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.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Which U.S. Business School Has The Most International MBAs?
Maria |
April 26, 2022

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Well hello everyone, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants, welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-hosts Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Today we have a special guest, Heidi Hillis from Fortuna Admissions. She is based in Australia, is a senior expert coach for Fortuna, and has three degrees, all from Stanford, a BA in English literature, that’s my degree, an MA in Russian studies, and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business. And we have Heidi here to discuss some really fascinating research. Here’s what Fortuna did. They dug into the last Two class profiles of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

That’s the class of ‘23 and the class of ‘24. They looked up all these folks on LinkedIn to identify a little bit more about their backgrounds, including their former employers and their places of undergraduate education to come up with an incredible analysis. Heidi, welcome.

[00:00:46] Heidi Hillis: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

[00:00:48] John Byrne: Heidi, what is, what are the big takeaways from your deep dive discovery?

[00:00:54] Heidi Hillis: It’s hard to know even where to start. I think there’s a quite a few interesting kind of trends that we’ve seen that have taken place over the years. We were mentioning before the call that traditionally there hadn’t been, 10 years ago, if you’d looked, you wouldn’t have seen so many tech companies represented, but now there’s a big presence of tech companies who are feeding a lot of these MBA programs in Stanford in particular.

I think that the thing that was really interesting was, looking, not just at where the companies that were feeding the students, the applicants to Stanford. When they were working there, when they were applying, but actually the paths that they took prior to their current job.

So how many people were working, if you look at McKinsey, for example, or Bain and BCG, those are obviously companies that feed a lot of applicants to the program, but we found 20%, which seemed to be normal of, the class came from consulting, but if you actually look into the numbers in their background, You would see that actually 37 percent of these two classes had worked at McKinsey sometime prior, or actually in consulting, so it was, it’s The kind of the patterns that are behind, what you would normally see in terms of what Stanford tells us.

So you get a sense of the paths that people have taken. And so that’s something that was really interesting to see.

[00:02:16] John Byrne: Absolutely. And of course, this is this analysis goes so far beyond what any applicant would learn by simply looking at the class profile that the school up because, this level of detail is never available to people.

[00:02:33] Heidi Hillis: No, and yeah, for example, you could see that, Stanford will say that they have around, each year around 50 percent of applicants are international, which is a great statistic and gives you lots of hope if you are an international student. But when you dig into the numbers, you actually understand that.

75 percent of the people who get into Stanford actually went to a U. S. University. So even if you’re international, it does have does seem to have kind of an advantage of having been educated in the U. S. That seems to be something that they look for. However, I think. The concentration of universities in the U.

S. that are feeding to Stanford is something also that, if you’re looking at it, you might find a little bit dis, disconcerting. There’s a few programs that are really, obviously the top. Programs as you would expect places like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the Ivies but if you look at the international universities very diverse from all over the world, really lots of people from different places, which is also really interesting.

[00:03:38] John Byrne: Yeah I tell you, one of the things that struck me in the data is how consistent it is. 10 years ago, we did the same exercise at Stanford and a bunch of other. Schools from Harvard and Dartmouth and Columbia and talk and a few others and back 10 years ago, we found that 25. 2 percent of the class of 2013 were from Ivy League colleges.

And the Ivy League 8 schools, not including Stanford. And if you included Stanford, it would have been 32. 6%. So now, let’s move forward to your data. And in 23, 30. 7 percent went to Ivy League schools, even above the 25. 2. And in 24, 27. 9 percent went to Ivy League schools. So it looks like Stanford has gotten even a little bit more elitist than it was.

Yeah,

[00:04:41] Heidi Hillis: It’s, it is it’s what the data says, right? Obviously, this is a sample. We have 80 percent of the two classes. So we don’t know where those other people went. And that might skew the data a little bit in another direction. But it is, if you look at there’s 15 schools, that include the Ivy’s and then you have UC Berkeley and obviously Stanford that really are contributing, 49 percent of the class of 23, 47. 3 percent of the class of 24. So that is a pretty heavy concentration and But, if you actually look into the data, you see a lot of people also, each of these is actually an individual story.

You see a lot of people who come from other schools as well. So it’s not like you have to give up hope if you come from a different school. I see a lot of individual stories that, from the whole range of U. S. schools that really are feeding into Stanford. So I think what the data doesn’t also tell you, unfortunately, is how many of these Of people from these backgrounds are actually applying.

So

[00:05:39] John Byrne: good point.

