Stanford’s GMAT Time Bomb For Applicants + An Alarming AACSB Study
ApplicantLab |
August 19, 2025

The latest “Business Casual” podcast episode dives into a surprising admissions policy change at Stanford Graduate School of Business and its potential impact on MBA applicants. Hosted by John Byrne, along with co-hosts Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, this discussion unpacks Stanford’s decision to shorten the validity period for GMAT and GRE scores. Normally accepted for five years up to the application deadline, Stanford is now requiring scores to be within four years and three months, setting a new precedent that could affect many applicants planning to apply to multiple top schools.

Caroline expresses concerns over this unconventional policy shift, highlighting that it might exclude otherwise qualified candidates simply because their test scores technically remain valid at other institutions. This unexpected move brings confusion and may prevent experienced candidates from applying, especially those who have planned their applications around the standard five-year validity. Maria speculates on potential reasons behind Stanford’s decision but finds the lack of clear communication troubling. The change seemingly sneaked onto the admissions page without official announcements, leaving prospective applicants unaware until they stumbled upon the fine print.

This episode is a crucial listen for MBA hopefuls, especially those targeting Stanford, emphasizing the importance of staying informed about admissions policies and understanding their broader implications. As visa rules and political climates shift, standing out with a strategic application becomes more vital than ever in securing your business school dream.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:07] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Bern with Poets & Quads. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wykvilla and Caroline D. O. T. Edwards. Caroline, of course, the former Managing Director of Admissions at NCI and the co-founder of Fortuna Admissions. Maria is the founder of Application Lab. We have two things we want to talk to you about. A big surprise over at Stanford Graduate School of Business in their admission policies, which has gone onpublicized, unadvertised, and you have to basically fall over the fine print on the website to find it. But effectively, you know that generally GMAT and GRE scores are valid for five years. What Stanford has done is shortened that period by nine months and is now out of step with other schools. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about a new AACSB study. For those of you who don’t know, the AACSB is the leading accreditation body for business schools in the world. They have a study that sounds the alarm on student mobility because of changing visa rules and politics and the upcoming environment for outcomes, career outcomes at the MBA programs. Let’s turn first to the surprising news over at Stanford.

[00:01:42] – John

Caroline, what do you make of this?

[00:01:46] – Caroline

Well, it’s not great news. So effectively, what Stanford is saying is that to enroll in the class beginning in the fall of 2026, you must have taken the GRE or the we met after June the first, 2021. So these tests have a five-year validity period. So that is five years. However, the normal policy for business schools is to accept the test within a five year time frame, running up to the application deadline when the candidate is applying. And that is true for all of the other M7 schools, and as far as I know, all other schools. So for example, if you’re applying to Harvard Business School in round one, then you must have taken the GMAT or GRE sometime after around the beginning of September 2020. So there’s effectively a nine month period during which candidates may have taken the test and they have the ability to apply to all the other top schools, with the exception of Stanford. Now, may seem like a minor detail, but I fear that the school is going to miss out on some great candidates. I have clients, as does Maria, who have stumbled upon this detail and are now concerned about whether they’re going to be able to apply or not.

[00:03:11] – Caroline

So I don’t see any reason for this. The GMAT and a GRE, they’re officially valid for five years. So effectively, Stanford is saying that someone, that they may reject a candidate over that GMAT or GRE score when it’s actually a valid score. So it seems inconsistent, and I don’t quite understand why they would make this shift in policy.

[00:03:34] – John

Now, Maria, can you speculate as to why Stanford might want to do this? There’s been no explanation on the website. And people who’ve called them, who have GMAT or GRE scores who will be affected by this policy have basically been told, No, sorry. What’s on the website is the rule of the law, the law of the land, when it comes to Stanford.

[00:03:57] – Maria

I am flummoxed by this. I can’t really make heads or tails of it because, first of all, why June first as the date? Why not when they enroll in August of next year? If the industry standard is that these scores are valid for five years, and it’s always been five years at the time of applying for as long as I can remember, why handicap themselves by essentially eliminating people who might be a little bit on the older side? I believe that a very common use case is for people to apply to deferred programs their senior year of College, or even just take the test their senior year of college, thinking, well, I’ll keep it in my back pocket for later, later arrives, and they realize that every other school is happy to accept the score, with the exception of Stanford. I don’t really… Whether or not the policy is sound or logical is one thing. But I think another one thing that actually does bother me is that I do believe that it would have been nice for them to give a heads up, perhaps even as much of a year’s worth of a heads for people, as opposed to this language, sneaking its way onto the website in advance of the admissions deadlines.

