Which U.S. Business School Has The Most International MBAs?
Maria |
April 26, 2022

It is not a secret that international students play a significant role in the MBA industry and how b-schools are ranked in terms of the number of enrollees. However, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting everyone throughout the world, on top of the former Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies, the number of international students has declined dramatically.

In this episode of Business Casual, Maria, Caroline, and John discuss the numbers and figures behind this statement and how COVID-19 affected the travel restrictions that held down many international enrollments.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.090] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. And we are going to talk about two things today, international students in MBA classes, both in the US and European schools. The latest data has come out, and it’s pretty fascinating data because, among other things, it shows a real rebound in international students at US business schools after a fairly significant drop during COVID-19, as well as the drop due to sort of anti immigration rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration. And then we’re going to talk about the latest financial report from the Harvard Business School, which has this really wow and crazy number on their endowment. Their endowment at Harvard Business School is now $5.3 billion. We’re going to find out if Maria, one of the most illustrious Harvard MBA alums, plans on donating more of the money to that big endowment. But first, let’s talk a little bit about those international student numbers. I was surprised to see a number of schools approaching in the US 50%. Stanford is at 47. Columbia is just under 50%.

 

[00:01:31.310] – John

Harvard is at 37. Wharton is at 36. Big disparity between those schools in a way which are considered pure schools. What do you make of that disparity? Do you think Harvard and Wharton are holding down their international numbers, while MIT, Stanford, and a few other schools are just letting it fly?

 

[00:01:53.280] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s hard to know. Right, because I’m not sure what their ideal class composition is. I would think that it’s not surprising that a smaller class might have a higher percentage of international students.

 

[00:02:06.460] 

Right.

 

[00:02:06.750] – Caroline

Because if you have three or four students from a particular Latin American country in the Stanford class, that’s going to be a much bigger percentage of the overall class than it would be at Harvard. So I didn’t find it surprising that Stanford does have that higher percentage of international students. And I think also Silicon Valley is just a huge draw for the international community, and it’s already a very international population here just up in the Hills above the Stanford campus. To me, it’s not at all surprising that Stanford would have such a high percentage of international students. It would be interesting to know if the schools have a target percentage, because clearly, as you say, it went down due to it’s gone down due to the pandemic. It went down in previous classes because of Trump and his immigration policies. And so clearly that the schools have absorbed more international students. And I would think that they see that as a positive development post Trump, post COVID. But I don’t know what their target percentage would be. I would imagine that they don’t want to go above half the class being international because they also have to think about their domestic stakeholders, which are the most important stakeholders.

 

[00:03:29.430] – Caroline

And I think that there can be some pushback from alumni at these schools if they think the school is going to international because they may see it as a detrimental to the domestic population.

 

[00:03:41.640] – John

The other thing I think you see in the numbers is I imagine that most international students would prefer to be on the coast, either the east or the West Coast, so that a Stanford or Columbia has a natural advantage in drawing more international students. And I think partly that’s true because New York is still an incredible magnet for talent and it is just an attractive city to live in for a couple of years. And then Stanford, for the reasons you just mentioned, being at the center of Silicon Valley, the world’s most dynamic economy in our generation, Columbia, as I mentioned before, was just under 50. They are actually at 48%, which is a new record for Columbia. That’s up from 44% last year. And the previous school record at Columbia was 47% in 2019. Out of the top 27 schools, nine schools out of the 27, and five of the top ten are now at 40% or more foreign student enrollment compared to just one school, Columbia in 2020. And 22 of the 27 schools are at 30% or more, up from just nine schools previously. And that also is evidence of the rebound international students from the Trump years when they were definitely down.

 

[00:05:08.660] – John

And then the effect of COVID, which through travel restrictions, held down many international enrollments because even students who were accepted had trouble getting here and traveling. Maria, why do you think Harvard is that far below a Stanford, which is always considered to be its neck and neck peer school? So Harvard is at again, 37%, Stanford at 47%, a ten percentage point increase in a smaller class at Stanford, of course. What do you make of that? Is it alumni pressure from domestic?

