In the buzzing world of top MBA programs, the spotlight often falls on the elite group known as the Magnificent Seven (M7), encompassing Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Kellogg, and Chicago Booth. In a lively discussion, hosts John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards dive into the latest data of these prestigious schools, offering keen insights into what attracts aspiring MBAs to these programs and shifting trends in the business education landscape.

One standout revelation from the discussion is Columbia Business School’s leap to the forefront in terms of cohort size. Traditionally trailing behind Harvard and Wharton, Columbia has surged ahead, enrolling 972 students last year. This marks a significant shift in dynamics among the M7, with John noting the school’s new facilities as a possible draw. Another intriguing trend is the resurgence of finance careers as a popular destination for graduates, highlighted by Maria. Despite previous downturns and the ebb and flow of the tech and consulting industries, finance seems to be reclaiming its status among the top career paths.

Caroline brings attention to the remarkable increase in application numbers across all M7 schools, with Columbia experiencing a substantial 38% rise. This uptick in applications is a testament to the enduring allure of these programs and their ability to adapt and thrive amidst global changes. For MBA hopefuls, understanding these evolving trends and data offers a crucial edge in navigating the competitive world of business education.

Episode Transcript

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

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets of Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast. Every year, we take a look at the M7 by the numbers. Now, for those of you who aren’t familiar with what the M7 is, let me just tell you. They are the so-called, and I will say so-called, Magnificent Seven business schools with MBA programs, Stanford, Wharton, Harvard, Columbia, MIT, Kellogg, and Chicago Booth. This is an idea that started many, many years ago when the deans, the admission directors, and the career management people wanted to get together in a peer group and self-selected. This became known as the M7. These officials still meet yearly, at least, not more often, in private and has also created some animosity, incidentally, among the other schools who believe that they’re as good, if not better, than some of the M7 schools who aren’t invited. So they’ve created their own elite club as well. In any case, there is so much interest in the M7 schools, which are all US, as you obviously just know. And that’s another point of contention, because you can argue that NCI London Business School, at the very least, if not others, would belong in a very elite group of MBA programs.

[00:01:36] – John

In any case, so many people aim for the M7 that we do a comparison. By the numbers, every single year, the latest story is called the M7 By the numbers 2025 Edition. Who gets in and what that says about the MBA market? It’s It’s intriguing. For among other discoveries in looking at the data, Columbia Business School now enrolls the largest MBA cohort of any of the M7 schools. It used to always be behind Harvard and Wharton. But in this past year, Columbia has jumped well ahead. To give you an idea. Last year, they enrolled 972 students. The year before that, it was only 829 when They were behind the 938 at Harvard and the 874 at Wharton. Basically, the Harvard number to compare against the 972 is 930 now, and the Wharton number is 866. If you’re interested in knowing Which of the M7 enrolls the smallest classes? It would be Stanford and MIT. Stanford brought in 424 students last year and MIT 433. If If you’re wondering why we don’t have numbers for this coming year, meaning this fall, it’s because those class profiles really won’t get released for many, many months. In some cases, they’re not even final yet, even though I know at UVA Darden, which is not an M7 school, the welcome meeting for the new students occurred today as we are taping this recording.

[00:03:27] – John

There are a lot of other interesting things about the data. We do it by acceptance rate, yield, applications, average GMATs, average GPA, average JRE, a number of percentage of women in the class and international nationals. We also look at tuition rates. We look at enrollment over time. It’s a pretty comprehensive look at the M7 by the numbers. Maria, what do you glean from a look at the stats?

[00:04:02] – Maria

Well, I mean, I think it’s really interesting. I think that we were probably expecting to see a bit of a downturn in some of these numbers. So it was really exciting to see that, in fact, that prior class had had some, in some cases, extremely healthy applicant numbers, in some cases, the best since we’ve seen since the pandemic, which was a delightful surprise. I also think that one of the things that’s really interesting interesting about this article is in the latter pages for folks that I strongly recommend everyone go and look at this article, is there’s a lot of information about the career choices and some of the dynamics that we’re seeing It certainly seems like anecdotally, we’ve been hearing a lot of rumors about things like the management consulting firms, perhaps not hiring as much, tech not hiring as much, and finance becoming the new one of the top choices This is for destinations for post-graduation. And it’s funny because I think a couple of years ago, there was, in fact, a downturn for finance jobs, and reports of the death of a finance career have been greatly exaggerated. So And it seems like, yeah, in times when if tech starts being a little bit more volatile and consulting firms clamp down due to uncertainty, and perhaps they don’t hire as many people because they’re not sure what their project flow is going to look like, the folks end up back at finance.

[00:05:33] – Maria

It’s the tried and true. So I thought that was a really interesting thing to see.

