What Most Surprised MBA Students In Business School
ApplicantLab |
September 29, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts discuss the 15 biggest surprises MBA students may encounter during their programs. One surprise mentioned is the overwhelming nature of the MBA experience due to numerous activities and opportunities. MBA programs also heavily emphasize soft skills like collaboration and leadership. The hosts stress prioritization and reflect on the transformative potential of an MBA for personal growth.

They also share a story of a colleague discovering that a recommendation letter appeared to be written using Chat GPT, discussing the challenges and awkwardness of addressing this with recommenders. They emphasize the importance of candid conversations with recommenders about expectations and recommendation quality.

Overall, the episode highlights surprising MBA experiences and challenges, including unexpected AI use in recommendation letters.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.450] – John

Hello, everyone. It’s John Byrne with Poets of Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. We recently ran a story that I really kind of like. We asked the latest graduating class of MBAs all over the world what was the single biggest surprise they found from their MBA experience? And we collected 15 of these. We call it the 15 biggest surprises awaiting MBA students. And it’s kind of really intriguing. Each of these are, in the words of MBA graduates from all the top schools, one that I really loved, and I think this would resonate with both Caroline and Maria as well, is this one business school de ages you. It’s kind of a pause in your life that allows you to think more thoughtfully about what you’ve done and where you want to go. I’m going to quote from this one graduate of an MBA program because I think this is just beautiful stuff. The MBA afforded me two years to reflect on how I’ve lived my life up until now and strategize around the life I want to build for myself moving forward. Where do I want to live? Who do I want to surround myself with? How can I be a better son, brother, friend and citizen? What aspects of my desired lifestyle are non negotiable? How should I prioritize my mental health and other non professional priorities like travel, fitness and family? My two years in business school served as a critical reset period for me. I thought that was really brilliant. Caroline, what do you think?

[00:01:51.380] – Caroline

Yeah, I definitely sign up for the aging. I think it’s kind of a shame that I went through that in my twenty s. I would be very happy. To go through it now.

[00:02:01.210] – John

I bet you a lot of people who go through think, oh my God, it aged me really fast.

[00:02:07.190] – Caroline

Yeah, you don’t necessarily get a lot of sleep, so I’m not sure that that’s good for staying young. But joking aside, I totally agree that it’s an incredibly transformative experience. And I think that’s something that resonates with a lot of MBA students, that you expect it to be something that will broaden your perspectives, that will open your eyes to new possibilities that you might not otherwise have considered. But I think that until you’re actually in that experience, you don’t fully appreciate what a deep transformation it can be. Right? And so many people go to the MBA, go into the MBA with a sort of set idea of what they’re going to do when they graduate. And so many of them end up doing something wildly different that they would have never imagined, have imagined before. And that’s because they have had that chance, as you say, to take a step back, to take stock, to reflect on who they are, what they’ve done, the skills they’ve built, what they like to do. And at the same time, they’ve been exposed to so much and so many different opportunities and so many different organizations and had a chance to learn about so many different avenues.

[00:03:28.040] – Caroline

And so that combination of being able to take a step back and that exposure means that a lot of people come out of the program doing something very different than they would otherwise have anticipated. And I think that’s wonderful. Right. It just gives you that chance to take a step in your life that you might otherwise never have taken.

[00:03:47.690] – John

Really true. Now, there are 15 things on our list. Maria, does anyone resonate with you?

[00:03:54.970] – Maria

Well, I think all of them resonated on some level. I think the one of it is totally nonstop. Right. You think about school as mostly being school and, oh, maybe I’ll do an extracurricular or two, but that’s really not the experience at all. It’s that plus plus super, mega extra, because you’re not only going to classes and participating in clubs the way you might have in college, but you’re also trying to find a job and you’re networking like crazy and you’re participating in case competitions. And I think the biggest value, Caroline, a few seconds ago was mentioning how one of the biggest benefits of the experience is that you meet people from all these different backgrounds and you start learning about different industries and different positions, and you ask yourself, well, what is the pharmaceutical industry like? Maybe I should work in that. And you start setting up these conversations with your classmates and the next thing you know, it’s two in the morning and it’s up time to get ready to go to sleep and do it all over again. So I think because the MBA is such a transformative and pivotal moment in someone’s life, I think that does differentiate it from a typical academic experience.

[00:05:02.750] – Maria

And that pivotal moment of your life means that you are putting so much energy into getting to know other people. That is just an element of time that just makes it feel like it’s twice as much time as any other schooling you’ve ever done.

