The European Job Market For MBAs
Maria |
March 6, 2024

In the latest episode of Business Casual, the hosts delves into MBA job trends, spotlighting the recent employment reports from INSEAD and London Business School. A significant highlight is INSEAD’s unprecedented placement of graduates into consulting roles, marking a potential record in MBA history. The hosts unpack the allure of consulting post-MBA, its benefits as a career foundation, and how it keeps options open for future shifts in career paths.

Discussion extends to how consulting firms value the one-year MBA program for its efficiency, particularly appealing to firms looking to sponsor employees. They also touch on the geographic mobility and cross-cultural skills of INSEAD graduates, making them attractive hires worldwide. Despite the impressive statistics, concerns about overrepresentation in consulting and its impact on school perception are also examined. 

The episode rounds off with insights into the strategic decisions MBA candidates can make based on hiring trends and school stereotypes, offering a comprehensive analysis of the MBA job market in Europe.

 

 

 

 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:08.570] – John

Well, hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co hosts Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wick-Vila. We’re going to talk about jobs, MBA jobs, and in particular MBA jobs in Europe primarily. Know whenever a business school comes out with an employment report, we are all over it, covering it from top to bottom and giving the analysis that you won’t find anywhere else, including how that report compares to others. Well, in the past week we have new reports from INSEAD and London Business School and the big news is that in the past year, INSEAD has probably placed more people in the consulting industry than any school in the history of the MBA. This is my conclusion. Based on the report, six out of ten graduates at INSEAD in the past year went into consulting. Now what do you make of that Caroline?

[00:01:11.270] – Caroline

It’s a very impressive number. Well, first of all, consulting is a great job post MBA because it’s a wonderful training ground. You get a lot of exposure to a broad range of industries. It’s a very intense work experience. So some people like to do it for a few years and then move into a different position and some people are looking at it as a long term career and aiming to become a partner in the firm. But it is an amazing training ground. So I think having an MBA plus consulting experience is an incredible foundation for a young person to have for their career and can lead to so many different opportunities in the future. Right? So it is a great way for keeping your options open as well. You can make a career change after working in consulting and a lot of people do that and go into a vast array of positions afterwards. I suspect that if the job markets in other sectors had been better, then we wouldn’t see such a large chunk of the class going into consulting. So I think that for some people this was probably their plan B rather than plan A.

[00:02:24.910] – Caroline

And the consulting firms have benefited from the fact that other firms have scaled back their hiring to mop up a lot of very talented INSEAD graduates. And then of know when the firms like McKinsey, Bain and BCG go to recruit at INSEAD, they’re not just recruiting for France or for Singapore or for London, they’re recruiting for offices all around the world. So they can recruit a huge number of graduates because they are big firms with offices spread in a global network and they appreciate the fact that INSEAD graduates have these cross cultural skills which is very much core to the learning experience at INSEAD. And so INSEAD graduates are known for being able to hit the ground running in a different market and work successfully across international borders. So firms like MBB love recruiting INSEAD graduates because they can plop them into an office anywhere in the world and they’re usually incredibly successful. So it looks like that is what has happened here.

[00:03:29.960] – John

And it’s incredible. When you look at the list of companies that are the top recruiters at INSEAD, nine out of the top ten are all consulting firms. Eleven out of the top 15. From the beginning, McKinsey, 167 hires out of INSEAD BCG, 108, Bain, 89 strategy n 38 at Carney, 32, Roland Berger, 19, Oliver Wyman, ten, Ernst and Young, ten. Accenture, nine. You finally get Samsung, Amazon and Eli Lilly before you get two other consulting firms in the restructuring business. Alex, partners in Alvarez and Marcel. And then you have Morgan Stanley. That is just extraordinary, the number of firms recruiting INSEAD MBAs. Now, the other important thing to point out, and Caroline, you know, this is true too, and has been true for many years, is that if you’re a consulting firm and you want your analyst to get an probably. And you want that analyst to return to you, you probably prefer a one year program and you’re willing to foot the bill for that and have someone come back than a two year program where you’re more likely to lose an employee that you really want to keep. And so I think that INSEAD, more than any other business school in the world, has a lot of so called sponsored students who come from the likes of MBB and these other consulting firms with the intention that they will return to their employer and their entire tuition will be subsidized completely by their employer.

[00:05:16.670] – John

Didn’t you find that to be the case when you’re at.

[00:05:19.830] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. The consulting firms love INSEAD for precisely the reasons that you say that it’s very efficient for their staff to be able to get their MBA in one year rather than two. That focused experience means that they have less time for job searching and looking at other opportunities that they would have if they did a two year program. So I’m sure that they’ve seen over the years that the analysts who go for a one year program are more likely to return than analysts who go for a two year program. And I would sometimes have difficult discussions with those consulting firms, right. Because they want to get more and more of their staff into INSEAD. And you can’t fill the entire classroom with McKinsey, Bain and BCG because that wouldn’t even be good for the McKinsey, Bain and BCG guys, right? They don’t want to be surrounded by all of their peers. They’re coming to INSEAD for a diverse learning experience. But there’s sometimes some tension with the firms because they are looking to channel a lot of their analysts into the score.

[00:06:21.010] – John

What’s also interesting about these numbers is the increases in know. In the US in particular, we’ve seen a slowdown by consulting firms in hiring MBAs and a number of people who they have hired, they’ve delayed the start dates. But at INSEAD, McKinsey is up from 160 to 167. BCG is exactly the same in recruiting 108 the year previous to this one. You have strategy Ann going from 21 to 38 hires at Carney from 17 to 32, Roland Berger from eight to 19, Oliver Wyman from six to ten. So almost all of the consulting firms have actually increased the hiring instead of actually lowered it INSEAD, which is another big surprise.

[00:07:17.380] – Maria

One thing that I found interesting about the INSEAD report was that 61% got jobs in management consulting, but only 37% came from management consulting. So that would point to a net gain of over 200 students who are able to make the switch not from management consulting into management consulting, which I think is a real testament to the INSEAD career services office.

[00:07:38.450] – John

Yeah, that’s, that’s huge. That really is huge. And I’m glad you pointed that out. That’s a really smart piece of. Because as I pointed out, there are a number of cylinder firms who really love to sponsor people at INSEAD. The fact that people are able to do a career pivot at INSEAD and get into consulting, which as we all know, is highly selective, highly competitive, it is not the easiest industry to get a really good job at. That’s a real testament to the school. Overall, the numbers are really good. At London Business School, for example, 91% of the class of 2023 got job offers three months after graduation. That’s only down three points from 2022 and two points from the year before in 2021. So those are really good numbers. And I think they also, to put these into perspective, when you have a lot of international students and you have increasing numbers of students seeking one off job opportunities, they’re not going to get them on the traditional three month cycle where people come to campus, they hire boatloads of MBAs and they get them to start at the same time in late summer, early fall of the following year, if not immediately after graduation.

[00:09:03.160] – John

If you want a job in places like a hedge fund, a venture capital firm, a private equity company, or a nonprofit or government job, all of these jobs are one off job searches for MBAs and they take a little more time. So when we say that 91% of the class got a job offer within three months, we’re also not saying. But it needs to be made clear that many of these MBAs are working on these one off offers where they have to go and use networking techniques to get into jobs that are very hard to get at companies that don’t routinely recruit large numbers of MBAs. One other little interesting stat out of the LBS employment report is that the actual salaries declined in three key industries year over year, which also doesn’t really happen all that often. But that also can be the impact of geography or company choice. So there can be a lot of noise in this data. But essentially the MBAs at LBS who went as consulting, finance and tech all saw declines in their pay. In finance, the decline was more significant than any other, was 11% decline in average salary.

[00:10:32.650] – John

What do you think that is all about, Caroline?

[00:10:36.770] – Caroline

Yeah, well, I think that LBS is more dependent than INSEAD on the UK job market. So it says in your article that more than half the class stayed in the UK, so 55%. And that’s even a drop from in previous years when it was two thirds of the class staying in the UK. And the UK has not been doing tremendously well. Brexit, we shot ourselves in the foot there. So a lot of finance jobs have left the UK, right? Firms have relocated, have moved teams and so I think it is a more challenging job market. INSEAD has the benefit of having a more global portfolio of job opportunities. London business school does also feed graduates into a lot of markets all around the world. But INSEAD, given the size of the class and the presence with campuses both in Europe and Singapore, does have a more global portfolio of relationships with recruiters. And that is a benefit. I mean, I’ve seen that in the past when I was working at the school and we would go through cycles of ups and downs in the recruiting market. And the fact that you’re not so dependent on one single local market does give a buffer to the school.

[00:11:54.340] – Caroline

And it’s incredible that INSEAD 100 graduates from that class have actually gone to the Middle East. I mean, there’s been tremendous growth of opportunities in the Middle east over the past few years and that’s the biggest number of INSEAD graduates I think they’ve ever moved to that region. So there are definitely great job opportunities there, very attractive financial packages being offered to graduates moving to that region. And it may be that INSEAD because it’s a bigger school. It has more relationships internationally than London business school has. It’s been able to divert some of its graduates to different markets in a way that London business school hasn’t been able to do. And I know that it didn’t mean they’ve invested a huge amount in the careers team over the past few years. It’s a much, much bigger team than when I was working at the school. And so I see that paying off, right? That they have really great relationships that they’re very good at maintaining and so they’re able to weather the storms a little bit better perhaps than some other schools.

[00:13:02.660] – John

Yeah. The other thing worth noting is that the median salary at INSEAD is up. It’s at 119. This is in us dollars from 110 the year before, median signing bonus, 31 grand, up from 27 the year before. Maximum salary. I always love when a school reports the largest number that a student got, even though it’s totally an anomaly and it’s often dependent on previous work experience. I always find these numbers fascinating. And in INSEAD’s case, the big payday occurred to someone who went into the energy sector. $450,000 to start. Maria, that sounds pretty darn good, doesn’t it?

