The 2025 Financial Times MBA Ranking
Maria |
February 25, 2025

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts dive into a controversial article from The Economist questioning the value of an MBA. They dissect the article’s claims, highlighting the cyclical nature of employment trends and the selective job acceptance of top MBA graduates. The discussion also explores the impact of AI on the job market and reaffirms the long-term value of an MBA in navigating complex business environments. Tune in to hear why the hosts believe the MBA is far from obsolete and remains a powerful asset for future leaders.

Episode Transcript

sM[00:00:00] John Byrne:

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. We were astounded to read, in a recent issue of The Economist, a piece that basically questions the value of the MBA. The title of it is, Why Elite MBA Graduates Are Struggling.

Is the Degree Still Worth It? And basically what The Economist did was, it took the latest employment reports from the top schools and showed that obviously in the past year, MBA graduates have had a more difficult time finding the jobs that they want. It noted that at the top 15 business schools, the share of students who sought and accepted a job offer within three months of graduation fell by six points to 84%.

If you compare that to the average over the past five years, the share declined by eight points. And it goes on from there and gives a bunch of different reasons why it thinks that business schools are in trouble and the MBA is in decline. What it doesn’t know, in fact, is that still the numbers of people getting jobs within three months are very high.

At schools who reported the worst numbers, like at Harvard and MIT, where 23 percent of the graduating class did not accept a job three months after graduation. It makes no note that a lot of this has to do with selectivity, meaning the graduates who quit jobs that paid them a fair amount of money are very effective in the jobs that they want to get after their MBA.

And in many cases, they jobs. With companies that don’t do recruiting of MBAs on the natural cycle of recruiting and that’s primarily because they don’t recruit a lot of MBAs. We’re talking about employers like hedge funds, private equity firms, some wealth management places, early stage companies, and some startups that obviously it’s onesie and twosie kind of recruitment of MBAs.

And they don’t recruit on a cycle where, okay, the everyone’s graduating at this date. And so we’ll start them in August. And that’s part of what has gone on at some of the schools that are reported these lower numbers. The other thing is, yes, the economy was little uncertain and consulting firms did cut back on their hiring and certainly tech firms did as well, but all signs are for already a recovery.

You talk to career management people at the business schools and they will tell you that the number of companies returning to recruit people for internships and for job offers and the job boards have become just loaded with a lot more jobs than they had a year ago. So Maria, what do you make of the economist’s sort of negative take on the MBA?

[00:02:58] Maria Wich-Vila:

Everything old is new again and whatever gets clicks, you can’t fault them for going after the clicks, although I do wish that their their analysis would have been a little bit more in depth and a little bit more trying to get at some of the core reasons behind some of these numbers, so the title says why elite MBA graduates are struggling to find jobs, but then the It doesn’t really answer that question.

It just talks about these numbers are going down. And, I think economies are cyclical. And as the economy cycles through its ups and downs, the hiring is also going to cycle through ups and downs. And one year real estate might be the hot industry that everyone goes into and then two years later, no one’s going into real estate and the same thing happens with tech.

I’m sure that we’re going to start seeing an influx into manufacturing probably in the next year or two. So these cycles come and go. And so I think that overall the death of the MBA reports of the death of the MBA have been greatly exaggerated. One point that the article made was that they thought that perhaps these consulting firms might start looking more towards people who have advanced degrees in technology instead of only going after MBA talent.

And that might work in the short term, but I do think that is not sustainable long term because the technological aspect of it. That’s only one piece of it. The technology, without knowing how to implement the technology alone doesn’t do a whole lot. You need to know how to implement it, how to implement it well, and how to implement it efficiently.

Even in this nascent age of ai, we see so many hallucinations in ai, for example, where an AI algorithm or a chat bot will give you an answer that is absolute nonsense. Waving, throwing your hands up in the air and saying that’s it. It’s over for the MBA because the AI is going to take over everything and only the engineers will have jobs.

If that were the case then there would have never been the rise of the MBA in the first place because it’s not like degrees in computer science did not exist until this year. That technological talent has always been out there. And yet, employers have found that there is in fact a benefit towards having a managerial education that looks at the different moving parts of an organization, operations, marketing, finance, etc.

And knows how to keep all of those pieces in balance when making decisions. I, Do you think that this is just a temporary glitch in things? And I think that we will reach an equilibrium again, once the economy starts to turn around.

[00:05:21] John Byrne:

Caroline, your take?

[00:05:24] Caroline Diarte-Edwards:

Yeah, I’m a big fan of the economist usually, but I find this article rather sloppy.

And we’ve seen it before. Every time there is a downturn in the recruitment market. And there is a downturn with every economic cycle. And there’s another generation of journalists who jump on this and think they’ve discovered something new and make a big song and dance about it, predicting the downfall of the MBA.

