Wharton Reaches A Business School Milestone
Maria |
August 3, 2021

Wharton reported this week that it has reached a milestone – the incoming class of 2023 is 52% female. 

With this, Wharton has become the first really, truly prominent business school in the world to enroll a majority of women. Other institutions have flirted with, and a few have even surpassed, 50% gender parity, but none have the reputation of Wharton. 

On this week’s episode of Business Casual, Maria and Caroline discuss what THEIR  business school experience was like with classes that were only 30% and 20% female respectively and how they see the landscape continuing to change moving forward.

  • Why have business schools historically have had more difficulty reaching gender parity than Med schools and law schools? 
  • How has it evolved to the point where Wharton has now been able to attract the majority of women in its business school class?
  • Is this a sign of what is to come with other business schools? 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.630] – John

Hello, everyone. It’s John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast featuring my co host Maria Wich Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Of course, Caroline is a former admissions director at INSEAD and a co founder of Fortuna Admissions, while Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. We had some really interesting news this past week, and let me just put the headline out there. Wharton has become the first really, truly prominent business school in the world to enroll a majority of women in its new full cohort. Now, 52% of the students in Wharton’s new cohort that enters shortly and is in the class of 2023 will be women. That’s a new record. There are other schools that have flirted close to 50% in gender parity and even a few that have exceeded it, but none of the stature, the reputation and the quality of Wharton. So we want to sit back and talk a little bit about how that happened, why it happened and whether or not it’s a harbinger of other things to come at other business schools. And with me, of course, I have two MBAs who went to business school when women represented 25% and low 30% of the population.

[00:01:39.890] – John

I think at INSEAD, Caroline, when you entered, it was about you were one and four, right?

[00:01:45.920] – Caroline

Yeah, it was 20% actually, 20% women. Yeah. It wasn’t very good at all.

[00:01:53.570] – John

What happened? First off, why have business schools historically have had more difficulty reaching gender parity than Med schools and law schools? And then how has it evolved to the point where Wharton has now been able to attract the majority of women in its business school class?

[00:02:15.290] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s a big question. And it’s very interesting, as you say, that a lot of other grad schools have achieved parity much earlier than business schools have been able to. And I think that various things are driving that part of it, I think, is the age factor. So students going into Med school and law school often going in straight from undergrad and therefore at an earlier stage in their careers and their lives than students going into business school. And I think that historically it’s been more challenging for some women to go back to graduate school in the mid to late 20s. They may have other family obligations and so on partners who may not be willing to follow them to business school or support them in that endeavor. So that’s definitely been an issue in the past. And then I think part of it is the changing landscape of the career opportunities that people have coming out of business school. So traditionally, people thought of the opportunity as you go into consulting, you go into investment banking. There are some pretty well one tracks of what you would do after business school, and that has diversified a great deal over the last few years.

[00:03:31.480] – Caroline

And so I think there are more career opportunities that are really attractive to women who may not some women who might not have been so turned on by the idea of going off to Wall Street post MBA.

[00:03:44.660] – John

Right. Maria, what’s your take on all this?

[00:03:48.650] – Maria

Obviously, I think it’s great. I think one of the biggest hurdles that women have faced is just the stereotype that a lot of men have of women of being less capable or less intelligent or whatever those horrible stereotypes are. And I think if you have more women in the classroom, especially in a discussion based curriculum where you can actually hear the women’s thoughts and they have a chance to present their analyses and really defend what they’re doing, then there’s an opportunity for, I think, the men, even if they have subconscious biases, to at least start to see women as equals and as peers. I think that sort of representation really matters not only in terms of the students themselves sort of realizing, like, hey, maybe I shouldn’t be sexist, but I think it also matters in terms of, as Caroline said, as women have started seeing that there are more pathways out of the MBA program. And I I think think, for example, some of the business schools even started I know Harvard, there was the Dean when I was there, a guy named Kim Clark. He made a concerted effort to try to bring more women into leadership roles within HBS itself, because as you might imagine, in the earlier days when women were hired, they were hired as secretaries or they would grade papers.

