How To Finish Up Your Round 2 App during The Holidays
Maria |
November 21, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts discuss strategies for MBA applicants during the holiday season, emphasizing the potential impact of Trump’s re-election on international and domestic applicant numbers. They highlight the importance of advanced preparation before the holidays to ensure applications are cohesive and recommenders are aligned.

The discussion also covers how applicants can effectively manage their application process during the festive season, making the most of the time for reflection and final adjustments to strengthen their submissions.

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 with my co-host, the admission experts of the world, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila. The holidays are coming up. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Then, of course, before you know, Christmas. Christmas will be here, and then you’ll have that week between Christmas and New Year’s. And both these holidays are time when you can take a little breather and you can get to work on those round two applications. So what we want to do is give you a little advice going into round two. If you’ve been listening to our podcast, we think there are going to be fewer international applicants in the pool for round two, in part because of the election of Trump. This may actually pose an advantage to domestic applicants. It could even pose, incidentally, an advantage to international applicants who wave away whatever fears and concerns they may have about a Trump administration being unfriendly to immigrants. It’s always important to remember what happened last time, which there was a decline, but really, the bullseye for Trump is going to be illegal immigrants.

[00:01:23.260] – John

What should we be looking out for in round two? What should people be doing during these holidays holiday breaks to polish up and finish their application so they’re in good order to hit that submit button when the deadlines come one after another in January. Caroline?

[00:01:40.400] – Caroline

Well, as you said, John, people have some breaks coming up. I would just caution against leaving things too late and using the winter holidays and the end of the year to do some serious work on your application because that doesn’t give you a lot of time to go through what should be an iterative It’s a process of reflection and drafting and revisiting, and it’s not something that you can cook up overnight. That’s a great time for putting the finishing touches to your application, but I would suggest that you should be well-advanced with your preparations by the time the holidays come around. And also, of course, keep in mind that you should be mobilizing your recommenders, and they may be taking a break over those holidays and might not be available. And it’s often the case that candidates are in a panic at the beginning of January because they have been emailing their recommenders and they’ve just got out-of-office messages. And of course, you want to have some coherence between how you’re presenting yourself in your application and what the recommenders are saying. So you can get them set up now, but if you haven’t done the serious reflection and figuring out your strategy of how you’re going to position your candidacy yourself before you brief your recommenders, then there could be a mismatch between how you yourself in your essays in the various parts of your application and what the recommenders say about you.

[00:03:06.310] – Caroline

I think it’s important to have made some progress well ahead of those breaks.

[00:03:13.250] – John

Right. Now, what I’m hearing here is that, look, the day after Thanksgiving, when I’m digesting my turkey, my sweet potato, my carrots, maybe it shouldn’t be the day that I first try to attack the essays for the schools that I’m going to apply to. I should be thinking about well in advance. Now, sure, the day after Thanksgiving, when I close the door and my family can’t bother me, it is a good time to at least look at a draft and be prepared on another level, right?

[00:03:43.980] – Caroline

Absolutely. And you can use that downtime to review and reflect. But I would suggest that, ahead of that time, you should have already established the key messages that you want to get across and how all the different elements of the application, including your essays, your resume, the application form, some schools have video questions, and then, of course, the recommendations, how those different elements are going to come together to build a clear picture, like pieces of a puzzle where there’s some coherence, but also not too much overlap. You don’t want to be repeating information in different parts of the application. Having a clear framework well ahead of time is the best way to tackle things. And then, of course, you can use those breaks that you have over Thanksgiving or over the winter holidays to revisit and reflect and refine.

[00:04:38.570] – John

Maria, your thoughts?

[00:04:40.270] – Maria

Yeah, I agree with all of this, especially the part of the recommenders. I think that is the one that, especially just given those early January deadlines, that’s the biggest source of panic always with rounds two, because so many recommenders often are on holiday during that time. You can force yourself to pull in on nighter, but you can’t call your boss and say, Hey, this is due tomorrow, and I haven’t heard from you. You can’t really command them to do your bidding as much as we wish we could. The other piece, in addition to also setting up the essays, is also those application forms. The application forms themselves can often take a couple of hours, actually, if you’re going to be thoughtful about it. It’s not simply your name and your address. If you have not yet actually opened up the application form, this could be a good one to do on that day after Thanksgiving. If you’re still digesting that turkey, you’ve got the tryptophan, I think, is the one that makes you nice and sleepy and cozy. You don’t feel like doing a lot of mental heavy lifting, which I would urge you to do that mental heavy lifting.

