Should You Use ChatGPT To Draft An MBA Essay?
Maria |
March 29, 2023

The popularity of ChatGPT, a language model developed by OpenAI, has been on the rise among MBA applicants for its remarkable ability to produce persuasive and coherent text. In this episode, John, Maria, and Caroline delve into the advantages and disadvantages of using this technology in the admissions process, while also addressing the potential ethical concerns that may arise.

Our hosts also provide a broader perspective on the changing landscape of MBA admissions, highlighting the role that technology is playing in shaping the future of the industry.

Whether you’re an experienced business professional, a prospective MBA applicant, or simply intrigued by the intersection of technology and education, this episode of Business Casual is a must-listen. Tune in to join an engaging and informative conversation on the use of ChatGPT in MBA admissions.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.210] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, a weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne, the editor of P and Q. And with me are my co hosts, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria, of course, is the founder of Applicant Lab and Caroline is the board former admissions director of INSEAD and the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. You will have been buried under a rock. If you haven’t heard about ChatGPT, there has been a tremendous number of stories written on this artificial intelligence ChatGPT, and we can tell you, we can do really amazing and incredible things. On a recent visit to Goizueta Business School, I sat down with the admissions director, Melissa Rapp, who, out of curiosity, started typing into ChatGPT the leadership question that Goizueta asked of all its MBA applicants. Her conclusion what came back was pretty good. Sure, it felt a bit canned and there was nothing personalized about it, but it was pretty darn good. It was organized well, it was well written, and it’s going to be a problem, I think, for a lot of admissions officers who have weighed essays in an important way to judge the qualifications of a candidate for business school.

 

[00:01:38.750] – John

So one of the things that we’ve done, we’ve asked Maria and Caroline to play with ChatGPT. I’ve played with it as well, and we’re going to tell you what we discovered. Maria, why don’t you go first? What question did you ask ChatGPT?

 

[00:01:55.050] – Maria

Sure. So I decided to ask it what I think is probably one of the hardest, if not the hardest, essay question in MBA admissions, and that is Stanford’s. What matters most to you and why? Admittedly, I started a bit too philosophical. I asked ChatGPT to tell me what should matter most to me, and it very rightfully pointed out that I am simply an AI. But it actually gave me he’s like it. It actually said, well, here are some ways that some people think about prioritizing things in their lives. And I was like, wow, this is very therapeutic. I think that admissions officers and therapists maybe should start to be concerned about this potential. But so anyway, I then asked it more specifically, okay, how should I write the essay for the Stanford thing? When I first gave it just very vague information, I got back what I would call a cotton candy answer. It was very sweet, but ultimately very empty, so it sure sounded nice. It had a lot of good things. I told it, what if community matters most to me? And so it came back with only let me see if I can find it.

 

[00:03:02.170] – Maria

We are all interconnected when one person suffers, we all suffer when one person thrives. We all benefit. By investing in our communities, we create a ripple effect of positivity. So, hey, look, ripple effects of positivity. Sounds great. The thing is that there were no actual examples there was nothing concrete. Like I said, it was essentially cotton candy. Like it looks sweet from far away and it is at first, but then when you dig into it you’re like, well there’s nothing here, it’s just air. So then I decided to give it more details about me, sort of a hypothetical me. And I created a composite of a sort of a typical applicant to Stanford, someone being raised in a military dictatorship, who worked with the government and protested the government and now is a sustainability expert and has done all this stuff with sustainability. And then I asked it to write the essay around that. What it did. It did some things well and it did some things that obviously it couldn’t possibly do. What it did do well was it took the information that I gave it about myself and it did structure an essay around those things.