 

[00:05:46.130] – Maria

First of all, I think it depends on how you’re going to define this sort of representation. Yes. Percentage is one way. But when you look at the class size at HBS, as Caroline alluded to earlier, there are actually almost twice as many international students by sheer numbers at Harvard Business School than there are at Stanford. Right? 370 something versus 200 at Stanford. So, yes, as a percentage, Stanford clearly has more. But both Wharton and Harvard, in terms of total numbers, have significantly more as absolute numbers. Now in terms of why those numbers are what they are, I mean, obviously this is one of the many admissions Crystal balls that I think we all wish we had secret access to. I suspect that they are. I think Caroline also alluded to that. They’re really trying to craft a class, which is exactly why if they weren’t trying to craft a class, then the entire class would just be McKinsey consultants and private equity guys from that would be the entire class. Right. They very intentionally want people from manufacturing and people from agriculture and people from Pharmaceuticals. And so I think for the same reason, there must be some sort of a rough I wouldn’t say a quota, but there’s probably some sort of a limit to how many international students they would take.

 

[00:07:05.610] – Maria

And it’s probably even by region or perhaps even down to by country on some levels, because I think what they’re doing when they’re crafting a class is they’re trying to predict the future for where on average, these folks are going to go both in terms of their professional success, but also geographically. And in order to extend their reach, they need people all over the world who are alums, but they also need to balance it with folks in the US for financial reasons. I think I think folks who stay in the US tend to make more money on average, and hopefully they donate that money back, which is probably something we’ll refer to a little later. I wouldn’t necessarily think the headline as exciting as that headline is, I don’t think the headline should be like Harvard is way behind Harvard. They’re so far behind. But of course, I’m a little biased.

 

[00:07:55.890] – John

Yeah. I mean, the other thing is it depends on who’s applying, right? Everyone knows that male Indian IT engineers are overpopulated in the elite MBA applicant pool, and no school wants to accept so many of them, even though they are well qualified to attend and do well, so that they form a sort of dominating sector of a business school class. So some of this is obviously dependent on who actually applies. What does that applicant pool look like? And if there’s more diversity in the international applicant pool, I think the school has a greater ability to admit more, because you can argue that. Okay, we’re taking you from Middle East, from Africa, from Australia and New Zealand, as well as Europe. Not only China and India in the mix preserves this sense that we’re crafting a truly diverse global class. Now you look at the US numbers, and they still pale in comparison to the best business schools in Europe. Ncr 95% London Business School 92% HTC, Paris 92% Ie Business School in Spain, Madrid 91 IESC in Barcelona, Spain 85 and when you look at the numbers and you see the dramatic differences, what does it mean to be a student in those classes?

 

[00:09:20.700] – John

And how culturally different is it?

 

[00:09:22.510] – Caroline

Caroline, when you said that Harvard and Stanford and so on pale in comparison to these other schools, he didn’t need to qualify as the best schools in Europe. They are the best schools. But the international diversity in these classrooms really has a huge impact on the learning experience, and it is a very different experience. And that’s why a lot of people are drawn to those international schools. And it’s also true that it’s easier for a school sitting in France or Singapore or London to attract an internationally diverse audience because you have so many more countries that are right on your doorstep compared to if you’re a school that’s in Chicago or Atlanta, Georgia. Right. So it’s also natural that they would have more international diversity. But it does have a big impact on the nature of the learning experience and the dynamic nature of the debate in the classroom. And from what I’ve heard from talking to professors who have taught both at schools like in Seattle on a business school and at the top of American schools, it’s actually much harder to teach at the international schools because you have such a diverse group of students.

 

[00:10:40.950] – Caroline

It’s a more challenging environment for the professors because you have so many different perspectives flying at you from every direction. Right. If you have a dominant culture in a classroom, there is more likely to be a dominant way of seeing things, and therefore, minority voice might be more hesitant to speak up. And I’ve seen that from my own experience. And in Seattle, there is no hesitation to speak up if you have a minority perspective, because everyone at a school like in Sierra is in the minority, because there’s that incredible diversity. It is a very different environment. And to me, that’s the best learning environment because you are learning alongside people who come from completely different background, perspective and mindset to you and will open your eyes to things that you would have never imagined. So to me, that’s a huge compliment to learning about business is learning about business across cultures and the complexity of working across borders.

 

[00:11:50.310] – John

In fact, doesn’t NCI cap enrollment by country and insists that no more than what, 5% of the class will ever come to NCI from another country. Is that right?