[00:05:40.030] – Maria

But if it’s just not in you and you’re doing those Black Friday online sales, a relatively simple task to do to start checking off your to-do list is to go through those application forms and really start digging into if they ask you, for example, Okay, here are, List your top three extracurricular activities. Here’s a box where you can describe your impact, or for every the job that you’ve had, why did you take that job? Or what’s your greatest accomplishment? Why did you leave that job? All of those different forms. Every school will ask different questions. They will have different character counts for each of the questions, and you are not going to want to simply copy and paste what’s in your resume. So if a school asks you, for example, okay, list your responsibilities for each job in this text box, you don’t just want to copy and paste the resume. Technically, that’s correct, but it makes you to look a little bit on the lazier side, right? So that, I think, is something that you could do, especially Specifically that day after Thanksgiving, that is in fact useful but does not require as much mental heavy lifting.

[00:06:36.450] – Maria

But I agree with Caroline on everything else. You are going to want to start having those draughts. If you haven’t already, at a minimum, have an idea of what you’re going to say or which stories you’re going to focus on. That way you coordinate with the recommender so that there isn’t too much repetition. Then also if you start during the Thanksgiving break, then that will give you a little bit of fresh time to step away for a few days and come back with fresh eyes later, as opposed to if you save the entire writing process just for that last week of December, it’s not going to be as optimal because you will miss things in your own writing.

[00:07:12.630] – John

So you mentioned recommenders, and since it’s The upcoming holidays are a time when you can send someone a gift, should I be sending someone a bottle of wine over Thanksgiving to share with their family? And in the note, thanking them for all their support, which is a subtle reminder to, get me that damn recommendation, put it in the mail.

[00:07:35.800] – Maria

If you think that’ll help, look, I think the recommendations have a lot of benefits, but one of the subtle benefits is, can you manage people above value over whom you have no actual authority. And so if you know that that former boss of yours, who’s your second recommender, you know that they like a certain brand of whiskey, and you also know that they tend to drag their feet. If you’re managing upwards, if that’s what it takes, then absolutely. Now, at the end of the process, you should absolutely thank your recommender and give them a nice gift. Whether or not you strategically have that gift arrived a little bit earlier in order to encourage them along, I think that’s really smart, right? That shows that you do, in fact, understand how to manage these folks over whom you have no authority. And so, yeah, I mean, why not? If that’s what it’s going to take.

[00:08:25.630] – John

Caroline, how much should I spend for a bottle of wine for a recommender?

[00:08:28.800] – Caroline

Yeah, Well, I guess it depends on what they like, as you say. Perhaps you can try and get some insider track on their taste and what would go down well. But I think it’s also a very good point that you want to stay in touch with them and be proactive in communicating with them regularly. Too often candidates have a conversation with their recommenders two or three months ahead of the deadline, and that’s great. And then assume that they are off to the races and then check in with them a week before the deadline, and there’s radio silence, and they haven’t done what they were going to do. And of course, recommenders, by their very nature, they’re extremely busy people. They have multiple demands. This is not part of their job description to have to write these recommendations, and they’re doing it in their spare time, probably late at night or at the weekend or something. So they’re doing you a huge favor, and it’s not going to be their number one priority, right? Of their day-to-day So you want to be regularly in touch with them and don’t pester them, but at the same time, just keep in touch so that you have a sense of where they are in the process and whether there’s anything that you can do to support them with it.

[00:09:46.100] – Caroline

You should perhaps have a discussion with them or send them some bullet points about what are the key messages that you think that they could convey in their recommendation, what are the key strengths that that you hope that they could showcase and perhaps give them some examples of how they have demonstrated that. Because when I’ve written recommendations for people, it can be difficult to do that, especially if it’s not someone who is your current, not and not a member of your current team. So if you’ve worked with them in the past and you’ve worked with many people, it can be difficult to remember, okay, what exactly was this individual’s contribution to that project that we wrapped up two years ago? Because with two recommenders, you’ll probably have, ideally, you’ve got your current boss and you’ve probably got a former boss in there. So especially with a former boss, it can be hard for them to remember exactly what you did, how you did it, and how you stood out. And what I’ve had to do in the past when it was writing recommendations is go back and dig through the performance reviews that I had done.