 

[00:04:06.000] – Maria

It actually put together a few connections that even I had not told it to make. So for example, one of the things I told it was that I had led protests against the government when I was in college, but I didn’t say any, and that I risked getting arrested for doing so, but I didn’t say anything else. And then ChatGPT filled in the details of I knew that silence would only perpetuate the problems that plagued my community and through this I inspired others to join the fight for change. So I had not said anything in my prompt about inspiring others and silence was not an answer, but it somehow was able to make that conclusion on its own and I thought that was actually really impressive. And the other thing was that the details I gave it, the original thing I said to it was what matters most to me is my community. But then the details I gave it were more aligned with someone who is committed to a career in sustainability. And then at the end what it did is it very smartly tied together those two things, that creating positive change in my community is what matters most to me.

 

[00:05:16.840] – Maria

And the way I think I should do this is through sustainability because without the environment, whatever the environment is really important for all of us. And so I thought that was really smart. Now obviously what it couldn’t do is it didn’t provide any deeper information beyond what I had given it. The other thing I will say, so that’s sort of a downside. But the other thing I will say also is that when I asked it just to just rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it every time it said the same things, but it was able to phrase it in slightly different ways. So I thought that that was really interesting, that it’s very fluent with taking a concept and writing one sentence that expresses that concept well and then writing a completely different sentence that also expresses that same concept well, just with rearranging words and choosing synonyms and what have you. So overall I actually think it’s a very good tool for actually writing something out. Where I think it fails is it doesn’t really provide any inner, deeper insight into someone’s thought process or their values or anything like that. But of course it can only work with what it’s given.

 

[00:06:32.990] – John

Nonetheless, were you surprised at how good it was or disappointed?

 

[00:06:39.970] – Maria

I have been surprised. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of weeks and the first time I used it for something I thought, oh wow, within moments it comes back with a fully fleshed out, grammatically correct, well worded essay.

 

[00:07:00.150] – John

You wonder if an admissions official who spends I guess the average time spent in a first read is only like, I think twelve minutes or so. So an admissions official with a pile of application essays in front of them, having to get through, all of them rushing through. If you provide enough answers and background to ChatGPT, would that person really be able to tell that it was created by a ChatGPT, do you think?

 

[00:07:31.170] – Maria

I mean, I think the thing it definitely lacked was sort of a personal or personality or a voice, so it was pretty dry. So I do think that applicants going forward should try to even harder to incorporate some aspects of their personality into it because it was a little bit sort of academic in its writing. I don’t know if an admissions officer will be able to tell. I think this is why the interviews are so important and I think it’s a shame that the new GMAT is getting rid of the analytical writing assessment because I just feel like when you actually see how someone writes under a time pressure you’re going to get a much better sense of who they actually are. Whether or not the admissions officer can tell or not, I don’t know. But I also think that it’s not, as you yourself have quoted, Dee Leopold, the former head of admissions for Harvard has said, and we’ve all repeated amongst ourselves many times, it’s not an essay writing contest. The admission does not go to the person who writes the most beautiful prose. The admission goes to the person who has accomplished the most impressive things in the best way.

 

[00:08:39.820] – Maria

So whether or not we can tell if it’s written by the person or written by their cousin or written by ChatGPT, at the end of the day I think it’s going to be what they’ve accomplished that’s going to matter most in terms of making that assessment.

 

[00:08:53.910] – John

Yeah, very true. Now Caroline, you fed it one of the INSEAD questions, right?

 

[00:08:58.990] – Caroline

Yes, I did. So I fed it the candid description essay from INSEAD. So the school asks the candidate to give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors which have influenced your personal development. So what I found is very similar experience to Maria, so I only got a sensible response once I started giving it more and more details. Right. So you have to have figured out what are the key elements of your story and what are the key points you want to get across before it’s able to draft anything that is usable. So the point where I found it most useful was when I took a rough draft, fed that in, and asked it to improve the style and reduce the word count. And then it spat something out that had INSEAD had a smoother style and it had reduced the word count, and it did that very quickly. I also found that the style was very bland, as you’ve both said. So definitely it read like something that lacked the individual personality. And so that’s not something that I would want to submit to a school by any means.