 

[00:12:02.310] – Caroline

I mean, there’s no specific cap, and it does vary sometimes. So right now it looks like there’s no more than 5% of any individual nationality. And typically the biggest nationalities that it’s yet are American, French, and Indian. And sometimes those percentages have been higher, but it’s rare that any of those would go above 10% in any given year. But what the scores try to do, rather than have a strict cap on nationality, is to diversify the applicant pool as much as possible. Right. So it’s through the school’s outreach marketing efforts, which is a big challenge as a relatively small institution INSEAD is not part of a big University, as a lot of its competitors are, and therefore it is more challenging to do global marketing as a relatively small institution. But I think the school has been quite successful at leveraging its alumni network internationally to build its visibility around the world, and that has reaped benefits over time in attracting some of the best applicants from really across the world.

 

[00:13:17.220] – John

Now when you look at these numbers, I wonder how comparable they actually are. You made the point off the air that you suspect that more of the US international students or those who qualify as international students and reported as an international probably have dual passports, and I’m not going to say that that diminishes them as an international student. One could argue the opposite. But how does that play into these numbers, do you think?

 

[00:13:47.370] – Caroline

Well, that also means that it’s hard to there’s the opportunity there for the schools to play a little bit with the statistics.

 

[00:13:56.390] 

Right.

 

[00:13:56.650] – Caroline

Because if someone is both a US passport holder and has another passport, does the school then put them as a US citizen in statistics or as an international citizen? They can only pick one or the other, so we don’t know how they are counting that. And there may be different practices at different schools. And it’s not just citizens.

 

[00:14:19.260] 

Right.

 

[00:14:19.460] – Caroline

It could be green card holders, people who have been working in the US and may only have one passport, as is my case. But I’ve been living here for some time and working in the US. I think that sometimes the international elements at the school may not be as strong as it first appears when you look at these statistics, because a bunch of those people are likely you said dual triple passport holders or green card holders, essentially people who’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the US before they go to the school and therefore may not bring as much of an international perspective as someone who is coming straight from Tokyo or Rio de Janeiro. And that’s not so much the case at the international schools where most of the people are, for example, inspire doesn’t have a huge population coming in from France. Right. Who are working in France. France does not have the same sort of international diversity in its workforce that the US has. So I think that has an impact. And what I’ve heard from some international students at some of the top US schools is that it can happen that you have a clique of the international students who hang out together and the American students who tend to hang out together.

 

[00:15:46.010] – Caroline

And I’m sure that varies a lot by class and by school. But I’ve definitely heard that from some international students that they feel that there’s a bit of a divide between the international and the domestic students, and the international students tend to gravitate towards each other as a group and vice versa for the domestic students. And that doesn’t happen at a school like London Business School or incident, where there is no dominant group.

 

[00:16:14.880] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:16:15.180] – Caroline

Everyone is a small minority.

 

[00:16:18.150] – John

What’s your take on all this?

 

[00:16:19.790] – Maria

Yeah, I think that the topic of the dual passport holders is actually really important for candidates to keep in mind, because I think it’s even that much harder, I think for people from, say, in India or perhaps China, they might look at the statistics and say, oh, well, roughly 8% of the class has a South Asian citizenship. But once you start digging into the LinkedIn profiles and you start looking at the individual students that are going to these schools, many of them, if they’re not born and raised or raised in America, many of them went to College in the United States, then returned to their home countries and then come back to the US for their MBA. I do think that is a valid that would be a really valuable statistic to know, in part to let the international students who are applying know that. Well, yeah, it’s 37% of the classes international, but of that 37%, a number of these folks have had significant experience or education in the United States. So in terms of like, truly international, like Caroline said, like someone who’s getting off of the airplane from Tokyo and they’ve never been to the US before, that sort of student is even more rare.

 

[00:17:34.480] – Maria

But yeah, I think it’s very interesting to me. I think that admissions offices are in a position of having to read the tea leaves, and I’m sure they probably do this with a ton of solicited or unsolicited feedback from others within the University of where is the economy going 10, 20, 30 years from now? And so who do we need to be letting in today? So that 10, 20, 30 years from now. Our alumni are the ones who are the Titans of industry. So, for example, in the past few years, I’ve started seeing more success with people from aerospace. Right. Where several years ago it wasn’t hard to get in with it, but it’s just I feel like it’s because of all of the satellite race and there’s so many things happening with satellites now. So people with certain backgrounds that maybe 20 years ago might not have been as attractive now that there’s this potential opportunity for a zillion dollar business in, say, like, I don’t know, commercial space flight or whatever it is, I think they are trying to read the tea leaves of the economy and let in people accordingly. Now, why a certain percentage roughly of the class should be international versus us, I don’t know, but I do suspect it has to do with where the alums end up living.