[00:10:50.860] – Caroline

And so often the detail is captured there. But you can save people a lot of time, and they will thank you for that if you can do some of that homework for them.

[00:11:00.430] – John

Now, both of you have been through round one already, and I wonder, based on what your round one applicants have found, meaning the response that they got from the schools that they applied to, if there’s any learning or going into round two. Maria, let’s start with you.

[00:11:17.570] – Maria

Let me think about that. I think, let me see the learnings. I know that a bunch of schools had new essay questions that led to a lot of uncertainty going into round one. Like Harvard. Like Harvard in particular, right? Going from the one open-ended essay into three far more constrained essays. And so I think a lot of us who were working with candidates in that round one, we were giving advice based on our our educated guess of what would make sense and what would be a strong way to approach those three essays. And so I think based on what I saw, I think we’re seeing that, yes, the essays are new, but at their core, what the school is looking for is not different. So The essay questions, and this, I think, applies to every school, the essay questions might change from year to year, but the core DNA of the core culture of the school and what they seek in their successful applicants, that does not change. I think that a lot of the round one results are verifying that. So that was nice.

[00:12:20.690] – John

Even though those essays are incredibly short, two are 250 word limits and one is 300 word limit, which is very restraining, I think, particularly when you look back not all that long ago when Harvard had one essay and there was no word limit at all on it for quite a few years. Caroline, based on your observations of round one outcomes, any thoughts for our round two applicants?

[00:12:44.210] – Caroline

Well, it’s early days. One thing that I always talk to round two applicants about is the need to really go the extra mile to show schools that you are really motivated to go there, because especially Actually beyond the M7 schools, and even some of the M7 schools, they’ll get a surge of applications in round two from people who have been dinged in round one, right? And they expect that. They know that’s going to happen, and many of them will be great candidates. But what they tend to see is that in round one, you typically have candidates who are very clear about wanting to attend that school, who’ve really done their homework, who articulate a good case for why that school is a really good fit for them. And in round two, you do see more candidates who have clearly gone down the list and they are not as motivated for that particular school where they’re submitting an application. Maybe they haven’t done as much homework, they haven’t had as many conversations with members of the school community, and they are a little bit more sketchy in the details of why this school is a great fit for them and why they really want to attend.

[00:13:59.280] – Caroline

So So you need to differentiate yourself from that pool of applicants. So you need to go the extra mile, I think, in round two to really show that you have kicked the tires, you have done your homework. It’s not something that you have just skimmed the website a few days before the application deadline and wrote in the name of a few electives and professors to show some vague knowledge of the school, but show that you’ve built your knowledge over time. Perhaps you’ve attended some events, perhaps you’ve reached out to student leaders who are running some of the clubs that you’re interested in, and you’ve had some informative interactions, and you can reference those in your applications. So I think showing you that you are genuinely motivated and showing some authenticity there is even more important in many cases in round two than it is in round one.

[00:14:54.940] – John

Yeah. Having had the opportunity to sit in Admission Committee meetings, both in Europe and the US and in Canada, for that matter, those interactions are important and they’re noted on your application. When you attend a webinar, when you go to a campus and do a day attending a class and having lunch with a student or having a conversation with an admissions official, it’s remembered and it’s remarked upon when an admissions committee member may be an advocate for you. That’s how they’re trying to sell you to the rest of the committee members. Now, I’m sure you get this just as I get this. It’s inevitable. I’d say almost every week, every other week, I’m getting someone who reaches out to me either by telephone or by email or through even a member of my own family. They tell me, I went to Yale undergrad. I was a military vet. I now work for the US Space Force, and I want to apply to Harvard. What are my chances? How in the world can you even go there and tell them what the chances are when Harvard accepts only 12, 13% of their applicants? We know that the vast majority of people who apply are very qualified to get in.

