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.

 

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Should You Use ChatGPT To Draft An MBA Essay?
Maria |
March 29, 2023

Full Episode Transcript:

John Byrne: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. We want to talk about international students. Schools are now reporting that a good number of their international recruits who were admitted to programs this fall haven’t been able to show up or have changed their mind.

At the University of Illinois, the school, the Gies College of Businesses, lost about 200 international students in its Master of Finance and Master of Business Analytics programs causing a $7 million hit. To their budget at UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 40 students didn’t show up who were admitted, and that’s resulting in two and a half to $3 million hit on their budget this year.

Both of these things have occurred before the announcement of a hundred thousand dollars tax on H one B Visa. Which will make it more difficult for many employers [00:01:00] to hire international students and keep them in the US for an extended period of time. And we’re getting the new class reports of the, of the new cohorts of students who’ve arrived on campus in the fall of this year.

And Carnegie Mellon is. Down 30% for their international cohort over the past two years. UCLA Anderson School is down 25% over the past two years, and schools are preparing for the worst because of the H one B Visa decision which could affect future employment. Caroline and Maria, my cohosts are in the market helping people get into the best schools in the world.

And Caroline, what do you think?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yeah, definitely seeing concern among international candidates and people holding off on applying for the US schools. So it’s really a shame. I think the international schools, particularly the schools like Inea and London Business School and the other top.[00:02:00]

International European programs will benefit, they’ll get talent that might otherwise have come to the us, which is great for those schools. And I’m very fond of those schools, but it is sad as from the US perspective for sure. On the other hand, you could also take the perspective that.

If you do have options for your career post MBA that don’t require that you absolutely have to stay in the US as an international candidate, then now could be a very good time to apply, right? Because definitely application volume will be down and schools will be perhaps. More open to candidates that might otherwise have been waitlisted or rejected in the past.

For some candidates, this is actually a fantastic opportunity to get into a top school, but from, for, at least from the school’s perspective, it is a shame because, I’ve experienced firsthand the value of a very internationally diverse classroom and the value that brings with a [00:03:00] diversity of perspectives that enriches the learning experience so much for everybody.

Enriches the debate and bring so much to the academic experience as well as the the network and the social experience. So it’s everybody’s loss, right?

John Byrne: Very true.

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: And I think it’s a very myopic perspective that the US government takes that. There needs to be a more of a refocus at US educational institutions on the domestic market because those international applicants bring a lot to the domestic students in enriching their learning and enriching their network.

Of course bring a huge value to the US economy when they stay. So there are very impressive statistics on the value of immigrants to the US economy. So Indian immigrants, for example, are only about one and a half percent of the US population, but they have founded to date about 8% of all the tech startups in the us.[00:04:00]

And for sure some of that top talent from India will now not come to the us. They will go to perhaps they will stay at the great schools that we’ve talked about in India, or they will go to other international schools. So for sure it will be a loss to the us learning experience and to the US economy.

John Byrne: Maria, you run applicant lab which is a platform that helps applicants get into highly selective schools. And many of the people who use your product are international students. What are you seeing?

Maria Wich-Vila: Everything Caroline is saying concern is think a delicate way to put it.

And I think it’s because as the more affordable provider in the market, I tend to get the applicants who maybe they don’t have the family business to fall back on. Maybe they don’t have, large sources of income elsewhere in their lives. And so I think the concern is very real and very merited, right?

I can’t. In good faith, tell someone, if they [00:05:00] really start, sit down and do the math and start to do, run the numbers, if they just assume that things are going to stay as is. And this is the big caveat that I’m, I want to get to in a second, but if we assume that things stay as is and if someone really is from a lower income tier from Nepal or India or some of the other countries that I work with, yeah, maybe sit down and do that math and think about, okay, if I do have to come back to Nepal afterwards, how will I pay back that loan? There, there is though some good news. Even if we assume that things stay status quo, which I hope, and I’m pretty, I’m I think it’s, I’m cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

But there are other markets as well. So I’ve had a lot of candidates, or former clients, I should say, graduate from business school, not be able to get jobs in certain in countries and then. Being able to move to Dubai. Dubai for some reason, has started attracting a ton of candidates, primarily from South Asia but from other parts of the world who might be having trouble getting some of those work permits.

