Tailoring Your MBA Application For Round 2 Programs
Maria |
December 14, 2021

For most individuals, this is the time of year when they need to go shopping, but for MBA hopefuls, it’s crunch time for round 2 applications.

But don’t worry; Maria, John, and Caroline know what to do! In this episode of Business Casual, they cover the following:

 

  • Things to consider when crafting your round 2 MBA applications (You should certainly listen to Maria’s advice!)
  • How to make it appear like the school you’re applying to in round 2 is your first option (even if it isn’t)
  • Why it’s never a good idea to wait until the last minute to prepare your application
  • Why you shouldn’t rely on others or only prepare for your round 2 MBA application when you have free time (spoiler – it won’t get done!)
  • For those with partners who are ALSO applying to business school (or already attending) – Maria and Caroline discuss the challenges of applying as a couple (but also the potential benefit) 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.630] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. And Caroline, of course, is the co founder of Fortuna Admissions and the former director of admissions at INSEAD. We know what this time of the year means for you. We don’t mean that you’re going to be rushing out or rushing online to do your Christmas shopping. We know that for many of you, it means putting the finishing touches on your round two applications because the deadlines for those round two applications is right around the corner. And as soon as Christmas is over and New Year’s is over, they start to strike like dominoes and fall one after the other. So what we wanted to kind of talk a little bit about is if you had filed an application in round one and you’re tailoring it for round two, what are some of the things you need to keep in mind? And we actually have a piece on the site and it is called how to Tell Your MBA Application for Round Two Programs.

[00:01:16.520] – John

It is written by one of Caroline’s colleagues, Amy Hugo, and it’s an excellent piece, and you should read that. But Maria, I wonder what your general guidelines are.

[00:01:29.570] – Maria

I think if you’re applying in round two, having already applied in round one, I get that you are probably exhausted at this point. You are over it. The last thing you want to do is put together another essay. But I think I like to quit that until you have an acceptance in hand. Every school is your first choice school, so you just need to sort of smack yourself out of it, get some coffee brewing. I don’t know what it takes to motivate you, but you need to bring that same amount of energy. Even if you’re around two schools might not have been your first choice schools, even if whatever it is, you just need to keep bringing that energy to a round two application because I get that you’re tired, but you just have to force yourself to do it because applying in round two, if you apply with sort of a lackluster or if your energy is not there, if it’s clear that you didn’t really do a lot of homework and you just threw this application together very quickly, it’s not going to go well. So why even bother? It’s almost like don’t even bother applying around you if you’re just going to half Bake it.

[00:02:37.190] – Maria

And I also tell people a lot of times I’ll get emails from people who are saying things like, well, gosh, I had my interviews and now it’s just a waiting game and I’m so stressed out and how do I pass the time and how do I keep myself occupied? And my answer is start writing essays for round two schools, because best case scenario, you won’t need them. But if you do end up needing them, at least you’re ahead of the game because you will have spent four, five, six weeks working on them instead of two weeks. So that’s my advice.

[00:03:04.370] – John

And this is true that during that crunch time between Christmas and New Year’s, people are feverishly trying to finish up and get things done.

[00:03:11.990] – Maria

Yes. And mistakes are made and things get sloppy.

[00:03:14.240] – John

Obviously, because we’re all human beings and every school wants to know that they’re your first choice. It’s kind of like if you were dating multiple people, but you want every one of them to know that you’re really the one, but you’re really not the one. How do you pull that off in an application?

[00:03:35.650] – Caroline

Are you speaking from experience, John?

[00:03:38.510] – John

No, not me.

[00:03:39.610] – Caroline

Anything you’d like to never confess to while we’re on air?

[00:03:47.450] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:03:47.850] – Caroline

Now you’re absolutely right. Now I think it’s even more important in some ways in round two and in round one, because he said a lot of people are applying now because they’ve been dinged in round one. And it tends to be panic time because they maybe had their hopes up for round one and assume that they were getting somewhere and their hopes have been dashed. And so a lot of people start working on their applications for round two quite late in the game because they weren’t sure that they would have to do it. And they also know that for a lot of the top schools, this is the last chance really to get in for the next season. Right. Hbs doesn’t even have around three other schools have round three, but very few places left. So this is your last chance. And people start to panic. So we definitely see that. And candidates sort of throwing out applications left, right and center, and scattergun is never a good strategy. Right. So schools see lots of applications in round two from people who are a little bit half hearted, a little bit sloppy, not quite clear, very sort of general statements about the motivation for the school with very few specifics.