[00:16:16.950] – John

The difference is between and among most of them is so slight that it’s almost impossible to predict who’s going to get in, who’s not. I wonder from both of you, what’s your batting average is? What can you work with applicants, you see applicants on a regular basis. You probably have a gut feel over whether or not they can get in or they can’t. How good are the two of you are predicting a person citizens basically invite to a highly selected business school?

[00:16:50.290] – Caroline

Well, I could jump in first. I think it’s sometimes easier to predict whether they’ll get to interview stage than what will happen after the interview.

[00:16:58.560] – John

True.

[00:16:59.470] – Caroline

Because Because you can dig into their profile, and you can understand their undergraduate track record, their test scores, their professional track record, their extracurriculars, so you can see how they stack up. And we have experience of working with candidates over many years and seeing having that context of the pool. So it can be… Of course, there are always surprises of people who get interviews or people who don’t get interviews where you think it might have gone the other way. And of course, it depends who else is applying at the same time. And it can be, of course, much harder with candidates who have a profile that is quite common in the applicant pool. So, John, we were just talking with Carla. She was saying At one point, she had 15 McKinsey candidates on her desk, and only two could get through.

[00:17:52.110] – John

So how do you whittle that down? Yes, this is Carla Cohen, who had been an associate director at Harvard Business School Admissions and now works for Fortuna as a director Sure.

[00:18:00.470] – Caroline

Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure all of those McKinsey candidates were fantastic. They would have had… The fact that they went to McKinsey means that they had strong undergraduate, that they were high performers, that they were over They’re achievers by their very nature. So with those more common profiles, it can be a little bit harder to predict.

[00:18:22.090] – John

Yeah, it’s hard to mission sitting at Harvard Business School, you’re an admissions official. Someone dumps 15 applications on your desk, tells that they’re all from McKinsey consultants and that you can only pick two. So with those highly selective scores, there is, of course, a strong element of luck because it depends who else is applying.

[00:18:44.860] – Caroline

Then, of course, there is a subjectivity in the process. And so you can be the best candidate in the world, but you don’t control everything about how your application is going to be evaluated, who is reading it, how they’re feeling on that particular day, how many people you’re being compared with. So for the best candidates, there’s always an element of luck as well.

[00:19:09.670] – John

Which is why you need to apply to more than one or two schools to increase the chance that you’ll get in because after all, there is some randomness to this. If an admissions official can only take two McKinsey people instead of 15, because in their cohort, they already have 10 more, that’s not your problem. That’s their problem. But ultimately, it’s not going to lead to the outcome you want. It’s a good idea to be applying at least four to six schools in any given time. Now, Maria, what’s your batting average on predictability?

[00:19:45.160] – Maria

I agree that I think predicting who will get the interview is much easier than the actual decision because, as Caroline was alluding to, we have no idea who else is in the applicant pool and what the dynamics are within your competitive bucket. At the end of the day, they don’t have quotas or anything, but they don’t want to just let only McKinsey consultants and Goldman Sachs bankers in. They do want people from different backgrounds because that’s how you learn from your classmates who have done all kinds of amazing things in all kinds of industries prior to business school. Within your bucket, how many other people are there going to be who are product managers in fintech companies? If there’s a thousand of them, in other words, I can look at someone’s profile and say, Yes, I think you’ve got a strong chance. It’s a little dicey or it could go either way or like, No, I don’t think it’s going to work out for you. But then after that, it comes down to, Well, maybe you were the only fintech product manager that they saw, and they’re like, We need to… Or maybe there were 300 that applied this year.

[00:20:45.560] – Maria

Because of those dynamics, it does get a little bit more challenging. But I think what admissions consultants do, and you can actually do this yourself a bit as a candidate, is I call it finding a resume twin. That is where you try to find someone who’s their pre-MBA background looked a lot like yours. So to stay with the McKinsey example, let’s say you work at the New York office of McKinsey, which I’m sure has probably dozens of candidates to the top business schools each year. And you notice, like, huh, last year, only two of the other people in my group got in, and 10 of them applied, but only two got in. So what is it that those other two did? Did they have better ratings on When they get assessed by their higher-ups? Did they get better ratings on the project? Is the partner specifically asking to work with them on a certain project? What do I think the recommender is going to say? If the recommender says, This is the best analyst that we’ve had in 10 years, then you’ve got a better shot, versus if you are doing a perfectly fine job, but you really haven’t distinguished yourself in any way.

