Navigating the realm of elite business schools, the so-called Magnificent 7 (M7) remains a focal point for aspiring MBA students. Despite a slight increase in applications and enrollments last year, the competition remains fierce, with Pola Lem, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards breaking down the numbers. Pola highlights that despite a 0.6% rise in applications, growth from previous years has plateaued, indicating stability amidst fluctuating economic conditions.

Caroline dives into the implications of these figures, emphasizing the remarkable consistency in academic standards and applicant quality for M7 schools. This stability speaks to the enduring allure of the M7, capable of attracting top talent globally. However, Caroline also notes the nuanced dynamics within the M7, particularly the stark contrast in yield rates between schools like Harvard and Stanford, which boast nearly 90% yield, compared to others like Chicago Booth and Kellogg, which stand below 40%. This disparity impacts how admissions teams craft their classes, with Harvard and Stanford enjoying greater control over their cohort composition.

For MBA hopefuls, understanding these insights is crucial. They underscore the competitive nature of M7 admissions and highlight the importance of distinguishing oneself amidst a sea of talented applicants. Whether you’re considering applying or simply curious about business education trends, these discussions offer valuable perspectives on what it takes to succeed in such an esteemed arena.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:03] – Pola

What’s it take to get into the so-called Magnificent 7? Last autumn, these elite business schools enrolled their largest combined class in 6 years. The M7 maintained academic standards and they pushed up program costs above $260,000. But how different is this year’s story really? More on that in a moment. I’m Polulem for Poets& Quants, and my co-hosts Maria Wich-Vila from ApplicantLab and Caroline Diarte Edwards from Fortuna Admissions are both with me today. And this week we’re talking about the numbers game in elite admissions and what it can tell us about an intake. So we’re looking today at a Poets& Quants story, which is based off of last autumn’s M7 figures. And I should mention the current intakes figures are just coming in right now. So this is why we’re somewhat backward looking here, but bear with us. The last autumn, the M7 received 48,800 applications for that MBA class of 2027, and that was an increase of just 0.6%. after a pretty big rise in applications. So the previous cycle, they went up by 22%. And similarly, for this class of 2027, schools collectively admitted 2.7% more students over that previous year while enrolling 1.8% more.

[00:01:39] – Pola

So overall growth there. Starting with you, Caroline, What do these numbers tell you? And also, how do they compare to figures since that historic high that we saw in 2018?

[00:01:53] – Caroline

So as you mentioned, we’re looking back at a cycle that started— so applications for this class that we’re looking at here would’ve started nearly 2 years ago. So we’re looking at the market as it was 1 to 2 years ago. And of course, the schools, there’s always a big lag in the schools publishing their data. And so it’ll be some time time before we see how things have played out since then. So, there’s always ups and downs in application volume, right, to business schools, and there is some relationship to how the economic circumstances are playing out. So, typically, if there’s an economic downturn, you’ll see an increase in application volume, and when the economy is strong, then applications tend to be flat or may decline. So, The data that we’re looking at here, it’s fairly flat, so no big changes either way. Also, when you look at the class statistics, so average test scores, average GPAs, there’s a lot of consistency with previous years. So I think, first of all, I mean, it just says a lot about the power of the M7 and their ability to year in, year out attract attract an incredible pipeline of very talented candidates.

[00:03:18] – Caroline

So, we can talk about some of the small fluctuations within this dataset, but I think that the headline is that there’s just incredible consistency in their ability to attract the best and the brightest from the US and to a certain extent from the rest of the world, although that seems to be declining somewhat and we can come back to that point, but really impressive figures here in terms of application volume, and there are no other schools around the world who see this size of applicant pool. So it is really impressive. And something that always astonishes me is the yield rates at Harvard and Stanford. So nearly 90%, right, yields. So that’s the percentage of people who are accepting the offer. So that is just astonishing. I mean, essentially what it means is that someone who gets into Harvard or Stanford, they are almost certain to go there. And if you are HBS or you’re Stanford GSB, your competition is the other school or nobody else really, right? People are not choosing to go to Kellogg or INSEAD or London Business School instead of going to HBS and Stanford GSB. I mean, potentially they may self-select out and not apply to those schools, but they have incredible applicant pools and very loyal applicant pools.

