Should You Hire An MBA Admissions Coach?
Maria |
April 27, 2023

In today’s episode, we’re exploring a topic that many MBA applicants have likely pondered: should you hire an MBA admissions coach?

Navigating the MBA application process can be daunting, and it’s no secret that admission to a top business school is highly competitive. So, it’s not surprising that some applicants turn to admissions consultants for guidance and support. But is it worth the investment?

Together, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of working with an admissions coach, how to choose the right one, and whether or not it’s necessary for a successful MBA application. So, whether you’re considering hiring an admissions coach or simply curious about the process, this episode is for you. Let’s dive in!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.210] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with poets and fonts with my co hosts Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. We are here for our weekly podcast. As you know it. It’s called business casual. We recently published our 7th annual list of the most favorably reviewed admission consultants for MBA candidates. You can have a look at it. We actually listed 37 different admission consultants on this, and I think it’s a good occasion to sit back and say, well, who should really hire an admissions consultant? Is it really worth it? What can you expect if you spend the money to get one? What are the likely outcomes? How do you get the most from it? And after all, we have two superb coaches here who have different approaches. No doubt in part because Maria created this sort of a do it yourself style of applicant help through a series of videos that help you navigate the journey. But she also does handholding the same way that Caroline and her staff at Fortuna does. So why don’t we just ask a question? Who should benefit most from hiring an MBA admissions consultant. Caroline?

[00:01:27.120] – Caroline

I think anyone can benefit. So if you’ve got a common profile so if you are in one of the overrepresented pools, applying to business school. So, for example, if you’re a management consultant or you’re an engineer or perhaps an investment banker, so one of those pools where there are a lot of candidates applying with that pool, you’re going to face stiff competition then it can be very helpful because a coach can help you figure out what differentiates you. And of course, coaches have often worked with many clients like you before, and so they understand how other candidates may be presenting themselves and therefore what stands out. It may be difficult for you to understand as an individual, what are your particular strengths compared to other similar candidates in the pool. And so I think often the benefit of working with a coach is that broader perspective. And of course, at Fortuna, most of our coaches have worked in admissions committees and so have that experience of reading for the schools and have that depth of knowledge of the pools. So that context can be very useful for candidates who are looking to differentiate themselves in a very competitive environment.

[00:02:41.830] – Caroline

And then also candidates who perhaps have an unusual profile. We often work with candidates who are concerned that they perhaps have an A typical profile and they’re applying to business school, and they’re looking to communicate their relevance to the business school classroom and their career goals and show clearly. To the school, why they want to go to business school, how they’re going to leverage that experience and how they’re going to make the most of that and how they’re going to build their career going forward. And so I think there’s a lot of different scenarios where having a coach can be useful. There are different reasons why people come to us sometimes people come to us because they’re concerned about a particular element of their profile. So it may be that they’re concerned about some element of their undergraduate track record, or perhaps they haven’t got a brilliant GMAT score GRE, they’re not a great test taker, or perhaps they got laid off and they’re concerned about how that will look and how they best communicate that to business school. So that’s also quite a common scenario that a candidate may have some concern about some element of their profile and are not sure how to best present that and put their best foot forward.

[00:03:57.900] – Caroline

And when I was director of admissions at In Seattle, would sometimes see candidates who obviously had that concern, but kind of hoped that we wouldn’t notice and there would be a gap in their resume and they would sort of skate over it and clearly hoping that we wouldn’t notice and sort of would sweep it under their car, under the carpet, so to speak, in their application. And of course, the file reader will notice. And so it can be a good investment to get some good advice on how to address things, how to put your best foot forward. There may be things that you don’t need to address. Right? So just figuring out what to communicate and how to best communicate, I think that is often money well invested for candidates who are then going to go on, of course, to spend often hundreds of thousands of dollars on their MBA experience. And so even though it may seem like a big investment upfront in the coaching support, at the end of the day, it’s not a big part of the overall expenditure in the grand scheme of things for going to business school.

[00:05:10.020] – John

I’ve always kind of thought that if you are already in an MBA environment, and primarily here, I’m thinking you’re an analyst at a consulting firm and you’re surrounded by other MBAs, newly minted and otherwise, or you’re at an investment bank or a company that directly employs and makes up a key part of the MBA employment game, you can often just turn to them and get help for your application and advice for free. On the other hand, there are so many of those applicants in the pool that little things can tip them one way or the other. Maria, do you agree?

