Wharton’s Class Profile, Kellogg MBA Pay & A Controversy At Harvard
Maria |
August 22, 2023

In this week’s episode of Business Casual, our hosts delved into the latest MBA admissions trends across three of the top business schools, and explored academic controversies within one of them.

They discussed Wharton’s ability to maintain high standards despite a 14% drop in applications, highlighting the consistent quality of top-tier MBA applicants. Kellogg’s robust employment numbers for the Class of 2023 reinforced the enduring demand for MBA graduates.

Additionally, they addressed a controversial case involving a Harvard Business School professor accused of research misconduct, underscoring the importance of due process and equitable treatment within academic institutions. The hosts reflected on the conflict between leadership teachings and the handling of the controversy, emphasizing the need for consistency in upholding values and principles.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.290] – John

Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. I’m John Byrne with Poets and Quants. And I have with me my co hosts Maria Wich-Vila Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline, of course, as you all know, is a co-founder of Fortuna Admissions, and the former head of admissions at INSEAD, and Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. We have had a lot of bit of news since we were gone on vacation and other things during this last part of the summer period. First and foremost, I think, and this is of great interest to all the applicants out there, Wharton released its class profile, and what’s interesting about it is that applications to the MBA program last year fell by 14%. That’s more than 1000 fewer applications than the school received a year earlier. But lo and behold, Wharton was able to maintain its record average class. GMAT score its high undergraduate class average for GPAs at undergraduate institutions, and achieve gender parity for the second year in a row with 50% of the class composed of women. And I think it just speaks to the depth and the quality of the MBA applicant pool at the top schools.

[00:01:38.530] – John

Maria, you agree?

[00:01:41.470] – Maria

Yeah absolutely. You know, I think it’s funny. Sometimes people, applicants in particular, understandably so, try to read the tea leaves of what do these trends mean? And this year it’s more people are applying or fewer people are applying. And if there are fewer people applying, does that mean it’s, quote unquote, easier to get in? And the fact is that, no, the standards are still going to be the same. I mean, statistically speaking, from a pure numbers perspective, it might appear to be easier to get in, but the fact that the GMAT scores are remaining the same and a lot of these other metrics are remaining very high, really does point to the fact that it’s never easy to get into a school like Wharton. And so hopefully, if anyone out there is trying to say, well, there are fewer applicants, so I’m going to roll the dice. Yeah, you should roll the dice. No matter what. But don’t expect it to be a vastly different landscape.

[00:02:34.070] – John

Yeah, that average GMAT score 733 for the second straight year and the GPA average was 3.6. Caroline, do you think we’re going to see this at other schools as they begin to report their class profiles?

[00:02:48.250] – Caroline

Yeah, I think that we will see that there was a drop in the last season of application volume, but I think that we will also see that the top schools have done a very good job of maintaining the quality of their class. And as you say, these schools have a really strong pipeline year in, year out of outstanding candidates. And people often make a big story about, oh, application volume is up a bit, or it’s down a bit, and that makes a big difference to your chances of getting in in one direction or another. But it doesn’t necessarily make a big difference because what happens is you have this solid, strong pipeline that is coming through year in, year out. And actually what happens when there’s a spike in application volume, it’s often not the best quality candidates who are throwing their hat into the ring at that point. And I saw that when I was at INSEAD and we saw that during the pandemic as well, that when there’s a surge in application volume, it’s often quite speculative candidates, people who maybe hadn’t planned necessarily to do an MBA, it’s not part of their sort, know, was not a long term ambition.

[00:04:03.050] – Caroline

But suddenly their circumstances may have changed and they think, oh, what am I going to do? Well, perhaps that’s a good idea to head off to business school. And maybe they are not the best prepared candidates, right? Maybe they don’t have the same quality of profile as some of the candidates who have been plotting their path to Harvard or to Wharton or to INSEAD over a number of years. And so those fluctuations in application volume can be a bit misleading because it doesn’t actually mean that there’s a dramatic difference in the competition. And it may actually make more of a difference for schools who are a bit further down the pecking order. But for the top schools, they have this really loyal base of prospective candidates coming through regardless of the cycle. And that’s what we see here that Wharton, regardless of quite a big drop, as you say, in application volume, it has had apparently virtually no impact on the quality of the class.