And then surprise, 12 months later, they’re writing about the uptick in recruitment for business school graduates. I think the article completely fails to take into account the longer term perspective and how we have seen this happen again and again over the decades. So I think, unfortunately, it’s a rather poorly informed journalist who doesn’t understand the context who’s written this article.

And it’s a shame because The Economist has a very big platform, and this article, I’m sure, has had a lot of visibility. So I think it’s a bit unfair to knock the MBA and question its fundamental value just because there’s been a batch of disappointing recruitment statistics. And, you make a very good point, John.

I think a lot of graduates from the top schools are incredibly picky about the positions that they want to take up. And I’m sure that if they took the first job offer they got, or they were willing to take any job offer that came their way, then all of those Harvard and MIT grads, etc, could have jobs lined up pretty damn quickly.

And that is backed up also by the data that you note in your article about some of the mid tier schools who actually have. Pretty strong recruiting statistics, right? So it doesn’t mean that if you’re graduating from Manchester business school, you have better opportunities than if you’re graduating from Harvard business school, but Harvard’s had a downturn in their recruitment stats and Manchester’s had an improvement in their recruitment stats.

So what it means is that those Manchester graduates are taking jobs that probably the HBS graduates are not going to take, right? So those top tier school graduates are are taking their time and. Yeah, rightly they have fantastic credential under their belt. They will have amazing opportunities and they don’t have to jump on the first thing that comes knocking at their door.

Yeah, it it’s a disappointing article in my view.

[00:07:55] John Byrne:

And then the writer even quotes in books that are negative on the MBA that are more than a decade old, which is really astounding. Now, Maria, you made note of this in our pre podcast call. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

[00:08:14] Maria Wich-Vila:

Yeah, in the middle of this article, there’s a really superfluous paragraph that cites a study from 2007 that says that when compared with firefighters, MBA students are more likely to be upset if a friend bought the same car as them. Okay, what? This study is from 17, almost perhaps even 18 years ago.

And what does this have to do with employment?

I’m used to using the phrase apples and oranges a lot. So comparing apples and oranges, comparing firefighters with MBAs, what does this have to do with. Anything, a study from 17 years ago about what MBA students think about car purchases oh this doesn’t even belong in the same publication, much less the same article, it almost felt like to me there was some sort of like a word limit that the writer was trying to get at.

And they’re like here’s some stuff that I put together for a completely unrelated article. Let me just paste it in here. So I just, I don’t understand that at all. And then also at the very bottom of the article, there’s a heading right before the end that says Donald Trump, MBA. And not only does the following paragraph not really have anything to do, I guess indirectly with Donald Trump, but Donald Trump doesn’t have an MBA.

So when Caroline, again, our resident diplomat, our resident ambassador said, I think that the author does not fully understand the context. Yeah, they don’t. Do they think that Donald Trump has an MBA? Cause Donald Trump does not have an MBA. So right off the bat I whoo, this is a head scratcher of an article.

And unfortunately it, I think it does make some interesting points. It certainly raises some interesting questions, but then unfortunately it doesn’t then proceed to answer them. And then what other, what few interesting points it does make or interesting questions it does make it it, it discredits itself with this random article about by the way, while we’re talking about how McKinsey is hiring fewer people from Harvard let’s also bring up a study about MBAs and firefighters and how they compare with their, what, with their car purchase decisions.

Okay. Okay. Yes, sorry. Sorry, sorry economist.

[00:10:11] John Byrne: Caroline your favorite magazine is really did a boo here I think.

[00:10:15] Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yeah, they certainly did. Bad marks. Zero out of 10 for the economist , it’s a shame because,

[00:10:24] John Byrne: yeah, go ahead.

[00:10:25] Caroline Diarte-Edwards: I was just gonna say, it’s a shame because I think as Maria said, it does raise some interesting questions and I think there is an important debate to have about how the job market may transform.

We are living in an age of unprecedented change with artificial intelligence, and that is going to transform the job market. And it may be that schools are feeling the impact of that already. It may be that, for example, consulting firms are not needing to recruit as many junior staff as they needed to in the past because of AI.

We also know that AI is going to create a lot of jobs. And we know that business schools have done a great job in integrating AI into the curriculum. So they are preparing graduates to, to take leadership roles and manage change and do all of that implementation work that Maria talked about, but they’re just, they’re going to be massive shifts, right?

In the jobs that People took coming out of business school 10 years ago will look very different from the jobs that people will be taking out of business school in 10 years time. And I think those shifts are starting to play out. And I think, they could have done a bit more research to understand.

What is happening on how that transformation is playing out. And you also cite in your article, an interesting report that talks about the expectation of a growth in demand for MBAs. And AI is predicted to create more jobs than it destroys. And I think MBAs are going to be very well positioned to take advantage of that, right?