[00:05:15.350] – John

Yeah, definitely. I’m going to just go through the 15 surprises. You mentioned one already. Number one, it is really hard to say no. And this is something that Caroline touched upon before. I mean, there’s so many things that you can do in and out of the classroom that it really can be bewildering and overwhelming. And saying no to some of them is important, but boy, is it hard to the professors really care. A lot of people come from undergraduate backgrounds where they were lectured at and didn’t really have a relationship with professors at business school. The classes tend to be smaller, particularly in the elective curriculum, and the professors are pretty devoted in many cases to the students, even though obviously their research interests are incredibly important to them. Some professors actually help students find jobs and mentor them and work on their startups with them. So that was one big surprise for a couple of students. There’s a heavy focus on soft skills. For all that we talk about this, there’s still a surprise about how much emphasis is placed on collaboration and leadership and business goals and teamwork. It is overloaded and overwhelming.

[00:06:35.400] – John

Four, it is totally nonstop, as Maria noted. Five, your classmates will love to travel. That is so true. And that is so expensive. You get to practice. What you learn immediately is surprise number six. Number seven, you get a lot of freedom in business school. That’s true. Number eight, it is a time to reflect and to grow. And graduates from Tuck, from UC Irvine, and from other schools mentioned that one because it’s such a big deal. Caroline, did you find something that made you remember back to your days at INSEAD in this group?

[00:07:18.330] – Caroline

Yes, definitely. I mean, the fact that it’s difficult to say no and there’s just so much to do, I think resonates, especially with a one year program like INSEAD, which is really like drinking from a fire hose. And I remember when I finished the program, I felt like I’d sort of jumped off a speeding train. Right. It was really strange to adjust to normal life again, because you had been through this incredibly intense experience where the pace is so fast, and as Maria said, it gives you a different sense of the passage of time. Your impression of time even changes. And so I found it quite strange then adjusting to real life again. And I think also what you said about the relationship with professors, I think that’s extremely true. And I think that’s partly because there’s a different level of maturity in the students versus when you’re an undergrad. And so the professors really are treating the students like peers rather than talking down to the students like they’re these young people who don’t know anything. Right. Because also the professors are very reliant on the knowledge of the students who come to the classroom.

[00:08:37.690] – Caroline

And it’s not a case where it’s just the professor dispensing his or her knowledge to their students. It’s more a case of facilitating a learning experience that draws on that collective knowledge and that incredible collective knowledge that you get in the classroom. And so the professors are very reliant on the students, and that changes the dynamic, I think, and the relationship that you have. That’s great. It’s wonderful to be able to build those personal relationships with faculty.

[00:09:10.750] – John

That’s so true. And we are in the phase now where we’re reporting on all the class profiles that are coming out at the schools, and you really get a sense of the richness of diversity of backgrounds and experiences that are brought to an MBA classroom through those class profiles. Number nine was, networking requires a lot of time and energy. No kidding. Ten, don’t underestimate the value of prioritization. There’s this phrase called ruthless prioritization. And that’s exactly what you have to do in business school, because there’s so many things to do, so many case studies to read. Number eleven, you’ll make a lot of friends. And number twelve, business school builds confidence. And we all know that self confidence, not cockiness, is an important ingredient in success. Were there any surprises, Maria, that weren’t on here that should be?

[00:10:02.770] – Maria

No, I think folks covered it. I’m glad to see that the graduates are focusing a lot on the interpersonal relationships they developed in business school, because I do think that that is the thing that going into the future, aside from the basic education. But really taking that network and those friends and those peers with you, that’s the most valuable thing. And so I will sometimes tell folks if you’ve got a networking event to go to or a good party to go to or something like that, and there’s a test tomorrow, like, yeah, study for the test, but you probably won’t use what that test is covering five years from now. But you will probably be reaching out to and hanging out with friends from business school 20 years from now. In fact, just this past weekend, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah at my house and we had some business school friends over. These people really do become a part of your life for a long time. So I’m glad to see that the kids today are smart enough to know, to develop and nurture those relationships, because that is really such a gem and high value thing you take away totally.

[00:11:10.880] – John

So check it out. The 15 biggest surprises that waiting MBA students. If you are a prospective student, an applicant, if you are a current student that just started your program, I think you really want to read this because you get a sense of what you’re going to be experiencing and maybe how to take best advantage of it. Now, one other story that kind of came out actually came from one of your colleagues, Caroline at Fortuna Admissions, and we have a story on it from one of your colleagues, Judith Silverman Hodara, and it’s called Help My Recommender Use Chat GPT. Now, we’ve talked about Chat GPT every now and then, but this is a whole new twist on it. How did it come about, Caroline?

[00:11:55.870] – Caroline

Well, the discussion came up because one of my colleagues, Heidi Hillis, received a recommendation letter for review and was very suspicious that GPT had been used. So it had very effusive praise, but it was very generic and lacking in examples. And then one dead giveaway was that it switched between he and she. So it’s a little bit confused about who it was talking, um, and then when we started talking about it.