[00:05:37] – John

True. And every single M7 school had an increase in applications for the class that entered last fall. And the biggest increase occurred at Columbia Business School with a 38 % pop in one year, which is amazing. Caroline, what do you attribute that to?

[00:05:59] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s a tremendous jump, and I hadn’t fully appreciated until we looked at this article that Columbia is now enrolling more students than any of the other M7 schools. So I think it is perhaps a combination of their fantastic new facilities and having additional capacity to host students and the appeal of those facilities, that beautiful new building, compared to the rather run-down facilities that they had before. Plus, I believe that they’ve invested more in their scholarship offering. And so that, of course, makes the MBA much more affordable for many candidates. So they’ve obviously done a fantastic job in getting the word out about what they offer and how that has improved over the last few years with those two key factors, and that’s a tremendous jump that they’ve seen.

[00:06:53] – John

Yeah. If you look at the total number of apps received by the M7, there’s a 22% jump overall to 48,545. Of course, in many cases, people are obviously applying to a number of these schools, so there’s a lot of duplication in the overall number for sure, because there are very few applicants who would dare apply to one single school, given how competitive and how often random the processing of applications are. The other interesting thing in these numbers, I think, is this trend line. The trends show a pretty healthy industry at the top, I have to say. Yeah, there are some ups and downs over the years, and some of the aberrations are a little more severe given the pandemic. But by and large, these schools are holding their own. There’s no doubt that the MBA degree is at these is in great demand. Each of these applicant pool show a lot of bench strength. They’re rejecting a lot of people who obviously are very good and qualified to attend. Maria, would you draw that conclusion from these stats?

[00:08:16] – Maria

Absolutely. I think the stat that you most would back up the idea that the academic component is really challenging or remains very high is that the average G that scores are either the same or, in fact, going up a little from the prior year. This is really interesting because I think that there’s been so much talk in the past couple of years about some schools going test optional or some schools offering test wai. I think those are a lot less common in the M7. The M7, obviously, is a little bit more rigorous, and so they can afford to be more choosy. But I did think that that was an interesting stat that not only does interest remain healthy, but the caliber of the candidates being attracted remains high if we were to use GMAT score as a proxy for candidate caliber.

[00:09:11] – John

Yeah. I mean, do these GMAT score surprise you, Caroline? I mean, it looks like the highest is the 740 median at Harvard, which actually is equalled by a couple of other schools, including Stanford. Some schools report averages, most, in fact, do, in some schools, report medians. But in no case is there an average or a median that’s below 729. The 729 is a Chicago booth. That’s the lowest reported average, and that’s a pretty high GMAT score. And of course, this is on the old test. So what do you make of that?

[00:09:52] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s extraordinarily high, as is the average GPA. So it does show that you really can’t budge it with these top schools. And of course, behind that there is a range. So not everybody has a 7: 40 at Harvard or Stanford. And in fact, some people have 7: 17, 7: 80, and some people have much lower schools. So that does mask a range, but it shows that on average, the students are incredibly high achievers. I know that the schools are sometimes nervous about the optics of these numbers and how it can potentially put candidates off from applying. And so I think it’s important for candidates to be aware that while the average is very, very high, it doesn’t mean that that is a minimum threshold by any means. And if you do have weaker stats than that, but otherwise a very strong profile and a lot to bring to the school, it shouldn’t deter you from applying.

[00:10:54] – John

When many schools report averages, they report the 80th percentile in the middle, and they don’t report the extremes, which it always puzzles me because if I wanted to get more people to apply, I’d give them the lowest number.

[00:11:09] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s true.

[00:11:10] – John

Give some people hope, right? I mean, why do these 80% ranges drive me crazy.

[00:11:16] – Caroline

Yeah, I think they do that because that’s a realistic score that you should be aiming for, that you are realistically in the running if you’re within that range. They’re getting that it across because they don’t want people to be put off from even considering applying by the average. So that helps provide some context. And I guess the complete range, if they went down to, Okay, well, we do have one student who’s got a 5: 50, that could be misconstrued as, oh, well, you only need a 5: 50 to get in Stanford or Harvard.

[00:11:53] – John

So- Probably with a quarterback for your… Maybe we’re an NFL quarterback, for God’s sake.

[00:12:00] – Caroline

I also don’t want to deluge, right, of candidates who are not within the range. Sorry, Marie, go ahead.

