What To Expect In Your Harvard MBA Interview
Maria |
February 7, 2024

In this insightful episode of Business Casual, the hosts delve into significant trends reshaping the MBA world. They discuss the launch of a one-year MBA program by London Business School, a move that reflects the changing preferences and needs within global business education. The conversation also touches on the emotional rollercoaster experienced by MBA applicants during Harvard Business School’s interview notification period, highlighting the high stakes of this phase in the admissions cycle.

John brings a fascinating perspective to the episode with his recounting of the experience at Michigan Ross’s Leadership Crisis Challenge, illustrating how top MBA programs are utilizing simulations to develop practical leadership skills. The hosts then share invaluable tips for navigating the MBA interview process, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and strategic communication while cautioning against common pitfalls.

This episode provides a wealth of guidance for anyone navigating the MBA application process or interested in the evolving landscape of business education.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.290] – John

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. And I have along for the ride, of course, my co hosts, partners in crime, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila. We are going to talk about a few things today. London Business School has announced a one year MBA program. That’s not unusual for Europe, but it is unusual for LBS, which has long had a more flexible kind of format, up to a two year degree, much more traditional in the US than, of course, in Europe. But now they’re going to go with a one year and we’re going to talk about what you can expect if you got an invite from Harvard Business School to interview Harvard for their round two applicants sent out invites and rejections last Wednesday. Big anxious day for candidates and the bulk of them in the round two and really final round at Harvard Business School for regular MBA applicants. And then I want to talk a little bit about. Let’s start with a recent trip that I took to Ann Arbor, to Michigan Ross, where I was embedded in a fascinating simulation which is basically called their leadership crisis challenge.

[00:01:33.590] – John

And this happens every year. It’s been around for a long time. It’s a 24 hours challenge. And this year’s event was the biggest ever in its history, attracting 416 graduate and undergraduate students, something like 30 faculty members who run the thing, 15 communication coaches and over 80 alumni. And it’s sort of a really incredible simulation for students to basically stretch their leadership muscles. What the simulation does is, first off, it puts people who really don’t know each other into teams of five to seven students, then throws them into a meeting room where they essentially act as a senior leadership team for a company that’s in the smart home and home security space. Over the course of the first 4 hours, from six at night until ten at night, they received nearly two dozen emails, voicemails, text messages and a tsunami of social media posts. And what happens to this company is it just launches a partnership with the university to take over their security and electrical systems and then everything goes haywire. At one point, a dog leaves a dorm room, is locked out in the bitter cold, and essentially dies. In another case, a student comes out of the shower and can’t get back in his room because the doors are automatically locked.

[00:03:18.200] – John

It turns out that there’s a hacker who got into the system who’s demanding ransom. And the team is judged on how it responds, what its strategy is, its ability to analyze the financial and legal implications of the crisis, and basically how well it presents to a board of directors composed of alumni, because after the six to ten session of different crises that appear over that four hour period in the morning, you actually have to walk into a boardroom and present to about a half dozen board members. After that, there are finalists who actually present in a press conference and have to be grilled by five actual journalists. It’s really a fascinating simulation. Simulations are a common thing in business school campuses and this has got to be one of the more elaborate, more compelling ones. If you want to read about it, go to the site it’s called. From angry voicemails to a dog’s death, these students grapple with a leadership crisis. I think it’s fun reading and I think if you’re not a student, it’ll get you kind of familiar with what a simulation is like at the best level and what you can expect when you go to business school.

[00:04:38.490] – John

Now, one of the big items in the news is London Business School’s decision to launch a one year MBA. Caroline, you’re a graduate of a one year MBA from a rival of LBS, INSEAD. What do you make of.

[00:04:54.350] – Caroline

Well, I think it makes a lot of sense for them given that they have an increasingly large cohort of graduates from the pre experienced master’s programs. And I know from INSEAD’s experience that those graduates are often looking then to come back later on to complement their education. And whereas at INSEAD they come back and do the one year MBA, coming back and doing another two years at your alma mater may seem like a lot when you’ve already done one year at the school. So I think it’s a logical evolution for LBS. I imagine that it’s not going to be a huge class given the prerequisites that you have to have done one of those masters in management beforehand. So at first I was nervous for INSEAD and whether this is going to be a lot of competition for INSEAD, as the schools do typically have a lot of overlap in their applicant pool for the full time MBA. But given that prerequisite, I don’t think it’s going to make a huge dent to the INSEAD application pool. But I think it also reflects that a lot of schools are looking at how they can diversify their portfolio.

[00:06:08.470] – Caroline

And we’ve talked in the past about how there is a shift towards one year programs. And whilst I think that the top tier us programs, especially the M seven programs, will likely remain as they are as flagship two year programs elsewhere in the market, there was definitely more of a shift towards these one year programs. And so I think LBS has seen that the demand is there, and years ago they created more flexibility in their two year format. So you can exit the program actually at different stages. So you can do the program in 15 months or 18 months. Most people do stay for the two years because you’re paying for that in any case. Right. And if you’re signing up for the traditional flagship MBA, then you probably want the full experience. And so most people do choose to do the full two years. And it also makes sense given that their master’s graduates would have covered a reasonable chunk of the curriculum that you would cover in the two year program. So I think that it’s a very sensible addition to LBS’s portfolio.

