally to go and visit a school, but it’s a big commitment, right? You’re going to be putting up a lot of money. You’re dedicating probably two years of your life to this experience, and it’s going to stay with you for the rest of your life. So it’s worth putting yourself out and making a big effort now to kick the tires and actually get onto the campus if you have not done so already.

[00:18:56.980] – John

Yeah, all great advice. I want to come back to what I would think is the biggest complication in making this decision. It goes back to what Caroline said about, think about the long term as opposed to any scholarship offer. But I’m also thinking that if a school offers you a very generous scholarship and the school you really want to go to doesn’t, above and beyond the financial consideration, what does it say about the school’s desire to have you in that class? It’s like if I’m going to draw an analogy to dating. There may be someone who you really have your eye on, but that person is standoffish. Then there’s another person who’s warm and welcoming and lovely. Aren’t you better off with warm, welcoming, and lovely than standoffish? Is money, in this sense, something of the equivalent of warm, welcoming, and lovely. Maria?

[00:20:05.250] – Maria

Is money ever a replacement for genuine warmth in any other facet of life? I don’t think so. I think schools are very pragmatic with offering scholarship money. I think they usually use it to attract a better candidate. They use it to punch above their own weight class, as it were. They tend to use scholarship money to say, Look, honestly, we have a pretty good sense that you’re probably going to get into a better school, and that on that basis alone, we probably can’t compete, but let’s sweeten the deal by covering a lot of the expenses. I sometimes get people asking me questions about how you negotiate. Should I negotiate my scholarships? The truth is, if you have a scholarship offer, look, the genuine blunt truth is that the lower-ranked schools are more likely to give someone a scholarship because they want to attract that higher level of talent to their program. Understandably, makes perfect sense. It’s capitalism in action. If that lower-ranked school is giving you money, ask yourself to Caroline’s point, Okay, but what am I giving up? Am I giving up a long-term, something in a long-term, in exchange for short-term investment? I wish scholarship money was the equivalence of a warm, loving embrace, but I think it’s a much more calculated offer, whether we’re talking business schools or we’re talking 80-year-old oil tycoons and their 18-year-old girlfriends.

[00:21:29.520] – Maria

We’re Whatever the context is, I do think that I would not necessarily use it as a deciding factor. The only case is where I have ever said to someone, You know what? Just take the money, is if they are, for example, a person who is supporting the other members of their family financially during those two years, let’s say perhaps their parents are retired or unemployed and they’re like, Look, I pay for my parents and I need this money, or if they know that they are going into a very non high paying field afterwards, if they’re like, I really just want to be in social enterprise and I want to run a charter school system, and I know that’s what I’m going to do, then I say, Okay, well, assuming that both schools are going to give you an adequate education in that, maybe it does make sense for you to take the scholarship money. But those are very rare occasions. I would say 90% of the time you should go with the school that you like more because the finances will work themselves out. The student loan payments will work themselves out. If you’re smart enough to get into business school, you’re smart to build a post-graduation budget that will allow you to pay back your loads.

[00:22:34.450] – John

Sure enough. And Caroline, I want to come back to the article that we mentioned early on from one of your colleagues, because the clincher, the last item on this article is, Have no regrets, whatever you choose. Now, imagine how you will feel on the day you first step foot on campus to start your MBA program. Imagine what that might feel like. And Look, whatever you choose, if you’re getting offers from places that you apply to, you obviously want to go there. You shouldn’t be applying to schools you do not want to go to. Whatever you decide, don’t be going and having remorse and asking yourself, Hey, if only I made this choice or that choice, right?

[00:23:22.990] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s right. By definition, if you have multiple offers, you have to turn down some fantastic opportunities. And there may be wonderful things that you will not get to experience, but that is a great position to be in, and that is life as well. We have to make choices every day, and you can’t do everything in life. And I think even if you go to a school and there’s some things that aren’t quite what you expected or perhaps you’re disappointed about some aspect of it, I think it’s all about attitude and the MBA is all about what you put into it. So So if you invest yourself and you make a big effort to learn as much as you can and to build those relationships and get involved in the life of the school outside of the classroom, then you will get a huge benefit from it. But if you go there and think, oh, damn, I’m disappointed about this class and that class, and I could have gone to X school instead, then you’re looking over your shoulder, then you won’t make the best out of it. So definitely it’s important to to make that decision and to move on and to embrace that.

