Making The Case For Capitalism
Maria |
October 8, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts welcome Susan Fournier, Dean of the Questrom School of Business, and Marcel Rindisbacher, director of the newly launched Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, & Society. 

They explore evolving perceptions of capitalism among younger generations and discuss the institute’s goal to deepen understanding of the role that business and markets play in addressing societal challenges. 

The conversation delves into definitions of capitalism, its impacts, and the growing skepticism from the youth, alongside reflections on capitalism’s vulnerabilities highlighted in recent political discourse.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.370] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Thi s is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila. Today, we have two special guests to talk about capitalism. Yes, 40% of 18 to 29-year-olds view capitalism positively. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, it’s the lowest share in any age group and 33 percentage points lower than the share of those 65 and older. We had run earlier, a couple of years ago, an essay by the former dean of Columbia Business School, who said that even MBA students are now questioning capitalism and what its consequences are. And across town from Boston University, at Harvard University, a new student-led group is devoted to, let me say it, end capitalism before it ends us. So joining us today is the Dean of the Questrom School of Business at Boston University, Susan Fournier, and the head of a new center. The new center is called the Ravi K. Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society. It’s launched to bring a deeper understanding of the contributions that business and markets can make to the world’s biggest societal challenges.

[00:01:41.210] – John

We have with us Susan Fournier, the Dean of the Questrom School of business, along with the new director of the center who had formerly been a senior faculty member, the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at Questrom, Marcel Rindisbacher. Well, welcome. Tell me, Susan, do you think capitalism is in trouble?

[00:02:05.730] – Susan

There’s an academic answer that comes first, which is how are we defining capitalism? I don’t think we need to debate who owns the means of production, which is back in a classic definition. But when you get into, I think capitalism as a term has with it an umbrella about the markets, the role of the markets, whether those markets are equitably benefiting all of the players, employees, and communities as an example, or consumers. And so I think capitalism has come to be known and founded with markets that are relatively free, although there are no free markets either, because they all have some regulation in them. But it’s come to be a catch-all for an us versus them, bit of a mentality about big business and the marketplace and confound it in there with monopolistic behavior and inequitable results for different stakeholder groups. So when you put it in that public context about how people talk about it and what they think and what they put under that umbrella, I think it is in trouble because it’s been connected and brought together with all kinds of societal ills.

[00:03:45.560] – John

Now, you have here three unabashed advocates for capitalism. And I should note that it was interesting that in a recent economic speech, Kamala Harris made clear that he is a capitalist, which does suggest that there is some vulnerability to the concept of capitalism. But why now, incidentally, for your Institute for Business, Markets, and Society? Why does it make sense at this moment?

[00:04:18.720] – Susan

I have to respond to the Kamala Harris point because that was one of the most quotable lines of that speech, Hey, I’m a capitalist. I think what she was referencing is a point, Hey, it’s election time and we’re going to try to move people with opinions. But some of the policies she’s put on the table, which seem to be government, government, government funding, And she wanted to be stating that, no, I do support business. I do believe business has a role to play in the marketplace. And I wouldn’t just be taxing and interfering with competition. So I think that’s another example of what do we mean when we’re saying, I am a capitalist? It leaves a lot of room. So sorry, your question was, however- Why now? Why now? I mean, honestly, some of this sentiment has reached a pitch, a fever pitch. And I think we’ve also been in maybe it’s since 2008, and when we had meltdowns of the markets, but we have a lot of instances on the table, high tech in the crosshairs, Google in the middle of a, let’s significant court case. We have a lot of negative anti-business sentiment about paying taxes, not paying taxes.