[00:05:09] – Maria

And also, I don’t know, and I could be mistaken, but I don’t believe that there was a big announcement about this, saying, You who, anyone applying to Stanford, be on the lookout for this. And the problem with that is that for people who did take the test, say five years ago, and who entered this process, I mean, most people, the MBA admissions process is a multi-month, if not a a multi-year long process. They have been coasting along thinking, well, at least I’ve got the test score out of the way, right? I got a whole bunch of other stuff to worry about, but the test score is handled. I’ve got that. It is taken care of. And for them, we’re roughly a month right now prior to the deadlines to suddenly realize, oh, my gosh, I can’t apply. So I either have to hurry up and take a test, which is suboptimal for most people. Many people do need quite a bit of preparation, or I need to push myself to round two Two, which is also suboptimal. If you’re ready to apply everything else, you’ve got every other duck in a row. And that’s the one thing like, well, do I push to round two?

[00:06:08] – Maria

These are discussions I’ve been having with some clients who reach out to me like, well, do I push all of my applications around Two now? Do I try to hurry up and take the GRE, and what if I don’t do very well? And so it’s just really unleashed a pretty sizable hoop to jump through that was not disclosed to people until the last moment. And it is their school. It’s their policy, they can put as many hoops as they want. They are the hoop masters. But if they are going to put in a new hoop, give people an honest chance to prepare for that. So I would have preferred that if they would have announced and saying, starting next year, so that way it will give people at least a year to take the test, which is what some people do require when they’re preparing. So to spring… The policy is one thing, but the way in which it was communicated and the fact that it was seemingly sprung on candidates at what feels like the last minute for such a large hoop is puzzling to me.

[00:07:07] – John

And it’s hard enough already to get into Stanford. The school has for its full-time MBA program, the lowest acceptance rate of any school in the US and the world that has really truly prestige MBA. So this added wrinkle certainly will add to the anxiety that candidates who are going to be affected by this policy will incur. Yeah, I agree with you. It should have been announced a year earlier so that people who would have to retake the test would have the time to reset, study for it, and take it more than once if they needed to get their best possible score. We know that the research, in fact, shows that the closest you take a standardized test for graduate admission to your undergraduate year is the better you do. And that’s largely a function of the fact that in undergraduate years, you’re in study mode, you’re taking tests on a regular basis, so you’re far more likely to have less anxiety to be more prepared to sit down and take a test. And so that’s why a good number of people actually do and how this could affect a fair percentage of people. Obviously, it’s not the majority, but it will affect a fair percentage of people.

[00:08:30] – John

And again, Stanford is putting itself in a non-competitive position. I’ve made this argument about Harvard when it dropped its round three deadline and therefore eliminated its possibility of seeing late candidates where every other school does. And now, Stanford is disadvantages itself in disqualifying, essentially, people who have taken the GMAT test. Well, it would be four years and what’s three months or so before their deadlines. It’s just like, wow, that’s really not too smart. Also, look, Maria is right. They owe people time to make a transition like this, and it should be more telescopes. People should know about it. It shouldn’t have to stumble upon it in the fine print of the admissions in the website. Anyway, so there you have it. I would just tell you, look, a number of candidates have contacted the school. Who knows, after we write about this, which we will, Stanford may reverse its policy for this year and put this in effect next year. Who knows? If not, hey, apply to Harvard, Wharton, MIT, Columbia, Kellogg, and Booth. That’s all. And don’t apply to Your dreams will come through no matter where you go, particularly if it’s those schools.

[00:10:06] – John

The other issue we’re going to talk about today is this latest AACSB study. So the accreditation agency polled 97 business schools across 27 countries, and that was actually the response rate. And what they found is that more than two-thirds of the respondents say that policy or legislation legislative changes have already affected demand among international students. We’ve been talking about this for some time over a number of podcasts, but there’s some hard data here that’s fascinating. According to the AACSB study, schools that anticipate an impact, project an average enrollment drop of 16% in the coming year, with all schools predicting a 10% decline on average. It will not surprise anyone because we’ve been saying this all along that the highest reported disruption is in the Americas, where 84 % of institutions say they have been affected by policy or legal changes. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, one-third of schools report disruption, compared with 40 % in Asia Pacific. No surprise here, right, Mujeraline?

[00:11:24] – Caroline

No, it’s really a worrying trend. And we’ve discussed over the past few months how the climate has changed in the US and the potential negative consequences. And this report is an interesting reminder of how it’s actually not just the US market where this is happening. Visa policies have changed over the past few years in the UK. I have heard from INSEAD how it’s harder these days for students to get jobs in Singapore or elsewhere in Asia Pacific, much harder than it was, for example, in my day when I graduated over 20 years ago. And so that can deter candidates from relocating for their studies as well. And it’s really a terrible shame. I think we’re all great fans of diversity, not just because it gives people who deserve opportunities a path forward in life, but also it enriches everybody. The classroom experience is just much better if you have a diverse population in the classroom. Those international students or people from underrepresented backgrounds just bring so much to the learning experience for everybody. And without that, then there’s less debate, there’s more groupthink, there’s just less learning that goes on. And then the classroom is less representative of the real world out there that candidates will be feeding into when they go into their careers.

