The Fastest Way To Write Essays And Submit An MBA Application If You’re In A Hurry To Apply To Business School!
Maria |
August 1, 2023

Since ApplicantLab’s exercises and advice are available online 24/7, even the most rushed MBA candidate can use it to maximize their chances, with the limited time they have left!


In an ideal world, people would spend 6-12 months working on their applications, but SPOILER ALERT: we don’t live in an ideal world, and so here you are: maybe only a week or three left before a deadline, panicking.

Maybe you were derailed by a health issue. Maybe you were recently laid off and so applying to business school wasn’t even on your mind until last week! Maybe you didn’t know a whole lot about just how competitive (and complicated!) business school applications are, and you were a little cocky / didn’t think these essays would be challenging. Or maybe you just procrastinated!

So here’s how you can “speed run” your way through ApplicantLab, if you’re in a big hurry! (pssst! You can start your free trial right now, no credit card required!)

While this isn’t the ideal scenario, even if you can’t go through all of the advice I’ve got in the Lab, with these steps I can at least help you make some key last-minute course corrections so that what you submit ends up being as strong as possible, given the circumstances.

Here is a quick text list of the steps, followed by a video explanation (you can play the video sped up 2x!), and then below that a longer written explanation of the steps you will take in the Lab as part of your “speed run”. Note: this assumes that you’ve already got a strong resume in place (don’t forget that the resume is MORE IMPORTANT than the essays) (you can see some of my resume advice via the ApplicantLab free trial — just create your account and click through to get to the Resume module! Already upgraded? Click here to jump directly to the Resume module , where you can select “7. Your Checklist” as a quick way to check your own resume) AND that you’ve already prepared your recommender(s) to submit something for the upcoming deadline (that is, that they at least are on-board with supporting you and have agreed to be ready by the deadline).

  • STEP 1: Skim the “Career Vision checklist” and “Why MBA checklist” items in the “To Do List” module
  • STEP 2: Go to the “Brainstorming” module and use its prompts to come up with at least 3 Leadership stories and 1 Failure story per each recommendation you need (e.g. since most people need to submit 2 recommendations, brainstorm a minimum of 2 “Failure” stories).
  • STEP 3: Branding [OPTIONAL] IF you are writing multiple schools’ essays (and / or if you’ve Brainstormed several possible stories) use the Branding module to allocate (at a minimum) the top 3 “Leadership Brand Traits” to your stories — this will help you filter through / prioritize the most promising stories later on.
  • STEP 4: Jump to the “Pre-writing” module and use its mini-questions to beat writers’ block and make sure you’re hitting the right points. If at any point you’d like more in-depth explanation or analysis of a specific essay question, don’t forget that you can hit “Review Advice” to pop-up the additional insights… but if you’re really in a hurry, just follow the pre-writing prompts!
  • STEP 5: Go back to the “To Do List” module, click on any school’s name, and review the advice in the “Rough Draft checklist” and the “Final Draft checklist” — apply those lessons as you build upon your pre-writing notes and start to flesh them out into a proper essay
  • STEP 6: OPTIONAL STEP re: Recommendations: if you’re still in a position to influence what your recommender says about you, this might be a good time to check out the core advice in the “Recommendations” module, so that you can try to course-correct / persuade them to modify what they’re writing *IF* you realize after reading that module that you had asked them to write sub-optimal things about you!
  • STEP 7: The Application Forms… Do NOT save these for the deadline day since there will probably be surprise text boxes to fill out — go through your forms, and then refer back to the advice in the Application Forms module for any that are particularly tricky (e.g. “Which other schools are you applying to and why?”, “Reason for leaving last job”, “Description of extra-curricular involvement”, etc.)

1. Since a weak “career vision” / “why I need an MBA” argument is the number-one reason otherwise strong candidates get rejected, go to the “To Do List” module, and pull up the “Career Vision checklist” and the “Why MBA checklist”

In these sections of the To Do List, I have summarized the key take-aways taught in those two modules (you can see some of the other sample To Do List items as part of the free trial, which you can get started with right now!)(you can also access a teeny sampling of the Career Vision module in the free trial as well)

You can expand the video play-back screen to “full screen” and see the check-list. If you want more information / explanation, you can watch the videos themselves. If you only have time to watch one video in this section, watch the SECOND video at the bottom of the page of the “Why MBA checklist” module called “Sanity Check”.