[00:05:48.000] – Maria

I completely agree. I think, as Caroline said, if you’re from an overrepresented group, it becomes that much more difficult to stand out in a way, because your resume is going to look almost identical to everyone else’s resume.

[00:05:59.240] – Caroline

Right.

[00:05:59.490] – Maria

Everyone who’s worked on an IPO as an analyst at an investment bank has a very similar bullet point. The size of the IPO might be different, the company might be different, but at the end of the day, the things that you’ve done are probably pretty similar to what everyone else has done. And the other thing I would say this goes not only for people who are working in environments that are full of MBAs, but just even if you have a friend or if you stumble upon someone online who happens to have an MBA who has put out a Shingle as an admissions consultant. I would just be very careful that simply because somebody attended a top business school does not mean that they necessarily know how to get into a top business school. They might have gotten in despite a terrible application. Right. There are many cases where I think people just truly have incredible accomplishments and the admissions reader is able to see through what is otherwise a terrible application to identify those diamonds in the rough and let them in anyway. And so somebody, if they are relatively inexperienced, they are not going to know if they got in because their application was stellar or because or despite the application.

[00:07:02.790] – Maria

So I would caution anyone, whether it’s someone you know or whether it’s someone who is for hire and they’re saying, oh, I’m only $20 an hour versus $400. Well, sometimes you get what you pay for. So I would be cautious of that.

[00:07:17.630] – John

And let’s face it, if you’re one of the 6% who got into Stanford, you don’t really know what separated you from the 94% who didn’t. You just don’t. There’s no way to know because you don’t know who you were compared against. You don’t know at that given moment what the mood of the admissions director of the committee was, how many previous people were already admitted who have similar qualifications as you do or are in the same profession. There are just so many unknowable things that it’s impossible for an MBA who is at Harvard or Stanford or Wharton or any school to know exactly why they were picked out of a pool where so many were denied. It’s just a reality. Maria, do you have advice in terms of how do you select an admissions consultant? All the firms do free consultations and there are different ways to go at this. And one way is your way where you’ve created an incredible platform of amazing videos, where it is cheaper to do that than have your handheld throughout the entire process by a consultant. But how do you make that choice and how do you search for one?

[00:08:32.070] – Maria

I think, as with all things in this process, self awareness is really key. So if you are someone who is self disciplined and has pretty good critical thinking skills and is a self starter, then a more DIY option like Applicant Lab might be a good choice. However, if you know that you respond better to having another person to speak with in real time and to follow up with you and to be available on the phone on a fairly regular.

[00:08:59.810] – John

Basis and to nudge you.

[00:09:02.830] – Maria

Exactly. To nudge you and to make sure, hey, just a reminder that the deadlines are coming up I mean, there can be like automated. You can always set up your own reminders in your own calendar system to remind you of certain deadlines and things, milestones that you should be reaching in your application process. But I think that just some people it’s the same thing. It’s very similar. One of the analogies I’ve been using is it’s similar to people who use a workout app versus someone who hires a personal trainer. Right. Some people can just get the workout app. I have the peloton app. It’s, I think $13 a month. I absolutely love it and it works for me. But other people respond much better to having a personal trainer that meets with them one on one, that motivates them and gets to know them at a very in depth level. So I really think that you just need to know yourself and know what you will respond to best and what your priorities are.

[00:09:56.050] – John

Well, the other point though is in many cases good candidates, solid candidates for a highly selected business school are incredibly busy. They’re typically working 50, 60, even more hours a week at a consulting firm or a bank. They can be traveling a lot, they got a lot going on in their social life. They’re young. So having someone to just remind you and push you along and keep you on a schedule probably is also very helpful, I would think.

[00:10:26.280] – Maria

Now I would just say to that though, that also the admissions consultants might not be available at the same time.

[00:10:32.350] – John

That you’re available oh, that’s true.

[00:10:34.560] – Maria

Versus a tool like mine, which is if you get off of that client site at 11:30 p.m. At night and you just want to try to do a little work on your application, an online tool that’s available 24/7 might also be a good option for you. Or a hybrid where you use a combination of tools and coaches at your disposal.