[00:21:55.590] – Maria

That is pattern. If you work in a company that does tend to send a lot of people to business school, then look around at the people who got in the year before or in the years prior to you and stack yourself up against them. If you don’t work for a company where you’re like, Well, nobody else in my company has ever gone to business school, then try to find people from similar backgrounds. If you’re, say, an oil and gas engineer doing some stuff in the Permian Basin and you’re like, I’m working at a small oil, natural gas company, whatever it might be, okay, fine. Maybe no one from your company has gone to business school. But if you When you look at, let’s say, the energy club roster at a business school that you’re targeting, and you can see the lists of the officers that you can start to look them up on LinkedIn and say, You know what? Actually, I’m only two years out of college right now, and I’m not really leading any teams. And when I look at the people who did get in prior to business school, they had six years of experience.

[00:22:49.450] – Maria

And they were lead. So that’s how as mission consultants, we, because as Caroline said, because we work with so many people over so many years, we start to develop to develop an intuition for that pattern matching, but you don’t have to have all of that experience necessarily. You can start doing some of that on your own to determine your own candidacy’s strengths. And at the end of the day, I’d say it comes down to how much impact you’ve had. If you can point to having impacted wherever, whether you’re at a large multinational or a tiny startup, if you can show that you’re the person who jumps into a situation and makes good things happen, then you’re already going to be head and shoulders above people, even if maybe your GMAT score might be a smidge lower or what have you.

[00:23:34.950] – John

Right. Now we’re in mid-November. Is it too late to hire an admissions consultant to help me meet my round 2 deadline?

[00:23:43.430] – Caroline

No, it’s not. So typically at this time of year, we work with candidates on an hourly basis rather than doing the what we call comprehensive school package, which is an all-inclusive package, which takes you through several steps of, first of all, developing your application strategy and all the reflection and so on, because of the more limited timeline now, you may not get all the benefits of that multi-stage process. So we certainly do start working with candidates at this time, but it would normally be a more focused service rather than this all-inclusive package that takes them through to build a really strong foundation for their application before they start drafting any materials, because at this point, as we’ve discussed, you really do need to be in the weeds already of drafting. Sometimes people come to us and they’ve developed their application and they’ve done it already and they haven’t worked with anyone, but they want someone to kick their ties on the application and review it and bring a fresh set of eyes. And they’re 90 % there, but they want some help with finalizing and putting the finishing touches to the application. So we do that typically at this time of year in December.

[00:25:01.860] – John

Actually, given the odds of admission at any of these highly selective schools, that’s a tire-kicking exercise. It’d probably be a really smart thing to do, and it wouldn’t cost you all that much, right?

[00:25:13.700] – Caroline

No, that’s right. I mean, normally a few hours of our time, and it could be very effective to help bring a different perspective, bring that perspective that we have, as really said, of understanding the broader pool and how they, as a candidate from their sector, may line up against other candidates from similar backgrounds and whether they’ve done a good job of teasing out those differentiating stories and getting some clear messages across about what is different about their candidacy versus other people with a similar background.

[00:25:46.980] – John

All right. One good thing about modern technology this time, and for the last few years, of course, if you’re doing your application and working on this the day after Thanksgiving, and you’re eating the mashed potatoes that were leftover, you don’t have to worry about splashing them on your application and sending them a soiled piece of paper to the admissions official of your favorite school because everything is being done on computer these days. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

[00:26:19.770] – Caroline

Just don’t spill your lunch on your computer.

[00:26:22.080] – John

Oh, no, that would not be good. That would be awful. Exactly. All right. So for those of you who will be working hard over the holidays, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas, fitting in the final touches on your application in round two. Also in between all the shopping that you’re going to need to do for the gifts under the Christmas tree, we wish you the best of luck and stay with it. Put your best foot forward. Have someone take a look. I love the idea of a tire kicking exercise by an admissions consultant. I think that’s a good way to get some really good advice at this stage of the game. For not a whole lot of money, for a few hours, it could be really, really helpful to you. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Thanks for listening to Business Casual.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
How To Finish Up Your Round 2 App during The Holidays
Maria |
November 21, 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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