[00:05:05.030] – Maria

But there were very few women on the faculty. And when they were on the faculty, it was for like HR, right before HBS accepted women, there was a program at Radcliffe College for business, but it was only for human resources management. And so I think that the other in addition to having lots of women in the classroom, I think it also helps when schools have more women as professors, as people within the administration with significant power, because I think it helps knock down those stereotypes.

[00:05:36.890] – John

Yeah. Maria, when you entered Harvard, what was the percentage of women in your class?

[00:05:42.300] – Maria

It was just under 35%. I think it was somewhere between 30 to 35.

[00:05:47.200] – John

Right. Which is, you know, that’s where, frankly, many schools are today, about a third, and there are more schools that are 40% and above. But 52% is quite an achievement. One of the points that the Dean of Wharton makes, Erica James, is that when she studied women in executive leadership positions back in the mid 20 00, 20 07, she did a study. And what she was looking at was how investors responded when an announcement of a female CEO appointment was made versus male counterparts, and also how they responded when different announcements were made by female CEOs to the concerns of their businesses. And she found, frankly, that the results among investors were negative when the announcement of a female CEO was appointed and they were negative when the CEO, who is female, made any pronouncements regarding the business interest. But maybe even the more important I found was that out of that study, there are only 17 women out of 529 over a full decade of the study. And a conclusion that she drew is that when there’s only a few, it works to the disadvantage of those who are in the game. And when there is sort of a critical mass of people, it works to their advantage.

[00:07:22.880] – John

And her point essentially is now with majority of this incoming cohort being female, it’s no longer an issue. In other words, it’s off the table. And I wonder what the two of you think about that.

[00:07:37.860] – Caroline

Well, that would be great. If it is the case, if it becomes sort of a self perpetuating thing, let’s hope that is true, that it sort of reached a tipping point and the classroom and the walking experience will continue to attract that sort of proportion of women. I mean, clearly, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of progress to be made at other schools, so it’s not yet an industry wise achievements. Let’s hope that one day we’ll be discussing that across the top schools that they will have achieved this. But for sure, the schools get some momentum on this, and I’m sure that this will attract further women applicants. They’re getting some great PR from this achievement, and the school is clearly sort of stake to claim as being the first top business school to reach this threshold. And it’s a very impressive achievement. So I’m sure they will continue to attract a good stream of women, but we need to build the pipeline for the whole industry and not just for a single school.

[00:08:46.950] – John

True. Absolutely. Maria, do you think we’re going to see more schools hit gender parity in the near future?

[00:08:53.060] – Maria

Yes, I do. And I think that it’s like I said, it’s like a chicken and egg type of thing. I think you guys were making the point that once as a woman, if you look and you see like, oh, it’s only 30% women, like maybe it’s going to be a hostile environment, maybe this isn’t for me, but if you start to see that it’s 45, 50% women, my hope would be that it would attract more women instead of with trepidation, perhaps of am I going to be welcome in the classroom? What’s my experience going to be?

[00:09:24.050] – John

Yeah, exactly. And that’s what the study showed that Erica James had done with another co author. She basically found that when the representation of a group, any group falls below a certain proportional threshold, there are damaging implications for how they’re perceived as a minority population, which is kind of fascinating.

[00:09:46.370] – Caroline

Something I would add is this is the result of and Erica James has been rightfully credited with obviously a big drive over the past year to make this happen. But this achievement is thanks to many years of work that the schools have been putting in. And my colleague Judith Fedora, head of admissions in Water, a few years back. I recall 20 years ago how she was working with Forte and with I think it’s 85 Broads and different organizations, and I was doing the same. It is yet. Right. And it’s been a long haul to push that number up. And the schools have been diligently cracking away at this goal for a long, long time. And working with those specific organizations are looking to build that female pipeline, offering specific scholarships to women, doing women focused marketing events. It’s really been a long haul and a key goal for most top stores for many, many years.