[00:10:54.220] – John

True. Now, what if you want to hire a full time consultant? There are people who work by the hour, there are people who work by the package. Most people work by package where it’s souped to nuts and you buy a three school package and they help you with three applications. How do you decide who to hire? I mean, it’s a wilderness out there. We have over 560 MBA admission consultants in our directory and I’m sure we don’t have all of them in the world. If I had to guess how many we didn’t have, maybe there’s another hundred out there who haven’t gone on our directory. That’s a lot of people for a relatively small pool of candidates. And I wonder, how do you figure out which fish to fry?

[00:11:41.650] – Caroline

Caroline well, I think those reviews that you publish are very useful and as you mentioned in your article, John, that you published yesterday, you do vet those reviews, right? So they are genuine time doing it. Yes. And so I think those are very useful to prospective candidates. I think that’s a great source of information for people who are looking for coaches. And then I would say scan the market. Look at I would encourage people to look at who is well established, who has good credentials. Who seems to have substantial experience in this business and then speak to different coaches and different firms and see who seems to be a good fit. Right. As you mentioned, all of the firms offer free consultations. That’s a great opportunity to speak with different coaches and get some probably useful free advice along the way. You can do a lot of research online and check out the websites of the firms and the BIOS of the coaches and see what experience they’ve got and read the reviews. But I think it’s also important to speak with someone and get a sense for your personal fit with an individual, because that chemistry is important.

[00:13:07.580] – Caroline

You’ll often be working with a coach over several months. I would say on average, we probably work with clients over it varies a lot, but probably on average, something like three or four months. And we get to know each other very well during that time. And it’s a very close relationship and the trust that you build up is very important. And so you want to make sure that you feel comfortable in opening up to that person and that their style of working suits you. And as Maria said, make sure that their availability works for you, that their communication style will work for you. If they’re in a different time zone, is that going to work for when you want them to be available? So definitely think about how you want the process to flow. Different people have different communication preferences and different styles of working, and discuss that openly with your prospective coach before you make a commitment.

[00:14:06.740] – John

Maria, if you were looking for a coach, what are the three most important questions to ask?

[00:14:11.410] – Maria

Can I ask the same question three times? Is that a lack of because oftentimes.

[00:14:16.830] – John

Journalists do that because they don’t get the answer they want the first time.

[00:14:22.210] – Maria

Look, I think as Caroline alluded to, I think experience there is no substitute for experience. I think after I certainly get better and better at this with every year that I do it. I think after you’ve spent after the first ten years or so, I think you start to develop a really keen sense for pattern matching, and you start to really start to develop that intuition for, okay, I’ve worked with people like you before, or I’ve seen people like you apply in the past, and here are the mistakes that I think they made, or here’s what I wish they would have done differently or even like. Recently, I was working with a young woman from Southeast Asia who was applying to schools that I thought were a bit too safe. And I said, look, why don’t you? I’ve seen people like you get into HBS before. Just I can’t guarantee you anything, obviously, but just throw in an application and just see what happens. And thankfully she got accepted. And I don’t do that very often. As I said, most people dramatically overestimate, but every while I encounter someone who underestimates their competitiveness. So anyway, I think working with someone who has a lot of experience just matters so much.

[00:15:29.050] – Maria

I also think that I do think that simply attending a top business school by itself is not sufficient. But I do think that it helps tremendously in terms of giving you that perspective. I mean, just having lived through that business school experience and having friends who have lived through it and knowing even all these years later, I look at what my friends and acquaintances and contacts have done with their careers and how they’ve used the MBA. And so if we’re sitting together and we’re working on okay, here’s how I think you should talk about your career plan for the MBA. Those of us who have gone through an MBA have a wealth of just first hand knowledge of what do those career paths actually look like and how hard is it to get that hedge fund job, hey, maybe you’re not going to get it, things of that nature. So I would say that those are my two things, but I multiply each one by one and a half. Yeah, that’s my three questions.

[00:16:24.570] – John

I didn’t really think of experience, although that’s so obvious because when I went to a cataract surgeon and they told me that they’ve done twelve before I ran out of the office.