[00:12:07] – Maria

Yeah, sorry. I have a friend who once did admissions consulting, and she did have a candidate get into, I believe it was either Harvard or Stanford with a sub 600 at GMAT. But as you said, that person, their parent wasn’t a quarterback, but their parent was, I believe, a very somewhat well known hedge fund or private equity type of person. And so Maybe someone who had donated several million dollars to the campus, I can’t remember, but certainly a somewhat household name in finance circles. So I agree. I get that it’s frustrating to not see the 100%, but I think that those outliers, when you get the middle 80 % range, then that means that 10 % of the class is going to be below that lowest part. And usually those folks either have extraordinary stories of surviving in refugee camps and things where you’re like, wow, this is really a needle in a haystack type of talent or tenacity, or it is someone who may be a, what’s the term for it? A development recruit or something like that. Someone who is singled out as a potential for development purposes, which is a way of saying we’re hoping their family is going to give a lot of money.

[00:13:21] – Maria

So I actually- Maybe their parents or grandparents already have a building named after them. Yeah, that’s very possible. So I think having the 80 % range strikes a nice balance in between those two extremes.

[00:13:36] – John

Yeah, which, incidentally, I’m not necessarily against. I mean, I think it’s a myth that admissions at any college is a true meritocracy to begin with. So, hey, if you’re lucky enough to be the child of a person who donated 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars to a business school, I I think you should get in. That 30, 40, 50 million dollars is going to help a lot of people, not just you. The other interesting thing about this data, incidentally, is the international enrollments. Now, the leading school here is Columbia with 46 6%, and that makes sense because if you’re an international student, I would think that New York would be a really good place to be given the diversity of the city on every single level, socioeconomic, cultural, and whatnot. And that would make New York a very easy place to transplant into for a two-year MBA program. What do these international numbers say to you, Caroline?

[00:14:42] – Caroline

Yeah, Columbia has long been the leader among the M7 schools, among international students. And I think, as you said, it makes a lot of sense given the pull of New York City as a global melting pot, and perhaps more appealing than some other location options, and of course, perhaps more accessible for candidates coming from at least Europe and Africa, maybe easier to get to New York than some other US cities. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that the schools like having roughly one-third international students, but perhaps not much more than that because they do… It’s a tricky balance, I think, for the US schools because they do want to have that incredible diversity that the international students bring, but also they are US institutions, and they want to keep incredibly strong alumni networks in the US, primarily. And so they do not want to have a majority of international students, unlike a school, as you mentioned earlier, in Seattle, London Business School, where there is no local full national majority, and the school is incredibly internationally diverse, and that’s a big part of the draw for students attending those schools.

[00:16:10] – Caroline

I would also say, although those numbers do look quite impressive in terms of 30 to 40 % international. Many of those students would have been working in the US before they go to business school and maybe green card holders, for example. And when we did the analysis This recently of the Stanford class, this deep dive analysis that Fortuna conducted, among the international pool, incredibly high percentage of them had actually done their undergraduate in the US as well. I think it is pretty difficult to get in. I think the bar is a bit higher, unfortunately, for international candidates than for domestic candidates. I think that international candidates who are resident in the US and have a background in the US do have an advantage over candidates who don’t have a track record in the US market.

[00:17:04] – John

Right. And the lowest in terms of international students in the cohort, in fact, is something of a surprise to me. It’s Wharton, which is at 31% That’s 15 percentage points below the leader, Columbia. And obviously, Wharton is located in Philadelphia, and maybe a lot of international candidates never saw Rocky. Maybe that movie really turns you on to Philadelphia, especially the scene where Sylvester Stallone climbs the steps of the library, the Grand Library in Philadelphia, and basically does his psyched up, triumphant run or the end of it, at least. Then in terms of women, only one school is at exactly half and half, 50%, and that’s Kellogg, as I mentioned before, Wharton, which has also been at a 50 or even more higher number in the past, is at 47%. But all these schools have pretty healthy representation of women, don’t you think, Maria?

[00:18:17] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. It’s certainly been a huge improvement from one or two decades ago. It’s good to see that these percentages are going strong. It’s Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing to see to bring more people of different backgrounds into the classroom and then into the alumni pool afterwards.

[00:18:39] – John

Maria, when you went to Harvard, I wonder what percentage of the class is female.

[00:18:44] – Maria

It was about 35%.

[00:18:46] – John

Thirty-five? So now it’s 45%, 10 percentage points higher. Another surprise in these numbers is MIT. Who would have thought that nearly half, 49% of the students at MIT were women because of the quantitative slant of the Sloan School of Management. Did that surprise you, 49%?

[00:19:10] – Maria

I mean, I celebrate how high that is. I do know that at the undergraduate level, I know that undergraduate-wise, MIT does strive for gender parity pretty strongly. I’m glad to see that they are trying to do that as well at the Sloan MBA level as well.