[00:05:40] Heidi Hillis: It’s it’s hard to know. And sometimes I think people this is. A path that a lot of people who go to these schools plan to take from the very beginning. So I would see, it would be interesting to know that I don’t know that we will ever find that out. But, um, that’s something to keep in mind as well.

[00:05:56] John Byrne: Yeah. And that’s a fair point. Because how reflective are these results of the applicant pool reflective of an elitist attitude probably a combination of if I had to guess, but, it is what it is, and these institutions obviously are great filters, so you come from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and you go to Harvard or Stanford or Penn, and you pass through a fine filter, and it makes you less of a admissions risk than if you went to, frankly, the University of Kentucky and worked for a company that no one knows of.

That’s just the reality of elite MBA admissions, right?

[00:06:40] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. And so you will see that the people who are not going, you’ll see a lot of the people who you would, the profiles that you would expect, the Harvard undergrad that then goes to Goldman that then was working at a PE firm.

That’s a really typical profile that you’ll see. But you’ll also see some really, unique and interesting ones, which I think, Okay. Helps you understand that if you don’t have that path, you also have a real chance at these schools, and maybe even more of a chance, again, not knowing, how many of those Goldman P.

E. Harvard grads are applying. So I’m thinking of the guy that I saw who he went to UPenn undergrad, studied engineering, started out a kind of pretty typical path working in private equity, but then made a big pivot to work for go to Poland where he was working in a real estate investment firm and the head coach of the Polish lacrosse team.

So you have really interesting profiles like that, that you can see that. aren’t necessarily taking that typical path. And sometimes that really does help you stand out.

[00:07:42] John Byrne: True. Maria, what surprised you most about the data?

[00:07:48] Maria Wich-Vila: Wow. I think we already covered, the, one of the biggest ones was the number, the percentage of people who would had some sort of either their undergraduate or graduate education within the United States.

Intuitively, I had felt that was true. And sometimes when I try to, give some honest, tough love to applicants from certain countries, and they’ll say, oh, but Maria, I think you’re being a little too pessimistic. After all, X percent of the applicants at these schools are international, and Y percent are from a certain geography internationally.

I’ll say yes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all Solely from that area. A lot of them are, do have significant international educational experiences. I think another, speaking of the international piece the percentage of people who had significant international work experience as well was something else that really jumped out at me.

Because it would signal to me that Stanford really does value this global perspective both within probably its domestic applicants and also its international applicants. So I thought that was also a really interesting piece of data that jumped out at me.

[00:08:52] John Byrne: Now remind me what percentage was that?

[00:08:56] Heidi Hillis: People who are international

[00:08:58] John Byrne: who have had international work experience.

[00:09:01] Heidi Hillis: I think it was 30%.

[00:09:02] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty

[00:09:04] John Byrne: impressive.

[00:09:04] Caroline Diarte Edwards: 30%, which I was thrilled to see. As well as coming from in Seattle and Europe. Obviously the international schools put a heavy emphasis on international experience and I hadn’t fully appreciated that. A school like Stanford would also.

really value that to the same extent. And it’s great to see that candidates are making the effort to get outside of the U. S. and get international experience because I think you gain so much from that exposure. And you bring more to the classroom if you’ve got that experience. I know that both Maria and Heidi.

I’ve worked outside of the home countries as well. Pre MBA and I think that you just have so much more to contribute to the whole experience. And it was great to see that 30%.

[00:09:50] John Byrne: What else struck you, Caroline?

[00:09:53] Caroline Diarte Edwards: We talked about the concentration of academic institutions, and I was also surprised about the concentration in employers.

So while there is a very long list of employers where the students have worked pre MBA when you dig into the career paths that they’ve taken there is some interesting concentration. Heidi had noted that the reports that There are 26 companies that account for nearly one third of the class in terms of where they were working right before Stanford.

But when you look at their whole career history, those same 26 companies represent over 60 percent of the class. So that is, yeah, that’s quite extraordinary that so many of the class have experience of working at quite a short list of companies.

[00:10:46] Heidi Hillis: I think that’s reflective of, if you really think about it, you have a lot of these companies.

You’re talking about the Goldmans and the Morgan Stanley and McKinsey that have really large programs that recruit out of undergrad that are really training grounds for. A lot of people that then on to do, work in industry or go on to work for in finance in particular, a lot of people starting out at some of these bulge bracket banks and then going into.