[00:24:33.950] – John

All right, there you have it. Hey, if you’re in the MVL position, choosing among multiple offers, good luck to you. We hope we offered a little advice to guide your decision. Make sure it’s the right one. Again, I’ll just amplify what Caroline just mentioned. Have no regrets. You’re going to have an incredible experience, a life-changing experience when you remember for the rest of your life. If if you’re lucky enough to go into a highly selective two-year residential MBA program or even a one-year MBA, which obviously is more common in Europe. So just go, enjoy it, love it, take advantage of it, and congratulations on getting those offers in the first place. Hey, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
How To Choose The Right School When You Have Multiple Offers
Maria |
May 1, 2024

Full Episode Transcript:

John Byrne: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. We want to talk about international students. Schools are now reporting that a good number of their international recruits who were admitted to programs this fall haven’t been able to show up or have changed their mind.

At the University of Illinois, the school, the Gies College of Businesses, lost about 200 international students in its Master of Finance and Master of Business Analytics programs causing a $7 million hit. To their budget at UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 40 students didn’t show up who were admitted, and that’s resulting in two and a half to $3 million hit on their budget this year.

Both of these things have occurred before the announcement of a hundred thousand dollars tax on H one B Visa. Which will make it more difficult for many employers [00:01:00] to hire international students and keep them in the US for an extended period of time. And we’re getting the new class reports of the, of the new cohorts of students who’ve arrived on campus in the fall of this year.

And Carnegie Mellon is. Down 30% for their international cohort over the past two years. UCLA Anderson School is down 25% over the past two years, and schools are preparing for the worst because of the H one B Visa decision which could affect future employment. Caroline and Maria, my cohosts are in the market helping people get into the best schools in the world.

And Caroline, what do you think?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yeah, definitely seeing concern among international candidates and people holding off on applying for the US schools. So it’s really a shame. I think the international schools, particularly the schools like Inea and London Business School and the other top.[00:02:00]

International European programs will benefit, they’ll get talent that might otherwise have come to the us, which is great for those schools. And I’m very fond of those schools, but it is sad as from the US perspective for sure. On the other hand, you could also take the perspective that.

If you do have options for your career post MBA that don’t require that you absolutely have to stay in the US as an international candidate, then now could be a very good time to apply, right? Because definitely application volume will be down and schools will be perhaps. More open to candidates that might otherwise have been waitlisted or rejected in the past.

For some candidates, this is actually a fantastic opportunity to get into a top school, but from, for, at least from the school’s perspective, it is a shame because, I’ve experienced firsthand the value of a very internationally diverse classroom and the value that brings with a [00:03:00] diversity of perspectives that enriches the learning experience so much for everybody.

Enriches the debate and bring so much to the academic experience as well as the the network and the social experience. So it’s everybody’s loss, right?

John Byrne: Very true.

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: And I think it’s a very myopic perspective that the US government takes that. There needs to be a more of a refocus at US educational institutions on the domestic market because those international applicants bring a lot to the domestic students in enriching their learning and enriching their network.

Of course bring a huge value to the US economy when they stay. So there are very impressive statistics on the value of immigrants to the US economy. So Indian immigrants, for example, are only about one and a half percent of the US population, but they have founded to date about 8% of all the tech startups in the us.[00:04:00]

And for sure some of that top talent from India will now not come to the us. They will go to perhaps they will stay at the great schools that we’ve talked about in India, or they will go to other international schools. So for sure it will be a loss to the us learning experience and to the US economy.

John Byrne: Maria, you run applicant lab which is a platform that helps applicants get into highly selective schools. And many of the people who use your product are international students. What are you seeing?

Maria Wich-Vila: Everything Caroline is saying concern is think a delicate way to put it.

And I think it’s because as the more affordable provider in the market, I tend to get the applicants who maybe they don’t have the family business to fall back on. Maybe they don’t have, large sources of income elsewhere in their lives. And so I think the concern is very real and very merited, right?

I can’t. In good faith, tell someone, if they [00:05:00] really start, sit down and do the math and start to do, run the numbers, if they just assume that things are going to stay as is. And this is the big caveat that I’m, I want to get to in a second, but if we assume that things stay as is and if someone really is from a lower income tier from Nepal or India or some of the other countries that I work with, yeah, maybe sit down and do that math and think about, okay, if I do have to come back to Nepal afterwards, how will I pay back that loan? There, there is though some good news. Even if we assume that things stay status quo, which I hope, and I’m pretty, I’m I think it’s, I’m cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

But there are other markets as well. So I’ve had a lot of candidates, or former clients, I should say, graduate from business school, not be able to get jobs in certain in countries and then. Being able to move to Dubai. Dubai for some reason, has started attracting a ton of candidates, primarily from South Asia but from other parts of the world who might be having trouble getting some of those work permits.

