Indian Students Growing At U.S. Business Schools
Maria |
November 7, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts explore trends in international student enrollment at US business schools, focusing on the increasing presence of Indian students and the decline of Chinese students. They highlight the potential influence of upcoming US elections on international student applications and the reliance of US schools on the Indian applicant pool for maintaining class sizes. The hosts delve into broader implications of these trends, such as the challenges Indian candidates face due to their growing numbers and the importance of education in Indian culture. They also point out the successful integration of Indian immigrants in the US workforce, especially those with a technical background, who enhance their skills with an MBA.

This episode not only focuses on the family and community support that Indian students often receive to pursue education abroad but also touches on the need for diversity in business school cohorts and how schools might adapt to the changing demographics of their applicants to maintain a balanced and diverse classroom environment.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.290] – John

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants, and I have my co hosts, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, in their homes. We are going to talk about a story we just ran on the US schools with the most Indian and Chinese students. If you’ve been listening to the podcast in the past, and we hope you have, we’ve talked a lot about the decline in domestic applicants to us schools. This is something that has been occurring over a number of years. Some of the decline has been offset by international students, and among the most popular international students are those from India. The latest data shows that Indian students at the top business schools are really at record levels. As a percentage, all the international students, those from India, accounted for roughly 33.7% in 2023. The year before, it was 28.5%. Chinese, not surprisingly, are down in part because of restrictions for travel and just the different changes in government attitudes in China. Among the international applicants, or, sorry, enrollment in the US business schools, it was down to 13.9 from 17.4 a year earlier. Caroline, what do you make of all this?

[00:01:38.220] – Caroline

Yeah, well, I think it looks like the Indian students have been benefiting from the decline in applications from China. So in the past, as you said, there were much higher volumes from China, and that has unfortunately declined as relations have soured between the countries and things have got much more difficult. And of know, there has been great, fantastic growth in India and a huge, well educated cohort of young professionals who are looking to expand their horizons and get into a good business school and get a great business education. And the US has always benefited from the draw that the traction it holds for international students. And so you see that coming through in those numbers. I wonder also possibly, and as you mentioned in the article, that there had been a decline in international applications during the Trump presidency, and of know that has turned around in the past two years with a more welcoming attitude to international students and employees and so on, coming into the country under the Biden administration. And I do wonder if possibly some students are looking to get in now before the election next year, as of course, twelve months time, we have another election, and it’s looking a bit dicey, in my opinion. I’m not quite sure which way things. Are going to go.

[00:03:10.160] – Caroline

I’m not terribly confident, unfortunately. So we will see the climate for international candidates could change again in twelve months time, potentially, right? We could be under a very different administration. And so I wonder if also that is at the back of the mind of some candidates that are thinking good to apply now rather than wait and see what happens in a year or so. But it also shows that American schools, they have become quite dependent on that Indian applicant pool to fill quite a few seats in their classrooms. Right. So that is a really important income stream for the schools. And they have a minority of international applicants and minority of international students on the programs. But quite a chunk, a big chunk of that cohort is coming from India. And I would imagine that the schools might like to have more diversity in that international cohort represented in the classroom. And the fact they don’t suggest that perhaps some of those schools are struggling to attract applicants in sufficient numbers from certain markets. I would imagine that they would like to have more diversity and perhaps more representation from other regions as well. But they are quite heavily reliant, it seems, on India.

[00:04:33.930] – John

Yeah, definitely, Maria. I mean, some of the numbers are pretty surprising. Like of the international cohorts at the University of Washington and Arizona state, this is for all programs, not only the MBA. So this would include other graduate business programs, including some of the specialty master’s programs. Two of three international students at Washington and Arizona are.

[00:05:00.670] – Maria

It’s, it’s, it’s amazing. I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, India’s population is I think officially now the largest in the world. I think they surpassed China a little earlier this year. And out of the major economies, I think they are one of the fastest growing. So I think that maybe also in addition to the downturn in domestic applicants, I wonder if a lot of the business schools are looking at some of these growth projections for some of these countries, especially India, and saying, wow, if we can educate that next generation of business leaders, a rising tide will lift all boats and hopefully donations 10 – 20 years from now. So I wonder if that’s part of it. And I think if you look even today across the Fortune 500 and especially in the tech firms, we’re seeing a lot of it seems to be a pretty good winning combination so far of that Indian undergraduate engineering education combined with the flexibility and the lateral thinking and the strategic thinking that a US MBA provides. I think that there’s like a good combination in there, of you know, I think a lot of immigrants from India are coming with technical backgrounds, coming to the US and finding success in the business world.