[00:05:58.800] – Susan

So that is growing, growing, growing, growing. And I think the tipping point maybe for Marcel and I is when we started to see the data among younger people really kicking in and saying, no, this is not a viable system, it has to go. Why now? We’ve got a paradox. At some level, people trust business more than they do other institutions. Trust in religious organizations is even lower. Trust in the government is even lower. But trust in business, nonetheless, is not, while higher than those, it’s not at a level where we would want it to be If we’re going to lead business schools. I mean, I’m the dean of a business school. We have 2,500 undergrads here. We have nine other programs of students. We have a mission to prepare the business leaders of tomorrow. It feels that perhaps we’ve been failing in our mission, if these opinions exist, of just trying to better understand and have a deeper appreciation, if you will, for what we mean when we talk about the role of business that goes beyond the simple, maybe the utopian, maybe the purely ideological, and that we have a responsibility to help leaders of today and tomorrow better understand what we’re talking about with your very question about is capitalism a problem.

[00:07:46.670] – John

Yes. I want to also point out that it’s common for business schools to launch centers, but it’s uncommon for a business school to launch a center as well-funded as this one. The The roots of it go back to a presentation that you actually made to your chief benefactor for this center, which showed a scale that was unbalanced. Then on one side, you had the criticism of business, which is executive compensation that’s too high, shareholder primacy, unethical leadership, income inequalities, loose regulations, corporate greed, tech monopolies, greenwashing in excessive profit. Then the praise, which was rather diminished in the scale. Business fuels innovation, business solves grand challenges, business has an engine for prosperity. When your benefactor saw this scale that you showed him, he said, That’s it, you got it. Basically, you found your donor for this new initiative, right?

[00:08:55.510] – Susan

Yeah, John, I will add we have other donors for this initiative initiative. He is our naming donor. So he was not the first one to resonate with that graphic. We had been on the road, if you will, for a year and a half, maybe more, talking about these general issues. And everybody pounds the table at that graphic and says, Yeah, this is just way too simplistic. Bad, good, one side higher, one side lower. The story is much more nuanced and much, much, much more in need of deeper understanding. Business does have, historically, I mean, throughout history, an incredible role to play. Business and the markets in which they operate, the capitalist markets in which we operate, help lift individuals into prosperity, help lift entire nations into a better place, and help address societal challenges, advance COVID vaccines resolve energy transition problems. So that is… I mean, anyone in business knows that business has an incredible role to play. And so do the markets in which we have competition and we compete. So that is the essence of the conundrum here. Let’s understand these things a lot more deeply. They are nuanced. And they are very complicated.

[00:10:32.790] – Susan

And business is a player in a big system, and arguably the system isn’t working optimally. So how can business as the center for agonist, because we’re a business school, how can we act within a system in which we operate and that sometimes has problems? Governments fail, markets fail. How do we make that the whole thing better so that that balance can be righted.

[00:11:06.050] – John

Caroline, what’s your sense of all this?

[00:11:08.340] – Caroline

I’m really curious about why this change has come about. I hadn’t seen those statistics before I read your article, John, about the perception of capitalism among young people, and it’s pretty shocking. It’s very different from my generation, I think, and you explain that in the article, that older people tend to have more positive views of capitalism much more than the younger people. I’m curious about why this has come about. And one thing I’m wondering is, do you think that social media hasn’t had an impact? Because we know that on the social media, typically things that are negative, things that generate fear, negative headlines typically grab people’s attention more than positive stories. And I think a lot of news organizations and media and people out in the blogosphere and so on, are exploiting that. And so do you think that social media is having an impact on how young people perceive capitalism and what can business schools do about that? Because I think there’s also a trend of young people not getting their news so much from traditional news media in the same way that previous generations may have, getting their news from social media and from different sources than people might have in the past.

[00:12:31.350] – Caroline

So how can you, as a business school, counteract that?

[00:12:36.210] – Marcel

I would say that misinformation or incomplete information plays a big role, because I think when you really try to go a bit deeper about them trying to understand what drives this opinion, I think people are very quickly to articulate things that do not fully describe what the pillars of capitalism are. But I think it’s There’s another effect there where also maybe the older generation has had the luxury of having have direct comparison with East Germany, West Germany. After the wall came down in Europe or so, there’s not really a socialist type of economy that you can point to and compare. Then in that perspective as well, when you think a generation that was born after 1990, ’90s or so, there’s the financial crisis in 2000 to date. There’s documentation that real wages don’t grow. There’s this perception that with big business having influence on the political system, you’re not represented. That’s very much resonated also in some recent books by Nobel Prize winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and so on to postulate that something has to change. It has to do with work by Angus Deaton about really the life expectancy in the US that has been declining.