You could do worse than live in, Dubai’s not perfect, but [00:06:00] you could also do worse than live in Dubai, right? The salaries are pretty high. The standard of living, if you have a white collar job there is, it’s not the worst outcome. So it’s not I can’t stay in the us. That’s it.

There’s no other it’s not a binary of, it’s either the US or it’s nothing. And then I think the second point is I, we’ve just seen. So many things, let’s take something from a different facet of policy. The tariffs, right? The tariffs were announced and the markets went crazy, and in the months that have followed, oh, actually, here’s the tariff, but this one company, their products aren’t gonna be subject to the tariff.

And then there’s this other company that maybe they’re not gonna have to pay the same tariff. And I can’t help but wonder if some of these. Some of these very large companies that are getting tariff exemptions, their ability to lobby for. The H one B, maybe lowering of the H one B fee. If they’ve been able to successfully lobby tariffs, they might be success, able to successfully lobby against these, true, these [00:07:00] visa fees.

And a lot of these big companies, these big tech companies are in fact some of the largest employers of post MBA talent in the us. So I am cautiously optimistic that. This could be, hopefully right now it’s the big, the flash and storm and the, the making, the big splash, right?

Everything’s about showmanship and making the big splash. And maybe in the aftermath of the storm, that initial PR media storm, maybe the reality will start to calm down a little bit. Yeah, the other good news is that if you’re applying now, that means you would enroll in 2026. You would, if it, if you’re talking about the US two year program, you would graduate in 2028.

At that point, who knows what might happen. I like to think that what we have seen so far in terms of the Visa policies, hopefully. Roughly the floor about as bad as it can get. I think if they start implementing a similar thing to OPT, that could be the same thing. But if we just assume that okay, right now what’s been announced is that these foreign students all have to do, you can’t stay here, you have to [00:08:00] go someplace else.

It, we assume that’s like the initial negotiating position. It’s just gonna chip, it’s just gonna get, it’s got nowhere else to go. It’s even worse. So we’ve, we now have two and a half years roughly until. People applying now would have to really implement, or be really affected by this in a.

In a pragmatic and tangible way. And so that’s why I’m hoping that the little chipping away and the chipping away things will start to get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better like we’ve seen with other facets of policy. Didn’t like a bunch of the CDC employees that were all fired under Doge didn’t more than half of them I think were recently rehired.

Yes. Back again true. Whatever you think of the policy, it seems like some of the policies are. Being slowly walked back. And so I think if you. If you’ve got an adventurous spirit, I, and by the way, if you apply now, sorry. I know I keep going, but I like, if you apply now, let’s say you get accepted, you don’t have to show up until August of 2026.

So that will give you [00:09:00] time, like definitely. Apply now and see what happens between now and August of 2026 to make the decision to not apply now, because you’re rightfully scared. I’m not blaming anyone, but to not apply now, maybe by maybe six months from now he’ll be like, ha, just kidding. I’m doubling the number of H one Bs.

Yeah, we have no idea what’s gonna happen. So things are So give yourself that optionality.

John Byrne: Yeah. And things are so uncertain that could very well happen because, one day at tariffs are on one country the next day they’re not one day they’re pausing the ab the interviews for student visas, the.

Say they’re not there’s litigation all over the place, challenging many of the presidential actions that have been taken that have put them in limbo despite all the headlines. So it’s, it, there’s more uncertainty than there is certainty about any of these things. And as you point out, you, if you [00:10:00] did apply this year, the odds are gonna be in your favor if you’re an international student, frankly, because there is no question.

That international applicant volume will be down at all the top schools in the us, which means that to maintain some semblance of a global class. Admission directors are going to have to dig a little bit deeper into their international applicant pools to select candidates. In a way, if you play the long term and in the BA, in, in many graduate degrees or long term bet, I think you’re gonna be.

Oddly better off. And it may even be that the schools will really even go out of their way to help international students in ways that they haven’t in the past because of these actions in Washington. And what do I mean by that? Just a more welcoming reception than the already welcoming reception you would get hiring immigration lawyers and people that can help you.

If in fact there is a [00:11:00] challenge of one kind or another. I think the takeaway is not to be discouraged and throw up your hands to say, ah, I always dreamed of coming to the United States and getting an MBA or a graduate degree in business. Use this as an opportunity to actually increase your odds of getting into a better school with the understanding that when you get out there, probably most likely be an administration change and a change in these policies if they even get completely adopted as Maria points out.