Private equity or smaller firms. So the diversity within finance in terms of where they were working prior to MBA is quite large compared to consulting because there just aren’t as many consulting firms, but a lot of people in financing, a lot of different firms, but they, a lot of them really do start out in these training programs, these analyst programs that are so big and popular.

[00:11:34] John Byrne: Yeah, true. And looking back, I did this exercise as well. The feeder companies to Stanford 10 years ago in the class of 2023, 22. 8 percent from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and your data, 22. 5 percent work there. Incredible consistency over a 10 year period. When you look at the top six employers 10 years ago, they were McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and JP.

Morgan Chase. They accounted alone for 34 percent of all the students in the class of 20, 2013 at Stanford. In your data for 23 and 24 they account for 29. 8%, just a few percentage points less. So remarkable consistency. And I think you’re right, Heidi, this is a function of the fact that these firms bring in a lot of people who are analysts and actually expect them after 3 to 5 years to go to a top MBA school.

So there’s a good number of them in the applicant pool to choose from and let’s face it, they’re terrific candidates.

[00:12:46] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. I think another pool of really terrific candidates that you see, and I don’t know what the 2013 data was saying, but is the US military, which is really, I think, again, something that I felt having worked with lots of military candidates myself, understand that, Yeah, intuitively, I would have expected, but to see it in the data is actually really interesting.

You just see Stanford in particular, I think, is really looking for leadership potential, and it’s so hard to show that as an analyst, as a consultant, but as in the military, these people have such incredible leadership experience that it really helps them to stand out.

[00:13:23] John Byrne: Yeah. And let’s tell people what the data shows.

How many out of us military academies,

[00:13:28] Heidi Hillis: In all in total, we had, 20 over the two years. So that’s in the two classes that we found. So that’s, a pretty large number. And they come from all the different academies, right? So you’ll find them from different, not academies, in the army, navy and the marines.

So you’ll see that. And you also see quite a few, in the data we’ll, we see a lot from the Israeli military as well, but that’s actually a little bit difficult to because every Israeli does go into the military. So it’s they have that in their background. Any Israeli candidate would have Israeli military background as well, but again, that’s.

Place that people can really highlight their leadership. So you had eight people from who had been, who were Israeli and obviously had military experience where they were able to demonstrate significant impact and leadership prior to MBA.

[00:14:18] John Byrne: Yeah. In fact, 10 years ago, roughly 2%. of the class went to either West Point or the U.

S. Naval Academy. Good number of people actually from the military. Maria, any other observations?

[00:14:34] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, I was also surprised at the fact that within those top employers And when we look at the tech companies, it was Google and Facebook and Meta with a pretty large showing. Google was actually the fourth largest employer after the MBBs and, but then, I was expecting there to be an equal distribution amongst those famous large cap technology companies.

So I, I would have expected even representation amongst Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, et cetera. And yet. Apple and Amazon only had one or two people each versus Google at 25. So I thought that was really fascinating and it makes me wonder if perhaps it’s a function of maybe Google and Meta might give their younger talent more opportunities to lead impactful projects, perhaps.

I’m just guessing here, but maybe Apple and Amazon perhaps are more hierarchical. And maybe don’t give their younger talent so many opportunities, but I was really surprised by that. I would have expected a much more even distribution amongst the those famous those famous tech companies.

[00:15:40] John Byrne: Yeah. You’re right. And I crunched the numbers on the percentages and Google took three and a half percent of the two classes and that’s better than Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase. Facebook had 2. 7 percent and Microsoft at 1. 5, and I was shocked at Amazon because, Amazon is widely known as the largest single recruiter of MBAs in the past five years.

At one point, they were recruiting a thousand MBAs a year, but in, in one sense, maybe Amazon quite doesn’t really have the prestige. For Stanford MBAs who might rather work elsewhere, I think that might be is, you look at the employment reports at a lot of the other schools and Amazon is number one at a number of schools and very low percentage of people from Amazon going to Stanford.

We don’t know, of course, how many. Leaving Stanford and going back to Amazon, but it can’t be that many.

[00:16:41] Heidi Hillis: I wonder if there’s something about just a proximity effect here. You have the plate, like the meta and Google just being so close to Stanford, maybe it just, attracts more people applying because they.

They’re almost on campus and maybe, just being Amazon all over the world and different places could be not attracting as many. I don’t know.

[00:17:03] John Byrne: Yeah, true. The other thing, the analysis shows, and this is what you also gather from the more public class profile is really the remarkable diversity of talent that a school like Stanford can attract year after year.