[00:06:10.950] – Maria

So I think it’s a positive upward cycle where the Indian immigrants are having a lot of success and therefore which business school doesn’t want to be part of a success story with its alumni. And so I also think that that might be a part of it as well.

[00:06:27.580] – John

So does this mean that it’s going to be harder for an Indian candidate to get in? You think that these schools are kind of reaching a ceiling of sorts, Maria, or what?

[00:06:40.340] – Maria

I mean, it’s interesting, right? Because we know the percentage of students that are enrolled, but we don’t know the percentage of applicants. And so I almost wonder if disproportionately, I’m not sure, is it harder or easier to get in? I do think that at some point, every school does need to maintain a certain level of diversity, as Caroline pointed out earlier, because at a certain point, if you’re just going to have a lot of students from any one country, then you’re going to lose out on a lot of really enriching conversations across the student body. So I would think that there would have to be at some point perhaps a limit or a cap of some sort. But I also think that the schools need to be flexible on a year to year basis in accepting the strongest class they can.

[00:07:27.180] – John

The other thing, of course, I think that this reflects is the high value that many Indians place on higher education, which know one of the great attributes of Indians and also one of the reasons why so many academics in business school were born in India. And we have a good number of deans from India as well. I sometimes wish that more Americans would value higher education the same way that Indians do, because clearly this is a major priority. And I do know that families get together, including grandparents in some cases, to help fund the students to come to the United States and get an education. Isn’t that right, Caroline?

[00:08:14.990] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. It’s often the extended family. It can be aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors. It could often be an incredibly generous effort from the extended family that supports these students to get there. You’re absolutely right that it’s a huge effort. Right. When you look at salaries have increased for young professionals coming from India over the past few years. But still, when you look at what they’re earning, typically before they do an MBA, compared to their American peers, it’s a fraction, right? Typically on average, for candidates. So it takes a tremendous saving effort to be able to put themselves through usually a two year program that they’re attending in the US. So it is a huge investment. And I think that something else that we see with, as Maria mentioned, that often Indian candidates are then very successful in the workplace. And that combination of having that engineering background as well as the graduate school business education seems to be a fantastic combination. And something I think that they also bring and I can attest to this from having lived in India for a few years, is that to do well in India and to get through everyday life, you have to have creativity, flexibility, adaptability.

[00:09:41.810] – Caroline

It’s often a just more challenging environment. Right. And so if you have risen to the top in that environment, you have developed a broader range of skills, probably, than someone who has risen to the top in the US, because it’s much more complicated. Everyday life is much more complicated. Navigating all sorts of aspects of life, from your personal life to your professional life, it’s often more challenging. And so I think that Indians who’ve come up through that have developed incredible resourcefulness, which perhaps some of their compatriots elsewhere or some of their peers from other countries have not developed to the same extent. And those skills serve them incredibly well in the workplace.

[00:10:29.390] – John

True. Yeah. I think the other implication of this, given all of our view that schools would desire as diverse class as possible, what these stats tell me is that if you are an applicant from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the odds are tilting in your favor, because I think schools would want more of those candidates in the classroom seats. Maria, wouldn’t you think that would be.

[00:11:02.070] – Maria

The numbers that we only, the only numbers that we are privy to are the enrollment numbers, and they’re usually provided at a broader regional level. So Europe versus individual countries, but we don’t know what those application numbers are. So it’s impossible to really come up with a country specific, or even a region specific admissions rate or admissions percentage. But I would assume know especially, I do think, from Europe, as I think we’ve mentioned before, with Caroline being the expert there, there are so many masters in management programs in Europe that the MBA itself, because there are so many alternatives to the MBA degree. I also think that there are fewer people seeking the MBA in the US from Europe. So I would think that there would be a bit more. You do tend to stand out, I would think, more from that country versus from India.