[00:14:06.130] – Marcel

Somehow this ideas floating around may have provided an amalgam where people just don’t see very clearly anymore, what are the real trade offs? What are the real choices? What is the unobserved trajectory that you would have if you would fundamentally change the system? I think from that perspective or so, what we are really trying to do in this institute is really to first teach the pillars and then really describe the trade offs such that people really understand what are the choices you have. I think if you get most of your income in terms of labor income, yeah, you don’t do as well as if you get your income in terms of capital income with the globalization and so on. There has been a divergence between the two. The younger generation is more affected by that. But that doesn’t mean that basically by turning around into a completely different system like socialism, that would be much better. I think this is the… We may have sometimes utopian conversations about what the alternatives are, and maybe the younger generation is like many young generations trying to find something new. They’re buying into a narrative that is probably a little bit utopian.

[00:15:23.460] – Marcel

I think our mission as an institution, higher education, is really just to have really frank discussions and really clear education where what this trade-off ultimately would be. As such, help them to understand better. Maybe it’s not as simple as I thought when I said, I don’t like capitalism.

[00:15:45.090] – John

Well, Maria loves capitalism, don’t you, Maria? What do you think?

[00:15:49.730] – Maria

I do. It’s interesting that you mentioned the early 1990s as a really pivotal point and the fact that today’s MBA students were probably born after, or if they weren’t, they were certainly too young to remember. I actually was able to visit the then Soviet Union in early 1991, about nine months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I have to say that any romanticized notions that I had about an economy run in that way was pretty quickly dashed by seeing the realities on the ground of what my host family was an exchange program. So what my exchange family had to do just to get basic groceries, it was really eye-opening. And so today’s youth, they don’t get to see any of that downside quite so much as perhaps we had access to all those a couple of decades ago. So that was a really interesting point that you made. But yeah, look, I love capitalism, but I also acknowledge that capitalism fails to account for certain externalities, particularly we’re seeing now, primarily with the climate, more than anything, being an increasingly urgent issue that has not been taken into account. But I am also hopeful and optimistic that the same capitalism that brought about this negative climate situation in which we find ourselves will also hopefully be the engine that will help find the solutions to this.

[00:17:22.240] – Maria

So my question is, I see that there are three pillars to this, the new institute Out. Specifically for the MBA students, how do you envision this mandate playing out in a pragmatic sense with what the MBA student experience will be? Is it going to be a formal class that will be introduced, maybe perhaps a small elective that will be offered, or is it more trying to integrate this messaging throughout the curriculum?

[00:17:57.080] – Susan

Interestingly, we are starting with the undergraduates. This is where the issue seems to manifest the brightest, I think. You change a lot from when you’re 18 years old to when you’re 28 years old and you’ve worked and you’ve seen how the world works a little bit more, right? So one thing that we are doing is absolutely bleeding some of this knowledge in these economic foundations and a better grounding in how it works. And a more acute lens on even, for example, let’s go back to another factor, the business roundtable. When they came out and said, We’re changing the purpose of business. And it is no longer about shareholders, it’s about all stakeholders. We came out and said that. And what we see is people Marcel, pick that off. Marcel used the word utopian and a lack of sensitivity to the trade offs. I mean, how do you have to balance all of this? And it is a set of trade offs. I think that the MBAs are more able to handle that and rationalize through that. Whereas with the people who come in to their first class in a business school, right out of high school, they don’t yet have formed, what is the role of business?