[00:19:27] – John

Yeah. Then in terms of cost, this is interesting, too. Now, I got to just tell you, first off, this is not the true cost because scholarships and fellowships and other discounts are not reflected in these sticker priced numbers. But in terms of actual tuition, the most expensive school is Columbia at 91,172. Pretty hefty. Incidentally, interesting Interestingly enough, the least expensive of the M7 schools is Harvard, which deliberately keeps its tuition price down. It never wants to lead there and wants to try to be more or less in the median of the top, I think, 15 or so schools. In this case, it’s well below all the others. It’s at 78,700. To put that in the context, you’re looking at the most generous school in terms of scholarship aid, because Harvard pours over $5 million a year into the students’ pockets through its fellowship program. So if you really looked at the actual cost of a Harvard MBA, It’s way less than the others. And incidentally, that 78. 7 number, the closest school to that is Stanford at 8575. So that’s That’s a big disparity right there. But Columbia at 91 172, and now they’re the largest program among the M7.

[00:21:11] – John

The cash is flowing at Columbia Business School this year, let me tell you. When you look at the tuition numbers, do you think they discourage applicants from applying, Caroline?

[00:21:24] – Caroline

I suspect they do in some cases. I think it’s great that you make the point, that that’s not actually the average that students may actually pay at the end of the day, because these schools do have very deep pockets. I don’t know if you have any data on what the average tuition bill is for students. That would be very interesting to compare by school. As you say, Harvard has the deepest pockets, and it’s incredibly generous with aid. So even that sticker price, as you say, is lower than any of its M7 competitors. The actual tuition fees paid by students, there would be an even greater disparity, I think, if we actually had that data, because they are so generous with aid. And I know that, for example, one-year programs like INSEED definitely get a lot of applications from candidates who are looking to get a top-tier MBA for a lower cost, right? So if you’re doing a one-year program rather than two-year, of course, you’re paying less overall in tuition fees, and you’re paying less in living you’re foregoing your salary for less time. That is definitely a draw for international candidates, particularly outside of the US market, for candidates applying to INSEAD.

[00:22:42] – Caroline

That would suggest to me that there are great candidates who are put off by those sticker prices on those top-tier MBAs.

[00:22:52] – John

When you look at the estimated two-year cost of an MBA at any of these schools, it’s an astounding number. Six of the are above the quarter of a million mark. Columbia leads there as well. Their two-year estimated cost is 269,829. I can just tell you that is a low ball estimate as well because you rent an apartment in New York City, and whatever the allowance is in their estimate, I can guarantee you it’s not going to fully reflect the actual cost of both eating in New York and both living in New York. So these are very hefty numbers. And the lowest, again, Harvard estimated two-year cost, $245,390. Again, excluding all fellowship and scholarship aid. And not surprisingly, Stanford is next, given how costly it is to live in Silicon Valley, the home of the Stanford Graduate Business School. I bet you these numbers are so much larger than what you paid, Maria.

[00:24:00] – Maria

Yes, indeed. They are for sure. But in early $2,000, if we account for inflation, it was still a pretty high amount. I think it’s great that we’re pointing out that there are so many opportunities for scholarships, but I do want applicants to go in with their eyes wide open that in many cases, the scholarships are need-based. And the schools themselves are pretty open about the fact that roughly half of people will not get any scholarship scholarship at all. And the half who do, it is very rarely a full scholarship. So for some schools, they will tell you, our average award is $20,000 a year, or our average award is $40,000 a year. So I think that applicants should go for it, especially if they are currently at a lower income and if they know that they would need that scholarship money, then because need is such a key part of what goes into that scholarship, calculation is not the only thing, but it does tend to play a key role. But I don’t think anyone should expect to get a scholarship. I work with a lot of a lower income applicants who very frequently will get scholarships, but very frequently will not get scholarships.

[00:25:11] – Maria

And so I think that we do need to caution people realistically so that way they don’t get to the end of this very long process and have a pretty big shock when they don’t… There’s a 50 % chance you’ll get nothing. And if you do, it’s usually between, say, 20 to 40 To offset the shock of the size of the tuition or cost estimates is the amount of money people are making right out of business school.

[00:25:39] – John

You get a freshly minted MBA from Stanford, and the median base salary, $185,000. The median signing bonus, $30,000. So the median total comp, not including year-end performance bonuses, which many students get, or even in some cases, reimbursement for relocation and other things is $232,000 to start. That is the high end for a Stanford graduate. The lowest for an M7 school is Basically, two schools are tied for that as $197,000 starting package at both Booth and Kellogg, mainly because they’re in the Midwest. And while they place people all over the world and on the East and West Coast, a high percentage of people do stay in the Midwest where living costs are lower, and therefore, the salaries and bonuses may reflect that slightly lower cost of living. Well, there you have it. Okay, the M7 by the numbers. Check it out. It’s fascinating because we look at this data in every possible way, including where all these schools rank and have ranked on all the major rankings. It’s the M7 by the number, it’s 2025 edition. Who and what that says about the MBA market? You’ve been listening to business casual. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants.