Oops. GMAT Now Has A Separate Writing Test
Maria |
July 15, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts tackle how a significant change in the GMAT — the recent removal of a writing section — is occurring at just about the worst time possible, thanks to the rise of AI writing tools like ChatGPT, is prompting schools like Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan to potentially require a separate writing assessment. GMAC, under criticism, seems to be scrambling to introduce an additional writing test—not yet available for registration, but presumably a simple resurrection of the previous “A.W.A.” (Analytical Writing Assessment) —reacting to feedback from some MBA programs that the current GMAT doesn’t meet their needs.

Caroline points out the poor timing of the change, coinciding with the rise of AI, complicating the admissions process. Maria sympathizes with GMAC’s predicament, noting the increased complexity for test-takers who must now potentially pay extra for the new writing component, advocating for it to be included free with the GMAT (and perhaps added back to the GMAT in the future). The discussion highlights the evolving landscape of business school testing and the unexpected consequences of technology on how business school admissions officers assess an applicant’s written communication skills.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.440] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual with my co host, Caroline Diarte Edwards, who is a co founder of Fortuna Admissions, and Maria Wich-Vila, who’s the founder of Applicant Lab. Guess what, folks, there’s a big oops out there for all you test takers who have to deal with the GMAT. That is the new, shorter GMAT, which is the only GMAT that’s available. It turns out that some schools would, in fact, prefer to see a writing requirement on the test. After all, with the advent of ChatGPT, admissions officials want to see if you can write. And GMAT, in their great wisdom, actually reduced the test by nearly an hour, but eliminated the writing assessment GRE, and their shorter test retained a writing assessment sample, even though they shortened it. And, you know, when these tests came out, we made note of the fact that GRE may have made the better decision in retaining that writing element, and it turns out that is true. The big discovery is Harvard business school is requiring this additional 30 minutes writing assessment of people who submit a GMAT score. And this came out of the blue.

[00:01:34.770] – John

You can’t even register. Can you believe this? You can’t even register yet to take this writing assessment from the GMAT. Caroline, what do you make of this?

[00:01:45.220] – Caroline

Well, it does look like GMAC is now scrambling to address the issue of the lack of the writing assessment. And we discussed before that they really took that out at the wrong time. Right. Because in the past, I don’t think schools took much notice of the writing portion of the tests. We certainly didn’t when I was at INSEAD. And it was, you know, pretty much disregarded in the evaluation of the GMAT in the past. So I can understand why they were thinking, well, this isn’t a really useful part of the test. The schools aren’t using it very much. So we can take that out, and then we’ll have a shorter test, and everyone will like the test so much more. The problem is that they did it at precisely the wrong time. Right. So they did that just as AI was penetrating the market. And now schools actually do want people to have to take a writing test like that because they want to see if people can effectively express themselves in a spontaneous context where they don’t have tools to help them, like aih. So they really took it out at the wrong time.

[00:02:51.470] – Caroline

And the fact that schools are already saying that you’re going to have to take this test, but the test is not yet available suggests that it’s been a mad scramble for them to get this off the ground. And probably it’s a result of the schools providing feedback to GMAT that their new test wasn’t going to be sufficient for their needs. So we’ve seen, as you said, so HBS is saying that anyone who applies to the school with GMAT focus will have to take the writing test if they get invited to interview. So you don’t have to take it when you submit your application, but you will have to take it by the time before you will get admitted. If you get to interview stage, then they’re not going to admit you until you’ve taken that test. And then MIT has also announced that they will be asking people to take the writing assessment as well. Although MIT says that they may require. So it’s not obligatory, but they may require candidates to take that test. And again, it will be at interview stage.

[00:03:56.310] – John

Well, Maria, this suggests that people should just avoid the GMAT and just go with the GRE. I mean, really, right?

[00:04:03.780] – Maria

Oh, I feel so bad for the people at GMAC. I really, I really do, because I could see you can completely understand the logic. Right. As Caroline said, the, you know, the analytical writing assessment was the thing that people were like, don’t worry about it. No one pays attention to it anyway. And so they probably thought they were making their test more popular for candidates in their. In their sadly ever losing battle in market share against the GRE. And unfortunately, in the advent of AI, now the schools actually want to see timed writing assessments done in a controlled environment. And so, yeah, I just feel, feel I’ve already been recommending the GRE over the new GMAT for completely other reasons. And so now this is just one more. Just one more reason. I mean, the only small mercy here, I suppose, is that at least it’s something that you do after you do the rest of the test. So what little cognitive friction or mental energy you would have spent doing the writing part of the test before, at least now you do it later. So presumably you could be fresher instead of having to, you know, do this marathon use of your brain, having your brain do all kinds of different things within a two or three hour period.

[00:05:23.370] – Maria

So I guess that’s the one small mercy. I do think it’s interesting that on the, at least the preliminary site about this writing assessment, it does appear that GMAC would be charging something. I think it was like $30. That, to me, feels like a bit of. A bit of a misstep. I think they should offer it for free for anyone who took the GMAT focus edition, because it seems like the GMAT focus edition is a little too focused. And that’s not the candidate’s fault. That was something that GMAT should have either rapidly reintroduced the writing assessment back to the test, but since it sort of seems like they’re doing this at the behest of the schools, it feels like why should the candidate now have to pay an extra $30 for something that should have been included in the first place? So perhaps, hopefully, they will at least get rid of that fee.

[00:06:08.660] – John

So you pay the $275 to take the focus edition, and then you gotta pay another $30 to take the writing assessment. So now the test is over $300, essentially, for what had been a test that was, I think it was at 250, and it’s a shorter test, but not by a whole lot. Wow. The other interesting thing here is that GMAC did not develop this test in a vacuum. It came out of a lot of consultation with business schools. So it’s sort of surprising that Harvard, and possibly MIT, may now require it. It suggests to me that Harvard wasn’t consulted, that other schools were, and they found that essentially they didn’t really use the analytical writing assessment to begin with, so they just scrapped it. And it’s unfortunate that they scrapped it at a time when everyone is using ChatGPT, particularly people who would apply to a business school. And the scoring on this is, how does the scoring work?

[00:07:18.420] – Caroline

So it’s a scale from zero to six, I think, which is the same as the old Awa. And I think perhaps what happened, John, is probably GMAT did consult with the schools, but I imagine it was pre AI when they were going through that consultation process. I think that probably they were working on GMAT focus for quite a long time. It’s not something that they could have cooked up overnight, and they don’t introduce these changes very quickly. So I imagine it was probably a multi year process, and perhaps they did the consultation at a time when no one was thinking about AI. So it may be that it was just a long process and they didn’t continue to involve the schools throughout. And they sort of relied on feedback that they got from the schools perhaps three years ago when AI wasn’t on people’s radar screen.

[00:08:14.250] – John

So I’m thinking, okay, if you’re taking a TOEFL, because English is a second language, you may as well take the writing assessment, because, you know this is going to be an issue, particularly for people who are taking and submitting a TOEFL. Right, Maria?

[00:08:29.010] – Maria

Yeah. And I believe that that is something that does satisfy the writing requirement for HBS, if I’m not mistaken. So it’s not like this is the only way to do it. My understanding is that there are other ways to demonstrate that writing fluency. And so I believe that there may be. If you do a writing assessment with another, like an english language test, for example. If the language of your undergraduate education was not English, for example, you might have to take something like the TOEFL. So I believe that that could serve as a suitable substitute.

[00:09:02.220] – John

Now, do we know if the writing assessment can be done at home, or do you have to go to a testing center?

[00:09:07.790] – Maria

I would assume you can do it at home.

[00:09:09.470] – Caroline

Yeah, I believe that it says that there’s an online option.

[00:09:12.550] – John

Okay.

[00:09:13.560] – Caroline

And I would imagine what they will do in future is when people register for the GMAT focus, you’ll have the option to register at the same time for the writing test. And it would be wise if they just included on the registration page information about which schools are going to, you know, may ask candidates for the writing test so that people just get it done at the same time. Some candidates may prefer to just take both tests at once rather than taking the GMAT focus. And then a month or two later, signing up for the next test might be better to just get it all out the way at the same time.

[00:09:50.010] – John

Wow. Now, Maria, when you say you’ve been recommending to your clients that they take the GRE instead of the GMAT, but for other reasons, what are your other reasons? I’m curious.

[00:10:01.810] – Maria

I just think the GMAT focus, I’ve heard from friends who are test prep folks that the GMAT focus is a shorter test but a harder test. So they’ve packed more difficult types of things into that test. I also feel like the grading scale is not a well enough known entity yet. And I’ve often found, anecdotally over the years, that there’s been a lot more, not freedom, but there’s been more leeway if someone applies with a GRE score. Because I think for decades, you know, everyone, everyone could immediately tell you off the top of their heads, like, oh, yeah, the average GMATs at these top schools is 730. But if you were to say to them, what’s the average GRE score? They might not know. I mean, now that the GRE is taking more and more market share, it is becoming, you know, you’re starting to learn, like, oh, the averages at HBS are 163, but even then, that intuition is still not quite there. And so I think that, you know, and even when you would go, let’s say in the past to the us news and world report rankings. They would put right there on the page, here’s the name of the school, here’s its ranking, and here’s the average.

[00:11:05.340] – Maria

GMAT was one of the main things, and then they would kind of bury the GRE score. So for all of those reasons, I felt that the GRE, unless, you know, you’re just gonna rock the GMAT, because it’s just, you love standardized tests. I recommended that if anyone is sort of feeling a little insecure about their test taking skills, I would always recommend the GRE instead, in general. And then the fact that my friends who are test prep providers, they’re like, this is great for us as test prep providers, but it’s not so great for folks who are test averse.

[00:11:39.020] – John

Caroline, are you going to have a similar recommendation to your clients?

[00:11:42.920] – Caroline

Well, it’s very interesting. I mean, a lot of my clients that have already taken the test are already some way down the road with their test prep by the time I start working with them or I speak with them. I think if you’ve already sort of started down the path of the GMAT, then you might lose time to then switch tests. But for clients where they’re really struggling with the GMAT and they’ve taken the test, and they’re clearly not where they need to be, given the scores that they’re targeting, then I do encourage them to try a practice GRE and just see if they do better. But I think if you’re at the start of the process, it can be great to take both tests. Right? Take a practice test for both and then see how you do and if you’re better suited to one than the other. But, yeah, it does seem like the GMAT focus. There’s just a lot of unknown factors at the moment. Given that there’s not much of a track record, fewer test prep materials, and then, you know, it’ll take us a year or two to see whether the percentiles are shifting as a result.

[00:12:48.440] – Caroline

If the test is harder, then. Then perhaps the percentiles that you need to get into the top scores will shift a bit. The schools will have to adjust, but we don’t know whether that’s going to be the case. And it could be risky for candidates to apply with lower scores when you match them across to the old GMAT.

[00:13:12.830] – John

Right. So it seems like this could even be a bigger surprise for applicants to HBS, then the change to the new three short essay questions, which Suzy Welch has that are ridiculously vague, nebulous, and what was the word she used? You’ll have to look it up in the article.

[00:13:39.950] – Caroline

I did enjoy listening to her rant, and I think she’s right that, well, she commented that it sounded like it was something that had been cooked up by a committee and perhaps too many cooks in the broth with those questions. Too many cooks in, you know, spoiling the broth with, with those questions. So.

[00:13:58.600] – John

Which we kind of thought of too, when we reviewed the questions, didn’t we? We suggested the same. I mean, it’s almost inevitable that a bunch of people got into a room and, you know, this one compromise after another. Everyone thinks they have a better idea, and what comes out is a really lousy idea.

[00:14:21.980] – Maria

I appreciated that she said that she wasn’t sure exactly where she would start as an applicant if she had to answer these questions. And I felt the same way. Like, at least with the open ended one, you could say, well, here’s what I want you to focus on about me instead of this very prescribed, like, well, I don’t know. And so then it just invites a lack of genuine authenticity. Because if now I have to pretend that my greatest accomplishment was actually the result of me being curious, as opposed to me having to just be like, hey, here’s something cool that I did, but now I have to twist it into this curiosity paradigm. It’s just annoying.

[00:14:55.410] – John

And Caroline, you mentioned that a number of your colleagues who are helping people apply to Harvard in round one are equally perplexed about, okay, what’s the right approach and what do you really say and how do you make an impact with these questions? Right.

[00:15:12.840] – Caroline

Yes, I think they are missing the old question, which just gave much more scope for creativity and to tell a personal story. These questions are quite narrow. They’re also multi part questions. So you’re trying to hit all of the different components of the question. And the word counts are extremely short. So it is a challenging exercise for sure, and I suspect will give rise to some responses that are just a less interesting read than the HBS essay in previous years.

[00:15:48.350] – John

So what’s the bigger surprise? The fact that they changed their essay and went to three short ones, or the fact that, lo and behold, in the fine print of the application, and I mean the fine print, you now have to do a writing assessment if you have the privilege of being invited to interview?

[00:16:06.190] – Caroline

Well, I think the essays are going to affect more candidates, right? That affects everybody, whereas the writing assessment, it will affect a subset of candidates. So I think that’s going to be a bigger headache for the majority.

[00:16:20.350] – John

Yeah. And I do think, however, that maybe some people are going to hedge their bets. Right. Because if MIT is now saying, you may, we may require it, who knows how many other schools, once the. The news gets out. And we’ll get the news out, of course, today. But this is a new requirement. We’ll follow suit. Maria, you think other schools might follow suit after this?

[00:16:45.290] – Maria

Yes, I do. And I don’t blame them. Right. If we want to make sure that we’re hearing someone’s authentic communication skills, then why wouldn’t you require this as well? But I guess the silver lining is now when people don’t get invited to the HBS interview, we can console them with, hey, the good news is you’d.

[00:17:07.120] – John

Have to spend $30 more for a half hour.

[00:17:10.110] – Maria

Yeah, let’s. Let’s try to put a positive spit on what is otherwise very disappointing news.

[00:17:16.250] – John

Yeah. I mean, you. You got to know that within six months to a year, the writing assessment will reoccur on the focus edition of the GMAT. It has to. Because GMAT is now no longer cleanly competitive with the GRE, they put themselves in a non competitive situation here, again, which is sad, I agree, you know, because I think there are a lot of people who still believe the GMAT is a better test because it is business school specific. And the scoring, because it’s business school specific is more uniform for that applicant pool, where you have people, you know, applying to master’s degrees in philosophy, geography, political science and whatnot with the GRE. So the scores across the applicant pool are somewhat altered, and that means the percentile scores are altered so you don’t get a full, complete read, as you would with a GMAT score if you’re an admissions official. So this is just like, wow, how could this even happen? It’s just, like, stunning to me. Really. You would think that. And, you know, the fact that Harvard’s not requiring it unless you’re interviewed, here’s what it tells me. Of course Harvard would have required it.

[00:18:41.060] – John

The only reason they’re not requiring it is because GMAC can’t get its act together to have people actually take it and register for the test in time to submit your score by round one deadline date, which is only around the corner in early September. I mean, you got to know that’s why Harvard, trying to be somewhat nice to GMAC, has probably just done this this way to allow GMAC the time to actually be able to put up the form to allow people to register for the darn test, which is even all the more aggravating. Wow.

[00:19:20.330] – Caroline

It’s also a surprise for candidates, right? I mean, it’s kind of late in the day in the season to bring on people that you’ll probably have another test to take, because most people, many people applying for the round one deadlines have already taken their tests, right. And they thought they were done and dusted, but then they have been.

[00:19:38.500] – John

Exactly.

[00:19:39.940] – Caroline

It pops up.

[00:19:41.440] – John

Okay, so here’s the thing. Harvard waits nearly a month later than it normally does to post its deadlines. Then Harvard waits another three weeks to tell you what questions they’re going to ask. And now Harvard is saying, okay, well, if you do get an interview invite, now you’re going to go back and you’re going to do another test and you’re going to pay for it. Nice. Now, you got to also think that if Harvard is serious about looking at this score among those who’ve been interviewed, that it’s going to have to invite more people than it traditionally does to be interviewed. Right. Because obviously they’re going to. In other words, they’re going to cancel out the portion of the applicant pool that has been interviewed because of this writing assessment. So therefore, they’re going to have to invite more people to get the same odds as they would have normally. Wouldn’t that be logical, a logical conclusion?