[00:07:18.750] – John

Yeah, totally. And you’re right. I mean, this has got to be a fairly limited sized class because the prerequisite is a master’s in management program. School says it will open applications in July of this year. The cost of the program in terms of tuition is about 75,000 pounds. That roughly translates into about $95,000. And to get the MBA, essentially, you get it in eleven months. But I think this is also part of the trend that we’re seeing overall toward flexibility. Business schools are really innovating in their programming to do everything that they can to make business education accessible to larger numbers of people. And they’re doing it by offering all these different many options. This is not something for everyone, but it is something for a slice of the market that otherwise might not get an MBA at all, or might in fact decide to go a more traditional route and then end up with a lot of duplication. Because after all, as Caroline points out, most of the courses in a MIM program at a graduate level are the core courses in an MBA program. So you can eliminate a lot of that and give people a series of courses that don’t entirely overlap to allow them to get an MBA.

[00:08:47.930] – John

Now the other big news, of course, is the invitations and rejections that went out for round two candidates at the Harvard Business School last week. And that’s always a big know. Maria, I wonder if you can recall back when you were waiting around to hear about your acceptance. I guess back then you didn’t go into an online portal to discover your decision, right?

[00:09:16.050] – Maria

I’m old, John, but I’m not that old. Yes, the carrier pigeon arrived and it brought with it an abacus so that I could calculate my student loan payments. No, it was through a portal back then. Even in the 2002 error, back in those days. Yeah, I remember that they released the actual acceptance results at noon Eastern time, which was midnight Hong Kong time. So I stayed up and back then, when the Internet was so slow, the dial up and it took you 20.

[00:09:53.540] – John

Minutes for the page to download, you heard the phone clicking with the modem. Exactly. I imagine that then going into that portal at that time, it was a very anxious kind of experience, right?

[00:10:09.250] – Maria

Yeah. It’s certainly not a low stress moment, but yeah. So I think a lot of us can definitely empathize with people who might have gotten either good news or neutral news or bad news yesterday. So hopefully folks who got good news are starting to prepare for their interviews and we can maybe talk a little bit about what they might want to do to do that. And if they got waitlisted or didn’t get the news, they of. There’s a lot of different ways to get to where you want to get inwards and upwards. Onwards and upwards.

[00:10:45.430] – John

Now, Maria, I’m curious. There you are in Hong Kong, it’s midnight. How do you celebrate your invitation to interview?

[00:10:53.960] – Maria

I mean, I went to sleep. I was so tired. I was like, okay, I got in time to fall asleep. No, I mean, obviously it was very exciting. Everything was topsy turvy in terms of the time of day that I found out. But it was also good because I guess I didn’t have to be pretending to lock myself in my office and pretend to do work while I was actually frantically just reloading the page over and over again.

[00:11:20.330] – John

So what can people expect? Okay, if you get an invite for an interview, let’s start with the basics. If you can go in person, is that preferable than doing it via Zoom? You have an opinion on that?

[00:11:32.260] – Maria

I do think if all else is truly equal, then sure, go in person because you can obviously build a rapport with someone much better in real life than you can through a computer screen. That having been said, if going in person would create any sort of major barrier for you, whether that’s a financial or you can’t get a visa to travel to the US, or you can’t take the day off of work, don’t worry about it. I think every school wants to make sure that they are being as fair as possible and they don’t want to give just because someone happens to live in Boston or because someone happens to have an employer that gives them the day off or they happen to have enough money to travel to Boston. If they live far away, that should not in any way give them an advantage. So don’t feel that you are at a disadvantage if you are doing an online interview. However, if you can swing it, I just feel that it is. If the pandemic has showed us anything and the fact that offices are reopening and schools are reopening, it’s that, yes, you can convey information over a zoom, and you can certainly get things done, and you can certainly get to know people, but it’s always better to be face to face if you can be just to read the body language and know, use more of your interpersonal intuition in terms of where the conversation is going.

[00:12:49.430] – John

Now, I know that what Harvard really hates are scripted people, people who come off as overly rehearsed and basically answering the way they want, as opposed to what’s natural and genuine. That said, how do you prep for a Harvard Business School interview without coming off as scripted?

[00:13:13.000] – Caroline

Yes. Well, I think that it is important to practice, but sometimes candidates memorize answers, or they do so many rehearsals that perhaps it’s starting to sound overly rehearsed and lacking an authenticity. So there is definitely a balance to strike. But I do think that that practice is important because it’s a very intense interview, right? I mean, it’s literally like 29 minutes, whereas a lot of other business schools, especially if it’s an alumni interview, it can easily be an hour or more. And so it’s very intense. You will be speaking with someone who has read your file in depth and has prepared some specific questions that they want to dig into, whereas often alumni interviews are more of a general discussion, and they may not be as familiar with your background, and so maybe asking more questions to learn about you. The HBS interview, they will have, you can assume that they have in their heads everything that you’ve written in your application, and so you should not repeat that. But they will be looking to dig into things that they may have some questions about. So you need to be prepared to go into a lot of detail.

[00:14:33.430] – Caroline

So it’s really a balance to strike, right? That you need to prepare and rehearse and think carefully about how you want to present yourself and be prepared to go beyond what you said in your application. For example, sometimes candidates fall up because they’ve sketched out in their application. You don’t have much space in the application, so they sketch out what is their career plan. But they haven’t necessarily done a lot of research into which employers they’re targeting and how they see their career evolving over time. And you may get some quite specific questions about that. So be prepared to go into a lot more detail and show that you’ve done more research than is apparent from what you’re able to share in your application. And also schools will be digging into your motivation for joining the school. And again, you may not have a lot of real estate in the application to show the interactions that you’ve had with the school community and the research that you’ve done and the different things that you want to get involved in when you’re at the school. But you definitely need to be prepared to talk about that in that interview.