[00:04:59] – Caroline

So, that is a very nice position to be in because it means that When you’re selecting the class, you have a lot of confidence in who is actually going to turn up. So that gives you a lot of control over the diversity of the classroom, that class composition, the different perspectives that you’re building. And it really drops off very sharply, right? When you go further down the list in the M7. So whilst Harvard and Stanford are in the upper 80%age points for yield, There are 2 schools, Chicago Booth and Kellogg, who are just below 40%. So, that’s a very, very different situation to be as an admissions team because it means that you are just admitting so many more people than you know will turn up. And so, it just makes it so much harder to craft the class and manage the classroom diversity because just so many people who you’re making offers to will not be turning up to the program. So, it’s a very different position to be in. So, kudos to the admissions teams at HBS and Stanford GSB.

[00:06:16] – Pola

I like it. Yes, we, or Caroline empathizes. Never been on that side of the table really, but yeah, I mean, you’ve covered off a number of the points already, but to that earlier one about selectivity. So Maria, as Caroline said, admissions may have plateaued, but that academic profile you need to compete for an M7 seat, you’re still as comp— they’re still as competitive as ever, right? How is that possible?

[00:06:52] – Maria

Right. I mean, it’s possible because The vast majority of people applying to these programs are in fact academically qualified. I think the rough estimate that I’ve heard thrown about is that roughly 80% of applicants are within that competitive range in terms of GMAT score and GPA. And so even if there’s a pretty massive drop in application numbers, there are so many other applicants in the pool who are just at that same level of GMAT, GRE, or GPA. So they can just fill the class multiple times over. So I actually think that, that, that metric is the kind of an easier one to, to sort of game that, that’s not as concerning. You know, I feel like, you know, again, I’ve never been in Caroline’s shoes, but I can imagine like, okay, well, you know, fine, numbers are down, but we still have so many hundreds or thousands of people who have a 730 GMAT or, you know, a 3.7 GPA. So that’s how I think they’re able to maintain that. Sure.

[00:07:52] – Pola

Yeah, Caroline. So if you’re one of these thousands of applicants hoping to, to earn a seat in the M7, this admissions data may offer a way to kind of gauge your chances, although, as we’ve mentioned, it is somewhat backwards looking. But if you were an applicant, how seriously would you take these numbers?

[00:08:16] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s useful context to understand what the applicant pool or what the admitted applicant pool looks like, what the student class profile is. But there’s great diversity within that. And so sometimes it’s not helpful because it can put good candidates off from applying because it looks like if you don’t have a 3.7 GPA and you don’t have an incredible GMAT, then maybe you’re out of the running. And that’s not the case. So that is the average, but there is great diversity at all of these schools. So still, it’s helpful, right, if you are thinking about applying to business school and, for example, you are planning to take the GMAT or the GRE and you’re thinking about what you should be aiming for, then it’s useful to look at, well, what is the average at the schools that I am targeting? Because ideally you want to be at or above that average, so it can give you a sense of how much preparation you to do and how hard you need to work for those tests. And that is one data point that is within your control, right? As an applicant, you can’t go back and change your GPA.

[00:09:25] – Caroline

There’s probably at this point a limited amount that you can do to change your professional track record, but the GMAT or the GRE is one element that is entirely within your control as you apply. So I think that that can be a useful reference point. And also something to keep in mind is that those are just 2 data points, right? The test scores and the GPA. Schools are looking at so much more than that, but of course those other elements can be harder to quantify and so don’t necessarily appear in class statistics. So sometimes candidates over-index on the importance of their GPA and their GMAT because that is very visible in these statistics. that we all talk about and that we see. But unfortunately, having an incredible academic track record is not going to be enough to get you into any of these schools. It’s just one part of the picture. So the other parts are a little bit harder to measure and therefore aren’t as visible here, but are equally as important. So I think candidates need to take this with a pinch of salt and aim to get a great test score because that could boost your chances of getting admission, but there will be so much more that goes into your application and your evaluation.