 

[00:10:14.150] – Caroline

So I think it can be useful tool at a certain point in the process. But until AI can stare into your soul and tap into your memories and your life experience, it’s not going to be able to tell you. What are the things that you should be telling Business School and what is relevant about your past experience and what are the key achievements that Harvard Business School or INSEAD are going to be particularly interested in. And that’s one of the things that, as coaches, we spent a lot of time on, is understanding a candidate’s background and delving into that and helping them understand what are their key strengths, what are their weaknesses, how do they showcase their strengths, and how can they effectively mitigate their weaknesses. And once you have that understanding yes. Then maybe this can play a role in helping you develop some of those drafts. And it could be useful in that process. But I still think garbage in, garbage out, right? You have to know what you’re doing, and there has to be some intelligence in the prompt, I think, that you’re giving it. And you have to understand the context of what sort of response you’re looking for, because there are all sorts of disclaimers on this tool.

 

[00:11:35.760] – Caroline

Right. There’s no guarantee that what it’s generating is accurate, or there could be all sorts of issues with it. You’ve got to bring your own intelligence to it, especially if the stakes are high, which they are when you’re preparing your application for business school.

 

[00:11:58.490] – John

Very true. I’m interested in the difference that you pointed out between editing and writing. So when you asked it to improve an existing draft, you thought it did a pretty decent job.

 

[00:12:12.170] – Caroline

Yes, I did. Although it was good at cutting down the word count, it made some awkward phrases less awkward. It had some nice turns of phrase. So I did find that useful, I think, particularly for a non native English speaker, that could be quite useful in the process. But then again, it did read the word that came to mind when I read it was bland. Right?

 

[00:12:42.770] – John

Yeah, exactly.

 

[00:12:44.630] – Caroline

And as Maria said, it’s not an essay writing competition. So the admissions officer and if you’re not a native English speaker and you make the occasional grammar mistake, or you have a turn of phrase that is not perfect, that’s fine. As Maria said, what they’re concerned about is your track record and your potential. Right. And they’re less concerned about whether you are able to write a sparkling essay. And so I don’t think people should get too hung up on the expression of how that’s put down on the paper. The key thing is what are the important elements of your story that you want to get across to business school and how do you want to convey that?

 

[00:13:27.970] – John

Now, since you have read, I would guess, tens of thousands of essays, both as the director of admissions at INSEAD and as a consultant, I wonder if you put your admissions director hat back on. Do you think you could be fooled by ChatGPT?

 

[00:13:47.130] – Caroline

Well, the application has various elements. Right. And that’s one of the reasons why schools have not just essays, but they also have interviews and now they have video questions, and there’s the GMAT and other recommendations. And one of the reasons they have these different elements is they are like pieces of puzzle that come together, and there needs to be some coherence in that. And so if the essays are perfectly written, but then the verbal GMAT is poor, very poor. Right. Or there are concerns expressed by the interviewer, or there is a video response that isn’t fantastic, they will be looking at how that cross checks. It may be feasible that, as you say right. You cited the admissions director from Emory and how it was able to spew out pretty impressive career goals. So it could be that for some element of the application, it would be able to come up with something that would be a useful addition to your application, but it can’t fake the whole thing, I think. And there are cross checks in that process that I think will still be valuable. Having said that, I think the schools are struggling to figure out how to deal with this.

 

[00:15:07.940] – Caroline

And we’ve reached out to a number of schools and they’ve said, we’ll figure it out. We’ll get back to you later. I think they’re all not quite sure how this is going to play out right now, so we’ll wait and see how they respond. But I think there is a lot of concern about this, and I don’t think they have figured out their policies yet.

