The Economist Walks From MBA Rankings
Maria |
July 20, 2022

After several years on the market, The Economist has officially bid goodbye to its business school rankings. Many people are aware that they have received a great deal of criticism, particularly from our hosts from Business Casual, John, Maria, and Caroline. This criticism has primarily been directed at them because their rankings are  unpredictable and inconsistent with any accepted method of ranking business schools.

Now the question is, given their track record on these rankings, which did not speak well of the prestige and authority of the brand that they represent, will they be missed or does the business school community, which they have persistently undervalued, have a bit to celebrate?

Listen to this week’s episode of Business Casual to hear what the team thinks!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.510] – John

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Business Casual, our weekly podcast that examines the business school community and world and business school programs. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

 

[00:00:19.610] – John

I’m here with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards, who is a co founder of Fortuna Admissions, and Maria Wich Vila, who is the founder of ApplicantLab. The big news we want to discuss is The Economist decision to abandon business school rankings. The Economist announced that it will no longer rank MBA programs, executive MBA programs, and Master in Management programs, starting immediately. The magazine said it was withdrawing from the market primarily for commercial reasons.

 

[00:00:54.470] – John

Many know that The Economist ranking has been subject to incredible criticism. The results from year to year are very flaky, inconsistent, unpredictable, and unjustifiable by any standard. So there’s no question that these rankings did not reflect well on the prestige and the authority of The Economist brand, which is truly one of the most esteemed media brands in the world and engages an incredible audience of decision makers and influencers throughout the world.

 

[00:01:33.560] – John

And so I imagine there’d be a fair bit of celebration among business school deans, associate deans, admission directors, career management people in the business school community who look at this ranking and say, this is nuts. It’s crazy. And after all, if you even look. At the latest ranking that was published not all that long ago, this year. INSEAD, London Business School, Oxford, Cambridge, IE Business School, and Imperial College London all decided, we’re not going to play this game anymore. We’re not going to even be involved in it, and decided not to participate with the ranking, which, of course, further eroded what little credibility it had in the marketplace. I wonder what my two critics of rankings, Maria and Caroline, think of the Economist’s decision and whether there are some mixed feelings about the decision by this magazine to walk away from the market.

 

[00:02:30.450] – John

Caroline?

 

[00:02:31.440] – Caroline

Well, my first reaction when I saw the pinky news flash about this was, oh, thank God, and how did it possibly take them so many years to realize how shoddy this ranking was? I’m a huge fan of The Economist, right? I mean, I’ve been a subscriber for years. I’m a huge fan of the organization and the quality of the journalism it produces. And it was just tremendously frustrating to see this, frankly, crap being turned out year by year, and how could they not realize how bad it was? And when I was in Sierra, I was responsible for putting together the data and liaison with the rankings organizations and providing the submissions from INSEAD. I spent a lot of time on that, and it’s not a fun thing for schools to have to deal with. And it’s incredibly frustrating that we would generally do incredibly badly in that ranking. And I think there was a lot of bad data going into the ranking from some schools that also led to the volatile results. We always play those games very straight at in Sierra, so felt that it wasn’t particularly fair because I’m not sure that everyone was playing game fairly, because some organizations are much more careful about the methodology and the quality of the data.

 

[00:04:01.040] – Caroline

Right? So FT audits the data periodically. They go around all of the schools every so often and audit the data. It’s a pretty thorough process, and organizations like the Economists never did that. And I think there were a lot of question marks about the quality of some of the data that was being used. And it’s extremely frustrating for the schools to see the brand and knowing that obviously didn’t truly reflect the quality of the program. But some people will look at that and think, oh, wow, INSEAD is number 30. They’ve really gone down the drain, haven’t they? And occasionally you have to explain that, and you have to explain to people. People are coming. As you know, with the business school market, every year there is a new generation, a new class of people who are starting to learn about business schools, and they’re new to this, and they’re learning about it. And they might stumble upon The Economist MBA ranking, and that might be the first thing that they read about. And then you have to explain to them why INSEAD is not really one of the worst business schools in the world, and you have to explain your opinion of the ranking and some of the history behind that.

 

[00:05:26.180] – Caroline

And it’s just very frustrating for people at the school to have to deal with that. So my initial reaction was, well, thank God, I can’t believe it’s taken them this long to do something about it.

 

[00:05:38.900] – John

Yeah, that’s really true, Maria.

 

[00:05:41.580] – Maria

My first reaction was, we did it, guys.

 

[00:05:47.370] – John

We’ve been pretty harsh critics, let’s face it.