[00:15:43.480] – Caroline

So it can be very wide ranging. And you also need to be prepared to get questions that are unexpected because they’re also looking to see if you can think on your feet. Right. So you can’t anticipate all of the questions. So you also need to be prepared to know how to handle your anxiety in that situation, because sometimes candidates start to ramble because they are sort of perturbed by a question and struggle to think on their feet. So it’s important to manage your stress. Be able to take a pause, be able to have the confidence to take a moment to think about it before you dive into your response. And also just keep your answer succinct, because remember, you’ve got 29 minutes. So if you take too long to explain all the background when you’re giving a response, then you might frustrate your interviewer because they may have other questions that they need to get to and they may run out of time.

[00:16:46.310] – John

Right? Yeah. And are there tricky questions, Maria?

[00:16:51.090] – Maria

Definitely. I mean, as Caroline was saying, part of what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to get a sense of, can you think on your feet? I mean, for me, the HBS interview is trying to get at two core pieces of information. One is authenticity. Did you actually do the things that you said you did in your essay? Do you actually care about that industry that you said, oh, I want to go work for a middle market private equity company in the midwest? Okay, great. So who’s your favorite firm? What investment have they made recently that you like? Are you full of it, or did you actually write what you meant? And you said you’d led that project, so didn’t somebody protest when you brought up that new idea? How did you handle that? So they’re trying to get a sense of authenticity, but they’re also trying to get a sense of fit. And because of the pedagogy, I mean, HBS is so committed to the case method as its core pedagogy. And so that’s a situation where you literally have no idea, walking into any class, where the conversation is going to go and the direction it’s going to go in.

[00:17:54.840] – Maria

And you might get to speak once every three classes, and you’ll probably get maybe 20 seconds to make your point. So they’re looking for people who can think on their feet, who can deal with the unexpected, because every case conversation is going to have twists and turns that you never anticipated. And so if you walk into a case discussion with a memorized answer of what you’re going to say if you get called on, it’s not going to work well for you because you’re probably not going to get a chance to say that beautiful little thing that you prepared. And it’s not going to be beneficial for your classmates, because it’s only a beneficial conversation if it’s a truly organic, if it’s all 90 people in the class organically trying to come to the same conclusion. So in terms of the unexpected questions, that’s actually, as someone who, when I give mock interviews, I try to come up with questions that they won’t expect precisely to test that aspect of can they think on their feet? So the more you prepare, in fact, if anything, if I start asking questions and I get the sense that the person has, like, aha, I was ready for this question.

[00:18:55.290] – Maria

I was ready for that question. Then I will go to my less expected questions on the list precisely for that reason, to see how they will.

[00:19:07.630] – John

No, you’re prepping people for good performance. And, Caroline, what are some of the questions? I mean, you get some typical ones, like, walk me through your resume, talk about a challenge at work or what you learned from a failure, things like that. What are some other questions that a candidate might expect?

[00:19:30.470] – Caroline

Well, schools often like to ask behavioral questions, so then they are asking for a specific example. So rather than asking about, tell me about your greatest achievement or asking something that’s quite general, they may hone in on something very. An example of a very specific behavior. So it could be, tell me about a time that you have faced an ethical challenge, and you need to sort of walk them through that situation and what you did, or tell me about a time that you had a clash with a colleague and how you managed that situation. So they’re looking to really hone in on specific experiences because they’re looking to understand how you handle situations and what your pattern of behavior is. And a good framework for handling those questions is the star framework. So you describe the situation, you describe the task that you face, and then you describe your action, and you describe the result. So essentially, you describe the scenario, and then what it is that you did and what was the outcome. So that’s a useful way to think about how to structure your response to those questions.

[00:20:52.510] – John

And I am imagining that clarity, conciseness is essential here, along with what you just said. It’s a linear framework, not all over the.

[00:21:05.450] – Caroline

Yes, yeah, for sure. And something else to keep in mind with the HBS interview is that compared to other interviews, the interviewers are often quite poker face, right? They’re often quite standoffish in their manner, almost, compared to, for example, alumni interviews, where they’re often very friendly and their demeanor is much more warm and therefore more likely to put the candidate at their ease. So I think that it’s important for candidates to keep that in mind, that there’s quite a specific manner that the interviewers will have. And sometimes candidates can feel a bit perturbed by that and maybe thrown off their game because they feel it’s hard to establish a rapport with their interviewer, or at least harder than it would be with someone who’s more friendly and chatty and wants to break the ice before they dive in and so on. So it’s important to prepare yourself for that style as well.

[00:22:03.190] – John

I’m thinking that because at Harvard, admission officials do the interviews as opposed to trained students or alumni, should I presume that Harvard puts more weight on the interview than maybe other schools or not?

[00:22:20.190] – Maria

I don’t know that it’s about the waiting, per se. I think it is, though, to the extent that everyone is trained and everyone is a staff member of the admissions committee, it is going to be a more standardized experience. Again, they’re trying to eliminate variability in terms of what if you get an alumnus who’s having a bad day? What if you get an alumnus or a current student who maybe they worked for a competitor company that you worked for? You never know. You’re trying to eliminate bias wherever you can. So I don’t know that it means that the interview is more or less important, but I do think that the interview, if someone comes back, writes their report on the interview, and comes back and says, like, look, I really, really loved this kid. I really think we should let them in and take a chance on them. Or conversely, look, they were great on paper, but when I talked to them, they were a little standoffish, they were a little full of themselves. I think it carries more weight in terms of there’s a lot of credibility with whatever the interviewer says because the interviewer is a trained professional member.