 

[00:18:46.070] – Maria

I do think that at least a lot of my friends from business school who were international students did, in fact, settle in the United States. And I think it’s just like that’s where the more the salaries do tend to be higher in the US. So I think they may also be looking at it from that perspective, too. But who knows, right? We’d have to kidnap. All we have to do is just kidnap some AFCO members and hook them up to a lie detector. So don’t I’m not trying to tell you what articles you should write for your publication, but I’m just saying if you need a suggestion for a story.

 

[00:19:20.370] – John

I like that idea. Oh, no, I’m going to get arrested directors and put a live detector on them, particularly about holistic admissions and the importance of GMAT and GRES. But hey, that’s a whole other story. We’ve talked about a lot of other different times. The other thing is that domestic applications at US business schools are down significantly and have been going down for a number of years outside of the big pandemic spike. So the fact is that there are fewer domestic applicants trying to get into these schools and more international applicants. And that may be one other reason why these numbers are much higher than they’ve been in the past. For the US business schools, I think it’s a good thing. I think the more global B schools are, and after all, its faculty and students that make the school truly global, the better off the education is going to be, regardless of the nationalistic tendencies that have put some people off on globalization in recent years. The other thing I think that many people believe that international students are more likely to pay in full tuition compared to some domestic applicants, and it could put less pressure on scholarship money that different schools have to hand out.

 

[00:20:46.610] – John

That’s not universally true, because obviously, if you have a student from a country like India, for example, where these tuition rates in the US are mind boggling to many Indian Africans, and they may really need assistance, you’re going to have to fork over some money to help them out. But in general, there is this belief that international students tend to pay full freight on how true it is, frankly. But there it is. Okay. The other thing which really caught my attention was the latest financial report from the Harvard Business School. And let me say flat out Harvard every year, and I give them great credit for this. They are among the most transparent of all business schools. They unleash an incredible amount of data on their programs, on the cases that they sell on every aspect of their financials from all the money that comes in and all the money that goes out. And it’s the most thorough accounting that any business call in the world makes it’s almost akin to a ten K report on a public Corporation. It’s that thorough. The big number that really flew off the pages for me was the size of Harvard Business School’s endowment, which has always been large and the largest in the world for any business school.

 

[00:22:13.480] – John

But in fiscal 2021, which ended at the end of June, their endowment was valued at $5.3 billion. It’s mind boggling because for a business school to have an endowment that exceeds most universities and colleges overall kind of blows your mind. Now, Maria, as a proud alumni of this school, I wonder if you look at those numbers and you say, well, really, should I keep giving my money to Harvard Business School? Yeah, I love the school. I benefited from it. So did my husband. But do they really need another cent?

 

[00:22:54.510] – Maria

I mean, a data point like this certainly doesn’t help it certainly doesn’t sound the alarm and get me jumping out of my seat to try to donate more money. Yes, it’s such an interesting again, I think that all of these schools, they take a long term view as institutions. And one of the ways they do that is they are amassing these endowments. They’re being very disciplined in how they spend them. I believe HPS only will they have rules where they only allow themselves to spend 5% of the endowment each year, which might explain why they’re constantly asking for money. It’s interesting, right? Because I would love to be in addition to being a fly on the wall in the admissions office, I would also love to be a fly on the wall in the endowment operating budget meetings, because I would love to see maybe that 5% is too conservative. Maybe we should be spending more, but being able to do it so that we I don’t know, maybe we double the class size and then that allows us to then double the endowment 30 years from now. So I wonder how those investments are looked at.

 

[00:24:09.120] – Maria

I do know that a lot of the endowment is earmarked very specific ways. So the large donors, of which I am not one, my donation is probably like couch change. Probably like, oh, look, I pulled this out of the couch. It’s Maria’s donation. But a lot of the larger donors, they do say, I want my money to go to this. I want to endow a real estate professorship. I want to endow a entrepreneurial competition, whatever it is. But yeah, I just don’t know what is the end goal with this much money. Are they saying, like, well, maybe we’ll keep it away for a rainy day? How many years worth of operating expenses does that $5 billion cover? Probably a few. But yeah, it’s an interesting question. Why does any University have to have I can understand, like, oh, well, in case we want to build a new building or in case there’s a whole year where, I don’t know, a pandemic happens and 20% of our students don’t show up, I can understand wanting to have some sort of a financial cushion for those sorts of things. But $5 billion cushion is a pretty big cushion.