 

[00:05:50.360] – Maria

We have trashed these guys year after year, rightfully so, for, I think, the reasons that Caroline mentioned. And I think, Caroline, I really have a lot of sympathy for the position that you were probably in in those days, because it’s very hard to explain to a prospective candidate why that ranking is garbage without sounding defensive, without sounding like you’re trying to overcompensate for something, but it really is a garbage ranking. And our fellow our resident diplomat here just used the word crap a few minutes ago, which is, I think, the first time I’ve ever heard of you say something that is not completely proper and prim, which is really quite a treat for me. No, I think this is wonderful. It is embarrassing for The Economist. Frankly. As a publication that a publication of its caliber. And it’s so meticulous and it’s so sophisticated and rigorous in its analyses in every other topic in the world. That when it comes to judging business schools. Which you would think might be a pretty strong source of interest for a number of its younger readers. It was just so weird that they really just did not. They kind of made it up and it just led to all these weird results year after year.

 

[00:07:11.630] – Maria

I guess if I were to look at a silver lining, is that I think The Economist could use this as an opportunity to maybe completely redo the world of rankings. Maybe they could say, okay, everyone else does this thing where they find different factors and they rank each factor, they give it a waiting and we are going to completely reinvent it. But it is kind of funny. I think people who go to business school and people who go to economics graduate school are kind of very different people and I think MBA types would have a little chuckle and say that this is very emblematic of how an economist thinks, which is not necessarily real world useful versus the way an MBA thinks, which is far more pragmatic in the real world.

 

[00:07:56.900] – John

Yeah, definitely true. And the latest list, let’s admit it was an unmitigated disaster. You have Stanford and 8th place Chicago Booth, which incidentally had been a number one MBA program according to The Economist, in 2018 and 2019 was 9th. You have Owen Business School at Washington University, which is a very good school, but it actually got its highest rank ever, 19th ahead of UCLA Cornell and UT Austin. The year before it was in 2019. Actually it was 41st. And you would go back to why the INSEAD and London Business School just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The two giants of European business education, The Economist would routinely rank them very poorly, particularly in comparison to the Financial Times. Good example. And the last time the INSEAD participated in The Economist ranking was posted 22nd, 19 places below its current Financial Times rank. LBS was 20 517 spots under its current Ft range. And even if you look over the 18 separate rankings that The Economist has done dating back to many years when it started, neither school, LBS or c has ever ranked first. And INSEAD has only managed to rank in the top ten once in all those years.

 

[00:09:32.730] – John

So there is plenty of disaffection by very important players who believe that The Economists undermine their quality. And so I get it, but I do think we’re going to lose something. And here’s what we’re going to lose business schools have long had a love hate relationship with rankings and it’s understandable why they would when you’re ranked low. And there are these questions from applicants and faculty and alumni that are annoying to answer because oftentimes you can’t explain why a school goes down because there’s so little transparency to the rankings, it’s hard to understand what’s going on. And the truth is, the differences between and among these schools is so slight that the results underlying the numerical rank are highly clustered together and have no statistical meaning when you put an actual number against the program. So I totally get it. But here’s the deal. The Economist is a prestigious and authoritative publication. It is read and engaged with by decision makers and influencers all over the world in the fields of economy, business and public policy. The fact that it devoted its resources to pumping out these three rankings every year really telegraph to its readers that business education is important, it’s worthwhile, and there is a good being served to society no matter where your school ranks.

 

[00:11:05.570] – John

The fact that The Economist believes these schools deserve its attention on a regular basis and devotes formidable resources to get these rankings published is a sign that business schools matter. Business education is important, and I think it does make people put business school education in their consideration set. It’s a reminder that there’s value here, and boy, should I go and get this degree, should I upskill? Should I enhance my ability to lead others and enhance my understanding of global business? Should I go and acquire that network of people who will support me and I will learn from throughout the rest of my life? Yes. That’s what the Economist ranking does. When you separate the actual results from the greater meaning, the greater context of what The Economist and premature puts on the business of graduate management education. So on that level, I think we lose something. I wish that The Economist instead said, look, we’ve been publishing crap. It’s beneath our brand, it is shoddy, and we need to fix it. And here’s how we can fix it, and here’s how we can also differentiate what we’re doing from what other rankings are doing and therefore add value in the marketplace.

 

[00:12:32.270] – John

I wish that The Economist had taken that approach as opposed to just walking away. Caroline, don’t you think we lose something here?

 

[00:12:39.140] – Caroline

Yeah, I guess if you take the perspective that no publicity is bad publicity, then it is a bad thing. Although I think Prince Andrew might disagree with that philosophy. But it’s true that The Economist is such a waste publication, as you point out. It’s read by so many decision makers around the world, and it’s often read by ambitious young people. It’s often read by students right around the world. So it does have influence. And the attention that it brings to business school, I’m sure, in some way was helpful, as you say. It boggles my mind that they let the state affairs continue for so many years and they didn’t do something about it, and they didn’t turn things around. As Maria said, they are known for the quality of their analysis and the rigor, and it’s a big organization, so how on earth could they not have sorted this out? I don’t know. How many years has this ranking been going on for? I don’t even know how many years it’s been going on for, but it seems like it’s a very long time.

 

[00:13:53.510] – John

Yeah, I think it’s about 18 years, maybe, something like that.

 

[00:13:57.030] – Caroline

Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s a long time, right, to be turning out rubbish for an organization like The Economist. So I think it’s rather shabby that they didn’t sort it out a long time ago.