It is, it blows you away, really. The quality and the diversity of people despite the concentration of undergraduate degree holders or company employers, it’s it’s really mind boggling, isn’t it?

[00:17:33] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, they come from everywhere and really interesting paths and even the people I think that, have those kind of typical paths, you see a lot of diversity within them as well.

So I think, even if you’re coming from a Goldman or a McKinsey having lived in another country or gone to done a fellowship abroad or running a non profit on the side. These things are actually what helped them to stand out. But you do see some really interesting, I think, profiles, too, of people who’ve just done, you get a sense of what it would be like to be in the Stanford classroom.

People from really unique and different backgrounds. People who come from all different countries and lawyers, doctors people who have run, nonprofits in developing countries people running large programs for places like Heineken or Amazon too. But, it’s a real diversity of backgrounds.

[00:18:27] John Byrne: Now, Heidi, I wonder if one is an applicant. Is this discouraging to read and here’s why if I’m not from Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and if I didn’t work for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google am I at a disadvantage and should I even try? Some people look at the data and come away with that conclusion.

[00:18:52] Heidi Hillis: I think it’s a reality check for a lot of people. I think it’s just, it’s really, it just helps people understand, what it, the difficulty of this, why it’s so competitive, but I think that there is, again, behind the kind of the percentages, you do look at these individual profiles and I would get, I would actually take a lot of hope from it if I were looking, as an applicant, because especially if you are.

Maybe a little bit more of a big fish or small fish in a bigger pond or big fish in a smaller pond you go to Rice or you go to Purdue or, and you do really well, those are the people who, they’re definitely looking for that diversity of background as well as the international.

I think that’s really neat. think that, instead of looking at the data and saying, why not, why I shouldn’t even apply, it’s why not me look at these other profiles of people who have taken really unique paths that that do get in. So I think it is actually a Kind of a mix of both, it is a reality check for a lot of people, but it’s actually, there is so much diversity in the data as well.

I think also one thing that we haven’t really covered is about is just the prevalence of social impact in, that’s really taken hold of the class. I don’t, again, going back to your 2013 analysis, I’m not sure how easy it was to tell that, but a lot of you can see reflected in the both the types of organizations people are working for, but also their titles and the kinds of work that they’re doing that that there’s a huge 40 percent of the class of the two classes had some kind of social impact in their background.

Whether that’s, running their own nonprofit on the side or volunteering or. Running trans transformational kind of programs within companies that are, either in finance or consulting or in industry. That’s a big trend. I think that people can take heart from as well.

So if you’re working if you feel like you’re in an organization where you’re not getting the leadership that you. can use to highlight your potential for Stanford, that’s definitely a place you can go is working for in volunteer capacity for a non profit or on the board of a of some kind of foundation.

Those are the kinds of places that you can highlight your potential

[00:21:00] John Byrne: true. And I know we have a overrepresented part of every applicant pool at an elite business school are software engineers from India. And I wonder in your analysis, how many of them did you find from like the IITs?

[00:21:18] Heidi Hillis: That’s a good question. The IITs, it was again, it was one of these you have about 50 percent of classes internet, so 25 percent of the class. was educated outside of the US. The IITs are going to be up there. Let’s see from India, 2. 1 percent of the class came from India. So probably, I don’t know offhand exactly how many of those were IITs, but

[00:21:43] John Byrne: I’ve had a lot of them.

[00:21:45] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, probably a lot of them. Although I think, that’s the other thing is that people who come, to work with me from India, they feel like if they haven’t gone to IIT, then that’s going to be a disadvantage. But I think, you’ll find that there are, there’s representation of other universities as well.

Definitely.

[00:22:00] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I was just looking at the list of undergrad institutions. And for example, you’ve got Osmania University from Hyderabad. So it is not, it’s not all IIT. Okay.

[00:22:12] John Byrne: Yeah, exactly. And Caroline, 1 of the things about the institutions that are really represented here and that I don’t really see unless I missed it.

I didn’t see a Cambridge or an Oxford. Two of the best five universities in the world. And I wonder if that’s just a function of fewer people in the applicant pool or what? What do you think that could be about?

[00:22:36] Caroline Diarte Edwards: I had a look through the uk Institutions and you have got cambridge in there.

I think I also noticed. Bristol university there are a few different universities. So i’m aston university, which is not it’s not on a par with Oxford or Cambridge. So I think that speaks to the point that Heidi made that you don’t have to have been to an elite school to get into Stanford.