[00:10:56] – Pola

Sure. So also think about the less easily quantifiable data and we’ve been talking about The bigger numbers, but it’s worth looking at the details. So this nearly flat application total that we’re seeing does actually mask a lot of movement between these individual schools. For instance, we saw that Chicago Booth posted the biggest gain year on year, and they saw applications climb nearly 14.7%. to roughly 6,000. Wharton and Kellogg also saw growth, so that was 4% and 4.6% respectively, whereas Harvard received just over 440 fewer applications, and on that side, it’s a decline of 4.5%. So Maria, what’s behind these shifts, do you think?

[00:11:59] – Maria

Well, I think that it’s, it can be a number of things. I think for Booth in particular, you know, Booth has been very generous and very aggressive with scholarship funding. They have received some pretty major gifts from alums over the past several years that have allowed them to really woo students, you know, you know, who would have otherwise gone to the Harvard-Stanford-Wharton trifecta. I have seen that in many cases, Booth will, you know, provide an extremely generous scholarship, a merit-based scholarship, right? As we know, Harvard and Stanford do not provide merit-based aid, usually, for the most part. They primarily provide only need-based aid. And so, if I get into those programs, but I also get into Booth, and Booth’s offering me, you know, $80,000 a year or something, and Harvard’s offering me virtually nothing, it can make a significant difference for some students. And I do think that As word gets out that, you know, oh, Booth’s super generous, that might drive more people to apply. I also wonder if there might be some, some shifts in the career, the career trajectories. Right. It’s interesting that the schools that are more famous for, quote unquote, finance, you know, for many years, tech, tech, tech was the big story.

[00:13:15] – Maria

And now the rumors over the past couple of years have been that, you know what, there are layoffs in tech and maybe tech’s hiring is softening a little bit. And I, I, you know, I’m just purely speculating, but I wonder if that— if people are now— there’s more of a flight to the perceived relative safety of the finance careers. And perhaps that might be something driving the finance schools, or on a broader level, those more quantitatively, you know, the schools that are more famous for having that strong quant background, perhaps. But I don’t know, speculation.

[00:13:45] – Pola

Oh, interesting. Caroline, what other shifts caught your eye?

[00:13:50] – Caroline

So something that I think is interesting is that unfortunately there’s a little bit less transparency now in some of the data. So I find it rather curious that Kellogg no longer reports the percentage of women in the class, which is a bit of a shame. They had reached parity, I believe, in the class, and you report that they had said that the percentage of women had gone down, but they’re not reporting that percentage. So I find that odd, but of course, this is in the context of the backlash against DEI and the difficult legal situation that the legal context for many universities. So some data points have fallen out of the class statistics. You mentioned in the article that the reported average share of US students of color fell from 46% to 34%, but that some schools in fact aren’t reporting that. So it’s not clear if there is actually an underlying decline or not. Would be a shame if there is an underlying decline, and I think it’s quite possible given that, given the changes in how DEI has been stripped out of admissions processes. And then whilst overall international applications or international enrollment declined only, I think, 1%age point overall, we did see some more significant drops at individual schools.

[00:15:25] – Caroline

So at Wharton, the school fell 5%age points to 26% international, and Columbia also saw a drop, although from a higher point, and dropped to 41% international. So, I think the context is at this point, this class was applying at a time when already there were a lot of concerns about the Trump administration and the impact on student visas and the immigration climate in general. And I think that it’s quite clear that that has continued to worsen for the US schools and that it’ll be very interesting to see the class statistics for the class entering in the fall of 2026 this year, because I think there’ll be some quite significant drops in the percentage of international students on these programs. So, we will have another story to talk about later when that data comes out, but the anecdotal evidence that we’re hearing from the schools is that they have quite a dramatic drop and an unprecedented drop in international demand for this entering class now. So, This was already starting to play out last year, but it’s definitely got worse since then, unfortunately.