[00:19:34.170] – Susan

What is the role of competition? What is the role of markets? What about the alternatives? What about this idea called stakeholders? And how does that even work? And how does it all come together? So we have a required course that we’ve always had for anybody entering into Questrom that was always appropriately titled, business and society or something of this nature. And we are in the middle of one month in to launching a completely new version of that class that really starts at… It has strong economic foundations throughout But it’s also different than just an Econ course because we’re business school. So it’s a business economic point of view of this. And it takes people through to really help them understand this whole system, this system view, and to take the entire semester and ground them in that. The other thing we’re doing is we’re taking back, again for undergrads, we’re taking back Econ one and Econ two. And we’re bringing them back inside the business school. And we love our economics professors. They’re incredibly well-accomplished department in the College of Arts and Sciences. But in that point of view, business is almost an afterthought. It’s certainly a black box.

[00:21:10.600] – Susan

It doesn’t really enter into all of the things that they teach in micro macro, except maybe as cost related something somewhere. But business isn’t there as a protagonist in this big act play. So we’re also bringing those two courses, which are also required back inside. So now you have a three, four. Then all of those foundations will get carried through in other required courses that we’re going to teach or in elective throughout the curriculum. So I wanted to just cover the undergrad side in its full splendor, because it seems to be the scale problem, the naiveté most significantly. And maybe, again, I could kick it back to Marcel because he’s been involved in this curriculum renovation in this course called Business, Markets, and Society.

[00:22:10.790] – Marcel

Yeah, I think what we really try to do is really teach the pillars of capitalism. For example, before we talk about how capitalism fails and what has to be changed or can be changed to improve the system. Because in the past or so, it’s an intro course. We had maybe a teaching that was really very simplistic, stakeholder, Milton Friedmann, all that’s from the past. Now we do stakeholders. We start really thinking through about what the real challenges are when you want to do that, because there’s a whole theoretical underpinning why shareholder maximization is something that you can use to align what managers do and what owners or shareholders want them to do. Then when you want to go to the next step because you care about other aspects, which I think a lot of people, also including shareholders, do. The question is, how do you do that? And these answers are not so clear. And I think to understand the complexity and also just to advance as an institute, really the theory of what you could call the political economy of business that really thinks about this in a very deep way, that’s also in a direction that we would like our students to start to think.

[00:23:26.570] – Marcel

And then when they go and work, that they remember that this This is something that them is not so simple. Because I think, again, undergraduates are ideal to do that because I think my observation having many children, is like they are very well understanding the political system. They are very much understanding parts of history. But economics is not really taught in a very thoughtful way in high schools. I think in general, I think this is a fundamental problem to understand them Then how the economic system interacts with the political system within the economic system, what is the role of business? And as Susan said, in traditional economics, we talk about the production function or costs. But basically the institution business, the way it makes a decision, the way it interacts with the political system and all of that is probably not emphasized enough. Then when students go and work, they start to realize, Oh, a lot of this is much more complicated than I thought. And I think it’s our duty to try to prepare them. For the MBA students, I also say that I think all what we do in that institute is hopefully creating a environment where students just really start to actively engage in constructive dialog about these things because there are a lot of aspects of the things that we’re trying to discuss that don’t have clear-cut solutions, but that are challenges to really improve the capitalist system and then really have people engaged, but with thoughtful interventions and discussions.

[00:24:59.580] – Marcel

I I think the hope is that basically, we have a signature feature of all our students when they go and work somewhere, people could say, Oh, I appreciate the question student because he has really had a real exposure to these questions and can make thoughtful contributions to think about solutions.

[00:25:20.570] – John

It seems to me that the institute has an inside-outside approach to this. In addition to the fact that you are trying to engage your current undergraduate students in this debate, you also have a communication strategy to get broader reach outside your own students and to do faculty research, which, of course, then would result in a broader discussion outside the school. Marcel, could you describe those efforts as well?

[00:25:52.570] – Marcel

So one effort that is way under its way, we have, I think, in about two weeks, nine episodes of a podcast that is called Is business broken? I think that should give you some insights about what we’re trying to do. So they are on basically questions about exactly how do business and government regulation interact? What are the challenges? Four episodes are on ESG investments, then two on basically changes to the payment and innovation model for gene and cell therapy, where the traditional model with FDA approval and so on is just not working anymore. It’s a really interesting example to emphasize what is the role of the government and what is the role of business and how do they interact. Now, basically, the last two episodes that are planned is on misinformation on social media platforms. It’s this fascinating situation that on platforms you can publish what you want because it’s protected by free speech in contrast to newspapers. Then the question is, how regulate that? It’s not so easy just to say the government should regulate that because that is immediately against the second amendment of free speech. There are other ways you can do that.