[00:20:40.930] – Caroline

Well, it could be. It depends how many people they think they’ll be weeding out as a result of the tests on the business writing assessment. I would imagine that most people who they invite to interview are probably strong enough that they can get a decent score in that exercise. So I would be surprised if many people get dinged post interview purely on the basis of that exercise.

[00:21:05.820] – John

That brings me to whole other question. Why even bother to require it? Right?

[00:21:10.660] – Caroline

Right. Yeah, I think that it’s, you know, they’re looking to cross check people’s skills and, yeah, they may need to leave some room for weeding some people out, but they have a pretty, pretty comfortable pool to draw from, I think. So I don’t think it’ll be too difficult.

[00:21:33.090] – John

Now, Maria, with your Harvard MBA, you know, the Harvard business School mindset, is there anything else that we haven’t covered as to why this would have occurred?

[00:21:43.900] – Maria

No, I think it’s just a matter of. Because of ChatGPT, it’s even less. There’s always been editors that might craft your essay and massage some of your voice out of it. But now the ChatGPT phenomenon just brings it to a completely new level. And so to the extent that trying to ascertain someone’s genuine, authentic communication strengths in a timed and controlled environment, it just becomes more important than it was before. And so I think that it ultimately comes down to just authenticity. And how strong of a communicator are you when you can’t necessarily rely on a tool? Or where you don’t have three whole months to work on some short essays right, where you have under time pressure. So that’s what I think it ultimately comes down to, is authenticity. But I agree with Caroline. I would be very surprised if, like a lot of people, if this suddenly unearths a ton of people who, you know, their essays were flawless, and then they can’t put two sentences together in the time writing assessment, that would be really shocking because, you know, the schools also have, you know, your transcripts, your undergraduate transcripts and what have you, so.

[00:22:56.310] – Maria

But it might weed out a few people so much. So much the better. But, yeah, what a mess.

[00:23:05.170] – John

Yeah. So here’s how they describe it. This is GMAT. Within a 30 minutes timeframe, you will be tasked with analyzing a brief argument rather than sharing your personal perspective. The objective is to critique the argument’s reasoning and evidence objectively and cohesively. A well structured, persuasive response will demonstrate to schools that you have the logical reasoning and communication skills necessary to succeed in the classroom and beyond. The results would be sent to you within three to five days. They’re claiming the prep time for this is two to 6 hours for the assessment. You can send your result to as many schools as you want at no additional charge. Big deal. They’re charging you $30 for a test that once was included in the GMAT. They’re saying it’s being going to be delivered online and available year round to take it home at any time, which almost suggests that they aren’t going to give this test in a test center. So there you have it. If you want to look this up and you can’t register for it, which is also frustrating because GMAC hasn’t put the registration page on its site. It’s called the GMAC business writing assessment.

[00:24:28.460] – John

All right, well, I mean, I guess if you’re invited to an interview at Harvard, maybe, you know, you don’t. You might not like it, but you’re not going to mind it because you’re going to be so happy getting that invite that you’ll say, yeah, $30 more, another 30 minutes, what the heck? You know, if it’s just one more hurdle I have to overcome and jump before I can get to Harvard. Hmm. You know, I think I can deal. What do you think? Right?

[00:25:02.450] – Maria

I would hope so.

[00:25:03.390] – John

Yeah, I would hope so, too. All right. There you have it. We think more schools are going to, going to ask for this. We think it probably will be included in the new focus edition soon. Incidentally, you know, GMAT intends to eliminate that brain branding on the test, which is what they told people at the GMAC annual conference in New Orleans. Don’t know when they’re going to do that. Probably when they add back the writing assessment. And, or you may want to follow Maria’s advice, take the GRE and avoid all this. And until GMAT cleans it up. Anyway, thanks for listening. Good luck to you. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Oops. GMAT Now Has A Separate Writing Test
Maria |
July 15, 2024

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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