Aston is a good solid university, nothing wrong with Aston, but it’s not it’s not one of the top UK universities. So there’s definitely some interesting variety in the educational backgrounds of the students going to Stanford. And

[00:23:16] John Byrne: then, yeah, it is if you’re a big fish in a small pond, like Afton, you’ll you could still stand out in the pool.

[00:23:26] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely. There’s a lot of really interesting background, you have look hard on blue and you have Miami University and some really smaller universities abroad. I think. Again, it’s really, if you look at that, it does give you hope because it’s really what you do afterwards and if you, obviously, if you come from one of these schools, you probably want to be in the top, 5 percent of the graduating class, you want to show that you have the GPA that can support an academic background that they feel comfortable that you’ll be able to compete academically, but, and maybe that’s what you’re Offset by the, the GMA or the scores, you don’t know, we don’t have those on here.

But, um, the path post university really becomes much more important in those cases. What you’ve done since then where you’ve, how you’ve risen from starting at a entry level position to, running a division or heading a country group or something like that.

[00:24:21] John Byrne: And as far as Cordon Bleu goes, every good business program needs a Cordon Bleu, for God’s sake, right?

You want to eat well at those NBA parties, don’t you?

[00:24:32] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely.

[00:24:35] John Byrne: Maria, I’m sure that was true at Harvard.

[00:24:38] Maria Wich-Vila: I wasn’t the one doing the cooking but I certainly, I was certainly a member of the wine and cuisine society where I happily participated in the eating and consuming a part of that.

But to, to the point that we were just recently talking about. regarding being a big fish in a small pond. Not only have I seen it personally with applicants that I’ve worked with who did not attend these elite universities, but even many years ago, I attended a, an admissions conference where Kirsten Moss, who was the former head of admissions at Stanford, she actually told stories about how they’ve accepted people who even attended community college.

But within the context of that community college, they had really moved mountains. And she said that one of the things that they look for is, Within the context and the opportunities that you’ve been given, how much impact have you had? So maybe you don’t have an opportunity to go to Yale or MIT or IIT for your undergraduate, but whatever opportunity you have been given, have you grabbed that opportunity and really made the most of it and really driven change?

So she specifically called out, I believe, I believe there were two students that year at the GSB who had both started their educations, their higher educations at community college. Anything is possible. It really is about finding the people who, wherever they go, they jump in and make an impact.

[00:25:55] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that to that point, I think it can almost be a more difficult if you’ve gone to Harvard and then worked at one of these, gone on one of these paths because we know that there’s, that’s an overrepresented pool in the applicant pool to stand out among those to have had that, that pedigree sometimes can be a disadvantage, right?

If you haven’t done as much as you should have with that, or if you started at that high level to show that level of progress over the course of your career is actually a little bit more difficult. Okay. And coming from a community college and rising to, a country level manager in some places is actually puts you at a significant advantage, I would say.

[00:26:31] Maria Wich-Vila: Because it’s hard for those people, it’s hard for those people to stand out, but also I think some of them go on autopilot, right? I think some people are on this kind of achievement, elite achievement treadmill, where they’re not even really thinking about what do I want to do with my life?

They’re always reaching for whatever that next, what’s the best college to go to? It’s Harvard Princeton. Yeah. Okay. Now that I’m here, what’s the best employer to work for? It’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG and without actually perhaps stopping to think about what is my passion? What impact do I want to make in the world?

And so I feel sometimes those autopilot candidates, I feel a little bit bad for them because they’re doing everything quote unquote and yet sometimes when you speak with them, that passion just isn’t there. And I do think that may ultimately harm them in the very, very elite business school.

Admissions because business schools want people who are passionate because at the end of the day, in order to do hard things, you’re going to need passion at some point to get you through those low periods. And so I think that’s something business schools look for. And I do think that sometimes these.

These kind of autopilot candidates might sometimes be at a disadvantage.

[00:27:29] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that, to that point look in the data, when you look at it, you see so many people who’ve gone to McKinsey, Bain, Weasley, or Goldman, but then there’s a, you see a lot of success for people who’ve actually pivoted.

So those pivots that are post The second or third job really do show you that, if you’re if you get a candidate who’s coming from, still at McKinsey, okay, that’s fine. They have to be the top 5 percent of McKinsey, like they have to be going to get so many McKinsey applicants that the only the, you can look at the data in a couple ways.