[00:10:52.510] – John

Yeah, it’s really true. And what’s kind of interesting is I think Erica James obviously had a big role in this, but I also think that last year, which definitely was impacted by the pandemic. So you got to take these numbers with a grain of salt. As a result, Wharton brought in a class 41% were women, and that was a six percentage point decline from the previous year when they brought in 47%. So I would not be surprised if there was a reawakening or redoubling of their efforts over these many years because years ago, Wharton, in fact, from what I recall, was the first major school to get over 40%. And last year, when Wharton was at 41%, Dartmouth Tuck was at 49, Stanford at 47, Duke at 46, Harvard at 44, Michigan Ross and NYU Stern, both at 43, which had to be somewhat a sounding of alarm bells about this. So I think it led to probably a real reinforcement of these year long efforts, and that paid off in dividends with this record 52% of the class being female. There is a competitive race for this, I think. Right. I mean, one school will look at this and say, well, that’s an incredible achievement.

[00:12:20.760] – John

What are we doing? And I think it will get more attention at schools that are far behind, more particularly than even the schools that are above 45% already. And that’s why we’ll probably see even a greater effort to attract more women to business careers now. Do you think also part of this is are we seeing the beginnings of the true cracks in the glass ceiling and that women are seeing more opportunities in business than they had before?

[00:12:51.050] – Maria

I wish I could say that that part were true. I think one of the sort of bummers about this is that even when my class was at, say, 30% to 35%, we graduated over 15 years ago. And so we’re now at a point where a lot of women would a lot of people are in their mid 40s and are sort of reaching those upper levels. And I don’t know that the women are necessarily able to keep up with corporate America has not necessarily. I think the business schools are trying to prime the pump. Now it’s up to corporate America to actually pick up on these women graduates and actually give them feasible opportunities. So I think women today make up roughly 50% of workers in general management positions, sort of at the mid levels. But only 8% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and only about 23. 25% of board seats are given to women. Now this is better. Ten years ago it was 2%. 2.4%, and then 20 years ago it was less than 1%. So definitely 8% is better than 1%. But it’s still not even close. There’s a big time shift, I think, between the women graduating in these percentages from the top business schools and then not translating.

[00:14:11.550] – Maria

But I don’t know that I’m seeing I think some of the larger services firms are trying to make a really concerted effort, like the consulting firms and banks are trying to make a concerted effort to do these sorts of things. But I think the sort of typical Fortune 500 company, they might not be following along. So I think there are definitely more opportunities for women. But I don’t think that 41% 44% of opportunities for senior women in business senior roles are out there. I do think, though, that this is a big reason why I became an entrepreneur, honestly, is that I tried my hand in the sort of startup tech world, very broken culture. Other people were all drinking beers and watching the USC football games, and that wasn’t my thing. And I had a quantitative background and I had studied a couple of semesters of computer science in College. And so when I would weigh in with like, hey, why don’t we do this to the code? And they were like, basically I literally told shut up. And I was called very nasty names throughout my career at startups. And so I was like, what am I doing?

[00:15:21.930] – Maria

I’m going to start my own business. And so I think that is if any woman is listening to this and she’s thinking, well, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t go to business school because only 8% of the Fortune CEOs. But I think the business school is actually very valuable for preparing you to become an entrepreneur and then just doing it yourself, free of those prejudices.

[00:15:41.510] – John

Yeah, exactly right. And it is true what you say. I know McKinsey banner, BCG and Deloitte in particular have had very robust initiatives to recruit more women in the doors. In fact, McKinsey has been a long term sponsor of our preMBA networking festival. That is their frankly stated reason they want to get more women consultants. And I think it’s true of the investment banks, too. And these are two industries that had long been totally male dominated and where women tended not to want to work consulting, in part because of the travel demands and banking, in part because of the huge number of hours that you have to clock and basically have no life to work for many of the investment banks or investment management firms. And solely this means that these cultures have to change and adapt on some level to accommodate not only women, but other young people who just don’t want to be on the road four, five days a week or to be working 70, 80 hours a week, including weekends and an investment banking job. So I think that this reverberates throughout the entire chain, meaning on the recruitment level, on the business school level, and then on the end level where employers have to change their own behaviors to attract more women.

[00:17:28.430] – John

So it’s a massive change, and it has slowly. And I think the Wharton accomplishment this year is really exceptional because I think it does send a real big signal to other not only the business schools, but frankly, the companies that are hiring the NBA, don’t you think?