You could do worse than live in, Dubai’s not perfect, but [00:06:00] you could also do worse than live in Dubai, right? The salaries are pretty high. The standard of living, if you have a white collar job there is, it’s not the worst outcome. So it’s not I can’t stay in the us. That’s it.

There’s no other it’s not a binary of, it’s either the US or it’s nothing. And then I think the second point is I, we’ve just seen. So many things, let’s take something from a different facet of policy. The tariffs, right? The tariffs were announced and the markets went crazy, and in the months that have followed, oh, actually, here’s the tariff, but this one company, their products aren’t gonna be subject to the tariff.

And then there’s this other company that maybe they’re not gonna have to pay the same tariff. And I can’t help but wonder if some of these. Some of these very large companies that are getting tariff exemptions, their ability to lobby for. The H one B, maybe lowering of the H one B fee. If they’ve been able to successfully lobby tariffs, they might be success, able to successfully lobby against these, true, these [00:07:00] visa fees.

And a lot of these big companies, these big tech companies are in fact some of the largest employers of post MBA talent in the us. So I am cautiously optimistic that. This could be, hopefully right now it’s the big, the flash and storm and the, the making, the big splash, right?

Everything’s about showmanship and making the big splash. And maybe in the aftermath of the storm, that initial PR media storm, maybe the reality will start to calm down a little bit. Yeah, the other good news is that if you’re applying now, that means you would enroll in 2026. You would, if it, if you’re talking about the US two year program, you would graduate in 2028.

At that point, who knows what might happen. I like to think that what we have seen so far in terms of the Visa policies, hopefully. Roughly the floor about as bad as it can get. I think if they start implementing a similar thing to OPT, that could be the same thing. But if we just assume that okay, right now what’s been announced is that these foreign students all have to do, you can’t stay here, you have to [00:08:00] go someplace else.

It, we assume that’s like the initial negotiating position. It’s just gonna chip, it’s just gonna get, it’s got nowhere else to go. It’s even worse. So we’ve, we now have two and a half years roughly until. People applying now would have to really implement, or be really affected by this in a.

In a pragmatic and tangible way. And so that’s why I’m hoping that the little chipping away and the chipping away things will start to get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better like we’ve seen with other facets of policy. Didn’t like a bunch of the CDC employees that were all fired under Doge didn’t more than half of them I think were recently rehired.

Yes. Back again true. Whatever you think of the policy, it seems like some of the policies are. Being slowly walked back. And so I think if you. If you’ve got an adventurous spirit, I, and by the way, if you apply now, sorry. I know I keep going, but I like, if you apply now, let’s say you get accepted, you don’t have to show up until August of 2026.

So that will give you [00:09:00] time, like definitely. Apply now and see what happens between now and August of 2026 to make the decision to not apply now, because you’re rightfully scared. I’m not blaming anyone, but to not apply now, maybe by maybe six months from now he’ll be like, ha, just kidding. I’m doubling the number of H one Bs.

Yeah, we have no idea what’s gonna happen. So things are So give yourself that optionality.

John Byrne: Yeah. And things are so uncertain that could very well happen because, one day at tariffs are on one country the next day they’re not one day they’re pausing the ab the interviews for student visas, the.

Say they’re not there’s litigation all over the place, challenging many of the presidential actions that have been taken that have put them in limbo despite all the headlines. So it’s, it, there’s more uncertainty than there is certainty about any of these things. And as you point out, you, if you [00:10:00] did apply this year, the odds are gonna be in your favor if you’re an international student, frankly, because there is no question.

That international applicant volume will be down at all the top schools in the us, which means that to maintain some semblance of a global class. Admission directors are going to have to dig a little bit deeper into their international applicant pools to select candidates. In a way, if you play the long term and in the BA, in, in many graduate degrees or long term bet, I think you’re gonna be.

Oddly better off. And it may even be that the schools will really even go out of their way to help international students in ways that they haven’t in the past because of these actions in Washington. And what do I mean by that? Just a more welcoming reception than the already welcoming reception you would get hiring immigration lawyers and people that can help you.