[00:23:23.740] – Maria

A lot of the interviewers will often spend some time observing interviews first, it’s not uncommon, especially if you go in person, for you to have a primary interviewer and then someone in the back kind of basically taking notes. And oftentimes that’s an interviewer in training. So given the amount of training that the interviewers get, I can’t speak to weighted is per se, but I do think that the interview has a lot of. If the interviewer says, look, this kid was just, they were terrific on paper, but when I met them, they were really stuck up, that is going to carry a lot of weight. Versus, I think I would suspect, if I were to get an alumnus report on someone that was equally negative, I might say, well, but does this person have an agenda? Maybe this person was having a stomachache on that day, or you never know. So I guess from that perspective, it probably does have more. I think the interviewer probably has more credibility in terms of whatever they report one way or the other.

[00:24:17.320] – John

I’m also thinking that if it goes to committee, that person is sitting, perhaps sitting at the table and hearing from a fellow admissions officer directly about a candidate and how an interview went would form a more powerful sort of assessment of the candidate than a piece of paper submitted by an alum.

[00:24:42.150] – Maria

Because you could ask questions, too. You could be like, well, where is it that they were full of themselves? Or were they just confident? I’m sure there are probably situations where you could push back on someone, and since they were the one who gave the interview, they could answer instead of speculating.

[00:24:56.590] – John

So besides a scripted or rambling answer, what are the pitfalls to avoid? What are the biggest mistakes that a candidate could make? I mean, surely coming off arrogant, you’re dead on arrival, right?

[00:25:11.890] – Maria

Yes. I think the other one is keeping in mind, Caroline mentioned before that a lot of times the interviewers are poker faced. Sometimes it might even blend into, again, thinking about, how is this person going to be in our classroom? It might even blend over into confrontational types of questions, right? Like, why did you do that? Or did you really do this? Just to sort of see how do you deal? Know, if you say, like, well, I really want to work for Nike because of whatever. And if I’m like, yeah, but don’t they use child labor in Asia? Like, how can you possibly. Whatever it is that you say, I can come up with a devil’s advocate reason why what you just said is bad, which is something that I attribute to having gone through the case method myself as an education.

[00:25:55.970] – John

So, Maria, if I’m asked a child labor question and I say, what’s wrong with that? At least a better profit margins.

[00:26:01.960] – Maria

There you go. That’s the right.

[00:26:03.410] – John

You say that’s the wrong answer. Right.

[00:26:05.930] – Maria

That’s exactly the right answer. You say making money is the only thing that matters, and those kids are in tough luck. No, but it’s more just to see, like, I think there is more of a chance that you might get a question that’s meant to make you uncomfortable or that’s meant to see how you deal with things that you weren’t expecting or pushback that maybe you might not get in another interview. And so I think the worst thing you could do in that situation is to dig in your heels and to say, like, no, I’m right, and you’re wrong because it’s not a productive way to have a conversation with someone. So that’s the other thing to do, is if the conversation starts taking a harder turn, don’t think that that means that you’re doing poorly. It might even mean that I have a higher opinion of you as a candidate. And so I’m really going to test you sometimes. Some of my nicer interviews are when I’m not very impressed with someone, and I’m like, I’m just going to, why make this more painful? They’re probably not going to get in, so why make this more painful than it has to be?

[00:27:11.160] – Maria

So just because you start getting tough questions doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doing badly. It’s kind of like, what is it, the GMAt? If you do well enough on the easier questions, they’re going to throw harder questions at you. It might be the same sort of thing. So don’t lose your cool and just be open to other people’s opinions. But also, don’t be a pushover.

[00:27:28.660] – Caroline

Right.

[00:27:28.850] – Maria

If they say, well, why Nike? Don’t they use child labor? And you’re like, you’re right. Nike’s terrible. I hate them. Then you’re not doing yourself any favors either, because you just cave so easily. What’s wrong with you? So just keep things civil and don’t let them see you sweat.

[00:27:47.100] – John

Yeah, Caroline, any other pitfalls that candidates should avoid?

[00:27:51.600] – Caroline

Well, there is a balance to strike, as you said, between, you don’t want to come across as arrogant, but you need to show humility, but you also need to stand up for yourself, as Maria said. And sometimes candidates find that a fine line to tread. One of my colleagues used to interview for Harvard and remembers a candidate. She was in the observer role, and the interview had asked a question, and the candidate said, actually, the question that you should have asked me a it is an important balance to strike, that you are there to sell yourself right as a candidate, but you don’t want to come across as overly full of yourself. And sometimes candidates do struggle with getting that balance right, because arrogance is a huge turn off. And as you said, that can immediately torpedo your chances. But on the other hand, you don’t want to be too humble because, after all, it is an extremely competitive process and you want to walk away feeling that you have been able to convey some really positive aspects of your experience and your strengths. So it’s important to strike that balance quite carefully.

[00:29:18.370] – John

What should I wear now? If I work on Wall street and I come in in the three piece suit with a pocket handkerchief in suspenders, I don’t think that’s probably good, right?