[00:16:38.430] – Maria

Good thing you could while you could still see the exit.

[00:16:40.920] – John

Yes. So obviously if you’ve done hundreds of these or dozens or whatever over a number of years, you should be much better at it than someone who’s relatively new and has only been at this for a few years. That makes sense to me. Caroline, what are other questions I would be applicants should ask an admissions consultant that they are considering hiring.

[00:17:04.170] – Caroline

Yeah. So that they’re experienced. You may want to look at their credentials. You might want to ask about their success right. With different profiles or different schools. You might want to ask about their workload, how many clients they work with per round. Because you don’t want to be one of dozens and dozens of clients that they’re juggling. And then they can’t sort of remember who it was who did the exchange program to Costa Rica, and they get everything confused. Unfortunately, that does happen at some firms where people juggling very large workloads. So I would keep that in mind, and then otherwise I think that personal connection is important to establish. I would encourage you to speak to the coach that you’re considering working with and get a sense for what it would be like to work with them. Read the reviews about their former clients have written about them.

[00:18:07.450] – John

And I would think that if I have a background in, let’s say, private equity and I was able to get that job despite coming from a second tier undergraduate institution, I might ask the consultant, hey, have you had candidates like me and how did you help them and what were the outcomes? I think that that would be an obvious question. And Caroline, I wonder, what’s the most awkward question you’ve been asked during a free consultation by a would be client?

[00:18:41.190] – Caroline

Well, sometimes people ask if they’ll get a refund if they don’t get in. Unfortunately, we can’t guarantee outcomes.

[00:18:50.880] – Maria

Right.

[00:18:51.200] – Caroline

We do not control the process.

[00:18:53.370] – John

No, exactly.

[00:18:55.400] – Caroline

So even with the best will in the world, and even if we have great confidence in our clients and their chances, we do also do our best to be upfront with people about their chances when they come to us for those free consultations. We have no interest in pulling the wool over people’s eyes and giving them any false confidence about their chance of getting into the top schools if we don’t believe in it, because that’s setting them up for failure. And we care a lot about our reputation, so we’re very upfront with people about how we think they will fare in the process. But even if we think they’ve got a great chance, as you said, John, nobody knows who else is applying. At the same time, nobody knows what the pool will look like. Even if we have insights into how the poll looked last year or historically, it’s a fresh poll that’s coming through, and there is an element of chance for absolutely every candidate. And so for sure, we cannot offer any guarantees.

[00:20:04.530] – Maria

When I get asked a similar question. To continue the analogy of the personal training app or hiring a trainer, let’s say you decide that you want to run a Five K race, and you’re like, I’m going to get in shape for this race. And you either do an online app that’s couched to Five K that teaches you, or you hire someone to be your running coach. And you say to that, Coach, can you guarantee that I’m going to win this race? No one can guarantee that because you don’t know if it’s going to be raining that day or if it’s going to be 120 degrees. You don’t know who else is going to be in the race. Maybe all of these previous marathon winners and Olympic athletes have all decided to enter the race at the same time as you. But the one thing that we can all guarantee you is that you will do better if you prepare with actual professional help than you would have done otherwise. And I think that’s the one guarantee I think any one of us in this field who has a depth of experience can absolutely offer.

[00:20:57.860] – John

Yeah, that’s a good analogy. It makes total sense to me how much can you expect to pay? What does it cost to hire someone at Fortune?

[00:21:06.730] – Caroline

Well, it depends what you want to sign up for. I would say I think about two thirds of our clients sign up for the all inclusive packages that you mentioned, John, as you said, the soup to nuts. And it also depends on who you work with. So, as you’d highlighted Emma, who is top of your ranking? So, for example, to work with Emma or to work with one of our other senior coaches for three schools, which is a common choice, it’s about $10,000.10 and a half, $1,000. Often clients will start working with us on one or two schools and then decide if they want to add on more schools later on. Sometimes people will start working with us on an hourly basis to give it a try and then decide if they want to upgrade to a full school package. We try to be very flexible. We don’t penalize people for starting on a smaller package and then upgrading later. It’s very flexible.

[00:22:02.830] – John

And what do you get for paying for a full package? What are the kinds of advice, what are the kinds of areas that you help someone with?

[00:22:12.170] – Caroline

Well, so it is designed to cover everything that you need to cover from start to finish. And so that will depend somewhat according to which school you’re applying to. But we always start with a strategy development process, so that includes a deep dive into your background, so everything that might possibly be relevant to your business school application. So all of your academic experience, your professional experience, all of your extracurriculars, your career goals, your values, your dreams, everything that could possibly be relevant so that we can start to figure out what may be the strengths that you would want to showcase in your application and what may be the interesting stories that you have to tell and also what may be the weaknesses that the school might be concerned about. And then we start to think about how could you be proactive in mitigating those and then also part of that strategy development process. We’ll look at your recommender strategy and who are your options for your recommendations and how can you effectively mobilize your recommenders. And then there’s an iterative process of developing the various elements of the application. And so, for example, we’ll brainstorm with you on the essays, and it’s always up to the client to do the writing right?

[00:23:42.310] – Caroline

We are not a firm that will do writing for you, but we definitely give you feedback and help you along the way and make sure that you get to the point where you’ve really put your best foot forward in the process. And then, as I said, different schools have different requirements. So some schools have video elements to the application, and so we will help you prepare for those. We have a resume doctor on the team who will work with you on refining your resume. We will spend quite a bit of time on reviewing the data form, the application form itself, because you’d be surprised at how many of those forms I read as an admissions director where people have made silly mistakes, putting today’s date as their date of birth or something ridiculous. And then of course, interview prep is very important, right? I mean, interviewing is a skill. It’s something you can practice, you can get better at it. And so putting you through your paces for the vast majority of candidates is a very useful preparation. And different schools have different formats for the interviews, as we’ve discussed on the podcast before. So we will brief you on what to expect and help you prepare for that.

[00:24:58.430] – Caroline

And then if at the end of the day you get, for example, say you get waitlisted at school, then we will advise you on what you can do to maximize your chance of getting off the waitlist and what you should do and what you should not do. Right. There are things that you should not do to annoy the admissions office. It’s designed to sort of accompany you through the entire process and hopefully get you to the point of getting into your dream score.

[00:25:29.220] – John

And then if you are lucky enough to get multiple acceptances, you will advise on how to make the decision, right?

[00:25:37.840] – Caroline

Yes. And sometimes people in a situation where they have an offer of a scholarship from one school but not from another school, and then how do they make that decision? And so, yes, there’s offered that sort of decision management at the end and how do they make those trade offs for sure.

[00:25:57.490] – John

Maria, you have something to add on this?

[00:26:01.250] – Maria

No, I think Caroline pretty much covered the soup to nuts aspect of it. And in the lab, I’ve got lessons for all of those things as well. So however you want to get your advice, there’s an option for you.

[00:26:14.950] – John

And I’m imagining too, that let’s face it, when you’re working that closely with someone over something that is that important to them, you become more than a coach, you become a cheerleader, you become a mentor, you even become a shrink at times. Is that true, Maria?

[00:26:35.230] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. And I think one sometimes a stereotype that people have of Applicant Lab that you never like, I’m manning the support inbox pretty much every day. So it’s not like you just sign up and then you never talk to a real person.

[00:26:48.450] – John

We know how obsessive and intense you are.

[00:26:52.630] – Maria

I’m going to take that as a compliment. I’m going to interpret that in a positive way. Thank you very much. But yeah, no, absolutely. Look, sometimes people we could do several podcast episodes just devoted to some of the sometimes people I think get super nervous about, let’s say off the top of my head, an interview went really badly because she sneezed at the moment when I was talking about that. People read so much into the interview sometimes, and sometimes they’re right. Sometimes the interview did go really badly and they’re like, should I email 100 people at the school to tell them how? And I’m like, no, don’t do that. Right. Or sometimes the interview actually didn’t go that badly and they think it did, but it really didn’t. And so it’s my job to be like, look, you did your best and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal, but let’s keep moving. Or sometimes people get really obsessed with rankings as we talk about we talk about rankings all the time here. And I’ll say to them, look, you can achieve amazing goals from all sorts of good schools. I’m not just saying that as fluff to make you feel better.