[00:11:51.980] – John

Yeah, totally. I imagine that this trend will likely continue as well, because while applications, by all accounts at this point, are going up this year, I think that the international domestic mix is still roughly the same. And I wonder if in your admissions advice business, you’re seeing any kind of difference in the mix of applicants from different areas of the world, Caroline.

[00:12:23.510] – Caroline

So I pulled up some statistics that they shared at the INSEAD reunion that I went to recently, and the percentage of Indian students at INSEAD has also increased. So it’s not just the US schools. So, for example, looking at the classes that will graduate this year, so the July and December classes of 2023, the school has a whopping 133 Indian students out of. So they didn’t give the total, but it’s typically around 1000. Right. It’s somewhere between 951,000. So around it’s somewhere between sort of 13, 14% from India, which is higher than it has been in the past. And if you’re interested, the nationalities with the highest representation at INSEAD, it’s India, Italy, France, China, Singapore, UK, US and Lebanon. But India is way above any other nationality in terms of number of students at the school. So I think that there’s just been an increase in the growth of candidates coming out of India and I think also an increase in the diversity of the applicant pool. In the past, I remember that the vast majority of the Indian applicants were typically male engineers. Right. But over time there have been more women applying, more people applying from a lot of different backgrounds.

[00:13:50.480] – Caroline

So the professional diversity represented within that pool has also increased, which has made it easier for the schools to accept more of those candidates because they’re looking for not just the diversity of the international population, but also within that group, diversity of profiles and backgrounds and professional experience.

[00:14:09.630] – John

Yeah, makes sense.

[00:14:10.980] – Maria

I also wonder if in the past couple of years, a number of MBA programs have been able to get STEM certification, which allows people to stay. They used to be able to stay for one year post the MBA, and now they can stay for three years. And I think a lot of applicants from India, it makes that investment decision a lot easier, because now if I know that I’m guaranteed to get at least three years of a salary, let’s say consulting banking or at a large tech company, I have several clients who took out the full amount of the loans to come to the United States. And now three, five years after graduation are well on their way to paying it back, if not fully paying it back. So I also think that that change in that policy has really know, make it an easier decision for candidates from India and from all over the world to come to the US.

[00:14:58.430] – John

That’s a good point, because you essentially get three shots at an H-1B visa if you have three years in which you’re allowed to work in the United States because you have a STEM designated degree. And I remember the first school to really do this is Rochester Simon and everyone else sort of followed in line. And pretty much it’s hard to find a US MBA program today that’s not STEM designated. Related to all this is a report from Forte foundation on women. And obviously, this is an area where schools over the last ten years in particular, have made major efforts to get closer to gender parity. And the Forte Foundation report shows that of their 58 member business schools, a record 42% have enrolled women in full time MBA programs. That’s up from 41% a year earlier in 2022. And five years ago the number was 38%. Ten years ago, it was only 34 to now it’s 42% of the students enrolled in these full time MBA programs after 58 member schools are women. That’s good news. The other interesting thing in the report is that forte found that 45% of women’s CEOs in the S and P 500 now hold an MBA or an equivalent advanced degree in business.

[00:16:25.470] – John

Yes, it’s true only 8% of the s and p 500 CEOs are women. But it’s interesting how important an advanced degree in business has become for the advancement of women into the key leadership role in a company. Caroline, I guess that probably isn’t surprising because in many know women, even though they have formed a minority of MBA students in the past, if you’re going to go for an MBA, you may as well go for really aiming for that top job in a company, right?

[00:17:00.760] – Caroline

Yeah. So women who are going back to graduate school, typically they are looking to go into leadership roles post MBA. And so I’m not surprised to see a really good representation of women in that group. It would be interesting to know how that compares to the percentage of men with MBAs in that group as well, and to see if women are more likely. Women in those positions are more likely to hold MBAs.

[00:17:28.430] – John

I think they are based on other studies that I’ve seen. It’s not mentioned in our article here, but I think among men, it’s more like 28% to 30% as opposed to 45.

[00:17:43.490] – Caroline

Yeah. And then it’s interesting to speculate why that would be. I think that the MBA does give you a lot more confidence in your abilities and confidence that you can tackle any challenge. And I think perhaps men are more likely to assume that they can do that anyway without an MBA.

