MBA Application Round Strategies
Maria |
September 14, 2021

The MBA application process is far from straightforward. Most programs have THREE sets of application deadlines and determining which to apply in is not an easy task. 

For this episode of Business Casual, our hosts are going to explain the logic that lies behind round strategy along with the different factors that may affect this year’s MBA application at large, especially now that we are in the middle of the pandemic where the set up is drastically different from what we have become accustomed to.

  • When should you submit your application? 
  • Do acceptance rates differ by application round?
  • Is it better to apply in the first round? 
  • Are you at a disadvantage if you apply in R2, typically the largest round for most programs? 
  • Does the round you apply in affect your chances of a scholarship?
  • Is there a certain round for which you should apply? 
  • Which round would be best for an international applicant to apply in? 
  • Is round three like playing the lottery, where the chances of winning are nearly impossible? And if you apply in round three, what can you expect?

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.330] – John

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, the weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne with Poets and Quants with my cohosts Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline, of course, is the former director of admissions at INSEAD and a cofounder of Fortuna Admissions. And Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. So it’s that time of the year again when people are starting to hit the submit button on their computers and letting fly their applications in round one. Harvard just had its round one deadline this past week, and now, like tumbling dice, they’ll fall one after the other, and one school after another will have round one deadline, some early action or early decision. And then, of course, we’ll go into round two in January. Most schools have a round three. Some even have four or five rounds. So we want to talk a little bit about round strategy. When is it best to submit your application? Do you have an advantage if you apply in round one? If you apply in the largest round, which is typically round two at any given school, are you at a disadvantage if you want a scholarship?

 

[00:01:20.160] – John

Should you apply in a certain round? If you’re an international applicant, which round would be best to apply to? Is round three playing the lottery, where the odds are basically impossible to get in? And if you are a Johnny come lately and you apply in round three, what can you expect? So let’s talk a little bit about this. Maria. You have a lot of videos on your site because it’s kind of like a do it yourself application process where you help people along. I know you do some personal counseling as well, just as Caroline does. But I wonder, do you have a video on round strategy actually just created one that covers this.

 

[00:02:04.700] – Maria

Yes, I say that I think the round strategy depends upon whether or not you are from an overrepresented group. If you are from the Eager Beavers, which tend to be the consultants, bankers, and in many cases, Indian engineers, I do think that you need to apply in round one, mostly because those are the folks who have been preparing for this for possibly years. In the video, I’ve got a little picture of my son or of a son from when he graduated, I think, from preschool. And so I put a little thought bubble over his head, like time to start studying for the GMAT, because I think some people really do start this process insanely early. I think those folks, since they know that they’re going to apply to business school years in advance and they, in fact, choose career paths that are more likely to lead them to business school, they’re more likely to apply in round one. And my hypothesis is that if you’re an admissions officer and you know that round one is when you’re going to see most of the consultants, most of the bankers, et cetera, that you are, due to human nature, more likely to pick most of your consultants and bankers in that round.

 

[00:03:14.110] – Maria

And the analogy I make is that it’s like if you’re making fruit pies and you know it’s peach season, you’re going to buy all the peaches when it’s peach season, and then you’re going to wait till the next season to buy apples for Apple pie because it’s Apple season. And so similarly, if round one tends to be management consultant season, that’s when you’re going to get most of your management consultants. So if you are from one of those groups, I do think there is a definite advantage to applying in round one. Aside from that, though, I do usually tell people, look, if you’re just not ready to go in round one, even if there is a disadvantage to applying in round two, you have to weigh is the disadvantage for round two worse than the disadvantage I’m going to get if I submit a really half baked application? So the ideal is to submit an amazing application in round one. But if that’s not possible, you submit a half baked application in round one or a stronger application in round two. And all else being equal, I do tend to say, like, I would rather have you apply with the stronger application, even if it means that round 2 may be a bit more difficult.