[00:29:31.110] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s fine to wear what you would wear in a business context. So I would err on the side of being too smart than too casual and wear what you would wear to an important business meeting, depending on which industry you come from. That’s absolutely fine.

[00:29:51.790] – John

Maria, you have any thoughts about dress?

[00:29:55.230] – Maria

Yeah, I think don’t overthink the dress. And if you don’t work in an environment where you have a three piece suit, don’t go out and buy a suit just for this occasion. I wouldn’t stress too much about it. I think, again, these are highly trained interviewers, and I would like to think that that means that they’re not going to be swayed one way or the other. Someone shows up with pink cowboy boots, that they’re not going to be opposed to them or in favor of them simply because of their sartorial, you know, obviously, as Caroline said, sure, err on the side of formality, but don’t feel that you have to go out and buy that brand new suit. That’s going to be the thing that matters.

[00:30:42.270] – John

What about tattoos and piercings? If I have tattoos that can be hidden, should I hide them?

[00:30:48.430] – Caroline

Well, if it’s part of your identity and it depends how you feel about it, I think you don’t need to flaunt it and I don’t think you need to hide it. I think you need to be comfortable. I think that’s really important in whatever you wear or however you present yourself, that it needs to feel authentic and you need to be comfortable. I had a candidate once who wore a suit that was too tight and was struggling to breathe through the interview. And so, poor guy, you don’t want to be in that situation. Where you’re sitting there fidgeting in your seat because you’re concerned that maybe your pants are too short or the waistband is too tight or your dangly earrings are bothering you or your hair is falling in your face. Just whatever it is that you wear, make sure that it’s comfortable and it feels authentic to you so that you’re not thinking about it. Right. You need to put a. Concentrate on what you’re saying, so you don’t want to have to put any mental energy during those 30 minutes into what it is that you’re wearing or how you’re appearing physically.

[00:31:56.230] – John

Now, one last question about the interview. If you’re invited, what are your odds of receiving an actual invite to be part of the class. You have an idea of what percentage of those who are interviewed are invited and what percentage are rejected.

[00:32:14.010] – Maria

I think the general rule of thumb is roughly 50%, maybe a little bit higher. Probably around there.

[00:32:22.290] – John

Exactly. So the interview, in a way, is meant to essentially cancel you out, isn’t it?

[00:32:30.820] – Maria

Well, we’re both very quiet. We’re like, put it that way.

[00:32:36.870] – Caroline

I mean, it’s an amazing achievement just to get to the interview, I think. And that’s important for candidates to keep in mind that they’ve got very far in the process, if they’ve got to that point, and they should be very proud of themselves, regardless of whatever happens at the end of the day. So they’ve got to the interview. It shows that the school believes that they would be a great addition to the school. And what happens after the interview? It doesn’t all depend on the interview. Right. The final decision is not just looking at what happened in that interview. It’s looking at a number of factors, including who else is in the pool and they’re building this incredible diversity. And so it depends who else who looks similar to you has also got to the interview stage. So I wouldn’t encourage candidates to go into it feeling like it’s make or break time at the interview. You don’t need to put that stress on yourself.

[00:33:33.990] – John

Now, I know both of you do mock interviews to help people prepare for the actual session. When should someone do a mock interview with consultant, and when do you think it’s not necessary.

[00:33:47.450] – Caroline

I think everyone can benefit from practice. Right. And whether that is a coach or whether that’s someone else that you trust, that you feel has the right background and the right understanding of the situation that you’re going into, it’s helpful to be put through your paces, and sometimes it’s helpful to do a practice interview with more than one person to get a different style and to practice facing a different conversation. Right? And sometimes actually it’s harder to do the practice in some cases than it is to do the real interview because you may be doing a mock interview with someone that you know and that can feel very weird and artificial and that can throw you off a little bit. And also, of course, you don’t have necessarily the same adrenaline pumping through your system that you have when you do the real interview. So sometimes people find that they struggle a little bit more with the mocks than with the actual interview. But I think practice is great. So sign up with a coach or practice with a colleague or a friend or a family member. Ideally someone who is familiar with what the school is looking for and has some familiarity with the process and with what the MBA is about.

[00:35:03.480] – John

Yeah, all good advice. Well, listen, if you have been invited to Harvard, either by Zoom or in person for an interview, good luck to you. And if you are in the mood for a one year MBA from London Business School because you already have the MIM, go for it and know that sim emulations will likely be a part of your MBA experience when you finally get there. Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
What To Expect In Your Harvard MBA Interview
Maria |
February 7, 2024

Full Episode Transcript:

John Byrne: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. We want to talk about international students. Schools are now reporting that a good number of their international recruits who were admitted to programs this fall haven’t been able to show up or have changed their mind.

At the University of Illinois, the school, the Gies College of Businesses, lost about 200 international students in its Master of Finance and Master of Business Analytics programs causing a $7 million hit. To their budget at UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 40 students didn’t show up who were admitted, and that’s resulting in two and a half to $3 million hit on their budget this year.

Both of these things have occurred before the announcement of a hundred thousand dollars tax on H one B Visa. Which will make it more difficult for many employers [00:01:00] to hire international students and keep them in the US for an extended period of time. And we’re getting the new class reports of the, of the new cohorts of students who’ve arrived on campus in the fall of this year.