 

[00:15:29.520] – John

Yeah. And Melissa Rapid quizueta said that of course they’re going to still look at essays and count them, but she is inclined to put more weight than has been put in the past on the face to face interview and their verbal essay question, which has to be answered on the spot in 1 minute, in front of a camera, where obviously ChatGPT can play no role at all. I assume. Although one would think you could just type the darn question in and out. You could read it off the screen in another window. But clearly I think that would also run into the same problem that we’ve been talking about. You’re going to get a bland cotton candy kind of answer that’s not very personalized and as soon as someone recognized that it’s that canned, it’s going to get your application tossed in the waste basket pretty quickly. Now, just like Caroline and Maria did, I picked an essay question as well to see what would happen and I decided I wasn’t going to give the ChatGPT any information about me and I was going to ask it my favorite MBA application essay question, which is Duke’s Fuqua’s goal of Business 750 Word question.

 

[00:16:55.910] – John

Share with us important life experiences, your hobbies, achievements, fun facts or anything that helps us understand what makes you who you are and list them in 25 different bullet points. So what was kind of interesting is ChatGPT just instead of refusing to answer and saying I don’t know enough about you to answer the question properly, it made stuff up. It created an entirely fictional portrait of who I am. And I have to say I kind of admired this person. I’m going to read some of the things that it wrote. Growing up in a multicultural household, I learned to appreciate and respect different cultures and ways of life. Now that’s really right up the alley and business school admissions these days. Another one. One of my biggest hobbies is hiking. I enjoy exploring new trails and pushing myself physically. Or how about this one? I have a strong interest in sustainability and have worked on several projects to promote eco friendly practices in my community. Or this one I am a certified scuba diver and love exploring the underwater world. Now of course, if anyone submitted something like this without having given ChatGPT any information about yourself and your interest, I think that you would pretty quickly be discovered as a fake.

 

[00:18:33.330] – John

There are so many incredible things here like I am a licensed pilot and enjoy flying small planes in my spare time where I am fluent in three languages english, Spanish and Mandarin. I imagine if you submitted that and then you showed up and were admitted, it would be pretty damn embarrassing, wouldn’t it?

 

[00:18:54.330] – Maria

Especially when that plane is starting to crash and everyone turns to you to save them and you can’t do it.

 

[00:19:03.150] – John

The other thing to consider here is that this is really like the first iteration of this ChatGPT. There is a competitive race now going on among Google, Microsoft. The company that obviously put this out will be Facebook as well, and other players. And that competitive race will likely result in fairly dramatic and quick improvement in what a ChatGPT can produce. And so I wonder a year from now, while we may be thinking that these essays answers are bland and cotton candy and kind of boring and almost academic, I wonder a year from now if you include just a few sentences about yourself, how well they might be structured and portrayed. And I wonder if, frankly, some of them could be quite compelling. It doesn’t mean we’re not endorsing the view that a candidate should use this for applying to business school. I think that would be a huge mistake, but it is surprising how good it is already and I think it’s only going to get better. And then the issue is, what impact will it have on admissions long term? Caroline, what do you think? Do you agree with Melissa that schools are going to not eliminate essays, but maybe weigh them a little bit less and maybe over index things like the face to face interview video questions, which may become more apparent and more common across the board, instead of just a few schools leaning on your recommendations more your undergraduate transcript, your work experience, and just putting a little less weight on this.

 

[00:20:58.180] – John

Or do you think it’s not going to make a difference?

 

[00:21:00.770] – Caroline

I think that the video questions could become more widespread. I think the schools that use those already find them very useful and we’ve discussed that in the past, that they give a wonderful glimpse into the candidate and how they think and how they communicate, and that’s difficult to fake for the time being. So I wouldn’t be surprised if those become more widespread. Perhaps we will see fewer essays in the future. I mean, many of the schools don’t have that many essays already in Sierra has quite a few essays, but it’s one of the outliers. So the schools already are relying on multiple elements to assess candidates, so I think that they will continue to do that. They’ll just have to be very conscious that they need to cross check things. And it’s a very interesting point that Maria made about how perhaps in the context of ChatGPT and so on, it’s a shame that the GMAT has dropped the essay element, because that could have been a very useful cross check as well for the schools.