[00:13:01] – Caroline

So it’s really a shame. And of course, huge economic impact, as your article points out. International students bring in so much income in the US, in the UK, in many countries. So it’s terrible shame to see this decline in enrollment. And I wonder how it’s going to impact institutions and whether they will be to maintain programs, whether it’s going to undermine the sustainability of some schools.

[00:13:36] – John

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the economic impact data is really revealing. And according to the ACSB in the United States, international students contributed $43. 8 billion to the economy in 2023 and 2024, supporting 378,000 jobs. In the United Kingdom, where we know it’s probably the second largest market for business education and higher education in general in the world, the contribution was 42 billion in ’21, ’22, that’s the academic year. It’s a really sizable impact When they asked, which of the following factors have posed challenges in attracting international students to enroll at your institution, 94% identified visa policies, and we’ve talked about them in relationship to the US and in the UK. Political climate is identified by 65% of the respondents. Post-graduation work opportunities and policies, 63%, and by policies, it would mean Obviously a work visa, by and large, which would affect one’s ability to stay in the country of choice, where you earned your degree and have your career. The fourth attribute here in terms of a challenge was cost of living way down compared to the top three at 28 %. Safety was 25 %. Maria, does all this ring true to you?

[00:15:11] – Maria

Yeah, these concerns are valid from international students being concerned about, should I even embark upon this admissions process if I may not get a student visa, if I may not even be able to enroll, or if I do enroll, if I may not be able to stay afterwards and pursue the career opportunities that I want to pursue. So this data, I think, just provides, as you said earlier, it just provides a quantifiable validation to something that anecdotally and intuitively we have been feeling to be true for months. And it is a real shame. I think another data point that also jumped out at me just to emphasize is that the research also shows that international PhD students produce more patents and attract more research funding than than domestic peers alone. So it’s not just the classroom is absolutely not as rich of an environment, but also afterwards, the societies and the countries themselves ultimately lose out by turning away the world’s best talent. So it’s a bummer.

[00:16:16] – John

I guess if there’s an upside, it’s for domestic applicants. Is that right?

[00:16:20] – Maria

I mean, insofar as it makes it easier to, quote, unquote, get in, but then once they do get in, to Caroline’s point earlier, it’s not going to be quite the same classroom experience in terms of these rich conversations that are going to help expand your mind that you’re going to carry with you for years after you graduate. That might be less likely to happen if you are in a room full of people who are all just like you.

[00:16:44] – John

That’s so true. Absolutely true. So have a read. It’s called Visa Rules, Politics and Billions in Play: AACSB Sounds the Alarm on Student Mobility. It’s on the Poets and Quants website. Meantime, hey, listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Stanford’s GMAT Time Bomb For Applicants + An Alarming AACSB Study
ApplicantLab |
August 19, 2025

Video transcript, for you skimmers out there: 

I love the fact that they. Report on this metric, right? The salary percentage increase, I think is an incredibly valuable metric because there are so many business schools out there that are great for so many people. And at the end of the day, these programs are in fact able to do what a lot of business school applicants are hoping for.

They are in fact able to provide a real change in the trajectory of someone’s career. They are, in fact, able to help people leapfrog. Into a higher career stratum than they would’ve otherwise been able to be in. So from that perspective, I love the fact that the FT reports on the salary percentage increase.

So valuable. I think it helps, when sometimes I talk to people at the beginning of the business school journey, I will frequently hear something like, well, it’s M seven or bust, you know, it’s Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or bust.

And I’m often like, look, slow your roll, man. There are so many programs out there that are going to get you. They might not be the first ones that you think [00:01:00] of, but wow, does that even matter? I mean, whew. Look at some of these numbers. $170,000. That is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it’s one and a half times more than what you were making before business school.

I mean, wow. , That is life changing. , And these schools can really change people’s lives. And I think it’s important to have this metric available because I think it helps open people’s eyes. To, To be a little bit more open-minded. , And I think that’s wonderful.

Where my little quibble is. Is that I believe this is an important metric to report upon. However, I do not believe that it is a metric that should have significant amount of weight in the rankings because if we think about what is the purpose of a ranking, it is meant to be some sort of a representation of relative quality.

Now rankings. The entire concept of them is flawed the entire, for me, the entire concept of an ordinal ranking is ridiculous. Like school versus two versus four, versus seven versus six . You know, like, there, there’s sort of [00:02:00] these tiny miniature marginal differences. I think that school rankings should instead be in buckets.