[00:04:59.530] – Caroline

And those will quickly get filtered out and put aside, I think, even more in round two because schools are well aware of that phenomenon of people applying as a second choice to schools in round two. You have to make an even greater effort in this round to show and articulate that motivation and really make it genuine and authentic. I think that’s absolutely critical. And then also what we see is candidates think, well, I’m going to have some time off over the holidays, so that’s when I’m going to work on my applications and I’ll put it all together then. And that’s never a good idea to leave it to the last minute, because a good application is not something that you can Cook up in a week or two. It takes time. It takes reflection. You’re going to go through some iterations. It’s like a fine wine, matures over some time, at least weeks and months rather than years. But it’s not an overnight process. And often candidates will sort of procrastinate thinking, I’m going to take some time off over the holidays, and I’ll work on it then and often overestimate how much free time you’ve got to be busy with other things over the holidays, family obligations and social activities, perhaps.

[00:06:20.130] – Caroline

And so people overestimate how much they can get done during that period. And then also, if you’re seeking other people’s feedback, if you’re working with a coach or you’ve got maybe a colleague who’s been to that school who said that they will review your application for you, don’t count on them on having a ton of time over the holidays.

[00:06:39.770] – Maria

Right.

[00:06:40.030] – Caroline

And the same with your recommenders. That should all be done and dusted before the holidays because people disappear over the break. And it’s often the case that people are in a panic at the beginning of January because the recommenders haven’t been contactable over the holiday period and they don’t know if they’ve submitted or not. So please don’t leave everything to that holiday period because it’s often a recipe for disaster.

[00:07:07.230] – Maria

To add on to what Caroline was just saying about recommenders perhaps not being available during the holiday. There are other people you also need to be contacting as part of this process, one of the major ones being current students or recent alumni, because that shows a school that you have actually taken the effort to not simply research on the website, but actually reach out to a student, set up a call with them, talk about the program, talk about the club. What was the media conference like last year? Tell me about jobs and private equity, whatever it is. And so those students themselves are also going on break. So you really want to try to wrap up any loose ends that involve other people as soon as possible?

[00:07:51.450] – Caroline

Yes, I agree. And I think that often candidates do a lot of research or hopefully they do a lot of research and start a process when they’re figuring out where they want to apply and sort of finalizing that target list and preparing application process. And sometimes that effort sort of dries up a bit once they get down to working on the nitty gritty of the application and moving forward with the process. And it really should be a consistent, ongoing effort to, as Maria said, network with people who have relevant, similar interests to you, continue to learn about the school, follow what they’re doing, keep up to date on the latest research coming out of the schools and so on, because all of that knowledge will enrich your application and not just the written application, but very importantly, hopefully the interview stage and it will make you much better prepared candidate. And that’s not something, again, that you can sort of prepare overnight. It’s really a long term effort that you should be consistently doing over several months.

[00:09:00.290] – John

Right through the process and becoming acquainted with faculty. If you know that you want to specialize in a certain area, get to know the faculty now, because that contact, that interchange that you may have could find its way in an essay just elevating your interest in the program in a way that would impress admissions, right?

[00:09:23.670] – Caroline

Yeah, for sure. Many moons ago when I applied to Insecure and a friend of mine who had been to INSEAD invited me to a conference at the school. And then I met a professor there who I then stayed in touch with. Anything that you can do that helps you to build those connections, makes you a better prepared candidate, actually gives you a stronger sense of why you really want to go to that school, what it is that motivates you, what you want to learn while you’re there. And you never know who might put a good work, who might put in a good word for you with the admissions committee. So all of that outreach will pay off and might pay off in ways that you don’t even anticipate.

[00:10:07.770] – John

Now we’re recording this on a day in which Harvard Business School has sent out notifications to their round one applicants. Caroline, you just mentioned offline that you have some good news. Why don’t you share that.