One is, oh, my God, they took 12 people from McKinsey and the others. Oh, my God, they only took 12 people from McKinsey, right? That’s So if you want to be one of those 12, you have to be the top 12 in the world, right? Whereas if you’ve gone to McKinsey and then done an externship at a health care startup and then moved on to be a product manager at for health at Google, that kind of a path is definitely showing a little bit more, maybe risk taking, maybe ability to follow your passions.

So I think that. When I see candidates who come to me, for example, and they’re like, not thinking about applying now, but maybe in a year or two, I say, look for an externship, maybe think about pivoting out of one of these places and looking for some operational experience.

And because you see in the data that works.

[00:28:42] Maria Wich-Vila: And they’re doing themselves a service not only in terms of enhancing their admissions chances, but even just in terms of determining, what do I want to do with my career? If I do eventually want to go into industry, what functional role do I want to have?

What industry do I want to work in? So it’s, it actually benefits them in the long term to do that as well, even if they don’t go to business school. I think those secondments and externships and second job, post consulting jobs are extremely valuable. Totally agree with you.

[00:29:06] Caroline Diarte Edwards: And I’m sure they also bring more to the classroom as well.

I would think that’s also why Stanford is selecting some of those candidates, because not only have they worked at McKinsey, but they’ve also led a non profit in Africa or worked in private equity or whatever it is. So they have much more breadth that they can bring to the classroom. And I think that It’s seen as a very valuable contribution

[00:29:29] John Byrne: in Heidi.

Did you see that? The majority of the candidates to examined actually did work in more than one place, right?

[00:29:37] Heidi Hillis: Yes, most of them did. There were very few that, you see working at one place. And I would say that those are people that would have really risen through the ranks.

Someone who’s worked at Walmart and become, started in, I don’t know, in one state, but then to become a regional manager and things like that really are going to onto a global role. The people who have stayed at one place really have shown significant career progression within that.

And then the other people I think you do see a lot of movement. The big. The most typical would be from investment banking to private equity and then you do find in finance, there’s a little bit less kind of movement into other industries. You see a lot of people staying within finance, but within finance.

Yeah. Yeah. The other industries, especially consulting or other, tech, people are really moving into other places and it’s becoming, it is a little bit difficult. We have these categories that we’ve talked about, for example, healthcare, but it’s hard to categorize some of these companies.

Are they healthcare? Are they tech? There’s a lot of overlap. And so everything’s a little bit of tech in something nowadays. So whether it’s finance and fintech or education and ed tech or health care and health tech, these are all merging and combining. It’s hard to categorize them.

[00:30:53] John Byrne: So looking at the data here I wonder if you’ve seen your old classmates in the sense that these new people are very much like the people you went to school with at Stanford. I

[00:31:05] Heidi Hillis: put this out and it’s really interesting to a lot of my classmates downloaded the report and read it. And a lot of them came back and said, oh, boy, I would never get in now.

It’s these people are super impressive. I think that you see a lot of. It’s just become more and more competitive. And I think that with more information and more people every year applying, it is becoming really difficult. I think that you do see a lot of, I am encouraged by the diversity part of it that you see still Stanford.

I feel like they do take risks on some really interesting profiles and candidates that maybe some other schools are less likely to do. And so that’s what does give me. A lot of hope when I get some kind of really nontraditional candidate who wants to, their dream school is Stanford. I feel like, I say all the time, there’s a 6 percent chance.

You’re going to get in, but there’s 100 percent chance. You won’t get in if you don’t apply. So you’ve got to, you got to give it a go. And that’s, the attitude that we take to it.

[00:32:04] John Byrne: Indeed. So for all of you out there read Heidi’s article on our site, it’s called who gets in and why exclusive research.

Into Stanford GSB and I’ll tell you one conclusion I have about this is that, man, if you really want to get into Stanford, you need a Sherpa, and and Heidi would be a great Sherpa for you because the, just the profiles of these folks, where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished in their early lives is so remarkable that To compete against, in this pool for a spot in the class you need every possible advantage you can get.

And and having an expert guide you through this trip probably would be a really big advantage. So Heidi, thank you for sharing your insights with us and the research, the very cool research.

[00:33:01] Heidi Hillis: Thank you

[00:33:03] John Byrne: and for all of you out there. Good luck. And if you want to go to Stanford, you got to check out this report.

Okay. It will inspire you to up your game, even if you are from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or wherever McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google, you want to look at this report and you want to really think about. What it will really take to get in. I think it will inspire you, motivate you to really put your best foot forward.

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

Maria

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