[00:05:14.450] – John

Yeah, really remarkable and a testament to really the quality of applicants at the top schools. And I agree with you that second tier schools, this is going to look a lot different. But at the very top, we’re talking the top 1520 schools, we’re probably going to see equivalent drops, at least double digit drops for last year’s admission season, but pretty good stats overall. Another M seven school reporting a stat is Kellogg. Now Northwestern. Kellogg did a little sneak peek at their preliminary employment numbers and it’s really the first hint at what the job market was like for the Class of 2023. And lo and behold, despite all the talk about, oh boy, is there going to be a recession or not, or MBAs who took jobs with consulting firms who are often asked to delay their start dates and all that. But at Kellogg, which sends more people into consulting as a percentage of the class than just about any school, median starting salary went up $10,000 to 175,000 to start, which is really good news not only for Kellogg, but I think we’re likely to see that elsewhere. And if you look back to pre pandemic days at those median starting salaries, you will see that the increase is on the order of almost 25%.

[00:06:48.690] – John

Really impressive. What does that tell you about the market, maria, I mean, one of the.

[00:06:54.520] – Maria

Principal tenets of capitalism is supply and demand. And it says to me that employers deeply value the value that an MBA graduate from any of these top schools can bring. And so I think this is an important thing for folks to keep in mind once they do get accepted, if they do not get the scholarship support that they were expecting, don’t despair because there’s a really good chance that you’re going to be making pretty decent salary when you graduate. And therefore paying back the student loans will in fact, be pretty feasible.

[00:07:33.030] – John

And not to mention the sign on bonus, which in consulting is $35,000, which that goes a long way to helping pay down your debt or taking a very extravagant vacation and not worrying about your debt, which maybe some people might actually be tempted to do. Caroline, you know, those.

[00:07:55.990] – Caroline

You know, it’s really encouraging to see this data, right, because we have been concerned about what’s happening with the job market. So it’s very impressive to see these numbers. And it’s quite an extraordinary bump that you mentioned, John, from that data that you highlighted, compared to the pre pandemic salary data, so up 25% since the class of 2019, I mean, that’s quite an extraordinary increase. So, again, a wonderful testament to the value of an MBA from a top school. I have heard anecdotally that some graduates from the classes this year have had offers not rescinded, but they’ve had employers have said, okay, we’re not going to bring you on in August or September. We’re postponing for a few months. So I have heard that from some people who are graduating this summer. So I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be taken into account in this data that we’re looking at now, right? Because they would probably still be reporting their packages even if they are not starting immediately. But nevertheless, as Maria said, it’s a very impressive testament to the value of the MBA and the demand that is out there despite a somewhat wobbly job market.

[00:09:19.490] – John

True. In fact, we just have a story right on the homepage today. I’ll just read the headline, which is kind of amusing. Newly hired consultants are getting paid to sit around and watch Netflix. So while many people in the consulting field who took jobs or many MBAs who took jobs in consulting and have been asked to delay their starts are getting some kind of stipend or pay before they actually start work, part of this is an attempt by some firms to say, hey, if you have three, six months of delay, why don’t you volunteer and work for a nonprofit and we’ll pay you what we intended to pay you? In this way you can do some community good. And so that’s what’s kind of behind that. But true enough, that’s not really going to affect the actual numbers on pay and a Kellogg that has not done so the other interesting thing about the Kellogg report is what Kellogg didn’t reveal is the percentage of graduates employed at graduation. And three months later, that’s to come when the full employment report comes out in the fall. Last bit of news we want to talk about is a big controversy over at the Harvard Business School.

[00:10:39.710] – John

Some of you may have read that one of the superstar professors there, Francesca Gino, who is an Italian born behavioral scientist of some note, highly popular at the school among MBA students and her colleagues, was caught up in allegations that four of her research studies had data that had been manipulated in one way or another. There is a blog out there called Data Colada by three business school professors that made these allegations. Harvard Business School put together a three person committee of former and current faculty members to investigate them. They concluded that there was a problem and that research misconduct did in fact, occur in this case. And they recommended that she be placed on unpaid administrative leave, that she be stripped of her title at the Harvard Business School, that she be banned from campus, that she would be prevented from ever publishing again on any Harvard Business School platform, including the Harvard Business Review. And that proceedings should begin to strip her of tenure. Stripping a professor at a business school of tenure is a big deal, and it becomes a bigger deal at the Harvard Business School. Now, what’s interesting about this case is that Gino recently filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against the dean at Harvard Business School, against Harvard University itself and the authors of the blog that initially made these accusations.

[00:12:26.990] – John

And the lawsuit is filled with the kinds of details that really make you severely question whether she was treated fairly, number one. Number two, whether in fact Harvard and the dean breached her contract with the school on a number of details that I’m not going to really get into here. But meantime, two law school professors have independently at Yale and at Harvard, questioned Harvard’s treatment of her, and both basically are suggesting that she has a good case and Harvard is likely to either settle or lose. Now, this is your alma mater, Maria, so I should give you the chance to talk about this first.

