What’s New In MBA Admissions
Maria |
June 28, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts will bring you the insightful highlights from the recent AIGAC conference attended by Maria, with of course a special focus on the MBA admissions industry. Discover the notable shift discussed as Columbia Business School transitions from rolling admissions to a three-round format and valuable insights on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in admissions.

They also dive into the acceptance of alternate tests like the new GMAT and GRE formats. Explore the rise of older applicants, potentially a result of pandemic-related delays, and the potential for tailored full-time MBA options for individuals at different career stages. Lastly, they touch upon the challenge of “summer melt” and its implications for admissions officers when admitted candidates opt not to enroll after submitting deposits.

Don’t miss out on captivating discussions about MBA admissions, AI in education, GMAT, GRE, and the evolving landscape of business education.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.370] – John

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. We want to talk about a couple things today. One is AIGAC. Now, you probably don’t know what AIGAC is, and I hate acronyms, but it stands for the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants. And in late May they met. And these are largely MBA admission consultants, not necessarily all graduate schools. And one thing that they do is they talk about the industry, they talk about trends, and they meet with admission directors of various schools who often kind of tell what they expect in the marketplace, as well as how they’re going to maybe change their application requirements or their essays. One of the big changes this year at a major school is Columbia Business School, which for years has had a rolling admissions policy and for the first time in memory, for sure, has gone to a traditional three round format. Maria attended the AIGAC conference and I wonder if you might share some of the highlights.

[00:01:25.620] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. It was a super packed I mean, these are conferences that go from 08:00 A.m. Until 10:00 p.m. At night, well, including meals. It’s not all conference stuff, but yeah, a few of the takeaways that were really surprising to me that I can share were first of all, we have talked here on this podcast several times about AI and Generative, AI and ChatGPT and what is that going to mean for writing essays, et cetera. And it was interesting. There was sort of a range of opinions from admissions officers. Some of them seemed, on average, a lot less freaked out about it or concerned about it than I expected them to be. For example, one of the officers said something like, well, we can tell if a candidate has written an application for another school, so I feel pretty confident that we’ll be able to tell if a candidate has written one with ChatGPT. Another officer sort of likened it to using Grammarly. Right? It’s sort of the natural evolution. We started with spell check and that little paperclip in Microsoft, probably before a lot of listeners to this podcast were born. You guys, there used to be a little paperclip in Microsoft that would appear and try to help you and it was not helpful.

[00:02:34.270] – Maria

We started with spell check and then we went to grammar check and then it was Grammarly. And so this person just said, well, this is just sort of a natural evolution of that because the ChatGPT cannot invent the content for you, no matter how good it is. But maybe it could be sort of a writing tool to help people become better writers. As a side note, this is not AIGAC related necessarily, but I know an English teacher who’s a high school English teacher in Los Angeles who said that she’s actually starting to incorporate ChatGPT into some of her lessons because she’s like, it’s here to stay. And if it can help my students learn to become better writers themselves, then we just have to embrace it anyway. I was like, oh, I hadn’t thought.

[00:03:10.670] – Maria

Of it being a tool to help people. Like, if you write it your way and then you put it in the ChatGPT and it spits back something that’s a lot better, then maybe it teaches you. I think that’s overly optimistic because I think people may or may not want to put in that level of effort and they’re just tell me, Just do it for me.

[00:03:26.370] – John

Maria I was recently at Cambridge and a professor told me that he wrote an article and then he put it into ChatGPT and he asked the bot to edit the article and it really functioned as an editor as well, and a rewrite person. So there is that.

[00:03:45.190] – Maria

Yeah, hopefully. I think the challenge, though, would be if ChatGPT, it might know how to cut out words, but how do we know that it’s cutting out the best words in terms of what’s relevant for an MBA admissions reader and what isn’t? It might just cut out words willy nilly, but also cut out really good stuff in addition to really irrelevant stuff.

[00:04:04.750] – John

As we know it makes up stuff too.

[00:04:07.550] – Maria

Sometimes it just makes it what was some of the stuff? Yeah. Listeners can find that old podcast episode and the one where it made up some fun facts about John randomly. I think it was your 25.