[00:12:31.310] – John

Who sends the recommendation, not the recommend. The essay to Harvard Business School and Columbia Business School is in the essay.

[00:12:40.450] – Caroline

I mean that that happens. I mean, that has always happened, but I’m just afraid that errors like that are going to start to pop up more frequently when people have this tempting shortcut at their fingertips. And then when we started talking about it, then other coaches mentioned that they had faced similar situation with their clients. And so I think it is coming up more and more. Unfortunately, what we’re advising our clients is to preempt that and if possible, have a discussion with your recommenders before they draft anything, which you should do anyway, right? You shouldn’t just send them an email asking them to write your recommendation and then forget about it. Right? You should ideally sit down with them, go through some bullet points with them of the key talking points that you would like them to get across, because you want what they say to back up what you say in your application. And there should be some coherence in the whole story. And so what we’re advising clients is at that point when you have that discussion, you should also try to diplomatically weave into the conversation that it’s better if they don’t use generative AI as a tool.

[00:13:59.390] – Caroline

And in this specific case that I mentioned, my colleague actually contacted the recommender and the recommender was very receptive to the feedback and rewrote things.

[00:14:10.670] – John

Mender was embarrassed at being caught at it.

[00:14:12.870] – Maria

As they should have been. Right?

[00:14:16.480] – Caroline

Well, so I don’t think that she actually know we’ve caught you out using AI, but I think she tried to point out that he or she needed to add in more concrete examples and pointed out some of the issues in the style. So I think that’s the way that she addressed it. So it is another issue that, unfortunately, candidates now have to manage as part of the application process and just anticipate. I think it’s best to anticipate it and address it with recommenders up front, if possible, before they go off and draft something that is just churned out in 20 seconds flat.

[00:14:59.790] – John

You know what’s kind of remarkable about this? We had always thought that the bigger issue were candidates using Chat GPT to write their essays. And lo and behold, you would never have imagined that a recommender would actually turn the Chat GPT to write a rec letter. Maria, what do you make of this?

[00:15:22.070] – Maria

Yeah, I have to say, I did not anticipate that being an know. It did not even occur to me until I saw this article from Caroline and her colleagues. It was like, oh my gosh. But I guess everyone’s catching on to Chat GPT and if they’re trying to save some time, maybe they figure everyone else is doing it, so I’ll do it too. But the swapping of the genders. That shows that the person didn’t even proofread. I mean, yikes. I’m glad that Heidi was able to deal with that in a diplomatic and effective fashion. I would expect no less.

[00:16:06.070] – John

Now, here’s another interesting question. If I got this right now, Caroline, did you mention that Heidi was the one who actually called the recommender to get the recommender to write a more.

[00:16:16.100] – Caroline

Specific yes, yes, that’s right. Yeah, she did.

[00:16:19.840] – John

Because I would have thought that the consultant would just sit back and make the candidate do that. I can see the advantage of the consultant actually doing that instead of the candidate, because, after all, on one level, you’re offering somewhat critical commentary to the recommender about what they’ve just handed in to you. Right, yeah.

[00:16:42.200] – Caroline

I think sometimes there’s a difficult power relationship between the candidate and the recommender and it could be their boss. Right. And a candidate may struggle to give feedback that could be taken as critical to the recommender. So in that case, it seemed to work better that Heidi gave the feedback directly. I do think that it’s an interesting question, but maybe there is more of a risk that recommenders use Chat GPT than candidates, because candidates are obviously much more invested in the process than the recommenders. Right. Because it’s their admission to business school that is on the line and they know that it’s an intensive process and they have to dedicate a lot of time to it. But recommenders normally, by their very nature, are incredibly busy people with a lot of demands and they probably writing that recommendation in their spare time, and so it may be more tempting for them than even for the candidate to take a shortcut, if that seems like an option. So I wouldn’t be surprised if schools start to spot some dotty recommendation letters.

[00:17:51.090] – John

Coming in is really solid, because recommenders, let’s face it, they often leave things at the last minute. They think a rec letter is an easy thing to do and it can for many people, even though they may say yes, be something of a nuisance. So I could very well see people turning to generative AI to dash one out and just get it over and done with. So you might be right there where a candidate is invested in the process. And a candidate might even be afraid that admissions Office might be using some sort of software to detect Chat GPT or other AI products. And if they’re caught with it, they’re immediately going to have an application that gets spiked. So they may be actually less inclined to use Chat GPT than the recommender. How about that? Wow. All right, well, there you go. Two lessons here. One, know that you will be surprised when you go to business school and get into a great MBA program. And know that your recommenders should never use Chat GPT, especially when the product refers to you as a he and a she in the same. And Caroline. Thank you.

[00:19:07.150] – John

This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual. Our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
What Most Surprised MBA Students In Business School
ApplicantLab |
September 29, 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.

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