[00:13:11.310] – Maria

Yeah, I mean, as with all things lawsuit, one never knows what is the truth and what is merely yeah. I have no idea who’s right and who’s wrong. I will say, though, that I think whenever any sort of potential, quote unquote crime is committed, whether it’s shoplifting or fudging data in your study or selling nuclear secrets to Saudi Arabia, whatever it is, I do believe in the power of due process. Right. And there is a law and there are laws that need to be followed. And I believe that Harvard Business School did, in fact, have a process in place that was meant to deal with allegations such as the one that Professor Gino encountered, and it’s my understanding from her lawsuit that those processes were not in fact followed in her case. One of the allegations is that, for example, when she finally met with the Dean, he basically said to know you’re not allowed to speak, which is shocking and honestly it’s a little embarrassing. I am not actually very familiar with this Dean who’s been around for only a couple of years. I did not encounter him, so I can’t comment one way or the other.

[00:14:15.640] – Maria

But I do think that it’s a shame that in a school that prides itself on selecting people for leadership potential and on training future leaders, that this does not any situation where you call someone into your office and you say, okay, shut up, you’re here, but you’re not allowed to say anything. I don’t think anyone would say that that’s a good leadership technique. Who knows who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s not lying? Maybe everyone’s lying, maybe nobody’s lying, who knows? But if these allegations are true, it doesn’t sound like it was handled in a fair way that would have been applied perhaps to other professors in similar situations. So that’s disappointing.

[00:15:05.660] – John

Yeah. And that meeting was the only meeting that Dean had with her, even though he had first heard about these allegations two years. Mean, any good leader would have immediately confronted her directly and asked about this instead of waiting to the end when you’re going to deliver a decision and incidentally, then you tell her you don’t have the right to speak. And you bury your head in a piece of paper and read word for word what the punishment is, which is appalling. Absolutely appalling. That occurred. Even if she’s guilty, even if she did commit fraud, that’s not the way you deal with something like this. It’s really unbelievable that something like that could happen. And this is at Harvard Business School where previous deans have taken great pride in running a very tight ship. Process means a lot at the Harvard Business School. There are a lot of rules and guidelines and regulations that have been promulgated with the approval of the faculty and that are followed religiously. Sure, I get that all universities are highly politicized environments, but they’re also in many cases collegial environments and that’s not the way you treat a colleague.

[00:16:23.530] – John

Caroline, any thoughts?

[00:16:26.010] – Caroline

Yeah, I agree. And Maria, you often say I’m very diplomatic and I love the way that you said that telling someone that they can’t speak in a meeting is perhaps not the best leadership style.

[00:16:39.470] – Maria

I’m learning from you, Caroline.

[00:16:42.930] – Caroline

Your time in England this summer was very well spent.

[00:16:46.230] – John

Okay. This reminds me of the scene in Barbie when the Kens take over, come in and they’re brow beaten into being women again and assuming the secondary role in society. Imagine you come in and the man tells you, no, you’re not going to speak during this meeting.

[00:17:08.970] – Maria

Go get me a brusky beer in my mojo, dojo.

[00:17:12.100] – John

There it is. Okay, I know that Maria saw Barbie now.

[00:17:16.010] – Maria

Sorry, Caroline. Go ahead.

[00:17:18.990] – Caroline

The irony of a school that is supposed to be teaching people how to lead and manage teams and train the next generation of business leaders and actually practicing leadership like this is extraordinary. I mean, schools are sometimes not the best practitioners, right? They sometimes don’t practice what they preach. But this seems to be quite an extraordinary example of not practicing what they preach. And I mean, apart from anything else, right? I mean, schools are very concerned about their reputation, and surely he would have been aware of the terrible PR that would fall out of the way he handled this. So I just find it extraordinary that it seems to have been so badly handled. Know this is awful publicity for the school. And as you know, Harvard has so many policies and procedures in place and is so carefully guards its reputation that you wouldn’t expect this to come out of Harvard Business School, of all schools.

[00:18:23.430] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. And after she filed the $25 million defamation lawsuit in US district Court in Boston, eleven days later, obviously feeling pressured by what was going on, the dean sent an email to the faculty. And even in the email, he sort of shifts the onus for the actions that were taken against her on the investigation committee, as opposed to standing up and saying, I believe this was the right thing to do. I made this decision. And it was backed, sure, by whatever conclusion the committee had. But it’s almost like he’s not even wanting to stand up and courageously be a leader in this sense and saying, yes, I made a decision and I stand by the decision. Really sad, but at least we have good news from Wharton and Kellogg. All right, there you have it. That’s the latest stuff that’s happened. We’re looking forward to getting back to our normal routine next week. And thanks for listening. This is Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Wharton’s Class Profile, Kellogg MBA Pay & A Controversy At Harvard
Maria |
August 22, 2023

[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 โ€˜23 and the class of โ€˜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

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