[00:17:00] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:17:00] – Pola

And Maria, I want to also ask you your predictions for this, the cycle this year. But before we get there, I think you had a point you wanted to make about yield and at MIT specifically.

[00:17:15] – Maria

Well, yeah, I mean, there was, I, the, the, you know, we, we already touched on yield, or Caroline already touched on yield, um, a little bit earlier. But I think some of the, you know, there was, there was a somewhat dramatic drop in, uh, MIT Sloan’s yield from 50% down to, you know, 42.5%. And there was a, a sort of parallel increase in their acceptance rate. And just sort of anecdotally, last year I had a lot of clients get Waitlisted in round 1 for MIT Sloan. Like, that always happens at every school. That’s just part of how the game is played. But it felt sort of like uncommonly high. And I almost wonder if perhaps they were, they were trying to wait to see during that year, um, sort of the past 2 years. Sorry, I know we’re looking back 2 years. Like, there’s sort of been this, this trend for MIT to push more people in round, round 1 to the round, you know, waitlisting them in round 1. pushing them to round 2. And I wonder if there is some uncertainty around yield that then, if they somehow predicted that decrease in yield, they knew that they then had to, at the same time, then increase their acceptance rate.

[00:18:21] – Maria

So some statistical modeler somewhere at MIT, unsurprisingly, is doing a great job of that prediction. But it’s pretty interesting how they were able to increase their acceptance rate while still handling that lower yield. And I’m actually, I’m surprised because I really, I love MIT Sloan. I mean, I love all of the M7. It’s like, I love all of the M7 equally, but I really, I think Sloan is just such a fantastic program and I’m really shocked to see that their yield has taken the hit that it has.

[00:18:54] – Pola

Yeah, Caroline, so based on historic trends, we were talking earlier about How these graphs are trending up in terms of schools enrolling more. Well, among them, right? We’re talking as a, as a bigger group, the M7 enrolling more students and accepting more students. But given what we’ve been talking about already with the appetite maybe from international students a little bit diminished, would you still expect these M7 numbers, these big picture numbers to keep going up and up? This year and in the next couple of years?

[00:19:31] – Caroline

So in terms of increases in class sizes, we have seen an increase at Columbia, but that was due to the new campus. And so I think that probably they don’t have plans to further expand the size of the class. But yes, I think in this fall, I would be very surprised if we saw increases in class sizes because I suspect that we will see a drop in the percentage of international students, and therefore, as that’s a big chunk of the class for many of these schools, I doubt that they will want to accept a lot more domestic students and further reduce the percentage of the international students in the classroom. So I suspect that for the class entering this fall, so the classes of 2028, we will see either stable class sizes or potentially small drops.

[00:20:32] – Pola

Interesting. Maria, we’ve talked a bit about international enrollment now, but what are your expectations for how things play out this year and for the class that’s entering now?

[00:20:44] – Maria

You mean in terms of international enrollment for the people like starting literally right now because we’re in August?

[00:20:50] – Pola

Or rather beyond the international enrollment side of things, do you have Other predictions for what’s going to happen this year with the numbers?

[00:21:01] – Maria

Yeah, I mean, I, I agree with Caroline. I think that the international numbers are understandably going to go down. I think, you know, the uncertainty with the visa situation, you know, student visas, post-graduation visas, that’s huge. Um, you know, this article also covers the costs. You know, it’s easily over $250,000 now all in to to get one of these top MBAs. I’ve also been hearing that some of the lenders that used to provide student loans to international students are significantly curtailing or being a lot more picky about who they grant loans to. So I’ve had some clients get into international schools, the M7, INSEAD, LBS, et cetera, who cannot attend because they A few years ago, the student loan providers would’ve said, oh my gosh, you got into a top business school, here you go, just pay us back later, but we know that you’re going to be able to pay us back. And there has been a curtailing in student loan providers. So I think that the international students in particular, that’s going to be a pretty significant drop. I do think that because we’re now living in an age where news travels at the speed of internet, the domestic candidates who might have been on the fence, I do think more domestic candidates are going to see see this as a potential opportunity to try to perhaps get in thinking that, okay, well, if overall application numbers are down, maybe here’s my chance.

[00:22:22] – Maria

But as Caroline said, like, I do suspect that the international percentages will go down, but they can’t go down to 0 or 5%. I mean, then that becomes a very different experience, a very completely different, you know, ROI or value proposition to the domestic candidates who are going because of the value that the international students bring. So, I, you know, I think there’s probably going to be a decrease overall in total numbers in the cycle that’s happening right now of people applying.

[00:22:51] – Pola

Just going to that example of students, he said, who haven’t been able to get a loan. I mean, first off, that is so gutting. Imagine doing all the work to get into one of these top programs and then being told by the bank, yeah, no, sorry, you’re not— we’re not giving you the money. But Maria, what would you advise those candidates if they find themselves in a situation like that?

[00:23:19] – Maria

I think one thing that I am doing a bit more proactively recently that I didn’t have to do in years past is really highlighting for folks who may be coming from a country where you’re not earning in dollars to realize that, look, there’s going to be, there’s increased scrutiny. on your ties to your homeland in terms of, you know, how much money do you have in your home country, or do we consider you to be an immigration risk? We being the immigration officer approving the student visa. That bar for getting that student loan, right? If your family does not have assets or collateral in the past, again, because there was just such a— it was a given that you graduate from one of these top schools, you’re going to get one of those top jobs, you’re going to be able to pay back the loan. That is not such a given anymore. And so the students who are from those lower income countries, but also the lower income strata within their own countries, are facing increased scrutiny. So I am, I am telling folks, look, if getting a scholarship is important, widen your, widen your net, perhaps like look to schools that may be less expensive.

[00:24:25] – Maria

Look to schools that may have more merit scholarships. Look to 1-year programs. Look to the 1-year programs in Europe. But I think folks are going to have to sort of broaden their apertures quite a bit to find ways to find programs that are more affordable and also just start saving money as soon as the thought of getting an MBA enters your mind. Many years ago, a Kellogg admissions officer said to me that they expect most students to have started saving for at least a year. And that’s sort of a mental, an informal mental calculation that they make. And I think that that’s good advice. I think folks should start saving, like you would say, for any large investment. You know, the MBA is probably going to be the first, either the start, the most high investment or the second highest investment you ever make after maybe buying a house. So, just like you would say for anything else, just start saving. Um, and yeah, hopefully things will start to turn around in the subsequent years.

[00:25:22] – Pola

Yeah, start saving and cross your fingers. Caroline, any other last bits of advice or final words on what we’ve been talking about?

[00:25:33] – Caroline

Yeah, I think as Maria said, that advanced planning is really critical in a time when there may be more uncertainty about visas, about financing, and just about the job market as well. So on the savings point, yes. I mean, I remember when I was at INSEAD, we would get scholarship applications from people who would claim poverty because they’d just spent all their money on their wedding, right? It’s not great planning to blow all your savings on a fabulous wedding day and honeymoon if you’re about to head off to business school. So that long-term planning is really critical. And just start investigating your financing options as early as possible as well. Don’t wait until you’re admitted to start looking at loan providers. I mean, there are more options these days for international students than they used to be. So, start investigating those and contacting them and understanding the parameters and your chances of getting financing and how much financing you could get. Start that as early as you can. Too often, unfortunately, candidates leave it until after they’ve been admitted to start doing that. And so, definitely start sooner rather than later. But in times of uncertainty, I think hedging your bets is a great idea.

[00:26:58] – Caroline

So as Maria said, apply— it might be a good idea in this context to apply a bit more widely than you might have otherwise done.

[00:27:08] – Pola

So a brief recap: hedge your bets, apply widely, save money, and don’t blow all the money on a wedding. 3 easy steps. Done. Right. Well, thank you everyone for listening, and you know where you can find us on poetsandquants.com or, uh, on various podcast streaming platforms. So thanks again, Maria and Caroline, and see you all next week. Bye.