Wouldn’t you think that’s the best strategy, Caroline?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yes, I agree. I think that it’s good to take a longer term perspective because it is such a long timeline, right? If you’re applying to a top two year program as you say, you’re gonna be coming out of the program at the end of the Trump presidency and things may look very different.

And Maria rightly points out that. Everything is very volatile, right? So one thing gets announced and the next week it [00:12:00] gets rolled back, right? They’ve done so many things where they’ve realized, oh, actually that was a really bad idea after all. So

They’ve changed things. So things may not it might, may not turn out to be as bad as we fear.

And then I would also encourage candidates. To apply to the US schools, but why not hedge your bets and apply to an international program as well? Agreed in a time of uncertainty. As Maria said, create options for yourself. And so I would encourage candidates to apply to the top US programs, but also apply to top international programs as well and see what offers you get.

And then you can make a decision. As Maria said, it will be closer to the time when you would be starting the program and there may be more clarity about the situation in the US and what your options are in international markets as well. So I think that given the current circumstances, a good strategy is to hedge your bets and apply more widely than you might [00:13:00] have otherwise done.

John Byrne: Plan Bs are good. Let me just say business schools in the US have for years advised international students that those should have a plan B in the event that they can’t get with a US company. The other thing to, to keep in mind incidentally, in terms of MBA employment is that most of the companies.

That basically employ the lion’s share of MBAs are all global concerns. So you can be hired here and if there’s any challenge in getting you employed here in the us you can simply start in an office outside the United States with a hope of coming back when things clear up. So that is also another important thing to keep in mind.

And I’ll just say this. Despite whatever messaging you’re reading in your local newspapers or on your streaming platforms or television stations about how immigrants may not be welcome in the us that’s not true at all. Universities are diverse places. Welcoming. [00:14:00] Embracing loving the diversity of their students and particularly those from different cultures and backgrounds that enrich the educational experience.

There is no Dean that I’ve ever encountered who said they want fewer international students. It’s the exact opposite. They’re putting out message after message, telling people that they’re still welcome and wanted. Needed in the classroom. Now, Maria, in the past we’ve seen applicants who try to say, okay, can I time my application and my enrollment in a program to what I think might be the next recession?

And we know that in recessions applications go way. In part because some people lose the opportunity to gain advancement in a recession. Some people get unemployed. Some people just realize, hey, a recession is a good time to take a time out and get a new educational credential, which may allow me to do things I otherwise can’t do.[00:15:00]

But it’s almost impossible to time a recession and I’m imagining it’s impossible to time what’s going on here now.

Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah. I mean if we could all time, when everyone’s been talking about a stock market crash that to, not to bring another disparate topic in, but like everyone’s been talking about, it’s a bubble.

It’s a bubble. I’ve been hearing ’cause a bubble for a year and a half. True. Yeah, you can’t time or ask, for example, ask the people who enrolled in business school, like who got into business school in 2020. Like there’s always gonna be these external shocks. We can try to predict a recession, but who knows if it’s going to happen?

Who knows if there’s going to be some sort of virus or the opposite of a virus. Maybe there’ll be a virus that helps us all live healthily forever. Who knows? There’s so much uncertainty out there that who knows what to do. So I think. I think yeah, have that optionality. I think go ahead and apply.

Now if there is a recession though, which everyone seems to think is coming at some point, at that point, it’s going to be harder to get accepted. And as Caroline has pointed out, so rightfully, if other international, high quality international students are [00:16:00] spooked by the current H one B talk, now is your chance.

International candidate. Jump in there, shoot your shot like you might be able to get into a school, assuming of course that you’re qualified, but. You might have a lot less competition now than you normally will, so this could be a golden opportunity for you. And one final as one thing that I wanted to point out was that I was thinking, okay, Maria, let’s say that, you just said that maybe there’s gonna be walk back of some of these and there’s gonna be, maybe he’s gonna change.

But even if there isn’t a change, right? Let’s think about this. The companies themselves are gonna have, and you started to alluded to this John, when you mentioned that a lot of them are global concerns. They’re gonna have now a two year window in which to say. Okay. We know that we’re not gonna keep these people in the states, so let’s open a huge office in Vancouver.