 

[00:14:09.410] – John

Yeah, I think one of the things that your colleague Matt Simon said to me in my obituary for The Economist ranking is that they did include many international business schools from Canada and Latin America to Europe and Middle East and Asia that were not in the Ft ranking and gave, therefore would be students more wide-ranging    worldwide study opportunities and attention, which is helpful. And the fact that they had an alternative to the FT’s Masters in Management ranking, that’s also helpful. And they took a global perspective, which, as we know, US. News, which is the predominant ranking that many watch in the US. And many people who are bound for the US. For graduate education look at, is totally US centric in that sense. It pretends that there is no other world other than the US. Still, Bloomberg Business Week from one ranking to the next changes it’s mine. But typically ranks schools that are not in the US separately. Forbes ranks them separately as well. So the Ft and the economists were the only two that had true global rankings. The other thing about the economy and this was both, I think one of the things that ended up killing it and one of the things that kind of made it special was they paid a lot of attention to student opinion of the academic experience.

 

[00:15:43.490] – John

And the problem was the small sample sizes made those responses not credible and led to a lot of the volatility in the ranking. But nonetheless, there are problems when you survey the latest graduates, including the cheerleading problem that you have, where no one wants to undermine their own school and a ranking. So even if they had reservations about the experience, they might hide them from the answers in the survey. But generally, over time, over many classes, you do get to some general period of level of truth in the student surveys. So that will be gone. And there was some value in saying, hey, we think the faculty were outstanding and seller and consistent throughout. And in other schools that was not true. But we think the quality of the educational experience we received in the MBA program was top notch. Or not, or not quite top notch. Seeing those answers was helpful. And the problem, the sample size being so small and so unpredictable, led to crazy, ridiculous results. But I think we’ll miss some of that as well. Maria, last words on this.

 

[00:17:02.310] – Maria

Don’t say rest in peace. Yes, rest in peace. We hardly knew ye. No, you just said some really nice things about all the stuff that they did and the benefits they brought. But I continue to think, sorry, guys. Garbage in, garbage out. I really think this ranking, the subjective piece of it, it’s true it’s wonderful to get the opinions of people who have gone through the program because they’re going to know it best. The problem is that most people get one MBA in their lives, so how do they know what to compare it to? They might say, well, this faculty was amazing, but maybe if they would have gone to a different school, the faculty would have been even better. And I don’t know, it’s so weird. Like, for example, just really quickly, 25% of their ranking was this student quality indicator, and number two was International University of Monaco. I would love to study a business in Monaco, but you look at that and you’re like, is it possible that maybe it doesn’t pass the rational test? So, yeah, I mean, did it maybe help get some new attention to University of Monaco? Probably.

 

[00:18:14.530] – Maria

But it also doesn’t exactly help a legitimate candidate who is really lost, new to the process and looking for truly helpful criteria upon which to gauge a business school. Monica would be great, but yeah, come on, guys.

 

[00:18:31.560] – John

Very true. No doubt about that. Caroline, your last words on this?

 

[00:18:37.190] – Caroline

Yeah, I mean, it was really an embarrassment. It was a huge source of frustration for me. I do think it’s a shame they didn’t try to turn things around. Maybe this is an opportunity for Poets and Quants. John. You created the Business Week ranking. Maybe you need to maybe you need to replace this.

 

[00:19:06.790] – John

And I do recognize that it is a dubious distinction, to be sure. But being the person who created the first full time, regularly published ranking back in 1988 at Business Week, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of work to do this with journalistic integrity and transparency. It’s a monumental effort to create a ranking that adds some value to the marketplace, and it’s useful to a prospective student. And that’s why it’s easy to be for us all, especially me, to be the armchair critic of the Sunday morning quarterback kind of person. Monday morning quarterback, rather. And it’s so much harder to actually do it. And I can get that. It would have been a mountain to climb for The Economist editors to fix it. And the other problem, I think, for The Economist was how it did the ranking. The people who did the rankings for the business schools were not the people who covered business schools. The longtime editor of the ranking, Bill Ridges, did all the other rankings and lists that The Economist did. So he wasn’t fully invested in a way that someone who covers schools regularly, day in and day out, really knows the territory, has visited the schools, and had a deeper understanding of the true benefits of a business education and how to measure try to measure quality.

 

[00:20:39.060] – John

Try I would say not measure actual quality, because that’s almost impossible. I think that divorce between those who cover the industry and those who rank the industry ultimately leads to an inferior ranking. And I think that that has long been the economist Achilles heel on these rankings. If they had someone who, day in and day out, covered the business schools, met with deans, met with students, met with faculty, knew the industry day in and day out, and then allowed those judgments and understanding to inform a new and better ranking, the result would have been very different than what it has been. So rest in peace, economist ranking. We will miss you, but we may not miss you all that much. All right, Caroline Maria, thank you very much again for your incredible insights and views. And for all of you out there, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

 

The Economist Walks From MBA Rankings
Maria |
July 20, 2022

[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!