Don’t forget, that, as with all videos inside of ApplicantLab, you can increase the playback speed by clicking on the gear in the lower right-hand side of the playback screen, you can increase the playback speed, up to 2.0x the speed!

  • Important note: above I said that this is the main reason an “otherwise strong” candidate does not get in… however, this does NOT flow in the OPPOSITE way: that is, a super-amazing career vision / why MBA reason will NOT help someone with a weak profile get accepted… nor does it guarantee acceptance for a strong candidate. It’s just the main way “people who were otherwise probably going to get in end up shooting themselves in the foot“, which is why I think it’s so important!

2. Go to the “Brainstorming” module and use its prompts to come up with at least 3 Leadership stories and 2 Failure stories.

This is the sort of “bare minimum” number of stories you’ll need for MOST MBA application essay sets, plus, for 2 recommendations. Of course, more is better!!!!! But you’re in a hurry!!!! 🙂

The TYPICAL business school application will ask you for at least one essay that goes beyond “career vision / why mba” — and usually, that essay topic will ask you (either overtly or indirectly) about a time you’ve been a leader. Also, most MBA applications ask for one (though usually 2) letters of recommendation.

You may, of course, discover that your specific school’s essay set has more / different requirements, but in my experience, an absolute minimum of 3 Leadership essays can get a candidate through lots of applications — though I’d urge you to try to have 5 – 7 stories total if applying to more competitive schools.

Therefore, Brainstorming at least 3 leadership stories should cover you for EITHER the schools that ask for , say, 1 main leadership essay, AND also will give each recommender fodder to use, since each recommender is usually asked to talk about at least one thing you did really, really well (and as we know from the AdCom Hierarchy of Needs, the “thing you did really, really well” should NOT primarily be an “IQ” thing like an impressive analysis, but rather an “EQ” thing, like leading others).

  • Important note: ULTIMATELY, you WILL need more stories for the INTERVIEW, so at SOME point you might need to come back to this module and really flesh it out (if you’re applying to a school like Stanford GSB that asks for at least 4 leadership stories [sure, some of them are “optional”, but come on… it’s not ACTUALLY optional!!!], or a school like Ross where you can write an 100-word essay about a failure you encountered, etc.) but the guideline above is the “bare minimum” that can probably get you through a lot of schools’ complete written applications.

3. [OPTIONAL] IF you are writing multiple schools’ essays (and / or if you’ve Brainstormed several possible stories), consider taking a few minutes to go to the “Branding” module and adding in the 1 – 3 brand traits I teach as most associated with “Leadership” to the relevant stories.

If you’re ONLY applying to 1 or 2 schools, OR if you’ve only limited yourself to a few leadership stories in Brainstorming, then you can skip this.

The benefit of the “Branding” module is to — when you get to the essay-writing step — help you visually-identify which of your stories might be the best choice(s) for a specific essay question. It can help you prioritize / organize if you’ve got lots of potential stories to use, lots of essays to write, or both!

Since you’re in a hurry, you can focus primarily on allocating the “Top three leadership traits” I emphasize (these are the ones at the top of the traits box, in their own little section) — in a hurry, focus on those three as they are the three most important ones!

If you have a LITTLE more time, other Brand Traits beyond the “Big 3 Leadership” traits that are usually good would be something around mentoring / coaching others, since schools like to see “supportive” students

4. Jump to the “Prewriting” module (after you’ve added schools to your list, of course) — please, please try to at least open up the Essay analysis advice and read the “In a Hurry?” short-cut (or maybe even watch a video or two, at 1.5x+ or even 2x speed), but if you’re completely in a hurry, then this will have to do.

The “Prewriting” module takes the essay questions and breaks them down into “mini-questions”, or sub-questions. This helps defeat writers’ block (by giving you a small, easy place to start) and also helps ensure that you don’t miss anything vital (and sometimes I even re-warn you to NOT do certain things).

Read the “mini questions” and then JOT NOTES in the text box on the right-hand side (or in your own document someplace else)

You can still, within the Pre-Writing step, pull up the in-depth advice that was displayed in the earlier steps. IDEALLY, you would have had time to have the Essay Advice and Mapping steps build upon each other before getting to Prewriting, but also IDEALLY I would have won the Powerball lottery last month, so…. Please do try to pull up the essay analysis in the “Review Advice” button (it’s the light-blue button on the right-hand side of each question) and go through as much of it as you have time for. Pre-writing was never meant to be a stand-alone step, it was meant to follow you going through a process of learning how admissions officers think, what each school looks for, etc., so ideally you can try to review *some* of the essay advice, especially for the trickier essay topics or for schools that are harder to get accepted to!