 

[00:04:11.940] – John

Because at least then you’ve got a fighting chance in the logic behind the first advice, which is if you’re a consultant or a banker, you should be applying round one, because that’s when the bulk of those apps come in. Is that basically after round one, most of those seats are filled. So while no school admits to having a, quote, just look at their class profiles year after year after year, within one or two percentage points, the same percentage of consultants who come in, the same percentage of bankers are from tech backgrounds. So basically, if the round one applicant pool is just chock full of consultants and bankers, you can assume that most of those seats are going to be filled after round one. Right.

 

[00:04:57.710] – Maria

I’m going to defer to Caroline, who actually did this for a living, as opposed to me speculating and reading the tea leaves. But yes, Caroline, what’s the deal?

 

[00:05:06.570] – Caroline

Well, I agree that, as you say, Maria, a lot of those candidates are applying early anyway because they’re on that track. Right. And they often know well ahead of time that they want to apply business school at a specific year, and therefore, they’re often very well prepared. They’ve taken the test, they’re ready for round one. And so definitely those common profiles are more common in the earlier rounds. I think that overall it’s better to apply early if you’ve got that sort of common feeder profile. But I do think it’s very important to apply when you’re ready. Right. And it’s still the case that too often, all sorts of profiles just rush things at the last minute. And even if you have taken the GMAT a year in advance, things can come up in a month, running up to the round one deadline. You could be staffed on a project where you’re working 90 hours a week and you just haven’t got the mental bandwidth to pay the attention that you need to your application. So I would advise candidates to not overly stress about round one versus round two for the top US schools, because it’s different, again for the international schools, because they’re often more rounds.

 

[00:06:18.390] – Caroline

But for the top US schools, you should be looking at round one or round two rather than round three. But between those two rounds, yes, it’s nice to apply in round one if you can. There are also other benefits to that. You get an earlier decision. If you don’t get in, you’ve got time to figure out a plan B, you’ve got more time to figure out your financing, logistics, et cetera, et cetera. But otherwise, don’t rush it and apply when you’re ready. I would also say that the benefit of applying round one is that it’s a fresh season, and at that point, the schools will be making forecasts about what they expect to see how many applications they expect, given their sense of the market and what they saw in the previous season, and how they see things evolving. And therefore they will plan how many spots they want to allocate in that round one, and they will plan how many offers they want to make round by round. But sometimes they might get their predictions wrong, right? It can happen that there’s more of a squeeze in later rounds than they anticipated. So at least with round one, it’s an open field, it’s a fresh season.

 

[00:07:32.190] – Caroline

They’re also bringing fresh energy to the process. They haven’t already plowed through thousands and thousands of management consultants already that season. So you’ve got the benefit of a fresh start in the process, and therefore perhaps more consistency in the offer rates than you may get later on in the season, because sometimes things change during the season. Look what happened in spring last year. Schools weren’t expecting to get a surge in applications at the end of the season, and then the pandemic hit, so things can change as the season moves on.

 

[00:08:09.620] – John

True. Do you think the accept rate in round one is higher than it is in round two, which is typically a larger round.

 

[00:08:17.580] – Caroline

So in general scores, we’ll try to keep the offer rate fairly consistent across those two rounds. My impression, though, in the last season was that the offer rate was higher in round one and in round two. So we fortune. We saw candidates getting more offers in round one and in round two. And I think that was unusual because it was such a strange year and the schools were very concerned about the volatility in the pool how things were going to evolve. They had been stung in many cases with lower yields. Right. In the previous season because of the pandemic. So they were overextending themselves on offers because they were concerned that yield might be weak again. But then that didn’t happen last twelve months ago. I think it was definitely easier to get in round one than round two, but that wasn’t a normal year. And I don’t think that the schools necessarily want to they don’t want to be admitting people around two who they would reject in round, or admitting people around one who they would reject in round two. Right. Because it’s really the interest of the school to take the best from the whole pool, not just admit a bunch of great people around one, and then you’re turning away people later on who are just as good, if not better, than some of the people that you accepted earlier.

 

[00:09:42.280] – Caroline

So they are trying to juggle it so that they keep the competition fairly equal.