And Carnegie Mellon is. Down 30% for their international cohort over the past two years. UCLA Anderson School is down 25% over the past two years, and schools are preparing for the worst because of the H one B Visa decision which could affect future employment. Caroline and Maria, my cohosts are in the market helping people get into the best schools in the world.

And Caroline, what do you think?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yeah, definitely seeing concern among international candidates and people holding off on applying for the US schools. So it’s really a shame. I think the international schools, particularly the schools like Inea and London Business School and the other top.[00:02:00]

International European programs will benefit, they’ll get talent that might otherwise have come to the us, which is great for those schools. And I’m very fond of those schools, but it is sad as from the US perspective for sure. On the other hand, you could also take the perspective that.

If you do have options for your career post MBA that don’t require that you absolutely have to stay in the US as an international candidate, then now could be a very good time to apply, right? Because definitely application volume will be down and schools will be perhaps. More open to candidates that might otherwise have been waitlisted or rejected in the past.

For some candidates, this is actually a fantastic opportunity to get into a top school, but from, for, at least from the school’s perspective, it is a shame because, I’ve experienced firsthand the value of a very internationally diverse classroom and the value that brings with a [00:03:00] diversity of perspectives that enriches the learning experience so much for everybody.

Enriches the debate and bring so much to the academic experience as well as the the network and the social experience. So it’s everybody’s loss, right?

John Byrne: Very true.

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: And I think it’s a very myopic perspective that the US government takes that. There needs to be a more of a refocus at US educational institutions on the domestic market because those international applicants bring a lot to the domestic students in enriching their learning and enriching their network.

Of course bring a huge value to the US economy when they stay. So there are very impressive statistics on the value of immigrants to the US economy. So Indian immigrants, for example, are only about one and a half percent of the US population, but they have founded to date about 8% of all the tech startups in the us.[00:04:00]

And for sure some of that top talent from India will now not come to the us. They will go to perhaps they will stay at the great schools that we’ve talked about in India, or they will go to other international schools. So for sure it will be a loss to the us learning experience and to the US economy.

John Byrne: Maria, you run applicant lab which is a platform that helps applicants get into highly selective schools. And many of the people who use your product are international students. What are you seeing?

Maria Wich-Vila: Everything Caroline is saying concern is think a delicate way to put it.

And I think it’s because as the more affordable provider in the market, I tend to get the applicants who maybe they don’t have the family business to fall back on. Maybe they don’t have, large sources of income elsewhere in their lives. And so I think the concern is very real and very merited, right?

I can’t. In good faith, tell someone, if they [00:05:00] really start, sit down and do the math and start to do, run the numbers, if they just assume that things are going to stay as is. And this is the big caveat that I’m, I want to get to in a second, but if we assume that things stay as is and if someone really is from a lower income tier from Nepal or India or some of the other countries that I work with, yeah, maybe sit down and do that math and think about, okay, if I do have to come back to Nepal afterwards, how will I pay back that loan? There, there is though some good news. Even if we assume that things stay status quo, which I hope, and I’m pretty, I’m I think it’s, I’m cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

But there are other markets as well. So I’ve had a lot of candidates, or former clients, I should say, graduate from business school, not be able to get jobs in certain in countries and then. Being able to move to Dubai. Dubai for some reason, has started attracting a ton of candidates, primarily from South Asia but from other parts of the world who might be having trouble getting some of those work permits.

You could do worse than live in, Dubai’s not perfect, but [00:06:00] you could also do worse than live in Dubai, right? The salaries are pretty high. The standard of living, if you have a white collar job there is, it’s not the worst outcome. So it’s not I can’t stay in the us. That’s it.

There’s no other it’s not a binary of, it’s either the US or it’s nothing. And then I think the second point is I, we’ve just seen. So many things, let’s take something from a different facet of policy. The tariffs, right? The tariffs were announced and the markets went crazy, and in the months that have followed, oh, actually, here’s the tariff, but this one company, their products aren’t gonna be subject to the tariff.

And then there’s this other company that maybe they’re not gonna have to pay the same tariff. And I can’t help but wonder if some of these. Some of these very large companies that are getting tariff exemptions, their ability to lobby for. The H one B, maybe lowering of the H one B fee. If they’ve been able to successfully lobby tariffs, they might be success, able to successfully lobby against these, true, these [00:07:00] visa fees.

And a lot of these big companies, these big tech companies are in fact some of the largest employers of post MBA talent in the us. So I am cautiously optimistic that. This could be, hopefully right now it’s the big, the flash and storm and the, the making, the big splash, right?

Everything’s about showmanship and making the big splash. And maybe in the aftermath of the storm, that initial PR media storm, maybe the reality will start to calm down a little bit. Yeah, the other good news is that if you’re applying now, that means you would enroll in 2026. You would, if it, if you’re talking about the US two year program, you would graduate in 2028.

At that point, who knows what might happen. I like to think that what we have seen so far in terms of the Visa policies, hopefully. Roughly the floor about as bad as it can get. I think if they start implementing a similar thing to OPT, that could be the same thing. But if we just assume that okay, right now what’s been announced is that these foreign students all have to do, you can’t stay here, you have to [00:08:00] go someplace else.

It, we assume that’s like the initial negotiating position. It’s just gonna chip, it’s just gonna get, it’s got nowhere else to go. It’s even worse. So we’ve, we now have two and a half years roughly until. People applying now would have to really implement, or be really affected by this in a.