Like, here is the top bucket, and then here is the also very good, but just underneath the top bucket, the next bucket. Um, but no one, no one listens to me. Uh, but so anyway, to the extent that a ranking. Is intended to be some sort of a measure of a program’s quality. I don’t think that this metric is one that should be included in the weighting.

Look, again, . Life-changing levels of improvements in salary. But when I look at, okay, so these were the top five programs by the salary percentage increase, but now when I look at it by the weighted salary, right, the top five US programs, by weighted salary, it’s not entirely accurate to say that.

Well, these programs, you start with people who have lower incoming salaries and they end up in the same place as the other programs. The numbers do not [00:03:00] really, , the numbers would tell a slightly different story. So if you look at the weighted salary a few years out for the top five programs by salary,

we’re talking about a $70,000 a year difference, roughly 240 a year versus 170 a year. That’s about a 40% difference, which I don’t think is a small, you know, if we were talking 5%, even 10%, I’d be like, yeah, 10%, that’s nothing. It’s, you know, nothing but 40% I do think is a pretty, I think it’s a pretty significant difference, uh, that is worth noting.

And so. Your point about like, well, they were letting in the people who were already on a, you know, if you were making, let’s see if we can, if we figure out, okay, so if we take this, these numbers, then we can sort of back into what’s an implied pre MBA salary, you know, that would indicate maybe something in the mid sixties before MBA versus, you know, one 10 something, [00:04:00] 1, 1 10, 1 15, for these other programs.

I get your argument. Your argument is like, look, these people were already clearly high achievers prior to business school, and so, mm-hmm. Is it not true then that the business school, like they would’ve continued to be high achievers And in fact, this is true, some of the most successful, financially successful people I know skipped business school altogether and they didn’t need it.

, However, I think GMAC often does, polls or surveys of MBA graduates, and I think the vast majority of them, at a minimum say that they’re glad that they went to business school, that they do feel that it was worth, their time. So. How much of this is,, nature versus nurture.

We, we will never know. , But I would gently push back on the fact that I, because these numbers essentially to the extent that they’re lower than say these numbers, it effectively penalizes thes e schools in this ranking. And for that reason, I don’t think that it should be part of the ranking because you’re penalizing a school for letting in more successful people.

But there’s a benefit. [00:05:00] To attending. Like, first of all, if you are a more successful person, think of the opportunity cost that you’re giving up. So the fact that these schools are able to lure away people to give up two years of their salary, in order to go to business school in the first place, I think is a pretty good indicator of the desirability or the perceived desirability of those programs.

Also, I do think that there is merit to thinking about like, who are my peers going to be in a business school? and. If a school is attracting people who were more successful prior to business school, I actually think that that is an indicator of the quality of the school, not only because it shows the people that are willing to give up those two years of salary, but also think about who the peer group is once someone is in the school.

Right? That means that if you are attending one of these schools. This percentage isn’t as high, but you’re surrounded by people who, prior to business school, were already achieving on a different level. And also after they graduate, they continue to achieve on a different level. True. The slope is not as sharp.

Right. But the.

[00:06:00] Result is a larger number. So I think that this implies that perhaps at the school itself, you might be surrounded by people who are driven. some people might say more competitive, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but people who are more driven and also after they graduate, they continue to be driven.

And so I think that also implies something pretty powerful about the ultimate benefit of the network because business school isn’t just the two years you go there and it’s not just that first job you get out of school or that third job you have five years out of school.

it’s also who’s your network gonna be and, and who are you gonna call 10, 15, 20 years after graduation? To invest in your company or to partner with your company or to start a company with. so I do think that there is value to attending a school and to have your peers during school and after school be people who were, for lack of a better term, high performers.

[00:07:00] I don’t think that this should be punished because I do think that this does yield a better business school. Experience and a better result in the long term. And so my quibble, again, I love this metric. I think this is an amazing metric to provide, but my quibble is that this should not be given honestly, any weight at all, and certainly not the high level of weight that it’s given, because again, you’re punishing the schools that, you know, you’re basically indicating that I, what I would say is an indication of quality.

An indirect indication of quality, but an indication of quality all the same. You’re basically punishing the schools that have sort of higher quality, quote unquote, coming in. And, and that to me is. Counterintuitive and kind of wrong. And so that’s why I continue to think that this should not be, uh, reported upon.

Absolutely. Tell us. It’s important. I think it’s great to know. I love using this information, but I don’t think it should be used in terms of like, let’s figure out which programs are the , [00:08:00] quote unquote highest quality programs. But what do you think? What did I miss? let me know. Thanks.

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