 

[00:09:47.550] – John

You’re right. I mean, lately this has been really weird because of the pandemic. So in the incoming classic Cambridge judge. And I’ll just point this out because this is an amazing fact. 28% of this year’s incoming cohort were deferred students. So let’s think about that. If you applied in latter rounds at Cambridge judge, what was your chance with the class already filled up because of deferrals. So you got to know that applying early had to be an advantage to you no matter what at a school like that. And there are a lot of schools that had fairly significant numbers of deferrals. Harvard had so many of them, in fact, that it enlarged the class and admitted the largest class in its history, over 1000 people. So it is a little bit wacky. And then you have the uncertainty that exists today with the Delta variant surging in the US, the economy is still somewhat strong, companies increasing pay of people to hold them longer or to recruit them. So that job prospects for highly promising young people are quite good, actually. So it’s a very uncertain picture. And I think that’s why it’s hard to really predict at any given school at any given time, particularly now, exactly how it’s all going to play out.

 

[00:11:20.900] – John

Let’s look at MIT. Last year, MIT in round one had a 95% yield rate and they went out into the market and they essentially admitted that they had in round one, admitted well over half of the class. And now, Caroline, you heard something rather interesting recently about MIT in one of their admissions webinars.

 

[00:11:46.590] – Caroline

A colleague had attended one of the school’s webinars and one of the staff mentioned that they advised candidates to play in round one rather than round two, which I thought was interesting because normally the schools aren’t that pointed about that’s true guiding candidates towards an early round. I mean, they’re often quite open about round three being very tight.

 

[00:12:12.090] – John

Stanford discourages people from applying to round three, discourages anyone from round two because that tends to be the biggest round.

 

[00:12:20.810] – Caroline

Yeah, I thought that was interesting. I think that it’s really better for the schools to just remove the stress. Round one versus round two. Right. And because at the end of the day, it’s better people apply when they’re ready, it’s better for the schools to keep the level of competition fairly equal across rounds, because then they’re getting the best of the pool, not the best, just from one round. And don’t pressure people to feel that they have to apply essentially twelve months in advance before going to business school. Otherwise it’s going to be a disaster. Right.

 

[00:13:01.770] – John

That almost sounds like you’re in favor of a rolling admissions policy, kind of like Columbia Business School has after the early decision deadline.

 

[00:13:09.590] – Caroline

Well, I mean, I didn’t see that we created four rounds. And of course, there’s two classes per year, so there’s eight rounds per year. Right. With the goal of giving people that flexibility so that they can apply when they’re ready, when it’s the right time for them, when they feel best prepared, and also understanding that often candidates are applying to multiple schools and therefore they’re trying to manage the timing.

 

[00:13:35.570] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:13:35.830] – Caroline

It’s very tricky if you’re applying to one school and then the other deadline is going to line, and then you’re having to make a decision on an offer from one school without knowing the outcome from another school. So it’s helpful to the candidates to have multiple rounds because it just gives them that flexibility to apply when it’s the best time for them and when they can sort of most effectively manage the process and the decisions on their side.

 

[00:14:03.140] – John

True. Why do you think Harvard only has two rounds now, Maria?

 

[00:14:07.120] – Maria

I think because round three was a waste of time for everyone. So I just feel like you’ve already probably got the class. All of these schools could easily fill their classes three or four times over with the people who apply. So it’s not like, oh, we’re hurting for people like, oh, no, are we going to have enough people interested in coming to our school? Of course they do. So I just think why extend things out? And then what if somebody does get in round three? But then, oh, no, my student loan wasn’t approved. My visa wasn’t approved to move to the and of course, a lot of the schools are very open that if you are international, you do need to apply in an earlier round. But even then, it feels like a lot of work for not a lot of payback.

 

[00:14:51.470] – John

Yeah. I always used to think that Harvard was actually missing out on some very good candidates who’d be going to rival schools by eliminating a round three. I guess that’s probably not true because it’s now been four years since they dropped around three, and have gone with two, and the acceptance is the same. Their yield at 89%. 90% every year is pretty much the same as well. And then you even have the wild card, two plus two candidates who ordinarily don’t really come. After two years of experience, it could be anywhere from two to five. So that’s a bit of a wild card, filling up seats in every single cohort at Harvard Business School. But obviously the dropping of that round three hasn’t hurt them one bit. Now at INSEAD, with the four rounds twice for the two different intakes, eight rounds are there rounds that tend to be bigger at INSEAD is round two, as it is at most US goals, the bigger round or not.