[00:17:48.610] – Caroline

Yeah, absolutely. And I hope that, as you say, that will gradually trick people through. I do think that the corporate culture in the US is incredibly tough. I’ve worked in different countries around the world and moved to the US about six years ago and hadn’t fully appreciated how different the environment is in the US and the work culture. And honestly, I don’t know how women with kids and careers manage to juggle everything in the US because I gave birth to all of my children in France, where I had very generous maternity benefits, very long maternity leaves. I could then go back to work afterwards and tell my employer I’m going to work part time. That’s what I want to do. And then when I’m ready to go back full time, you have to take me back full time. And I had seven weeks holiday a year. So when the kids were sick or they were on school vacation and I used to be there, I could do that right. It just gives you so much more flexibility. And I really don’t know how women manage it in the US because you don’t have all of those benefits.

[00:19:02.650] – Caroline

And I think that has to change to support women who are often juggling many different responsibilities.

[00:19:10.710] – John

Yeah, that’s a really good point, because I think a lot of career choices are made or not made as a result of these policies. And in Europe, there’s a much more compassionate and more generous attitude when women want to take a break and have children, which is, let’s face it, the only miracle in life is to give birth to another. And in the US, we’re really backwards. And yet I wonder if you were to look at senior leadership positions in Europe versus the US and whether or not those more compassionate and thoughtful maternity policies have led to more women in senior leadership positions in Europe than they are in the US. I don’t know what the numbers are well.

[00:20:05.390] – Caroline

It varies a lot by country. In Scandinavia, where they’ve had rules around the percentage of women at different levels in organizations and on boards and so on. And that’s had a tremendous impact. So much more parity in those countries than some other parts of Europe. And Southern Europe is definitely more challenging for women, where the culture is more still. Whilst the government policies may be very female friendly, the culture of companies can still be quite Matcho. And the still discrimination is alive and well, unfortunately, in many organizations.

[00:20:49.370] – John

Yeah. And I also should point out that Wharton has made this accomplishment in the year when applications went up, they didn’t go up a lot. I think it was about two and a half percent. But the previous year applications at Wharton were up like 21%. So the fact that they were still up again was significant. I think we’re going to see much bigger increases at Harvard and Stanford, which were less likely to benefit from the pandemic surge because Harvard’s applications were pretty much closed off because they only had two rounds and Stanford didn’t extend its round. And the other interesting thing in the class profile at Warden was the fact that the school achieved record average GMAT scores for the class and a record median score for the class. The median of this class is 740, which is astounding that’s ten points over the Harvard Business School median at 730. And the average now is 733, which matches Stanford’s average of last year. And Stanford historically has had the highest average class GMAT for any prestigious MBA program in the world. What do you two make of that big record jump? Because if you look at the Gmail scores at Wharton last year, they were actually fell by ten points, and so now they’re up by eleven points to 733.

[00:22:24.030] – John

Is that a number you manage in MBA admissions, Maria?

[00:22:28.690] – Maria

Well, I’m going to defer to my colleague here, Caroline, who actually was in charge of that. But I don’t know. I think, first of all, comparing it to last year isn’t fair for anyone. Last year it was just a weird mutant year. Yeah. So I think that was true for everyone. But yeah, Carol, here’s what I’m basing this on. I think that some schools do try to manage that number because I have seen certain schools give out higher scholarships to people who have significantly above average GMAT scores, which leads me to believe that I think some programs try to lure away higher people who have like, otherwise an identical profile to someone else. But maybe they have like a 760, they might get a scholarship to some other school. And sometimes I think I wonder if because there’s no other difference between these two candidates, but one got a scholarship and one didn’t. And the only difference is the GMAT score. So sometimes I wonder, like they might have both gotten in, but one gets the scholarship. And I wonder if part of that is to try to lure the person to tip the scales more in one direction.

[00:23:34.710] – Maria

But, Caroline, what was your experience?

[00:23:37.890] – Caroline

Yeah, I think what we did at Water, I don’t think that they are trying to manage that number up. I think that it’s a reflection of it being that they’ve had an incredible batch of applicants. It’s been a very competitive year, I think, and the best candidates have had fantastic GMAT scores. It’s a double edged sword having that kind of high GMAT, because on one hand, it looks good. It looks like you’ve got a fantastic cohort of super smart people coming to the school and plays into the rankings and so on. But the school will also be aware that it can have a deterrent effect. Right. It can deter very good candidates who don’t have that, Stella GMAT, who actually may have fantastic profiles and much more interesting profiles than some of the people who apply up the 760s and 770s. It can actually deter them from applying. So it’s not always a wholly positive thing for the school. So I don’t think that they have sought to push that up. I think it’s been a byproduct of the pool that they’ve had.