 

[00:25:29.750] – John

Yes. Especially when, okay, the school’s annual expense is about $780,000,000. So it could literally give everyone a free MBA education and basically pay all of its bills for, let’s say, what is that? Is that 15 years, 14 years if it used its endowment without taking in a dollar? Of course, that’s not the way it works. I should say that the 5.3 billion was a massive increase on the year earlier number, which was 4.1%. And sure, some of that came from very generous alums. And the couch changed. That was contributed by Maria, but most of it was a result of unusual, extraordinary returns in the markets. The annual return on the endowment in fiscal 2021 was 33.6%, which kind of blows my mind. The year earlier was only 7.3%. And that’s much more in line with what you might have expected. But 33.6% increase in the value of the endowment just by the investments that the school made, really an incredible performance. So just setting aside for a moment the massive size of that endowment, and before I do that, we should just not to make Caroline feel jealous or embarrassed, we need to note that INSEAD endowment is just a puny piece of this.

 

[00:27:09.520] – John

Right, Caroline?

 

[00:27:11.270] – Maria

That’s right. Yeah.

 

[00:27:12.390] – Caroline

We calculated it’s about 8% of the Harvard Business School endowment, 185,000,000. Yeah. I mean, what is mind boggling as well is that Harvard Business School endowment is about 10% of the Harvard University endowment, which is bigger than the GDP of most countries. I mean, it’s just these numbers are mind boggling. But with those returns, Maria, I think you should give them some more of your accounts change and get them to invest it for you. I mean, if you can make 33% in a year.

 

[00:27:43.770] – Maria

Honestly, for real, that should be an alumnus benefit that you get to put some money in alongside theirs, almost like as a private equity investment, put some of that 401K money into whoever they’re doing a great job. And so what the heck?

 

[00:28:02.430] – John

That is a great idea as an alumni benefit that would benefit the school as well, because they can take a little piece off the top, number one. But number two, it gives them more clout in the market and more influence over their investments by having even more money to play with. I like that idea, actually, I think someone in the alumni office should start putting together a proposal and bringing it up to the Provost and President of Harvard. Here’s what’s interesting, too. There was a point at which during the pandemic, Harvard said the business school expected its revenue to plunge by 115,000,000 and that they would lose $22 million in this fiscal 2021. In fact, they had an operating surplus of 26 million, a $48 million swing from their prediction, which goes to show how well the school is managed. It goes to show how smartly diversified the revenue streams are from because they had big increases from their online initiative, fairly significant increase there, as well as an increase in Harvard Business School publishing. They do the Harvard Business Review, and they do their website there. And actually, they sold a record number of business school cases to other schools and organizations in the year.

 

[00:29:30.990] – John

So that brings in a chunk of change. Plus, they took more money from the endowment, given the size of it. And all told, they actually didn’t have a loss at all. But they had a pretty comfortable $26 million surplus, which is really remarkable, honestly. You look at the numbers and they remind me of numbers that compare nuclear weapons in the United States against other countries, because it just seems so unfair that one business school has numbers like these that are really not even comparable to most other business schools. Now, Stanford has a fairly significant endowment, but still not 5.3 billion like Harvard does. And Warden has a fairly decent war chest, but also nowhere near what the Harvard numbers are. And this brings me to a point that Malcolm Gladwell, the fairly famous New Yorker writer, has made over and over again asking, why do Alums and why do people continue to contribute to schools that actually don’t need their money when there are other schools, particularly community colleges, Incidentally, that largely educate first generation students that badly need the money? Why do you think that’s?

 

[00:30:56.190] – Maria

So, Maria, I’m a social justice warrior, so I’m like, I think garbage should totally give it to the community colleges in Massachusetts. Well, first of all, speaking earlier, as we were talking about, like, trying to read the tea leaves about crafting a class, this is exactly why these schools choose the students they do. They choose the kids that they think 30 years from now are going to give a $10 million donation. That’s kind of the hope. Why do people give why do I give my little couch change to them every year? I think there’s this notion of Karma. There’s sort of this idea of, wow, I owe a lot to the school. I owe a lot to the experience and the education that I got there. And in order as if paying the full freight and all the student loans that I did, as if that weren’t enough, I think there’s sort of this idea of like, oh, I sort of owe it to them again from this Karma perspective. But, yeah, if they want to start kicking back from that, they want to issue a dividend to all living alumni. That might be I personally think that’s a great use of the funds.