 

[00:22:10.650] – John

Yeah, true. And I bet you at the time that the new test is being created, there was no ChatGPT and this was not an issue, and now suddenly it can be an issue.

 

[00:22:24.320] – Caroline

Yeah.

 

[00:22:25.060] – John

Maria, what’s your takeaway on this and how ultimately admission directors will evaluate candidates?

 

[00:22:32.190] – Maria

Yeah, I agree with Caroline. I have long been a champion of the video essays. I mean, even if you do type into ChatGPT, like, oh, quick, I’ve just been out, I have to give a 32nd answer about a teamwork thing. It’s probably not going to know enough details about you to come up with a good answer in time. And also most people, unless they’ve had significant theater training, I mean, if there’s a ChatGPT answer right in front of them and their webcam, they are reading it, it’s going to be pretty obvious. You can see their eyeballs moving across the page from side to side. And so it’s really obvious when someone is reading something on screen, right? Again, unless they have had a lot of training with theatrical script memorization and performance. So I actually think I would almost advise people right now to almost avoid the temptation to use this because let’s say you are a non native English speaker and you submit a perfectly flawless ChatGPT polished essay, it’s going to look fake. And so, on the contrary, I would almost think that admissions officers might give some points for genuine authenticity if the essay really does reflect what this person communicates like in real life.

 

[00:23:47.150] – Maria

And so I would actually avoid it, I think, because my worry is that it’s just everyone’s going to sound so sanitized that it will at least at best you might sound bland, but at worst it might be sort of suspicious, like, wait a minute, is this person cheating by using something like ChatGPT? Because like Caroline said, their verbal score on the GMAT wasn’t that high or they only took a few classes in English in college and they didn’t get very good grades or things like that. So I don’t know, I would actually avoid the temptation to use it even for editing.

 

[00:24:26.470] – John

Yeah, interesting. One of the other things that I did here was to ask the Harvard Business School question, because that’s pretty tricky question in the sense that they’re only asking you for more information that’s not already in your application. And I only gave it a little detail. I said I was an entrepreneur of a digital media company and that’s all I said. And it’s kind of interesting. It even had a salutation it’s a Dear Admissions committee on the answer. And after that it said, I am thrilled to submit my application for the Harvard Business School MBA program and I appreciate the opportunity to elaborate on what I believe makes me a strong candidate for the program. And then it goes on and it says, one of the most formative experiences of my life was growing up in a family of entrepreneurs. From a young age, I was exposed to the challenges and rewards of running a business, and I was inspired by the dedication and hard work that my family put into their work, blah, blah, blah. So it just extrapolated that from me telling that I was an entrepreneur of a digital media company and that I wanted to apply to Harvard and then gave Harvard’s question.

 

[00:25:54.770] – John

It’s a worrisome tool. You’re right. It’s bland, it’s canned, it’s cotton candy. But the more information you give it, the more specific it tends to get. And I would think that other iterations are going to make essays a very difficult thing to evaluate by admission committees and admission directors in schools. I totally agree with Maria. Don’t use it. It will probably ruin the spontaneity and the genuineness of what you do want to write, so you might want to play with it for other reasons, like tell me what I should eat tonight, or give me a recipe that you’ll think I’ll enjoy or where should I travel on my next vacation. But don’t ask it to answer an essay question where your answer could determine whether or not you actually get into your dream school. Maria and Caroline, you both agree with that?

 

[00:26:54.470] – Caroline

Sounds good.

 

[00:26:56.210] – John

And we should ask it okay. If you’re interested in going to business school, what podcast should you listen to? I hope it says Business Casual. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You have been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

 

Should You Use ChatGPT To Draft An MBA Essay?
Maria |
March 29, 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 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

New around here? Iโ€™m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I โ€œscaled myselfโ€ by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read ourย rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!