In a pragmatic and tangible way. And so that’s why I’m hoping that the little chipping away and the chipping away things will start to get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better like we’ve seen with other facets of policy. Didn’t like a bunch of the CDC employees that were all fired under Doge didn’t more than half of them I think were recently rehired.

Yes. Back again true. Whatever you think of the policy, it seems like some of the policies are. Being slowly walked back. And so I think if you. If you’ve got an adventurous spirit, I, and by the way, if you apply now, sorry. I know I keep going, but I like, if you apply now, let’s say you get accepted, you don’t have to show up until August of 2026.

So that will give you [00:09:00] time, like definitely. Apply now and see what happens between now and August of 2026 to make the decision to not apply now, because you’re rightfully scared. I’m not blaming anyone, but to not apply now, maybe by maybe six months from now he’ll be like, ha, just kidding. I’m doubling the number of H one Bs.

Yeah, we have no idea what’s gonna happen. So things are So give yourself that optionality.

John Byrne: Yeah. And things are so uncertain that could very well happen because, one day at tariffs are on one country the next day they’re not one day they’re pausing the ab the interviews for student visas, the.

Say they’re not there’s litigation all over the place, challenging many of the presidential actions that have been taken that have put them in limbo despite all the headlines. So it’s, it, there’s more uncertainty than there is certainty about any of these things. And as you point out, you, if you [00:10:00] did apply this year, the odds are gonna be in your favor if you’re an international student, frankly, because there is no question.

That international applicant volume will be down at all the top schools in the us, which means that to maintain some semblance of a global class. Admission directors are going to have to dig a little bit deeper into their international applicant pools to select candidates. In a way, if you play the long term and in the BA, in, in many graduate degrees or long term bet, I think you’re gonna be.

Oddly better off. And it may even be that the schools will really even go out of their way to help international students in ways that they haven’t in the past because of these actions in Washington. And what do I mean by that? Just a more welcoming reception than the already welcoming reception you would get hiring immigration lawyers and people that can help you.

If in fact there is a [00:11:00] challenge of one kind or another. I think the takeaway is not to be discouraged and throw up your hands to say, ah, I always dreamed of coming to the United States and getting an MBA or a graduate degree in business. Use this as an opportunity to actually increase your odds of getting into a better school with the understanding that when you get out there, probably most likely be an administration change and a change in these policies if they even get completely adopted as Maria points out.

Wouldn’t you think that’s the best strategy, Caroline?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yes, I agree. I think that it’s good to take a longer term perspective because it is such a long timeline, right? If you’re applying to a top two year program as you say, you’re gonna be coming out of the program at the end of the Trump presidency and things may look very different.

And Maria rightly points out that. Everything is very volatile, right? So one thing gets announced and the next week it [00:12:00] gets rolled back, right? They’ve done so many things where they’ve realized, oh, actually that was a really bad idea after all. So

They’ve changed things. So things may not it might, may not turn out to be as bad as we fear.

And then I would also encourage candidates. To apply to the US schools, but why not hedge your bets and apply to an international program as well? Agreed in a time of uncertainty. As Maria said, create options for yourself. And so I would encourage candidates to apply to the top US programs, but also apply to top international programs as well and see what offers you get.

And then you can make a decision. As Maria said, it will be closer to the time when you would be starting the program and there may be more clarity about the situation in the US and what your options are in international markets as well. So I think that given the current circumstances, a good strategy is to hedge your bets and apply more widely than you might [00:13:00] have otherwise done.

John Byrne: Plan Bs are good. Let me just say business schools in the US have for years advised international students that those should have a plan B in the event that they can’t get with a US company. The other thing to, to keep in mind incidentally, in terms of MBA employment is that most of the companies.

That basically employ the lion’s share of MBAs are all global concerns. So you can be hired here and if there’s any challenge in getting you employed here in the us you can simply start in an office outside the United States with a hope of coming back when things clear up. So that is also another important thing to keep in mind.

And I’ll just say this. Despite whatever messaging you’re reading in your local newspapers or on your streaming platforms or television stations about how immigrants may not be welcome in the us that’s not true at all. Universities are diverse places. Welcoming. [00:14:00] Embracing loving the diversity of their students and particularly those from different cultures and backgrounds that enrich the educational experience.

There is no Dean that I’ve ever encountered who said they want fewer international students. It’s the exact opposite. They’re putting out message after message, telling people that they’re still welcome and wanted. Needed in the classroom. Now, Maria, in the past we’ve seen applicants who try to say, okay, can I time my application and my enrollment in a program to what I think might be the next recession?

And we know that in recessions applications go way. In part because some people lose the opportunity to gain advancement in a recession. Some people get unemployed. Some people just realize, hey, a recession is a good time to take a time out and get a new educational credential, which may allow me to do things I otherwise can’t do.[00:15:00]

But it’s almost impossible to time a recession and I’m imagining it’s impossible to time what’s going on here now.

Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah. I mean if we could all time, when everyone’s been talking about a stock market crash that to, not to bring another disparate topic in, but like everyone’s been talking about, it’s a bubble.

It’s a bubble. I’ve been hearing ’cause a bubble for a year and a half. True. Yeah, you can’t time or ask, for example, ask the people who enrolled in business school, like who got into business school in 2020. Like there’s always gonna be these external shocks. We can try to predict a recession, but who knows if it’s going to happen?

Who knows if there’s going to be some sort of virus or the opposite of a virus. Maybe there’ll be a virus that helps us all live healthily forever. Who knows? There’s so much uncertainty out there that who knows what to do. So I think. I think yeah, have that optionality. I think go ahead and apply.