Because MBA graduates are well prepared to to manage Organizational change, transformation, take the lead in a context of ambiguity in a fast changing environment they are well equipped with those skills, so I think the business school graduates are going to be very well positioned in this new job market.

And it’s a shame I think The Economist didn’t dig into that a little bit more.

[00:12:23] John Byrne:

Yeah, if anything, AI is going to have a greater impact on business undergraduates who, have done very well. In the past, but the truth is that the enrollment in undergraduate programs at a number of universities now it’s just astounding.

There are some universities where business undergrads make up well over a third of all the undergraduates at a university and everybody has been expanding these programs over the last decade. Because they’re in such demand. But you wonder how AI is going to eliminate some of those entry level jobs for undergraduates and will undergraduates be finding themselves working for insurance companies and not meeting the expectations that have been met by a previous generation of undergrads.

In terms of the graduate degree, I agree with you. Look, business is not getting simpler. It’s getting more sophisticated, more challenging, more competitive, more global, more disruptive. And that calls for higher education, smarter people not dumber people and not less education. So as the world becomes more challenging and more complex, it’s going to require managers who can deal with that complexity.

And I think. That graduate education is a great start for training people to basically deal with and manage the complexity of business today. Caroline, I think you have recently absorbed a future of work report from the world economic forum. What does that say?

[00:14:03] Caroline Diarte-Edwards:

I was just reading an article about that, and they say that 60% of employers expect digital access to transform their business by 2030.

And it says that analytical thinking remains the most sought after course skill with seven out of 10 companies considering is it essential in 2025. So I think that’s very relevant, right? Because business schools are definitely giving. graduates great frameworks and cultivating analytical thinking.

It goes on to say, this is followed by resilience, flexibility, and agility, along with leadership and social influence. So it talks about creative thinking, et cetera. So all of those skills are skills that are cultivated through an MBA program. So I do think that this research that the World Economic Forum has done.

really speaks to the the skills that will be required. And I think that MBA graduates will be very well positioned in that environment. And I think it’s also important to keep in mind that as a graduate degree, Business school prepares you for so many different paths, right? There are other graduate degrees that are much more specific and I think can get you locked into a specific career path.

And that is not the case with business school. I think one of the beauties of this this degree path is that it means that you can Tackle any role in a business environment in the future. It just gives you that amazing foundation and business school graduates often are changing careers and they often reinvent themselves, not just when they graduate, but again and again in their careers.

And it gives them the confidence and the skills to do that. But also I think that the network gives you. A fantastic safety net, because it means that if things don’t work out in your current career or your current position, you have an amazing network of people you can reach out to who can help you with your next step and help you move to a new position or help you transform your career again if you need to.

That’s an amazing resource and asset to have that stays with you. Without throughout your career. So I think that it’s a great asset to have that equips you for an environment. That is where the pace of change is increasing and you will need to reinvent yourself in a way that you can’t even anticipate now.

So I think those softer skills that the MBA cultivates will continue to be relevant and probably even more relevant in 10 years time than they have been in the past.

[00:16:48] John Byrne:

I think getting an MBA degree is a heck of a lot easier than getting a medical degree, a law degree, or a computer science degree.

And yet, you’re not locked into law, medicine, or computers if you get an MBA degree. So I think that’s for all things to they support the notion that the most popular graduate degree in America, in part because of all of these attributes that you can place on it. And the flexibility the degree gives you in the world of work.

So I, I think we can pretty safely conclude that the economist is badly misinformed and misread a slight decline in employment stats for one year to go on and extrapolate that to say the degree may not be worth it anymore. And And we’re going to even cite studies that are over a decade old to tell you how MBAs aren’t as good as firefighters as people,

[00:17:49] Maria Wich-Vila: …which in fairness is probably a valid statement to make!

I just want to be clear, but it’s just not super relevant to the discussion at hand.

[00:17:58] John Byrne: …says the Harvard MBA marry to another Harvard MBA? That’s right.

[00:18:04] Maria Wich-Vila: And we thank our firefighters here in LA every day. So…

[00:18:08] John Byrne: And you know what, Maria, I think of you as a firefighter anyway.

[00:18:13] Maria Wich-Vila: You know what? We MBA graduates are putting out fires of different sorts.

Slightly less perhaps a little bit less fatal, but fires nonetheless (?) .

[00:18:24] John Byrne: There you have it. Take a look at the Poets and Quants commentary, The Economist Asks, Is the MBA Worth It? And take a look at The Economist article and see if you draw the same conclusions as we did about it. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Thanks for listening.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The 2025 Financial Times MBA Ranking
Maria |
February 25, 2025

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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