If in fact there is a [00:11:00] challenge of one kind or another. I think the takeaway is not to be discouraged and throw up your hands to say, ah, I always dreamed of coming to the United States and getting an MBA or a graduate degree in business. Use this as an opportunity to actually increase your odds of getting into a better school with the understanding that when you get out there, probably most likely be an administration change and a change in these policies if they even get completely adopted as Maria points out.

Wouldn’t you think that’s the best strategy, Caroline?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yes, I agree. I think that it’s good to take a longer term perspective because it is such a long timeline, right? If you’re applying to a top two year program as you say, you’re gonna be coming out of the program at the end of the Trump presidency and things may look very different.

And Maria rightly points out that. Everything is very volatile, right? So one thing gets announced and the next week it [00:12:00] gets rolled back, right? They’ve done so many things where they’ve realized, oh, actually that was a really bad idea after all. So

They’ve changed things. So things may not it might, may not turn out to be as bad as we fear.

And then I would also encourage candidates. To apply to the US schools, but why not hedge your bets and apply to an international program as well? Agreed in a time of uncertainty. As Maria said, create options for yourself. And so I would encourage candidates to apply to the top US programs, but also apply to top international programs as well and see what offers you get.

And then you can make a decision. As Maria said, it will be closer to the time when you would be starting the program and there may be more clarity about the situation in the US and what your options are in international markets as well. So I think that given the current circumstances, a good strategy is to hedge your bets and apply more widely than you might [00:13:00] have otherwise done.

John Byrne: Plan Bs are good. Let me just say business schools in the US have for years advised international students that those should have a plan B in the event that they can’t get with a US company. The other thing to, to keep in mind incidentally, in terms of MBA employment is that most of the companies.

That basically employ the lion’s share of MBAs are all global concerns. So you can be hired here and if there’s any challenge in getting you employed here in the us you can simply start in an office outside the United States with a hope of coming back when things clear up. So that is also another important thing to keep in mind.

And I’ll just say this. Despite whatever messaging you’re reading in your local newspapers or on your streaming platforms or television stations about how immigrants may not be welcome in the us that’s not true at all. Universities are diverse places. Welcoming. [00:14:00] Embracing loving the diversity of their students and particularly those from different cultures and backgrounds that enrich the educational experience.

There is no Dean that I’ve ever encountered who said they want fewer international students. It’s the exact opposite. They’re putting out message after message, telling people that they’re still welcome and wanted. Needed in the classroom. Now, Maria, in the past we’ve seen applicants who try to say, okay, can I time my application and my enrollment in a program to what I think might be the next recession?

And we know that in recessions applications go way. In part because some people lose the opportunity to gain advancement in a recession. Some people get unemployed. Some people just realize, hey, a recession is a good time to take a time out and get a new educational credential, which may allow me to do things I otherwise can’t do.[00:15:00]

But it’s almost impossible to time a recession and I’m imagining it’s impossible to time what’s going on here now.

Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah. I mean if we could all time, when everyone’s been talking about a stock market crash that to, not to bring another disparate topic in, but like everyone’s been talking about, it’s a bubble.

It’s a bubble. I’ve been hearing ’cause a bubble for a year and a half. True. Yeah, you can’t time or ask, for example, ask the people who enrolled in business school, like who got into business school in 2020. Like there’s always gonna be these external shocks. We can try to predict a recession, but who knows if it’s going to happen?

Who knows if there’s going to be some sort of virus or the opposite of a virus. Maybe there’ll be a virus that helps us all live healthily forever. Who knows? There’s so much uncertainty out there that who knows what to do. So I think. I think yeah, have that optionality. I think go ahead and apply.

Now if there is a recession though, which everyone seems to think is coming at some point, at that point, it’s going to be harder to get accepted. And as Caroline has pointed out, so rightfully, if other international, high quality international students are [00:16:00] spooked by the current H one B talk, now is your chance.

International candidate. Jump in there, shoot your shot like you might be able to get into a school, assuming of course that you’re qualified, but. You might have a lot less competition now than you normally will, so this could be a golden opportunity for you. And one final as one thing that I wanted to point out was that I was thinking, okay, Maria, let’s say that, you just said that maybe there’s gonna be walk back of some of these and there’s gonna be, maybe he’s gonna change.

But even if there isn’t a change, right? Let’s think about this. The companies themselves are gonna have, and you started to alluded to this John, when you mentioned that a lot of them are global concerns. They’re gonna have now a two year window in which to say. Okay. We know that we’re not gonna keep these people in the states, so let’s open a huge office in Vancouver.