[00:18:03.950] – John

Right.

[00:18:04.520] – Caroline

Than women who, of course, I’m sort of generalizing terribly. But I do think that women can sometimes be more modest about their talents than men, and therefore are perhaps more likely to believe in themselves once they hold an MBA and have that education behind them and the confidence that they actually have developed those skills, whereas men maybe are more likely to assume that they can do it and perhaps they can’t, but they have a higher self opinion sometimes.

[00:18:39.990] – John

Now, Maria, I think you would agree with that, wouldn’t you?

[00:18:45.110] – Maria

Oh, you just like to set the little minefield like, Maria, Maria, don’t you think that most men are just completely full of. I do. I do agree that perhaps in general, when I work with female candidates, sometimes I’ve just been doing some mock interviews in the past week or two for it’s mock interview season. And sometimes after, at the end I’ll say, okay, so how do you think that went? And the women are the ones that are most likely to be like, oh man, I think I did really badly. I think, oh man, I did not do well. And I’m like, I think you did fine. And it does happen to be that more often the male candidates will be like, yeah, I think I crushed it. And I’m like, well, everyone has room for improvement. So I will say that I do see that. And so there does tend to be, along gender lines, more of a I didn’t do very well versus I crushed it for people who did exactly the same. I also think in addition to the MBA, helping a woman feel more self confident, I also think that there’s also the external credibility factor where it may be that shareholders or the board of a public company might.

[00:19:54.020] – Maria

Maybe the woman has plenty of self confidence. I had plenty of self confidence prior to the MBA. But I do think that maybe externally speaking, if you are the board of a public company and you’re trying to vote on who your next CEO should be or figure out who that person should be, if that woman happens to have an MBA, it certainly doesn’t hurt. And so I would wonder if maybe the women are more likely to have an MBA for both of these reasons, both internal and external.

[00:20:26.030] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s right.

[00:20:27.880] – John

Makes sense to me. The study also found, and this is kind of interesting, that five of Forte’s member B schools, four in the US, one in the UK, have reached gender parity, with three more schools close behind by a percentage point. Or know, five years ago there was only one. So this is definitely moving in the right direction, which means, I think, that schools are incredibly welcoming and they’re really competing with each other to hit gender parity. Wharton’s at 50%, Kellogg at 48, University of Washington 47, Stanford 46, along with MIT, also at 46, Harvard is 45, Duke 45, Columbia 44, Dartmouth 44, and goes on from there. Interestingly enough, INSEAD among the international schools and is not alone, but IE  in Spain, at HEC, Paris in France, and IESC in Barcelona, along with INSEAD, all below 40%. INSEAD is at 38. IESC is at 35, at HEC Paris, 32 and IE 30%. Why are some of the European schools lagging behind? Caroline?

[00:21:46.010] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s a difficult challenge for the schools that you mentioned because the percentage of women in the applicant pool by country is not consistent. So, for example, INSEAD has a really great percentage of women in their applicant pool from the US, from China, from Singapore, from eastern Europe, but a much lower percentage of women in the applicant pool from some other countries, including Western Europe, which I find quite surprising. But that is the case. And from India, for example. And so because of that international diversity of the applicant pool and the fact that some countries don’t have very good representation of women in the applicant pool, it is harder for a school like INSEAD to push that percentage up. And for example, compared to the business schools at Oxford and Cambridge, where they have a higher percentage of women, I think that’s largely because they have a bigger cohort from the US. Americans really like to go and study in the UK if they’re going internationally and are very drawn to the brands of Oxford and Cambridge. And so those schools both attract very strong applicant pools from the US, and they have a larger chunk of Americans in the classroom than, for example, INSEAD does in the American applicant pool.

[00:23:05.220] – Caroline

There’s typically a very good chunk of women applicants. And so that is the challenge for a school like INSEAD. It’s related to the geographical diversity question.

[00:23:15.210] – John

Yep, absolutely. Well, there you have it. Hope you enjoyed our podcast. Join us next week. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Indian Students Growing At U.S. Business Schools
Maria |
November 7, 2023

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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