Now if there is a recession though, which everyone seems to think is coming at some point, at that point, it’s going to be harder to get accepted. And as Caroline has pointed out, so rightfully, if other international, high quality international students are [00:16:00] spooked by the current H one B talk, now is your chance.

International candidate. Jump in there, shoot your shot like you might be able to get into a school, assuming of course that you’re qualified, but. You might have a lot less competition now than you normally will, so this could be a golden opportunity for you. And one final as one thing that I wanted to point out was that I was thinking, okay, Maria, let’s say that, you just said that maybe there’s gonna be walk back of some of these and there’s gonna be, maybe he’s gonna change.

But even if there isn’t a change, right? Let’s think about this. The companies themselves are gonna have, and you started to alluded to this John, when you mentioned that a lot of them are global concerns. They’re gonna have now a two year window in which to say. Okay. We know that we’re not gonna keep these people in the states, so let’s open a huge office in Vancouver.

Let’s open a brand, an enormous new office in Toronto. Whatever that is. Because I was thinking back to over the summer when it looked like maybe a bunch of international students wouldn’t be able to get any student visa at all. And I know that some of the business schools we’re looking [00:17:00] at, do we rent out some space in Toronto and do Zoom classes?

We do a hybrid. What we did during COVID. I’ve heard that. I think Rice, I was actually having dinner last night with a dear friend who was, say he’s from Texas and he was saying that Rice has some sort of a campus in Paris and that they are leaning really heavily on their global campuses around the world to still be able to service these students who had gotten accepted.

So things like that, like if. Even if our sort of my very cautious and perhaps irrational optimism turns out to not be true, let’s say the things get, the OPT is banished and all, everyone is banished and it’s the worst case scenario. Again, there’s gonna be two and a half years for these companies. To quickly find, okay, fine, we’re gonna open up an office in Mexico City and we’re gonna pay people really well and we’re gonna what?

Whatever that is. ’cause they’re, the companies are still gonna want the talent, right? Just because the political administration doesn’t want the global talent in the country. That doesn’t mean that the country’s employers don’t want that talent. They [00:18:00] want that talent, they want that intellect, they want that energy and that drive to make their companies better and to make more money.

So they have a very strong incentive to not only be lobbying for these. Visa changes to go away, but if they don’t go away, they have a very strong incentive to come up with some way to provide, to provide those incomes and to provide those perks and some sort of a compromise type of situation.

So again I think if you’re applying now, if you’re going in with eyes wide open, shoot your shot. That’s my, I would absolutely tell people to to try that.

John Byrne: Yeah, I totally agree. And, generally this is my rule of thumb and Maria and Caroline, you may or may not agree with this, at the top MBA programs, they’re so selective that the people who apply to them generally are very self-selecting group.

So I always say that roughly 80% of the school’s applicant pool. Is qualified to actually get accepted, get in, do [00:19:00] well, and land a good job. And yet we know that at Stanford, the acceptance rate is 6%, that Harvard is 12 Wharton and Columbia is, a little under 20 or so. So there are a lot of really good candidates who aren’t getting in.

Which leads me to this, if you’re an international student who thinks okay, so these US schools just might dip a little more into the domestic pool to make up for the offset of international candidates. As it turns out, there is a little notice. Clause in the big beautiful tax bill that was passed here under Trump that places severe limits on federal loans for graduate students.

Now, the current grad plus loan program allows students to borrow up to the cost of their graduate programs. That comes to an end in July of next year. After that, grad students borrowing will literally be capped at [00:20:00] 20,500 bucks a year with a lifetime graduate school loan limit of a hundred thousand. That’s a big deal because, at the top MBA programs it’s not on typical.

For a student to borrow over a hundred thousand dollars easily. And so these caps are also going to affect domestic enrollment. So again, that, that contributes to your ability as an international candidate to get in both. The likely decline in competition not only from internationals but also from domestic students here, interestingly enough, that Bill, which passed has different limits for a professional graduate degree, but the bill basically says that only med school and law school qualify as professional degrees and not business school.

That’s another wacky thing that’s happened that will affect. Domestic enrollment as well. So I, I side with Maria and [00:21:00] Caroline to me the advice is, look long term. Don’t be affected overly affected by the change in policies in the US or the climate here. Understand that if you apply now and you matriculate next year and you graduate in two years after that you’re gonna be facing probably a very different environment.

Also understand the odds are in your in your favor, in getting into a highly selective, really good program in this coming year. And know that, while people too often calculate the value of an MBA based on short term variables, like what’s my starting salary gonna be? What is my sign-on bonus?

The truth is the MBA has enduring value over your lifetime. So it rewards you over your entire career and not just for the first or second years. And you can’t go wrong by graduating into a network of helpful and supportive people from a great school and [00:22:00] receiving a great education. So I think bottom line, we’re telling you apply.

Don’t get convinced by your colleagues or anyone else that this is a bad time to come to the us. Opportunity. Some of the best opportunity come comes when people perceive there to be significant challenges. And I think this is really true with business school. We hope we convinced you to come and try and hedge your batts too, as Caroline noted.

I think that’s really super important to have a plan B when you apply and toss a bunch of apps to the European schools which have excellent superb world class MBA programs and real international cohorts. 90% of the students not from the countries where the schools reside. Toss a bunch of them in your mix for your target schools to give you these different options at the end of the day.

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

Maria

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