[00:27:10.890] – Marcel

We have a faculty member here who’s actually doing research on how this could be solved. Again, this is an interesting example of where you can say that the real societal problem, it’s such that maybe just say, That should be regulated. That cannot be easily implemented or may also not be the best solution. But then you can think about, okay, what else could you do? Are there market innovation type or market making type of mechanisms that you could implement in platforms to really address that? That’s a big part of the communication strategy to be visible to the outside. The other things we want to build is basically, at the end of the day, it has a lot to do with business as an institution. I think trust in institutions, be it political institutions or businesses, is an part to really understand what may work or may not work in capitalism. What we’re trying to do is we try to use large language models and AI and build a business sentiment index that extracts how the perception of various stakeholders for business varies over time. Then we’re also trying to build, actually, because we also think that this public discourse and constructive dialog is very important.

[00:28:29.780] – Marcel

We also try to to build an AI-supported learning platform where you can really play in terms of dynamic case studies, examples where you see how this different groups, government groups, advocate groups, competitors in an industry have to interact to solve certain problems. We believe that with this asset building or so, we can also make an impact to research, but also education. Then we have also very specific research proposals that we are vetting that will support in terms of really advancing what hopefully will become the theory of political economy of business down the road. That’s a very ambitious goal, but we want to be ambitious. We are well-endowed, and we believe we can really make a difference here.

[00:29:20.960] – John

I wonder 10 years from now, when you look back on what you will have done, how will you measure the success of the institute and the impact that it might have? Ten years from now, what are you hoping to have happen? Susan?

[00:29:37.520] – Susan

I would start by where we just left off, that we will have a more informed group of future leaders graduating and walking out of the Questrom doors. I love what Marcel said, that from our conversations with companies, corporations, organizations, they really see value in what we’re doing. If people are branded with this a thoughtful emersion in these issues and they understand better the role of business and what it can be, should be, is, they see value in that. So my first wish is that when people leave here, they are known to have gone through an eye-opening education that really grounds in the role of business, and that they’re much better able to take and make real the mission that we have to create value for the world through business, because they better understand how to leverage it and what it is and how to make that happen. So that, to me, is the first sticky metric, is that the students are sought after and are stronger for the experiences they’ve had in the classroom and outside the classroom. The other thing, I guess, if we’re going to go 10 years, maybe we need more, like 40 years, though, Marcel.

[00:31:11.010] – Susan

We do have a really grandiose mission goal, which is to provide a real strong theoretical case for capitalism and business in capitalist markets. You can say to say that that potentially is lacking. That’s actually we had Larry Somers as a keynote speaker at our launch event, and he said that. He said, the strong, strong theoretical case hasn’t been made for this view that is more attentive to the system-wide reality of what business is inside the competitive markets. So way down the road, I think, if we’re contributing Taking that theoretical foundation to guide work in a way that theory, quote unquote, of stakeholders isn’t able to do. It’s not concrete, it’s not tangible. Is there a theory of trade offs? I don’t think so. Is there a theory of primate? I don’t think so. So can we get there in this incredibly aspirational way. Then in between, I would hope that we can deliver better every year on what Marcel talked about, having those debates, those public discourses, those episodes of the podcast, where all of this comes together. And each year, those get richer and richer because more people want to participate in them. And when we have events that packed because people want to hear this, and they want to understand, and they want to move us forward.

[00:33:07.970] – Susan

I mean, I loved Maria’s point about being there on the ground to see what alternate systems are for. So can we have those discussions that help open our eyes? That’s what I would love. And it will, therefore, take many, many decades.

[00:33:27.180] – John

Caroline and Maria, any final thoughts?

[00:33:30.520] – Caroline

I’m curious what the reception has been from students, both undergraduate and then in the MBA program, and then also from alumni.