[00:04:22.710] – John

What’s interesting is OpenAI calls this hallucinations and they basically justify ChatGPT making up stuff when when it can’t find information as exactly what humans would do. They just make up stuff. I find the whole notion of hallucinations fascinating.

[00:04:44.030] – Caroline

That’s like it’s on drugs.

[00:04:47.130] – Maria

From now on, whenever I make any sort of mistake at all, I’m just going to call it a hallucination should be my excuse for Noah. So in general, I was really surprised because I thought there was going to be a lot of hand wringing and gnashing of teeth and stress, but overall it was a pretty much spell check. But on steroids or on LSD as a case. Another thing that was interesting was different opinions about the alternate tests that are coming up. So, in other words, the new GMAT, the new GRE. I think Harvard has said that they will not accept the new GMAT this year just because it’s coming out a little too close to the round one deadline. And then they want our people should they wait, should they not wait? Just like, let’s just not even introduce that variable into the mix. I believe that’s been their position so far. But another school said something like, I’ll take any measure of academic horsepower I can get. And so whether it’s a short GMAT, a long GMAT, a short GRE, I don’t care I just want to know that they can handle the work in my program.

[00:05:56.160] – Maria

So overall, I was also surprised by just there sort of seemed to be kind of a yeah, sure, bring it on attitude about the new test. And then another trend that I had sort of I think some of us who work in this field had noticed anecdotally, but they confirmed it was that there was a larger influx of older candidates in this year’s applicant poll, sort of noticeably so. And I think the theory was that because of the pandemic, perhaps people were either waiting to see what would happen with the pandemic, or perhaps they had to care for elderly parents or for whatever reason, they suspect that. What happened is that there was a build up of people, maybe in their late 20s, early 30s, who were thinking of applying to business school and then did not apply to business school. And now with the Pandemic quote unquote over, they all kind of appeared this year. So the hope is that things will level out a bit more in the next year or two, and that will not continue. Although someone from one of the schools said it seems to him that perhaps the current MBA, as it stands, given that it is targeting people at a certain point in their lives, at a certain point in their careers, maybe some of the schools should start reconsidering what they offer and what is the MBA.

[00:07:09.680] – Maria

And maybe there is a full time MBA option, not just the executive MBA, but maybe a full time MBA option for people who might be a little bit later in their lives versus what we think of as the typical MBA candidate. I don’t think anyone jumped up and said, yes, we’re going to offer that tomorrow. We’re going to restructure everything to cater to this audience. But it was an interesting thought exercise, right? We’ve seen a proliferation of the Master’s programs targeting more early stage people in their career. So it would be interesting to see if that then follows with more full time types of options for people who might be a little bit later. But so those were the three things that I took away.

[00:07:51.540] – John

That’s interesting. Was there any talk about volume of applicants in the current or in the forthcoming application cycle? Do people expect apps to go up, down, stay the same?

[00:08:06.490] – Maria

I think it’s really anyone’s guess. I think that there’s just everyone kind of like, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the upcoming season. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I think right now, honestly, a lot of the admissions officers are just so worried about summer melt. And that is to say, like, the people they give the offers to. Oh, here’s another thing that a couple of them shared, is that they’ve found a lot of people have started putting in multiple deposit goals. In other words, that’s always happened, right? People will always take the bird in the hand or three birds in the hand versus why not put in a bunch of deposits? But one of them noted that that’s happening a lot, and that makes sense from a candidate’s perspective. Right. Why not play the field a little bit longer? But it also makes it very stressful for an admissions officer who doesn’t know just because you have $1,500 in hand from someone, they might still disappear on you. And so I do think that I think the summer is not going to be a fun one for a lot of our colleagues and peers and people that we like who work in admissions, because I think they’re people that they thought were going to apply or sorry, who were going to enroll, just might vanish.

[00:09:21.070] – Maria

And that is very stressful.

[00:09:22.970] – John

Yeah. Caroline, what are your thoughts about Maria’s observations?