 

[00:32:05.170] – Maria

But who knows, Caroline.

 

[00:32:06.550] – John

If you’re giving to INSEAD connected to Karma as well.

 

[00:32:10.150] – Caroline

It’s a very interesting question. Why do alumni continue to give when the schools are so wealthy? And I tease my husband about this because I think that INSEAD  is much more worthy recipients of our hard earned dollars than Harvard and Stanford, who he goes to those schools. But I think there’s a sense of loyalty, right? There’s a sense that you’re grateful for the education you got and you want to give back. And the schools do a very good job of making you feel good about participating. They care a lot about participation rates, and they emphasize that it’s not about how much you give. It’s about participating. And they measure what percentage of your class has given so far this year. And there’s sort of competition between the classes. And I’m really proud because 2003 D is one of the biggest donor classes in the history of incentives. So I’ve got to help to keep that up.

 

[00:33:10.100] – John

It’s almost like they’re guilty when they’re giving your money.

 

[00:33:13.030] – Caroline

So they’re very good. Well, they’re very good at making you feel good about being part of the community and participating in this, and then also at communicating. Look at the wonderful students who have been able to come to thanks to the scholarships that your money has gone towards. And when I donate to Instagram, I can choose what I want it to go towards. So I want it to go to I think the options are it can go to research, you can go to scholarships, or it can go to the Dean’s fund, which is at Ilian’s discretion, his little slush fund. And so I always choose scholarships. Right. Because I was an MBA scholarship recipient, I had the honor of managing the scholarship budget when I was at the school. And there are very difficult decisions to make.

 

[00:34:03.340] 

Right.

 

[00:34:03.570] – Caroline

Because there are a lot of people who want to go to the school who really can’t afford it and absolutely do need that support. And so I’m happy to continue to contribute to that every year. But I do think that perhaps harbor could give some of that money to some of the worthy scholarship recipients at Internet. Right.

 

[00:34:24.470] – John

I will say they give a lot to their own students. In fact, the latest numbers, even though overall support was down largely because the class size was down, the average scholarship support for an MBA student at Harvard Business School is now more than $81,000 over the two years. And roughly half of the entire student body gets scholarship support. A comparative number. Back in the class of 2017, the average was 69. So it’s gone from 69 in 2017 to in 21 $81,000. That’s a lot of moolah to help kids who are going to make a lot of Mula go to school. Maria, I’m sure you were a full ride.

 

[00:35:12.000] – Maria

No, I actually didn’t get any scholarship at all.

 

[00:35:16.850] – John

Hearing these numbers must just make you want to keep your accounts changed.

 

[00:35:22.020] – Maria

Well, what’s funny is that I went to Princeton for College, and the year I think it was the year after I graduated, they announced that going forward, they were doing away with student loans for undergraduates or something like that. And I was like, why is it the year after I graduate, why can’t they apply this retroactively? So hearing numbers like, oh, it’s $80,000. I’m like, oh, that’s nice. I was in a weird place because I had been working in Hong Kong prior, and so I was making a lot in US dollars. But also I was spending a lot because it’s one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. And so they just looked at that top line number and they were like, Nope, nothing for you. And I was not savvy enough at the time to actually think, to question it the way nowadays people are like, hey, why? I was like, okay, well, I guess it is what it is. I’m going to suck it up. But yeah, still like Caroline said, when they send out the information, it’s all about like it’ll be the picture of the student, you know, like the worthy student who it’s never like, Hi, I’m a private equity bro.

 

[00:36:25.870] – Maria

It’s always like some worthy student who works for an NGO in the Sudan. And so you’re like, oh, my money is going to help that person. They tug on your heartstrings quite a bit.

 

[00:36:41.420] – John

There you have it. Okay. For those of you who are listening in and you’re hearing, wow, the average college board for an MBA student, Harvard is now more than $81,000. It should take a little bit of the sting out of that first sighting on the website of the actual cost of the degree because a lot of the degrees are getting discounted and not only at Harvard to a lot of other schools, but Harvard certainly has the wherewithal to be so generous. Well, thank you, everyone for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve just heard Business Casual our weekly podcast with Caroline and Maria. Thank you.

 

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Which U.S. Business School Has The Most International MBAs?
Maria |
April 26, 2022

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!