[00:33:39.650] – Susan

Well, alumni are responding with support. We do, as we mentioned, have a naming gift to support the institute, but that’s not all. So we’re out there with alumni and non-alumni who really believe that there’s work to be to be done here. I would say in the business communities, the reception has been really strong. Yes, please. Let’s work on this. This work needs to be done. I think in the student reactions, we’re just starting. Marcel, do you have any early feedback?

[00:34:19.870] – Marcel

We have definitely students who come and ask, What can we do? How could we get involved in the initiatives and so on? Because I think it’s also to be fair, there are a lot of undergraduate students that come to business schools or as MBA students because they want to be successful in business and they see that there are challenges there. They understand that basically purpose is an important part. Then having maybe the toolset and the knowledge to really debate these issues in a more deep and sophisticated way that gives them leverage also in their job searches and all of that and their impact they can have because they want to really contribute to society by following their career path and so on. I think that resonates well. Obviously, the question is, what is the perception of people also outside of the business school? Or so is there really a general education purpose there that we can make more impact? Because I think it’s more important to probably also try to have a message for the public in general about these issues because I think there’s a lot of half baked answers out there that people, even in political debates, jump on.

[00:35:32.210] – Marcel

And then the content of or the quality of a lot of the discussions, even about this election from an economic policy point of view, I would hope that this is a bit more sophisticated and deep than it is. And I think if we can be through podcast and so on, reach this general public, then that would really be a success.

[00:35:52.920] – Susan

But that’s a high point to come. I love that. I mean, we’re part of an ecosystem at BU with 19 schools and colleges. So a measure of success is when other schools and colleges are working on big problems, that they come to us for our inherent and powerful role in affecting the solutions of whatever they’re working on, whether it be bringing very expensive gene therapies to the market or solving the misinformation problem or any other issues around sustainability or whatever, that they see business as a key protagonist in those solutions.

[00:36:37.880] – John

Maria, you have anything to add?

[00:36:39.880] – Maria

No, you both touched upon what my next question was going to be, which is, I think it’s great. It makes a lot of sense that you’re starting with the undergraduate who are enrolling in these economics and business classes, but on some level, you’re preaching to the choir. They might be a slightly skeptical choir given this generation, but it is still people who are interested on some level on business leadership, management, et cetera. So my question was going to be, do you envision interacting with the other schools within the broader university community? And it sounds like that’s part of it because that’s the audience that I think really does need to be reached. And also bringing those different perspectives into the fold will be really beneficial in terms of figuring out, well, so what does capitalism do? Where does it go from here? So that it does continue to bring the benefits, but it also takes into account some of its less savory aspects. And I think getting to those solutions is going to involve incorporating those different perspectives and bringing everyone into the fold. But sounds like you guys are already thinking about that. So that’s fantastic.

[00:37:43.250] – Susan

Yeah, we are. And I would also temper a little bit on the preaching to the choir. You would be amazed how simplistic people think about this. And you say mission driven and what that means to them and what what the role of profit is, and the prophet is bad. And it’s not all the choir at all. It really isn’t. So I think It is this simplistic view. And when I first came to this school, I remember the intro case for the course we’re talking about was about about what was the car that had an acceleration problem, but they didn’t fix it, which I don’t know. Anyway, they were teaching the case, and the case was this is how business people think. This is in the business school. There weren’t enough deaths, so it didn’t make sense to fix the problem. This is how business people think about their products and their products. This was our intro case. You have a really different choir if you’re having this a point of view from the minute you start. I think, yeah, I would say it is absolutely outside inside and work on all sides.

[00:39:13.340] – John

Well, let me thank Susan and Marcel for our discussion on capitalism. If you want to know more about the Ravi Mehrotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society, you can check out the Questrom website, or you can refer to our story, Making the Case for Capitalism, Questrom launches a Well-Funded Mehrotra Institute. For all of you out there, I hope we made you think a little bit more deeply about capitalism, its benefits, and maybe even its negative sides. Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Making The Case For Capitalism
Maria |
October 8, 2024

[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!