[00:09:27.490] – Caroline

Yeah, it was very interesting. I was particularly interested to hear what they had to say about AI. I do think that the schools are still trying to figure it out, and that may be why they didn’t have a clear policy. I was checking online what the schools say about their policies on AI, and it’s sort of a moving target at the moment. And I think the schools are sort of struggling how to juggle. There’s a fine line to tread right. For business schools, because on one hand, they need to embrace AI, because their students need to understand how it works and understand how to leverage this technology for their future roles.

[00:10:14.170] – Caroline

Right? That needs to be sort of integrated into the curriculum so that they can really know how to use that strategically in whatever role they’re going into. But at the same time, they’re academic institutions with standards to uphold. And I can imagine that professors are not too keen on students using AI willy-nilly to do all of their assignments. And I would imagine that there would have to be some consistency at some point in policies that they have on the academic side and in admissions.

[00:10:48.590] – Caroline

From what I understand, I think the schools are sort of trying to figure this out. It sort of all happens so quickly, and it’s not easy to figure out what the implications are for admissions and then academically as regards academic policies, and then also as regards helping students learn about it and be able to understand how they can leverage AI in the future. So I think it’s a very complex issue for schools, and I suspect that there are a lot more discussions going on behind closed doors that they’re not necessarily sharing in public yet.

[00:11:27.630] – John

Yeah. Right now, this year’s conference was in New York and Connecticut, which probably means Yale and the New York schools. Did you pick up any intelligence, Maria, as to why Columbia went to a more traditional three round format for their deadlines this year?

[00:11:48.130] – Maria

I don’t want to speak for them on this. I would suspect that just in terms of the complexity involved with having to manage rolling deadlines and the early decision. And if what one of the admissions officers said is true about people putting in multiple deposits, then the early action, the binding early decision of Columbia perhaps was starting to become essentially meaningless, right. As more and more candidates were, I think, applying early to Columbia, getting in and then saying, woohoo, I now have a 6000 for $6,000, I have a call option on an amazing school. Now it’s time to apply to some other schools in round one and see how well I do. I suspect that’s how a lot of people were using early decision recently. And if that started increasing, then it effectively, from a yield management perspective, it makes the early decision not nearly as useful as it is intended to be. But one quick thing. Caroline mentioned a second ago, she made the great point that AI tools are here to stay, as if schools need to be able to train their students to adapt to it. The Dean of Columbia Business School spoke to us and here’s a little plug for Columbia.

[00:12:52.570] – Maria

He pointed out that they are incorporating a ton of AI, a whole bunch of technology and forward facing classes into their curriculum and something like a huge percentage of their electives didn’t even exist five years ago, that they are constantly refreshing. I can’t remember if it was 2030. 40% of their electives are constantly being refreshed. And obviously every school is going to always keep up with the times. But it did seem like an overwhelmingly high number of elective refreshes. And it’s something like they introduced a class on Python programming for MBAs, and again, a huge, I want to say roughly 30% or more perhaps, of MBA students have taken that Python class as sort of a sign that students realizing that these skills are just going to be valuable. And so business schools, I think, are instead of saying like, well, go take Computer Science 101 down at the undergrad campus, I think schools are going to increasingly incorporate that. So we can definitely start seeing more out of that from Columbia’s curriculum. All schools well, but it’s just their.

[00:13:57.070] – John

Top of mind because they hosted us exactly now. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of schools are now posting their application deadlines for this forthcoming admission cycle. And a number of them, most of them who have posted deadlines have posted their essays. We see any interesting changes on the essay front and what is expected of applicants this forthcoming season. Caroline, do you see anything interesting?

[00:14:29.750] – Caroline

So HAAS has introduced a video question. So I think that’s interesting. And we’ve discussed before that there has been a trend for increasing use of video in applications over the past few years and that with the advent of AI that it makes sense for schools to perhaps rely more heavily. On tools like video because it’s perhaps harder to gain that than it is a written application with AI tools, ChatGPT and so on. So unlike some of the other schools which use the Kira platform to generate questions that you would need to respond to fairly spontaneously in a sort of interview style. So schools like Inclusive, for example, use the Cura platform and they will give you 45 seconds to prepare and then 60 seconds to respond, right? And they would cut you off after that. So it’s more of a sort of spontaneous exercise with this half video. You can prepare it in your own time and record it and I think you can prepare a two minute video to introduce yourself. So it asks you to briefly introduce yourself to the Admissions Committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you. So it’s referring back to the Berkeley defining leadership principles and I think you mentioned earlier, Maria, that that was one of their interview questions before so that they’ve brought this forward from interview into the initial application and incorporated that as a video question.