5.Go back to the “To Do List” module, scroll down to any school, and review the advice for “Rough Drafts” and “Final Drafts” (no need to actually use those modules if you’re in a hurry)

For the love of all that is good upon this earth, do NOT think that since business school is “SCHOOL” that your essays should sound like SCHOOL essays. They should NOT. They should sound like a CONVERSATION from the REAL YOU.

Don’t try to use big words. It makes you unlikeable. And even worse is when people try to use big words that they don’t really understand, and so they mis-use the word — in that case, someone is unlikeable AND embarrassing, and MBA programs do NOT want to admit people who are EITHER one of those two things!

6. “Recommenders” module: skim the good examples and bad examples to make sure your recommender is saying the right stuff about you!

You have probably already gotten the process of getting recommendations underway, but… JUST to make sure that you have asked your recommenders to say the most USEFUL things about you (as with the resume, the sorts of things they might say to impress a future employer might be meaningless.. or even backfire!… for an MBA admissions reader!

So, go to the Recommendations module and click on the green-side tab to pop up the advice article called “Purpose of Recc?” — you can then SKIM the advice here to see if the sorts of things you’ve asked your recommender to say about you is indeed what they are writing. If you realize after reading this advice that you need to course-correct, reach out to your recommender(s) RIGHT AWAY and tell them that you realize that you didn’t mention this earlier, so of course they don’t need to change their recommendation if it’s already been written… but if there’s any chance they’d be willing to write about (good, MBA-relevant) example instead of (boring, high-IQ) example, that you’d really appreciate it!

It’s worth a shot — after all, maybe your recommender has procrastinated a bit too… and this might be a case where that works in your favor! 🙂

7. “Application Forms”: read through the actual forms; check out this module for any tricky or unexpected questions

DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE DAY OF THE DEADLINE to go through the application form(s) for the first time. MOST application forms will have a TON of little text-box questions (e.g. “Describe your greatest accomplishments at work”; “Tell us about your most significant international experience”; “If your direct supervisor is not a recommender, please use this space to explain why”….). You do NOT want for the clock to be counting down 15 minutes to go before the deadline and you realize to your horror that there’s no way you can get the stupid little boxes all filled in in time.

SO!

Go through your schools’ application forms soon-ish. Since it doesn’t take as much “brain power” as other tasks, the filling out of the forms can be a nice quasi-break from the more mentally-demanding tasks above.

If you run into a text box that you’re not sure what to say (“What should I write in the box asking about my job responsibilities? Or the one asking me why I left a certain job? OR the section asking me to list all of the other schools I’m applying to? What do I put there?! Help!!!”) then check out the Application Forms module, since I cover the most common mini-questions there. In case you find a form field that you don’t see advice for the in the Lab, then email [email protected] with the specific question, and we’ll try to point you in the right direction!

Sign up for the ApplicantLab Free Trial now (no credit card required!) to check out just a small sample of the Lab’s features…

…and remember, at this late stage, the other admissions consultants of my caliber (HBS graduate; in my 20th year of giving admissions advice) are PROBABLY already fully-booked for the upcoming deadline, and are DEFINITELY going to charge you MUCH more than the cost of ApplicantLab (most consultants of my caliber are charging $450+ for just one hour of their time, and they tend to sell time in a block of a “two hour minimum”… if you find someone charging less than that, or with wide-open availability only a few weeks before a deadline, then there’s a chance that they have spare capacity open for a reason…so even if you DO end up hiring someone else, that’s awesome!!!! But… maybe, maybe also get an affordable “2nd opinion” from an expert like me via the Lab, just in case, for example, a larger firm dumps you off on one of their least-experienced / least-popular staff members!)

My promise to you is that, for less than the cost of one hour of hiring me, you will get dozens of hours’ worth of advice (which of course, you can play back at 2x speed, ha ha) about every facet of the application… and any questions not covered in the Lab, you can just reach out to us at [email protected] to get clarifications!

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Application Tips | MBA Admissions Advice
The Fastest Way To Write Essays And Submit An MBA Application If You’re In A Hurry To Apply To Business School!
Maria |
August 1, 2023

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

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!