Let’s open a brand, an enormous new office in Toronto. Whatever that is. Because I was thinking back to over the summer when it looked like maybe a bunch of international students wouldn’t be able to get any student visa at all. And I know that some of the business schools we’re looking [00:17:00] at, do we rent out some space in Toronto and do Zoom classes?

We do a hybrid. What we did during COVID. I’ve heard that. I think Rice, I was actually having dinner last night with a dear friend who was, say he’s from Texas and he was saying that Rice has some sort of a campus in Paris and that they are leaning really heavily on their global campuses around the world to still be able to service these students who had gotten accepted.

So things like that, like if. Even if our sort of my very cautious and perhaps irrational optimism turns out to not be true, let’s say the things get, the OPT is banished and all, everyone is banished and it’s the worst case scenario. Again, there’s gonna be two and a half years for these companies. To quickly find, okay, fine, we’re gonna open up an office in Mexico City and we’re gonna pay people really well and we’re gonna what?

Whatever that is. ’cause they’re, the companies are still gonna want the talent, right? Just because the political administration doesn’t want the global talent in the country. That doesn’t mean that the country’s employers don’t want that talent. They [00:18:00] want that talent, they want that intellect, they want that energy and that drive to make their companies better and to make more money.

So they have a very strong incentive to not only be lobbying for these. Visa changes to go away, but if they don’t go away, they have a very strong incentive to come up with some way to provide, to provide those incomes and to provide those perks and some sort of a compromise type of situation.

So again I think if you’re applying now, if you’re going in with eyes wide open, shoot your shot. That’s my, I would absolutely tell people to to try that.

John Byrne: Yeah, I totally agree. And, generally this is my rule of thumb and Maria and Caroline, you may or may not agree with this, at the top MBA programs, they’re so selective that the people who apply to them generally are very self-selecting group.

So I always say that roughly 80% of the school’s applicant pool. Is qualified to actually get accepted, get in, do [00:19:00] well, and land a good job. And yet we know that at Stanford, the acceptance rate is 6%, that Harvard is 12 Wharton and Columbia is, a little under 20 or so. So there are a lot of really good candidates who aren’t getting in.

Which leads me to this, if you’re an international student who thinks okay, so these US schools just might dip a little more into the domestic pool to make up for the offset of international candidates. As it turns out, there is a little notice. Clause in the big beautiful tax bill that was passed here under Trump that places severe limits on federal loans for graduate students.

Now, the current grad plus loan program allows students to borrow up to the cost of their graduate programs. That comes to an end in July of next year. After that, grad students borrowing will literally be capped at [00:20:00] 20,500 bucks a year with a lifetime graduate school loan limit of a hundred thousand. That’s a big deal because, at the top MBA programs it’s not on typical.

For a student to borrow over a hundred thousand dollars easily. And so these caps are also going to affect domestic enrollment. So again, that, that contributes to your ability as an international candidate to get in both. The likely decline in competition not only from internationals but also from domestic students here, interestingly enough, that Bill, which passed has different limits for a professional graduate degree, but the bill basically says that only med school and law school qualify as professional degrees and not business school.

That’s another wacky thing that’s happened that will affect. Domestic enrollment as well. So I, I side with Maria and [00:21:00] Caroline to me the advice is, look long term. Don’t be affected overly affected by the change in policies in the US or the climate here. Understand that if you apply now and you matriculate next year and you graduate in two years after that you’re gonna be facing probably a very different environment.

Also understand the odds are in your in your favor, in getting into a highly selective, really good program in this coming year. And know that, while people too often calculate the value of an MBA based on short term variables, like what’s my starting salary gonna be? What is my sign-on bonus?

The truth is the MBA has enduring value over your lifetime. So it rewards you over your entire career and not just for the first or second years. And you can’t go wrong by graduating into a network of helpful and supportive people from a great school and [00:22:00] receiving a great education. So I think bottom line, we’re telling you apply.

Don’t get convinced by your colleagues or anyone else that this is a bad time to come to the us. Opportunity. Some of the best opportunity come comes when people perceive there to be significant challenges. And I think this is really true with business school. We hope we convinced you to come and try and hedge your batts too, as Caroline noted.

I think that’s really super important to have a plan B when you apply and toss a bunch of apps to the European schools which have excellent superb world class MBA programs and real international cohorts. 90% of the students not from the countries where the schools reside. Toss a bunch of them in your mix for your target schools to give you these different options at the end of the day.

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

Maria

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