Should You Get An MBA?
Maria |
May 4, 2022

It takes money and intelligence to get an MBA, but more than that, it takes passion and patience. Because, after all, it’s all worthwhile; it can help a professional advance in their career, earn more money, and enhance their position. Many businesses demand an MBA for certain management or leadership positions, and having an MBA can provide the skills and information needed to start a new firm.

But the question is, really, why should you pursue an MBA in the first place? Or do you think you’ve got what it takes to get an MBA?

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.150] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. We’re going to talk about not something that is out there and people are wondering about it. And there’s two pieces to this puzzle. Let me get to the first one. Should you get an MBA? What questions should you actually ask yourself to help you determine whether or not an MBA makes sense for you? That’s part of it. The second part of this puzzle is let’s say you’ve been admitted to an MBA program, but your boss just gave you a promotion or increased responsibility or really compelling assignment. Should you still go or should you stay? We’re going to talk about these two related issues with Maria and Caroline. And I guess the first thing I want to ask Maria, let’s say, is what are the questions you should be asking yourselves to determine whether or not an MBA is a good investment and a good move for you?

 

[00:01:10.220] – Maria

I think it’s very simple. What am I hoping to get out of this degree? What is my end goal? Is my end goal to change into a new career that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to change into? Is it to move up in my existing career, whatever that goal is? In some cases, the goal when I talk to people, it’s frankly, that they want to emigrate from perhaps a country with a more developing economy. They want to emigrate to a place with a more developed economy. When you really dig down, you really have to dig down into what are actually my motivations. Right? Is it just because I want to move to the US, which is a perfectly valid reason for wanting to do something right, by the way. But you really need to ask yourself, okay, first of all, what is it that I actually want from this? And then make a list of all the different ways other than the MBA, I might be able to get that. So, for example, if you currently work in a specific industry and you want to move up in that industry, you might very well be better served by simply attending industry conferences, for example, and networking and meeting lots of people within that sort of little universe where you work.

 

[00:02:14.720] – Maria

And that might help your career just as much, if not more than getting an MBA. So depending on what your goal is, Conversely or similarly, if your goal is to emigrate, maybe don’t look at the US schools only. Maybe look at Canadian schools. Right. Canada anecdotally has much friendlier immigration policies. So if that’s your goal and you’re like, well, I might want to move to Seattle. Like, if you’re willing to move to a place like Seattle or Boston, Canada’s, in terms of climate, pretty similar. So really ask yourself, what is it I want with this degree? Because then what happens is that if you actually get in and when that deposit is due, you won’t suddenly get cold feet writing that deposit check.

 

[00:02:55.020] – John

Yeah, that’s true. And then there are certain professions, of course, or careers where an MBA is pretty much required. This is particularly true in high level management consulting, strategic consulting. This is true in many cases in terms of product management jobs and technology. This is also true in many finance jobs. Caroline, what do you think the questions are that should be asked of a person?

 

[00:03:22.550] – Caroline

So as regards of being required, I think that’s less the case than it used to be. I think in the past it was really an essential step if you wanted to rise up the Echelons in consulting or investment banking. And that is less the case now. There are more options for people to climb the career ladder and come into those careers than they used to be. I think that it’s less the case that someone has to do an MBA because it’s expected of them by their employer and not necessarily because of their own motivation, which I think is a good thing. Right. It’s a very personal decision about your short, medium and long term future. So it should be something that you want to do rather than you’re doing it because it’s a hoop that you’re expected to jump through by your employer. But the critical question is Maria says, really your career goals, what do you want to do? And I think people need to kind of map that out. And I think too many people start going down the road of applying to business school thinking, okay, I’m not very happy in my current job.

 

[00:04:31.230] – Caroline

It’s not really the right thing for me. So I know I want to do something different, but I don’t know what that is. And so I’ll go to business school and figure that out. And it’s better to invest some time and effort in figuring out the answers to some of those questions before you start the application process and figure out what would be your ideal job post MBA. How do you see your career evolving in the medium term and the long term? Because that’s an important thing that you need to communicate to business school. And so you’ll just be a much better prepared candidate if you have figured that out sooner rather than later. And you can fudge it in the written application.

 

[00:05:12.010] 

Right.

 

[00:05:12.330] – Caroline

Because often there’s a very short question that you have to respond to about your career goals if there’s a question at all. But you can expect to be grilled about your career vision at the interview stage. The clearer you are and the more research you’ve done, the better you will come across as a motivated candidates because given the choice and admissions committee. And I’ve seen that when I was the admissions committee, given the choice between two very similar candidates, someone who is able to articulate clear career vision and what they want to get out of the MBA is going to get preference over someone who’s wishy washy about their career goals. And that’s true even though the school knows that a lot of the students will go through a change of heart while they’re on the program.

 

[00:06:03.940] 

Right?

 

[00:06:04.280] – Caroline

So a lot of people do change their career goals when they are studying and they’re exposed to so many different opportunities that they might not have thought about before. But what I’ve seen at NCR is that students who come in with a clear vision of what they want to do, even if that completely changes. Right. Even if they end up doing something totally different at the end of the day, that ability to sort of think through logically, what are my skills, what am I good at? What would suit me? And figure out a vision that relates to that? Even if they change that vision, that ability to articulate that and think through those logical steps will stand them in good stead. And they’re more likely to sort of recalibrate and figure out another plan that makes sense versus someone who’s kind of wishy washy and torn in lots of different directions and tempted by management consulting, but also banking and thinking about starting their own company. And those people often end up being very scattered on the MBA program in terms of what they choose to study in the electives and so on, and sometimes don’t do so well in their job search.

 

[00:07:15.770] – John

And the truth is, a lot of people who graduate from an undergraduate program, no matter what discipline it’s in, and let’s just say for the sake of discussion, it’s engineering. You may go to engineering, you find that the job is quite narrow and you’re less challenged by it. Three to five years in and you’re thinking about, okay, what would I like to do that might be engineering related, but put me at a higher intellectual level where I’m thinking about and solving bigger challenges that are more meaningful. And that’s why many engineers go get an MBA, because they don’t want to stay in those narrow engineering jobs. And I think it’s also true of people who by accident, you fall into something that you really didn’t want out of undergraduate school, and now is your chance to say, okay, I think I do want something else. And that MBA degree is the ideal way to transition into a new career. So for people who are like that, I think that’s a helpful thing because you need to think about, okay, what are you going to get from a business education above and beyond, a higher starting salary or a different job?

 

[00:08:33.970] – John

And we often think of getting the MBA because I want to work at X company and I want to do X instead of, okay, what kind of knowledge are you going to gain? What kind of skills are you going to gain? What resources will degree give you that will make you a better professional and a better person not only immediately after graduation, but through your life, meaning you will more likely find the thing you really want to do as opposed to things you can do and might be willing to do but can’t put your whole heart and soul into it. Isn’t that another part of the equation? One of the questions that you should ask yourself beyond the money, beyond the first job I’m going to get, how is this going to set me up for my life and how is it going to enrich my professional, even my personal life?

 

[00:09:29.150] – Maria

Yeah, I think something that sometimes gets lost in the crazed arms race of admissions is that people sometimes don’t realize at the end of this you actually go to school, you take classes and you learn things.

 

[00:09:42.480] – John

How about that?

 

[00:09:43.750] – Maria

It’s so weird. And so I think sometimes people lose sight of that. And I think it’s interesting that when you anecdotally hear some people who say things like, well, I don’t know if it was really worth it. Frequently those are folks who sometimes had taken business as an undergraduate major. And so for them, I can understand, well, there’s obviously going to be some repetition. Obviously the MBA level, perhaps courses would be at a higher level or they would be more strategic versus focusing on execution. But I do think that there is something to be said for the education. And again, if you look at one of the things I really urge people to do is to really look at what are the classes you think you’re going to want to take, especially the electives. Does the school you’re interested in even offer these sorts of electives you find interesting? And a lot of the syllabi for these electives is available online. So click on are you going to be learning stuff that you actually want to learn? If you look at the syllabus or if you look at the curriculum and you say, I don’t know, I don’t know, accounting, finance, I mean, the only thing I really want to learn is marketing.

 

[00:10:43.350] – Maria

Then maybe a broad based business degree isn’t for you. So I do think that there is value. I think for many of us, those of us who very much appreciate the fact that we got the MBA, we actually went there to learn, shockingly enough. But if you don’t think you’re going to grow or benefit from the actual classroom environment, that could be another reason to reconsider.

 

[00:11:06.770] – John

Yeah, definitely. The other thing you’re going to gain, which we’ve talked a lot about over the past, is the network, the relationships with people who are like minded, who are ambitious, who are as smart as you are, or smarter, who take their professional careers very seriously and want to pour a lot of themselves in those careers and expect a lot from them. And you may not have had that experience at the undergraduate level. And you may not have that experience three to five years after your undergraduate degree, where you may be one of many, all of whom are pursuing different interests in different paths. And I think a lot comes out of the relationships you get out of the business school. And that’s another consideration, don’t you think, Caroline?

 

[00:11:58.080] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s something that people often underestimate as the value of what they’ll get out of the program, because in the long term, actually, the value that you will continue to derive 1020, 30, 40 years down the line will be the relationships that you’ve built in that network that enables you to open doors that might not otherwise have been opened. Right. And it gives you the ability to potentially reinvent yourself. And I think that’s an important consideration, that there’s so much uncertainty in the economy today. We hear talk of how people entering College, so many of them will go into jobs that don’t even exist right now. Right. So the job market is changing so rapidly that none of us can anticipate what the careers will be for people coming out of business school and as their careers evolve over time, further down the road. And so in that context of uncertainty, having equipped yourself with a good education as well as a great network of people who are in a lot of different industries and will do very well in their careers and can help you in the future, that’s so important.

 

[00:13:11.150] – Caroline

So it’s important to think about the makeup of that network. Where will that network be geographically? Is that relevant to you? Right. If you’re looking for an international career, what are the international programs like London Business School or in CIAD may be the best option for you.

 

[00:13:26.800] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:13:26.980] – Caroline

Because that gives you a great network of people around the world. But if you are focused on tech companies and high tech or venture capital, then probably going to one of the schools in California where most of the network, most graduates stay on the West Coast, that will bear more fruit in the long term. So I think it’s important to think about the composition of the network and what’s going to be valuable for you in the long term.

 

[00:13:55.190] – Maria

And you know, Carolyn, I would love to jump on something that you said that I think is really valuable. You just use the term to reinvent yourself. And I think that that is a really valuable point, because in business school you are going to be exposed to people who have worked all over the world in every industry Imaginable. You’re going to be covering cases in class about every industry industry you never knew anything about, Pharmaceuticals, real estate, manufacturing, everything. And I think that’s a really great point, especially for a certain subset of high achievers who make up a large number of the MBA applicants. These are people who have been on sort of like this predefined escalator of success. Right. Like the goal is to get into a great College. So I’ve done that. Okay. What’s the next goal that gives me validation? It’s to get into one of these banking or consulting firms. Okay. Now I’ve done that. And then I think it reaches a point where it’s sort of like, okay, so what’s next? Like, I’ve done everything I was supposed to do to be, quote, unquote, excellent, to be the best. And I think for some people, some people love consulting and they stay in it forever.

 

[00:14:56.840] – Maria

And frankly, those people probably should. Maybe they don’t need to get an MBA. They’re probably better served by spending those two years still at the firm. But I think for people who maybe have just been with their Blinders on, just like, okay, I just need to keep going up that escalator that predefined escalator what defines success. And then if for whatever reason, you’re like, well, maybe this isn’t what I want business school. I mean, in terms of those two years, I hear a lot of people who don’t like the degree saying things like, it’s too whole or well, INSEAD out, of course, as a more compressed timeline for those who are more mature and more intellectually able to handle changes at a faster pace. But people will often say, oh, it’s two whole years, but there’s no other way to learn about so many industries at once in only two years. Right. If I work in consulting and I think, wow, the biotech field just seems really cool in this genetic cancer treatment. If you try to get into that field and then you spend two years there and you’re like, well, actually, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be.

 

[00:15:52.760] – Maria

There’s really no other way to get this broad of a sense. You’re not going to be able to talk to as broad as a variety of people as well. In terms of what does it really mean to work in entertainment, what does it really mean to work in real estate, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that’s a really excellent point that you made.

 

[00:16:11.660] – John

The other thing is you need to know that you’re going to be willing to invest the time and the money to do the degree. One of the things that Maria and Caroline and I do before we get on and record this is have a little pre session where we have a conversation about some of the points that we want to make. And in that pre discussion today, both Caroline and Maria were talking about recent clients that they’ve had who’ve been admitted to top programs, but are now having doubts, doubts about whether or not they really want to spend the time or the money to go and get an MBA after having gone through this entire process, which is pretty laborious to get into a really great business school, particularly an M seven school how do you know that you’re willing to invest the time and the money with regard to the time?

 

[00:17:07.640] – Caroline

As Maria said, sometimes people hesitate about the two years. I think something that’s important to keep in mind is that time will go much faster than you anticipate.

 

[00:17:17.590] 

Right.

 

[00:17:17.900] – Caroline

So it’s an intense experience in MBA, and two years is not a great little time out of an entire career. It will go much faster than you think, and obviously more so. If you do a one year program like yet, it really goes by in a flash. So I would encourage people to not hesitate because of the time factor. Right. Because in the long term, I don’t hear people regretting having taken that time out of their careers. It will go by very quickly. And the vast, vast majority of people really feel the benefits of that in the long term. And also time wise, I’ve seen that with candidates who want to decide they want to defer, right now is not the perfect time to do my MBA. I’ve just got a promotion, or my employee doesn’t want me to leave, or I’ve just got a great job offer. And when I was in Seattle sometimes have conversations with admitted candidates who want to defer for professional reasons. And it’s important to keep in mind that there is never a perfect time to go off and do an MBA. The very nature of MBA admits is that you are successful and opportunities are coming your way and you just have to make a choice.

 

[00:18:41.540] – Caroline

Right. And that’s definitely the case right now, especially in the US. There’s a strong job market. People are getting promotions, people getting exciting job offers, people are getting pay increases. And so it seems like the opportunity cost is higher going off to business school. And I think it’s a shame when people decide, okay, I’m going to defer it, or maybe I won’t go now. Maybe I’ll reapply. You just need to make a call about what is in your long term interests, not what is in your short term interest. And have faith that you will have great opportunities coming your way when you graduate as well. So it’s not as if you’re damaging your long term prospects by on the contrary, you’re actually going to be opening more doors more than you can imagine. So we definitely see that right now, people hesitating to go after business school, hesitating to apply because of the strong job market. But as I said, I think it’s really a shame. You need to take a long term perspective on what is going to have the most value for you.

 

[00:19:50.040] – John

And generally, people who do defer or choose not to apply at all now end up not going I mean, the window of opportunity tends to start to close.

 

[00:20:03.230] – Caroline

Yeah. They start to hesitate and they defer. And a lot of people who defer don’t ever go to business school. So sometimes they’re kind of kidding themselves that they will go later, but they’re not.

 

[00:20:17.730] – John

So taking that long term view, I think, as you express, is really super important here because it’s not about for a lot of people going to be about, okay, I just got the promotion. It’s really good. I’m going to make more money. And now the value equation has changed. But that’s now, that’s not five years from now. That’s not ten years from now. And that’s what you really got to think through. Now, Maria, you were mentioning the story that you had a client recently who was accepted into an M seven school after a lot of effort and work and is now questioning whether or not that person should go.

 

[00:20:55.350] – Maria

Yes, indeed. And I think another sort of bit of advice that I would add to what I said earlier is also, like, once you’re thinking about what is it I want from this degree? Also write down a list of schools that you would be delighted to attend, because I feel like sometimes people get into that dream school and they say, oh, if only I could get into school. I love them. They’re perfect for me. And then they get in and all of a sudden they’re like, well, I don’t know. They didn’t give me enough of a scholarship or maybe I could get in somewhere better, right? It’s like I don’t know if you have someone who like a friend who is always developing crushes on people and then they start dating their crush and they’re like, oh, well, I don’t know. He’s not that great. And you’re like, come on. Like all you’ve talked about for the past seven months is how much you want to get into the school. And I’m so insecure and I’ve got so many questions and what do you think about this and how should I phrase that and which story should I choose?

 

[00:21:46.250] – Maria

And then it’s like, oh, Congratulations, you got in and I’m so happy for you. And then they’re like, well, I don’t know. So first of all, make that list of schools that you would be delighted to go to. And by the way, if you’re not excited at all about going to a school, then don’t waste your time applying there. But yeah. So it’s funny because now as we are starting to sort of get into the post pandemic world and jobs are booming and salaries are booming and so people are reconsidering it. I do think, as Caroline said, it’s a long term. It’s a long term calculation, right? What goes up must come down. So for every person who right now is saying like, oh, man, the economy is great and I just got a huge promotion and I’m making so much money. Well, guess what? Like, there were people who thought just like you. And then March 2020 came around or the housing crisis in 2008 came around. You have to ask yourself if I think the value of the MBA is such that I am going to learn enough and become a stronger manager person leader as a result.

 

[00:22:46.010] – Maria

Then this will allow me to weather those storms that are coming in the long term of my career. Because the only thing that’s certain is that there’s going to be more uncertainty in our lives right now. Salaries are great, but two years ago, everyone was getting laid off. So those cycles of boom and bust are just going to continue forever. So I just think once you get in, then it’s like, oh, never mind. Now I’m too good for this school. Like, oh, my gosh, really? Maybe make a little note to yourself that you can refer back to at the end of things and say, oh, actually, that’s right. I really did love this school. This really was my dream school. And I’m okay with making that payment, and I’m okay with the fact that they only gave me a $50,000 scholarship or whatever.

 

[00:23:35.550] – John

That is so true, because you don’t know what’s going to happen 510 years from now. And the research shows that those with graduate degrees have far lower unemployment, are likely to be laid off than those with just undergraduate degrees. That’s one piece of research that’s absolutely certain. The other piece here. And this is a question I ask every Dean these days. What are you doing to make sure your MBA graduates are not unemployed by a computer algorithm? And I’m going to tell you that as artificial intelligence and machine learning will become a bigger and bigger part of the professional world, and they already are, but they will become much bigger. There are going to be many people who are at risk. And I actually think that an MBA degree that gives you that network and that trains you across all the different disciplines and really allows you to Hone your leadership skills, which a computer algorithm can never do. Meaning working in dynamic and diverse teams and leading people and motivating people. It’s something a robot or AI won’t be able to do. These are going to be essential to you in the future to make sure that you are not replaced by a computer algorithm.

 

[00:24:57.090] – John

And that’s the long term game that you should be playing, not the short term game. I think you two agree with me on that, right?

 

[00:25:06.210] 

Absolutely.

 

[00:25:08.490] – John

All right. So there we have it. We give you a bunch of questions you should ask to determine and help you decide whether or not an MBA is right for you. And for those of you who have been admitted to an MBA program and you’re having doubts because your employer is dangling a promotion or a raise in front of you, just remember this, okay? You need to invest in yourself. The brand is you. You can’t depend on your company in the future to look out for you. You’ve got to be on your own and your own. 2ft and one of the things that we’ve learned in the last quarter of a century, if not the last half century, when major layouts were occurring and professional employees were being thrown on the street by the tens of thousands in the 80s, is exactly that. You’ve got to be your own manager of your own brand. You have to invest in yourself. You have to bring your skills up to a high level so that you are highly desirable in the world of work. That’s one thing we know for sure. So when you’re thinking about, okay, I’ll take this promotion and I’ll defer likelihood is you’ll never go back or you’ll take the promotion and turn it down completely.

 

[00:26:21.900] – John

The opportunity to go to a great school, you probably won’t go back. And if you do, you have to go through this process all over again, and you may find it very difficult to get into a great school again. All right. I hope this is helpful to all of you out there. Oh, wait. I think Maria has another point to add.

 

[00:26:40.410] – Maria

I just had one final thought that occurred to me that I think speaking of the timing, the time will never be right. It’s very similar to the decision to have a child. Right? There’s no great time to have a child. There’s only less painful versus more painful times. And I think it says if you’ve decided at some point that let’s say having children is something you want to do, you kind of just have to take the plunge at a certain point and go for it. And yes, the decision to have a child will come at a significant cost that those who don’t go that route do not experience. But some people end up thinking that it’s worth it. There’s also a window that closes right after a certain point. If you’re three years out of College, maybe you can say, well, I’ll wait another year or two, but after a certain point, you can’t go back. You really can’t. And so I think, again, if you think about the long term of your life, then just sort of think about like, okay, would I rather have this degree or would I rather not? Would I rather have a child or not?

 

[00:27:40.820] – Maria

And similar to having a child, there is no right or wrong. People have very happy, very fulfilling, very wonderful lives with children without children, with pets, with children and pets with neither. It’s just about figuring out what you want and what’s best for you and not what your coworkers are telling you or your fellow, your frat brothers on Wall Street are telling you or whatever, listen to what you want and then follow it. Although I do think the MBA is expensive, it is still less expensive than having a child. So caveat on that. But I think that’s maybe I don’t know if this is a useful way to think about it, but it just occurred to me right at the end. Thank you an MBA. Sorry it involves a lot less diaper.

 

[00:28:29.690] – John

And since all three of us have children, I can say that there are probably times when we have at least a little bit of remorse here and there during the temper tantrum or during a time when your kid is sick and you’re feeling awful for them. You’re wondering, oh, my God, is this worth it?

 

[00:28:49.610] – Maria

Like I said, it’s a painful it’s a decision that comes with a cost.

 

[00:28:55.110] – John

All right. This makes the MBA a really easy decision for all of you out there. Clearly. Go for it. Hey, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast with my co host, Carolyn Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich villa.

 

Should You Get An MBA?
Maria |
May 4, 2022

[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 โ€˜23 and the class of โ€˜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

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