[00:27:56.310] – Maria

I legitimately mean it. Let’s look at the career reports. Let’s look at the employers who come to campus. You’re going to be fine. This is not a make or break, a make or break thing. So I do try to provide that sort of support and also that tough love and anything in between whenever needed.

[00:28:13.710] – John

Yes, I wonder how often assignments break. And this is what I mean. You sign up with a particular consultant and you’re into the process for a few weeks and you just realize the fit isn’t there, the chemistry is not right. Does that happen? In what percentage of cases does that happen?

[00:28:34.690] – Caroline

Caroline it is very rare because we do our best to make sure that there is a good fit up front, but occasionally it might happen and then we will work with the client to figure out a good solution for them. And it does occasionally happen that we’ll match them with a different coach. So we want it to be a successful and positive experience for them. And also I would say that we’re trying to make it a positive experience, not just in terms of the outcome of them getting into business school, but hopefully it’s also a useful learning journey and a useful process of reflection for them. And what we often hear from clients when they get to business school is that they feel that all of that coaching and that reflection that they went through in the admissions process has helped them to clarify their goals and figure out what is it that they really want to get out of the MBA when they’re there. And they are much more focused in using their time and they feel more confident about choosing their electives and figuring out which companies to apply to because of the coaching that they went through and that sort of reflective process that we went through with them.

[00:29:48.480] – Caroline

So hopefully there are multiple benefits to it and therefore the relationship is very important and that’s something that we do care deeply about. So we will do our best to make sure that it is positive experience, not just. In terms of the final outcome, but the experience and the process along the way.

[00:30:09.830] – John

Is there any proof that if you employ an admissions consultant, you may be more likely to get scholarship aid?

[00:30:15.870] – Caroline

Well, I don’t know if there are any studies that show it’s difficult to control for, but I mean, certainly we do see our clients getting generous sponsorship and scholarship support. So I would speculate that because they’re well prepared candidates and they are submitting strong applications, then they are in a better position to benefit from financial aid.

[00:30:43.390] – John

Obviously, that well more than offsets the cost of the fees. Although we just did a story on one MBA admissions coach who is now charging $20,000 for a three school package, which a pretty hefty sum that’s almost double what Emma Bond you mentioned earlier would get. Is $20,000 too much for an admission coach for three schools?

[00:31:11.830] – Caroline

Well, I don’t know. It’s a lot of money.

[00:31:16.940] – John

You’re on the spot, aren’t?

[00:31:20.390] – Caroline

Well, look, I guess she has a lot of people who want to work with her, and it’s a case of supply and demand, right? So if she has enough people who want to work with her and who are willing to pay that, then that’s the law of the market. Right?

[00:31:37.580] – John

Indeed. Said like a true MBA. Now, Maria, your option, the bargain option, is a lot cheaper, but as you point out, you have to have self discipline and do it. How much does your service cost?

[00:31:55.010] – Maria

So I have used the average hourly rate of other admissions results of my caliber as the benchmark for what to charge for all of Applicant Lab. So as of right now, the fee is 349. And that gives you one year access to all of my lessons and all of my interactive exercises. That includes the interview, the resume, the essays, the recommendation, all of that stuff. And then there’s also the ability you can work with people. You mentioned before that sometimes we become quasi therapists, but we also become friends sometimes with our clients. And in fact, I have many former clients who went through the Applicant Lab process, went to business school and now help out. They’ve been trained by me. They know the system, they know my advice, and so they also can help as well. And the one thing we do say, though, is that you have to go through the lab lessons first before you contact us because we charge less, but with the understanding that it’s a team effort and that the client has done a lot of heavy lifting already. Right. If you send us a resume that has a huge summary of qualifications at the top, that takes up half the page.

[00:32:59.590] – Maria

I know you haven’t read my advice, and so then we actually are like, you need to reschedule this session because we’re not going to waste our time. So it’s a different model. But like I said, it’s similar to personal training. Or online tax. You can hire an accountant to do your complicated taxes for you, or you can use software to help you. I mean, there’s something for everyone. And actually, several people have contacted me to say that they’ve used Applicant Lab in conjunction with a high touch concierge consultant. Maybe they do the concierge consultant for a few hours and then use the lab to supplement that. Or they might do a three school package with a consultant and then apply to schools four through seven with I mean, there’s all kinds of different ways to do it.