 

[00:15:57.580] – Caroline

So the earlier rounds are bigger. Round four is typically a bit smaller, but the first three rounds varies. They’re all large rounds, and then there’s a tail off in round four. So it typically pans out. And it’s true that, I think at all the schools, the average quality of candidates in a final round is generally a bit lower. Right. Than the quality in the earlier round. So that’s also why Harvard probably dropped their round three, because they weren’t seeing the same quality of candidates coming through in that final round as they were seeing in round one and round two.

 

[00:16:33.420] – John

Right.

 

[00:16:33.840] – Caroline

And so the offer rates will definitely be lower in the final round. But that’s also partly because of the quality of the candidates in that pool.

 

[00:16:43.190] – John

What do you see in terms of scholarship offers? Do you see that a higher percentage of people admitted in round one get scholarships than those admitted in latter rounds?

 

[00:16:53.550] – Caroline

Well, it depends on the school, but I think if you’re looking for scholarship support, then definitely you should apply earlier rather than later. And some schools specifically direct candidates to do that, to apply earlier rather than later. They’re looking for that financial aid.

 

[00:17:09.840] – John

Yeah. And just like seats that run out, money runs out. I’ve sat in scholarship award committee meetings as an observer, and you get very excited about the round one candidates you’re seeing for the first time for that new cohort, and you might be a lot more generous to make sure that you lock them in and they don’t go elsewhere. And suddenly when you go into round two, the treasure chest of money to induce you to come is significantly reduced, no matter how well you plan for it. So that is definitely true. The earlier you apply, the more likely I think, you will be in getting some scholarship help. And for internationals, the earlier you apply, the better it is because you’ve got a lot of paperwork and details to take care of, to get a student visa, to come to the United States, to plan here, to get housing and just get settled. And if you’ve never been to the United States or have never been to Europe, if you’re coming from another part of the world. I think it’s helpful to get there early and just get that cultural transition underway before you actually have to go into a core curriculum and face the most demanding part of an MBA program.

 

[00:18:30.630] – John

In terms of the rounds, do you think that in fact, I mentioned before that maybe it sounds like rolling admissions is even better. But the truth is people respond to deadlines. And for both of you who assist and hold the hands of many candidates every year who are applying, I would imagine that a deadline is a useful tool to get this stuff done. And I’m not talking about those hurried, crazy, frantic nights when people are churning, churning, churning to meet a deadline. I’m just saying a date in the calendar when you know everything is due helps motivate and organize you in a way that a rolling admissions policy wouldn’t. Am I right?

 

[00:19:20.410] – Caroline

Absolutely. Yeah.

 

[00:19:21.570] 

Sorry.

 

[00:19:21.880] – Caroline

Go ahead. No, I was just going to say it’s also helpful to have the decision deadlines. Right? I mean, it’s nice for candidates to know, okay, if I apply by this date, I will hear from the school on this date. If I’m getting invited to interviews and if I interview, then I will hear by this state whether I’m admitted or not.

 

[00:19:38.870] – John

I do that. And really, it’s a pet peeve of mine for schools that don’t. Now I wonder if the schools that don’t do it just don’t want to hold themselves accountable for a deadline because there are schools that tell you, okay, we’re going to notify you on this date if you’re going to get an interview, and then we’re going to give you your final decision on this date. And I like the certainty of that.

 

[00:20:02.860] – Caroline

Yeah, I agree. It takes stress out of the process for candidates because they know when to expect here for the school and they’re not sort of checking their email or their phone every minute of the day for several weeks.

 

[00:20:18.510] 

Right.

 

[00:20:18.720] – Caroline

They know when they need to pay attention.

 

[00:20:21.020] – John

And this is an obsession. All you have to do is go on any of the community boards that GMAT Club or Reddit. And what you’ll find there are people who say, hey, is there anyone heard yet from Blank? And someone will say, yeah, I just got on the waitlist, or yes, I just got someone will say, well, I haven’t heard anything. Does that mean I’ve been rejected?