[00:16:11.370] – Caroline

So I think those video questions are very useful. And of course, as an Admissions Committee member or as a file reader, you often don’t get to meet a candidate in person because it’ll often be other people who will be conducting the interviews, given the volume of interviews that are being done. So videos can be a really nice way to get a glimpse of the candidates, right? So that two minute glimpse can be a very useful way to sort of cross check things like communication skills. How does the person get their story across? And is there some coherence between how they present themselves in video and how they present themselves in the written application? How they present themselves and how the recommender presents themselves? So it’s a very interesting addition to the overall puzzle that comes together to build a picture of the candidate. I have to say that I’m not a huge fan of those pre recorded videos that candidates put together. I personally prefer the Kira format where it’s more of a sort of spontaneous exercise which although that can be quite stressful for candidates, right? It’s not easy to have to respond to those spontaneous questions where you have just a few seconds to prepare and then you have to deliver your response, then you’ve got 60 seconds and it cuts you off.

[00:17:35.750] – Caroline

It’s not an easy exercise, but I do feel that sometimes candidates tie themselves up in knots in thinking this has to be beautifully produced, it has to be professionally produced and they do like 1000 different cuts of their video and that is not necessary. But I think they feel pressure to look like a movie star in their video, right? And maybe if you’re Maria and you live in Hollywood then that’s very doable. But to the average candidate then that’s quite an intimidating exercise, I think. So I prefer the more spontaneous type of videos, where I think that also the schools get a better sense for how the candidate communicates in a more spontaneous format, rather than something where they’ve perhaps just learned a script and they are delivering a script that they’ve pre prepared.

[00:18:35.510] – John

Right. That’s interesting. Any other new things that you’ve noticed, Maria?

[00:18:41.970] – Maria

Well, at Poets and Quants, you guys already ran a great article about the changes to Columbia’s application. So getting rid of early decision, moving to rounds. I also think they got rid of their question on what’s your favorite movie, song or book and why, which was sort of a chance for a bit of creative expression in the past. And now they’ve replaced it with a question around diversity, equity and inclusion, which actually was a question they had a few years ago. They’ve resurrected it, and I was actually analyzing it a couple of days ago. And if you look more closely at the wording, the bar, I think has raised. So when they introduced that question, I believe in either 2020 or 2021, it was more around when have you been challenged around diversity, equity, inclusion? They list out these sorts of kind of four or five different things that they look for, like advocating for others or trying to end systemic prejudice or things along those lines. And then the question used to say, talk about a time you were challenged around one of these, and now the wording is much more around, tell us what actions you took.

[00:19:49.050] – Maria

So I thought that was really interesting. Right. Because I think the school is indirectly saying, like, look, it’s one thing if two years ago you had no idea systemic racism, it was all news to you, but we’re now in 2023, and hopefully you’re trying to lose others more in things like conversations. You don’t all have to save the world. Like I tell people, this is not a Nobel Prize Prize competition, this is a business school competition, but hopefully you’re at least trying to become somewhat more inclusive, even if you broadly define that inclusivity. So I did think that that was an interesting change as well.

[00:20:26.250] – John

Yes. So for all of you out there who are tracking this and intend to apply either round One, round Two, round Three in the forthcoming admission season, you can check out Story. It’s called MBA application deadlines for the 2023-2024 admission cycle. Harvard, Stanford and Wharton are already done with their deadlines, and so is Yale and Duke and UVA. Darden in Michigan and new other schools are posting them. As we move forward and closer to those round One deadlines, we update the story every single day when a new deadline comes out or when new essays come out. So it’s a good place to just see put in your calendar those dates when you’re going to have to meet these deadlines and get your application underway.

[00:21:22.890] – John

Otherwise, thank you for listening. And Maria, and Caroline, a joy as always. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our  weekly podcast. See you next week.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
What’s New In MBA Admissions
Maria |
June 28, 2023

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

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