[00:33:43.100] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. So, last words on this, and I’m going to assume that Maria, you got into Harvard, and Caroline, you got into INSEAD without the help of an admissions consultant. If you were doing it all over again, would you hire a coach?

[00:34:04.810] – Caroline

Caroline yeah, I didn’t even know that such a thing existed when I applied back in 2002, which is kind of embarrassing, but I don’t think that there was much it was a long time ago also, when I applied, there wasn’t the sort of overwhelming amount of information online that is out there now. And I think that that adds more stress to candidates because there’s so much more to navigate through now than there was when I applied. It’s a blessing and a curse, the Internet, right? I mean, if you know what you’re looking for and you know how to find it, it can be great. But if you’re coming to the world of MBA admissions for the first time, it can be very difficult to know what are the good sources of information and what do you need to know, what don’t you need to know, and how do you navigate through all of that overwhelming deluge of information out there. And that’s something that I think a coach or platform like Applicant Lab can help with making sure that you get the right information and you’re not wasting your time. And as you said, John, often MBA candidates have very demanding day jobs and they just don’t have the time to be barking up the wrong tree.

[00:35:32.610] – Caroline

And they want to be very efficient in how they use their time when they are doing their research and when they’re working on their application. So in today’s world, yeah, I would definitely hire a coach. I think that there’s a lot of value to gain. And looking back, of course, I can see all of the mistakes that I made in my own application and thank God they let me in anyway. I was probably one of those diamonds, maybe not even a diamond, but something in the rough, as Maria says.

[00:36:08.310] – John

Maria, would you hire a coach if you had to do it over again?

[00:36:11.670] – Maria

If I were applying now, I think I would, because as Caroline was saying, the applicant pool has become infinitely more sophisticated and more savvy with each year that goes by. And so I was also applying in 2002, and there was the Business Week message boards, for example, that’s someone I know, someone that I’ve heard of, may have been working at Business Week at the time, but I mean, really, it was like one message board pretty much, and that was kind of it. And so we didn’t know what we didn’t know. I also agree that I look back sometimes on some of the stuff I submitted and I cringe, right? So when I say something like, just because somebody got into business school doesn’t automatically make them it, I’m speaking about myself. My own essays have some pretty bad stuff in them that I wish I could redo. I think my one parting thought would be I think the reason why the services that people like Fortuna and Caroline and that I and all the others, the reason why we provide, why there’s so much demand for it, and why we do genuinely provide value is that applying to business school is an exercise unlike any other you’ve ever done.

[00:37:24.930] – Maria

It’s not like applying to college. They are not looking for the same things that college admissions officers are looking for. It’s not like applying for a job. They are not interested in your ability to do a job tomorrow the way a hiring manager is. They are more interested in looking at your broader leadership potential over the next 20 years, 30 years, and hoping that you will become an alumnus or an alumna that will go out and make the school proud, et cetera, et cetera. So because it’s such a unique marketing exercise, just because someone has been successful in, say, the college admissions process or they’ve been successful in getting a highly competitive job, it’s not the same process. And that’s why I think people are always when you read the reviews online, when people express really heartfelt and genuine gratitude to their admissions consultants, it’s because of this. It’s because we unlock for them. Here’s how it’s different from anything you’ve ever done before, and we’re going to guide you on what to do and what not to do to maximize your chances of getting in.

[00:38:22.610] – John

Great point. Okay, for all of you out there who have an interest in hiring a consultant, do look over our list. Not necessarily to pick someone from the list, but to get an idea who’s out there. There are many different firms, many different consultants, many different styles. We have a directory where you could say, hey, I want to have a consultant who used to work at McKinsey or Goldman Sachs or Microsoft, or I want a consultant with ten plus years, or I want a consultant who’s going to guide me into London Business School in particular, or Harvard or Stanford. You can get a wealth of knowledge out of the directory and talk to three. Ask the questions that both Maria and Caroline suggested that you ask before you make your choice, and know that you’re going to have your hand held, you’re going to be nudged at the right time. And there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re going to submit a better application and present yourself in a more professional way if you do. All right, Caroline and Maria, thanks so much for your insights and help. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Should You Hire An MBA Admissions Coach?
Maria |
April 27, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

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