[00:10:26.070] – Caroline

Several clients who’ve just been admitted to HBS, including a married couple. So it’s been great fun to work with a couple and wonderful that they’ve been admitted to the school together. It will be great experience for them to go to HBS together. Sometimes it’s tricky for couples applying. Right. Because it’s so hard to get into those top schools and doubly hard to get in together at the same time to the same program. So I’m really thrilled for them that it’s worked out.

[00:10:59.620] – John

And it’s pretty rare. Maria, how often do you see couples applying to a single school and both getting in?

[00:11:07.050] – Maria

It’s difficult. Right. Because I think in that case, if you’re talking about a school that has a 5% 10% acceptance rate, each one of those people now has to be in that top 10%. I don’t believe that schools will say, well, this one person is not that great, but they’re a package deal, so we should take them both. I don’t really think that happens. And actually, I worked with I don’t think they were married or just in a committed relationship, but with a couple earlier this year, that against my recommendation. They wrote in their optional essays like, I am applying with so and so we are a couple. And if you’re not going to let us both in, then don’t let either one of us in. They also said, and don’t tell us which one of us was the weaker candidate, although the school would never really bother to say that the school is never going to be like.

[00:11:55.820] – John

Well, sorry, you’re an outcome.

[00:11:58.830] – Maria

I don’t know. But I will tell you that very candidly. And this was hard for me to convey, but one person in the couple was a very strong candidate and the other one was mediocre, probably not getting in. And so I tried to convey I was like, that’s really risky. So if one of you gets into HBS, the other one could go to MIT Bubc. There are so many schools that they could go to in the Boston area. They could go to Tuck, which is 3 hours away. And so I said that’s really risky. And I didn’t want to say to the stronger partner in this case was a female. I was like, your boyfriend’s not nearly as impressive as you are. I didn’t quite say it that way, but I was like, this is a really risky strategy, and it’d be a real shame if you limit yourself, especially because if they’re not married, like, oh God, what if they break up later and then this very promising woman curtailed her? Anyway, I tried to talk them out of it, but I don’t think I was able to. So I’m sad about that.

[00:13:07.080] – John

Yeah. That really increases the odds of rejection. I would think if you do that, it’s just got to be much more complicated, unfortunately. And I would also think that if you’re a couple applying, you really should apply around one, right? Don’t you think?

[00:13:25.560] – Caroline

Yeah. And I absolutely agree that it’s not a good idea to tell the school if you don’t admit my partner, then don’t bother admitting me. It seems a bit petulant, but I think it’s absolutely fine to tell the school if you are a couple applying. Sometimes couples aren’t sure. Should we mention it? Should we not mention it? The schools are happy to know that you’re both applying. It shows commitment and motivation. Right. That you have this plan that you would like to go to the school together. As you said, John, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to admit someone who is below par, but it’s helpful information to have. And in some scenarios, if you’re thinking about, well, this person, we’re not sure if it’s their weightless material or whether they should be a straight admit. It can be useful information to know if their spouse or their partner has been admitted or not, or also wait listed just to help the school manage the decisions and know what impact that’s going to have on the candidates. So it’s absolutely fine to mention it. I just wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.

[00:14:42.430] – John

The other news this week is every year we do name a Dean of the year. This year we did it, and we had a big celebration for that Dean just two days ago on the campus. The Dean of the year this year is Jeff Brown, who is the Dean of the Giese School of Business. Sorry, the Giese College of Business at the University of Illinois in Champagne and it’s primarily because of all the advances that they have made in the online learning space where they have the disruptively priced IMBA for 22 five and have increased their enrollment from pretty much zero five years ago to over 4300 students. And that’s just one aspect of what has been done there. But if you’re interested in why we named Jeff the Dean of the year, go and look at the site and look at our profile. Meantime for all you round two folks, good luck to you. Hope you found this useful. I will again refer you to Amy’s piece which I think is really helpful just to think through your final steps before you actually hit the submit button again. It’s how to tailor your MBA application for round two programs.

[00:16:04.250] – John

Otherwise good luck. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Tailoring Your MBA Application For Round 2 Programs
Maria |
December 14, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

New around here? I’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 “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!