Let’s open a brand, an enormous new office in Toronto. Whatever that is. Because I was thinking back to over the summer when it looked like maybe a bunch of international students wouldn’t be able to get any student visa at all. And I know that some of the business schools we’re looking [00:17:00] at, do we rent out some space in Toronto and do Zoom classes?

We do a hybrid. What we did during COVID. I’ve heard that. I think Rice, I was actually having dinner last night with a dear friend who was, say he’s from Texas and he was saying that Rice has some sort of a campus in Paris and that they are leaning really heavily on their global campuses around the world to still be able to service these students who had gotten accepted.

So things like that, like if. Even if our sort of my very cautious and perhaps irrational optimism turns out to not be true, let’s say the things get, the OPT is banished and all, everyone is banished and it’s the worst case scenario. Again, there’s gonna be two and a half years for these companies. To quickly find, okay, fine, we’re gonna open up an office in Mexico City and we’re gonna pay people really well and we’re gonna what?

Whatever that is. ’cause they’re, the companies are still gonna want the talent, right? Just because the political administration doesn’t want the global talent in the country. That doesn’t mean that the country’s employers don’t want that talent. They [00:18:00] want that talent, they want that intellect, they want that energy and that drive to make their companies better and to make more money.

So they have a very strong incentive to not only be lobbying for these. Visa changes to go away, but if they don’t go away, they have a very strong incentive to come up with some way to provide, to provide those incomes and to provide those perks and some sort of a compromise type of situation.

So again I think if you’re applying now, if you’re going in with eyes wide open, shoot your shot. That’s my, I would absolutely tell people to to try that.

John Byrne: Yeah, I totally agree. And, generally this is my rule of thumb and Maria and Caroline, you may or may not agree with this, at the top MBA programs, they’re so selective that the people who apply to them generally are very self-selecting group.

So I always say that roughly 80% of the school’s applicant pool. Is qualified to actually get accepted, get in, do [00:19:00] well, and land a good job. And yet we know that at Stanford, the acceptance rate is 6%, that Harvard is 12 Wharton and Columbia is, a little under 20 or so. So there are a lot of really good candidates who aren’t getting in.

Which leads me to this, if you’re an international student who thinks okay, so these US schools just might dip a little more into the domestic pool to make up for the offset of international candidates. As it turns out, there is a little notice. Clause in the big beautiful tax bill that was passed here under Trump that places severe limits on federal loans for graduate students.

Now, the current grad plus loan program allows students to borrow up to the cost of their graduate programs. That comes to an end in July of next year. After that, grad students borrowing will literally be capped at [00:20:00] 20,500 bucks a year with a lifetime graduate school loan limit of a hundred thousand. That’s a big deal because, at the top MBA programs it’s not on typical.

For a student to borrow over a hundred thousand dollars easily. And so these caps are also going to affect domestic enrollment. So again, that, that contributes to your ability as an international candidate to get in both. The likely decline in competition not only from internationals but also from domestic students here, interestingly enough, that Bill, which passed has different limits for a professional graduate degree, but the bill basically says that only med school and law school qualify as professional degrees and not business school.

That’s another wacky thing that’s happened that will affect. Domestic enrollment as well. So I, I side with Maria and [00:21:00] Caroline to me the advice is, look long term. Don’t be affected overly affected by the change in policies in the US or the climate here. Understand that if you apply now and you matriculate next year and you graduate in two years after that you’re gonna be facing probably a very different environment.

Also understand the odds are in your in your favor, in getting into a highly selective, really good program in this coming year. And know that, while people too often calculate the value of an MBA based on short term variables, like what’s my starting salary gonna be? What is my sign-on bonus?

The truth is the MBA has enduring value over your lifetime. So it rewards you over your entire career and not just for the first or second years. And you can’t go wrong by graduating into a network of helpful and supportive people from a great school and [00:22:00] receiving a great education. So I think bottom line, we’re telling you apply.

Don’t get convinced by your colleagues or anyone else that this is a bad time to come to the us. Opportunity. Some of the best opportunity come comes when people perceive there to be significant challenges. And I think this is really true with business school. We hope we convinced you to come and try and hedge your batts too, as Caroline noted.

I think that’s really super important to have a plan B when you apply and toss a bunch of apps to the European schools which have excellent superb world class MBA programs and real international cohorts. 90% of the students not from the countries where the schools reside. Toss a bunch of them in your mix for your target schools to give you these different options at the end of the day.

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

Maria

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