Is A Master’s In Management Degree In Your Future?
Maria |
July 8, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts discuss the growing popularity of the Master’s in Management (MIM) degree. The MIM degree is becoming the predominant graduate degree in business in Europe and is attracting humanities graduates who struggle to find employment. 

While MIM programs are well-established in Europe, they are still relatively new in the United States, raising some questions that you might find answers to in this episode. The conversation explores the differences between MIM and MBA degrees, the benefits of MIM programs for students with non-business backgrounds, and the potential complementarity of MIM and MBA degrees.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.770] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Vernon with poets and quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co hosts Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. We’re going to talk about a degree that is gaining in popularity in the US. And is the predominant graduate degree in business in Europe. It’s the master’s in management. What separates a MIM from an MBA? We’ll tell you in a few moments, but generally, if you graduated from an undergraduate institution with one of those wonderful degrees like I did in Political Science or English, I double majored, or maybe you majored in philosophy or geography or any one of the humanities subjects, and you are finding it difficult to locate a job. The MIM is where it basically shows you how to get not only a job, but land one in a company that no longer has the kind of rotational training programs that companies once did. Back into the 1980s, many companies reduced many layers of management and training programs for newly graduated people with geography, English, political Science, and other degrees kind of went away. Companies began disinvesting in those kind of training programs, hoping to get graduates who they could hire and who could contribute in the job from day one.

[00:01:42.660] – John

And this is what has made really, the Master’s in Management so popular. It is a pre experienced degree can be anywhere from one year to even three in some cases, and it really prepares you for a role in business. Companies in Europe. Love MIMs. In fact, many of the MIM programs at the business schools are more selective than their full time residential MBA programs in the US. Probably the highest ranked MBA program with a MIM is Kellogg at Northwestern. The degree is proliferating in the US. And is considered to be a big growth area for US. Business schools. Caroline, what’s the difference really, between a MIM and an MBA?

[00:02:29.390] – Caroline

There are a lot of different flavors of MIMs, so it does depend on which school and which program that you’re looking at. So, for example, the INSEAD Masters in Management, it’s a pre experience program versus the full time MBA, for which students typically have, on average, five to six years of work experience. And so the Masters in Management is actually a little bit longer, so it’s 14 to 16 months, whereas the full time MBA is ten to twelve months. And that reflects the fact that with the full time MBA program, the faculty can really rely on the fact that students coming into the classroom have really rich and deep professional experience that they can draw on and they can relate what they’re learning to their previous experience and give it that context very quickly. Whereas students who are coming in straight from undergraduate, I’m sure that they’ve done internships. A lot of them would have done internships and would already have start to build their resume. But of course, they won’t have the same length of professional experience that the MBAs would have. And so it’s necessary to just take things a little bit more slowly and start from an earlier point in some of those classes.

[00:03:49.170] – Caroline

And so it makes sense to take things to expand the program over a longer period. And I think it’s a wonderful option. It gives students a great, as you said, a great entry point into the marketplace. It gives them a wonderful credential. It’s not just an academic experience. The schools will also work with students on figuring out their career plans and connecting them with employers. And so it’s a great springboard into the marketplace, into the workforce, and into recruitment opportunities. So, a great way to transition from an undergraduate degree, as you said earlier, John, particularly in Europe, a few years back, the European Union restructured the undergraduate degrees to harmonize undergraduate programs because there was a lot of variability in Europe, with some undergraduate programs being very long. In Germany, even sort of five, six years was not at all uncommon and some very short. So in the UK, typically three years. So there was an effort to harmonize the undergraduate degree across Europe, and that led to a lot more students coming out of their undergraduate degrees at an earlier age. And this fed an appetite for pre experienced Master’s degrees. And so this is also responding to that need, particularly in Europe, where students feel that after three years, they don’t feel quite yet done with their education.

[00:05:23.380] – Caroline

And they see these programs as a great way to transition from perhaps a very academic learning environment, as you said. Perhaps they’ve been studying English or history or something quite abstract, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself immediately to a professional career. And therefore, taking a Master’s in management would be a wonderful way to transition and build a great foundation of skills so that they can then make that successful transition into the workforce.

[00:05:55.970] – John

And you learn to speak the language of business. I mean, if you’re an English undergrad and you go into the marketplace, you have no idea what return on equity is, how stock markets work, how the global economy is interdependent. You just have no basic knowledge of how business operates. And business does have a language, and learning that language is important if you’re going to get a job at a company. Maria, what’s your take on MIM?