[00:13:56.110] – Maria

I mean, it doesn’t sound bad. I’m not opposed to it. I would take, you know, shockingly enough, so might know. I wonder if that person was going to the Middle east, perhaps, maybe they were a member of the Saudi royal family to begin with. Who knows? One can never, I mean, I guess oil and gas, maybe they need to attract people to come work for them. If there is so much interest in sustainability amongst MBA students right now, maybe the oil and gas companies are having trouble attracting talent and perhaps they’ve had to increase the compensation accordingly.

[00:14:36.780] – John

Yeah, and I’m betting this person has had a good amount of experience to draw upon and was a very valuable recruit for whatever company got that person. I’ll also note this, and I think this is important as the economy is so dynamic and it’s so different from one region of the world or country, even to another. When you look at these global reports, where schools are really placing people all over the world, unlike most, you know, opportunistic students have the opportunity to pick and choose. And the Middle east is a good example. As Caroline and Maria both pointed out, it’s dynamic, it’s growing, it’s fast paced. The number of people available with skills to help professionally manage operations in the Middle east is low, and that spells great opportunity for MBAs. And if you’re in a global program, like a London business school, like an INSEAD, you’re going to be more apt to take advantage of where the opportunities are in the best and fastest growing economies in the world. It’s just a simple fact, if that’s what you want to do. And clearly, I think in the INSEAD report, with over 100 of students going to the Middle east, which if it’s not a record, it’s a near record for INSEAD, is an indication of this and a real positive.

[00:16:04.970] – John

It’s also something to think about. If you’re considering an MBA and you’re considering your opportunities and you’re open to basically getting the job anywhere and you’re really interested more in growth and a dynamic economy, your options may really well open up in a big way when you go to a global MBA program. Any final thoughts on these? I think they’re both really good reports, Caroline.

[00:16:34.360] – Caroline

Yeah, so a couple of things. I think it’s also evidence that consulting firms always do well regardless of the economic cycle, right? Because if economies are booming, then they’re doing lots of wonderful, fascinating strategy projects and market entry projects. And then if the economy is in dire circumstances, then they’re doing lots of cost cutting projects and headcount reduction projects. So consulting firms always do well regardless of how other firms are doing. So I think that these statistics also reflect that. And then I would also say, even though these numbers are good for INSEAD, it’s a double edged sword, because they do not want to be known as the school to go to only if you want to do consulting. Right. And they do suffer a bit from that image that sometimes candidates are put off by those numbers because they think, well, INSEAD is a consulting school. And if I want to go into finance or I want to go into something else, then I should go elsewhere. And the school is very keen to dispel that myth because it does have great relationships with recruiters across industries. And sometimes the numbers can be a bit misleading because it’s such a large class.

[00:17:51.910] – Caroline

So you might still have in absolute numbers quite a lot of people going into finance or private equity or venture capital or starting their own companies or whatever it may be, it may not be a huge percentage of the class, right. So people can underestimate the other opportunities. And the school does suffer a bit from that concern, that image that sometimes candidates think that they should only go to INSEAD if they’re interested in consulting. So I would say that is not the case. And I know that the school will be looking at these numbers and they will be concerned about how that will look to prospective candidates. So just a final thought there.

[00:18:37.510] – John

No, that’s a really good point. And this is something that I’ll just say. Many schools still suffer these stereotypes. Like people say, oh, if you want to go into marketing, go to Kellogg. If you want to do finance, go to Wharton. If you want to do something like operations management or supply chain, go to Michigan State. Or if you want to go to consulting, INSEAD or finance, London business school as well. And these stereotypes don’t really do justice to the general management curriculum and all the great faculty in the various disciplines that make up business because all of these schools are really, at this level, great across the board. And in fact, you could basically, as an applicant, think about the alternative strategy, which is this. If you go to Kellogg, instead of going into marketing or consulting, you go into finance. Why? Because a few of your colleagues want to go into finance. And you may find more opportunities out of Kellogg and finance that you would in a place where so many people are gravitating to that same. You know, you can play this two different ways. Or at INSEAD, let’s take these numbers and say, okay, what the consulting firms have found is that the fishing is great at INSEAD because the pond contains so many fish who want to go into consulting.

[00:20:04.360] – John

Therefore, every consulting firm is going to go there with an army of recruiters and interview everybody under the sun because they’re expecting to come out with boats full of fish. It’s hard to really sit back and say, oh, which strategy should I employ? Should I go to the school if I want to be a consultant that’s placing so many people in consulting, or do I go to school? That’s placing few people and therefore I have fewer competitors in those interviews and maybe even a better chance of getting a job because the employers, too, want a diverse range of people from various schools. So it’s always a difficult play. Anyway, these are two good job in climate reports, interesting both in themselves. And you can read about my Poets and Quants. Meantime, hey, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The European Job Market For MBAs
Maria |
March 6, 2024

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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