 

[00:20:43.750] – Maria

The conspiracy theories that people use to try to rationalize what I’m assuming is a pretty much a random like, okay, I’m in the Pacific Northwest and I work in biotech. And so what does that mean?

 

[00:20:56.830] – John

Come on, bottom line advice on round strategy. Maria, what is it?

 

[00:21:07.150] – Maria

Apply as early as you can realize that if you are from a feeder group, as Caroline so eloquently put it, that you probably should apply in round one. But even then, if you’re going to submit a half baked application, in round one versus a more robust one in round two. I would tell you to overall go for round two because at least you might get in. You might have a slight advantage for submitting early, but you might negate that advantage if your application is sloppy.

 

[00:21:37.310] – John

Right. Caroline, do you have anything to add to that?

 

[00:21:40.040] – Caroline

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I do think people stress too much over this and over sort of reading the tea leaves on the perfect timing, and it’s impossible to know for sure how it’s going to play out. Right. Because you might find that in the end, the offer rates might be higher in round one or vice versa. It plays out slightly differently every season. So at the end of the day, apply when it’s the right timing for you and get prepared early. And the longer term view you can take of this, the better. The other thing that we haven’t talked about is that the benefit of applying early is if you don’t get in, it gives you more time to apply to other schools. If you wait until round two to apply to any school at all, then you might find yourself coming up short for the season. Right. So there is a huge benefit implying for round one because you have the useful information whether you’ve got into some schools or not, whether you need to apply elsewhere. Because I do think sometimes people underestimate, they’re sorry, they overestimate their chances of getting into schools and then are surprised when they apply to two or three schools in round two, and they’re taken aback that they don’t get in to one of those schools and then they’re disappointed that they have to effectively wait another year.

 

[00:23:11.520] – John

Right. I’ll throw another wrench into this, too. I’m assuming that if you apply to a really top school, this is where you really have to try to get into round one if you’re ready and are able to basically put your best foot forward. But what about a second tier school? Is it all that necessary to apply in round one? Probably not. Although if you apply in round one to a second tier school, they’ll feel like you really want to go there and your chances of an admission might be quite high. What do you say to that?

 

[00:23:43.470] – Caroline

Yeah, I do think sometimes round two can be tricky in that the schools may be wondering, are you applying because you’ve been dinged elsewhere? Right. Are we really your number one choice? How motivated are you?

 

[00:24:00.590] – John

No one wants to be sloppy seconds.

 

[00:24:02.880] – Caroline

No one wants to be the backup plan. Right. And I think that could be difficult for candidates to sometimes communicate that motivation and make that come across clearly, because for sure, all schools are seeing in round one candidates who are more specifically motivated for that school than in round two. In round two, people start to sort of throw out scattergun applications in desperation because they haven’t got where they wanted in round two and so schools are left wondering, okay, which pool do you fall into? Are you applying because you are genuinely motivated in round two? Was absolutely the right time for you to apply or are you applying now out of desperation because you didn’t get into Harvard Stanford water in round one? I think it’s even more important to communicate your motivation for the school in round two because of that dynamic.

 

[00:24:56.870] – John

Absolutely. All right. So for all of you out there, there it is. If you are ready to put your best foot forward in round one and that deadline is coming up, do it and give yourself the opportunity to apply in round two in case you don’t get what you want in round one. Meantime by applying early, more seats in the class are going to be empty. More scholarship money is going to be available and I think there’s a general belief that the best candidates tend to apply in round one. So I would think that the Edmund rate is slightly higher around one than it is in subsequent rounds at most schools. But that can change according to the season, the quality of the applicant pool at any given time and all the other external trends out there, whether it’s a pandemic, whether it’s the economy, job prospects and whatnot all have a factor in this. So Caroline and Maria, thank you once again, again for all of your insights. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’ve been listening to, Business Casual our weekly podcast.

 

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
MBA Application Round Strategies
Maria |
September 14, 2021

[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!