[00:06:28.210] – Maria

So my take on it is, I think, for Europe, for all the reasons that Caroline explained, I think it makes a lot of sense in some ways. I’ve always sort of viewed the MIM degree as an opportunity for people who, perhaps, as you mentioned earlier, John, get to the end of their undergraduate careers and realize, oh, my gosh, maybe I do want to pursue a career in business, but I didn’t study it. Or I didn’t have the opportunity to study it before, but I don’t want to go back and redo my bachelor’s degree, but I don’t have experience. I’m too young for an MBA. So it’s always seemed to me to be sort of like a stop gap. It’s not quite an MBA, but it’s not quite a full bachelor’s. And so I think it’s a great opportunity for people to make that transition. I know in the States, for example, in the past, because as you mentioned, the MIM in the States is not as popular, but for example, if you were an English major or political science major and you got a job, say, at McKinsey, that’s what the Tuck, the Dartmouth Tuck Business Bridge program used to be.

[00:07:20.520] – Maria

The corporations would send these recent graduates to it was significantly shorter than a full Master’s, but it was sort of like, I think a ten or twelve week type of program on the Tuck campus. And it would be full time and it would be kind of like a crash course and all of the business fundamentals that they would need, for example, to get in front of a client and talk about things like return on equity. And so I think the MIM in the US. It’s interesting that it’s starting to emerge because I’d be curious to learn more from Caroline. Is it more of a standardized experience in Europe? Because it has been around for longer? Because I think one of the trickier things with the US. Landscape is that there doesn’t seem to be a complete standardization. Like, some schools will have the Master’s in Asset Management and some schools will have the Masters in Management Science or Masters in Management data analytics. There doesn’t seem to be sort of a cohesive curriculum, whereas with an MBA, while the electives may vary pretty dramatically from school to school, the core MBA and what is an MBA program is very well known in the US.

[00:08:21.790] – Maria

But I think with the Master’s degrees there’s, like the Master’s in Finance, that’s MIT Sloan, that’s 18 months. But then they have a Master’s in Management Science, I think it’s called. That’s nine months. It’s sort of all over the place. So do you happen to know do either one of you happen to know if in Europe it’s already a little bit more of an established curriculum and everyone sort of universally knows what the MIM is?

[00:08:47.290] – John

Or is it yeah, I think that’s true in Europe, definitely, because it’s so popular and there are so many of them in the US. If you talk to directors of MIM programs I had a recent interview with the head of the MIM program at Georgetown University’s McDonough School, and she admits that there’s an education job here. Both the market, as defined by aspiring students as well as employers need to be educated about the degree and what its value is because it’s still very early on in the US. Market. And I think you’re right, there could be a lot of confusion with a lot of the other specialty master’s degrees that are out there. And this is quite a different and distinct product because it really just gives you the fundamentals of what a business education is. I mean, the basic accounting, finance, marketing strategy, and then some capstone project typically, that allows you to integrate those basic skills in a project of one kind or another. And different schools have different flavors of this. But I see most of this as pretty commoditized. Now At Paris has just done an entire revamp of its Masters in Management program to emphasize ESG issues.

[00:10:10.370] – John

And that’s kind of interesting too, because particularly in Europe, and I will say Europe is ahead of the United States in terms of sustainability and ESG. And a lot of the European schools and their MIMs have this emphasis, but not to the extent that HEC has gone to develop it. In part after conversations with incoming students, alumni and employers who see sustainability and all the other issues related to governance and the role of business and society as key drivers of new business graduates and what motivates them and what they need to be thinking about, what kind of skills they need to bring to the workplace. So I do think that while the knowledge is generally commoditized, there are some changes afoot, particularly in Europe, that are the result of demand from incoming students and from employers. Even in Europe, the programs are growing because it’s only recently that INSEAD and IESE and Barcelona launched MIM programs even though they’re so well established in Europe. So even in Europe, the classes are expanding in enrollment and new and very great schools. I mean, IESE and Barcelona and INSEAD are among the top five world business schools and they’re just only getting into the MIM game.

[00:11:43.620] – John

So there’s no doubt that this degree seems to be in demand and has great value. I mean, Caroline, why do you think INSEAD waited so long, in fact, to enter that market?

[00:11:56.340] – Caroline

Well, I think they were waiting to see how things panned out in the market. I think there was also some hesitancy to launch a program for pre experienced students because the school, the MBA is the average age is 28 29. So it’s quite different to be addressing an audience that is straight out of undergrad. It’s a very different group. So I think that there was some hesitancy about bringing in that group and concerned that it would be a very different type of student. But actually the experience has been extremely positive. It’s been very successful. The MIM students at Ins yet are a wonderful group of actually surprisingly mature young students. And I think the school is thrilled with how it’s gone. But it was definitely a different program. And also initially, when MIMs began to emerge, the price point was quite low compared to full time MBA programs. And so I think the school was also figuring out how to potentially launch a program that really fit with INSEAD, where it’s really a premium product and they weren’t going to offer a heavily discounted program just for the sake of launching that particular program and competing in that market.