[00:24:45.070] – John

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of schools are just telling me their apps were up again. At UT McCombs, the applications were up 15% Incidentally, and at Haas, they were up 8%. So we’re seeing a continuation of the surge that did occur with the pandemic at many schools. And then there are some schools that I think they’re just a little bit because they have such a big increase the previous year. It’s going to be really interesting to see what the Harvard and Stanford numbers look like as well as the class profiles. Now, Wharton is the first big school to release its class profile. So that’s why we know that 52% of the incoming cohort will be women and why we know that they posted record average and median GMAT scores never before achieved by the school’s previous students. So there you have it. Well, I will say kudos to Wharton for this incredible achievement. It’s a big deal. I think it will be looked at by a lot of other Deans and admission directors and will heat up the war for talent from women to enter their programs. And Maria, I think you actually raised the question I hadn’t thought of for years.

[00:26:09.710] – John

Harvard and Stanford have really been among the most generous schools offering scholarship aid to students. And typically both Harvard and Stanford maintain that they offer their scholarships only on the basis of need and not merit. And almost every other school in the world offers scholarship money largely on the basis of merit, essentially buying high GMATs and buying candidates that might otherwise choose another school to go to. Ward has been a laggard in the scholarship races. And it makes me wonder now if Wharton really anti up this past year on the scholarship side to get that 52% number I have to believe Wharton had to because I have to believe that Wharton stole some of these women from Harvard and Stanford this year and had to do it with some very aggressive scholarship money. And I hadn’t thought of that before. So. Maria, thank you.

[00:27:11.670] – Maria

I wonder if it’s more that they’re saving them for being poached by Booth, because in my just anecdotally I don’t have any scientific background. I’ve just seen Booths be super aggressive with people that I think they think have also gotten into Wharton. And so I wonder if they’re matching it more to prevent people from leaving them to go to Booth or maybe even Columbia.

[00:27:34.150] – John

Really good.

[00:27:35.180] – Maria

We don’t know. Right. It’s a mystery.

[00:27:37.120] – John

It’s a mystery now. But believe me, I’m going to get down to it.

[00:27:40.460] – Maria

I have no doubt.

[00:27:41.610] – John

I’m going to call up everybody and I’m going to figure this one out because I think it makes so much sense. And you’re right, Chicago. Booth has been incredibly aggressive because they’ve had a lot of money by having received, really, the largest single gift ever given to a business school by David Booth. And a good amount of that money is channeled into getting the best possible students. And they’ve been far more aggressive than Wharton and been trying to compete with Wharton, particularly for people who are interested in finance, after all, because it’s a quantity school like Warren. Good point.

[00:28:13.340] – Maria

So I just wanted to say that this discussion about gender parity, it’s not simply fueled by some sort of Liberal, bleeding heart social justice warrior thing. Studies have actually shown that female investors outperform their male counterparts and that female CEOs tend to outperform their male counterparts. And so the data as more and more women get opportunities. My hope is that the data will start backing this up, that this isn’t just something that is being pursued simply out of the goodness of people’s hearts. And they’re trying to swage their guilt about centuries of oppression. It actually the numbers actually back up that women perform just as well, if not better, when they are given positions of power.

[00:28:59.990] – John

Yeah, that’s really good and a very important point because some people might listen to our discussion and how, frankly, how gleeful we are over Wharton’s accomplishment and think that it’s oh, it’s a bunch of Duke ears and Liberal people applauding the school that has done this politically correct or whatever.

[00:29:23.090] – Maria

But it’s actually the numbers are backing it up.

[00:29:27.870] – John

Good point. All right, hey. Thanks for the really great discussion. Maria and Caroline, always a pleasure. And for all of you, thanks for listening to Business Casual. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Wharton Reaches A Business School Milestone
Maria |
August 3, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

New around here? I’m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!