[00:13:36.310] – John

Yeah, that all makes sense. I should let everyone know. And this is kind of interesting that Caroline is about to embark on a journey that every parent ends up doing. She is bringing one of her children, a daughter, on a college trip. And I wonder if Caroline might theorize about what major you would like your daughter to undertake when she does get into one of the schools that you will visit over the next couple of weeks. Do you want it to be humanities major and then maybe get a MIM? Or would you prefer that she just enrolled in a business school and get that business degree and move forward with that?

[00:14:17.810] – Caroline

Well, I am definitely not going to tell her what she should study. She’s extremely headstrong and I will be put in my place very quickly if I try to express my reference. She’s actually very interested in psychology, which I think could be a very interesting course of study and also could be relevant to a lot of different future career paths. But I really don’t care. I just want her to study something that she loves doing and whatever that is is absolutely fine with me. I have no particular direction I’m trying to push her in at all, but.

[00:15:00.530] – John

I do with two parents who have MBAs from world’s leading schools, Stanford and INSEAD. I’m sure that an MBA is in her future, no matter what her major is at undergrad.

[00:15:11.020] – Caroline

Well, I don’t know. So she actually doesn’t particularly show an inclination that direction. But my third child is already trying to figure out how she can start a business, so I do have some hope for her. But I would actually be thrilled if one of my kids did want to do a program like the MIM one day, because thinking back to my own experience, I studied French and German undergrad and French and German at the university where I studied was I was studying medieval German, right? And it was a very academic program. And so then I went to work in consulting in London. As you said, John, it’s a whole different language that you have to learn. And the firm that I worked for, they had to invest a huge amount in training those recruits, right, because they recruited young talent from top universities. But a lot of people like me, who had been studying something that was completely unrelated to the world of business and didn’t necessarily have a lot of experience, relevant experience, it’s tough on the employer because they have to invest a lot of money in that training and it’s a huge learning curve for that young professional.

[00:16:26.310] – Caroline

So I think something like a Min would have been a great experience for me. So I would personally be thrilled if one of my kids went in that direction in the future. And it doesn’t preclude you doing an MBA later on, either. I did talk to the admissions director, Lindsay, about that. Is that something do you see that it’s kind of a completely different program, and someone who does a MIM would therefore not be a good candidate for an MBA, because haven’t they covered a lot of the same curriculum? Actually, what they’re seeing is that the programs can be complementary because the MBA, you have a lot of different electives. You’re addressing things from a different level at that stage. And so they actually are seeing people who’ve done the MIM who are interested in then coming back and doing an MBA later on. So I don’t think having a MIM precludes you then from doing an MBA at a great school later on.

[00:17:26.750] – John

Yeah, really good point. Maria, any last words on the MIM?

[00:17:32.110] – Maria

No, I’m excited for it to start to take off more in the US. Because there’s such a variety of masters in finance, masters in asset management, like in the US. And I do wish that there would be some standardization because I think that would be more helpful for the schools, for students, for educating the marketplace, as you mentioned. John right. It’s one thing if I’m a recruiter and I know what I’m getting with a MIM. A graduate versus a Master’s in quantitative finance versus a Master’s in Finance versus a Master’s in asset management. Like, there are just so many different ones in the US. And yeah, I do think that based on the MIM curriculum, it’s very similar to it’s the same thing where I took accounting and finance and a bunch of classes like that in college. And when you’re in undergraduate, I suspect the MIM might be very similar where it is more about the mechanics of here’s how you build a balance sheet, here’s how you build a PNL, here’s how you depreciate an asset versus when you get to business school. You are looking at it from a much higher level.

[00:18:28.900] – Maria

And so at first I thought, wow, I already took accounting in college. Why is business school forcing me to take it again? That’s annoying. But it was a completely different ballgame. It was less about the definitions and the mechanics of it and more about here’s how a management team can use accounting and the principles of accounting to manage their overall business. So I don’t think that there may be some overlap in the course titles. However, I believe the way in which the coursework is examined is very different between the two programs. So I’m excited for all of these opportunities for people to learn more.

[00:18:59.540] – John

True. And I should point out that the Financial Times has been ranking MIM programs for a number of years. That ranking tends to be pretty European centric. Very few us. Schools have participated in it. So it’s not a full list globally, but it’s a really good indication of sort of the MIM landscape, particularly in Europe. And you can come to Poets and Quants and you will see. What we tried to do is to look at the top US. Schools and determine who is already offering a MIM and how do they differ from each other, what do they cost, how long do they last, what schools are in the game, and how do they teach this subject to pre experienced students. So I think you can benefit from that. Check out our story, online now at Poets and Quants on the best MIM programs in the US. Meantime, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been hearing our Business Casual podcast with Maria and Caroline.

Is A Master’s In Management Degree In Your Future?
Maria |
July 8, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

New around here? I’m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!