Why B-School Faculty Matter
Maria |
May 19, 2022

In this episode of Business Casual, John, Maria and Caroline talk about what most MBA applicants rarely talk about –  the faculty. 

Poets and Quants just released their Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professors Of 2022 and of course the Business Casual crew is going to weigh in with their thoughts on it. 

Join the team as they discuss the list, the role faculty play in a school’s brand, and the impact they have on one’s education.  Also – how much should applicants cite specific faculty members as a part of their rationale for wanting to attend a specific school and should applicants reach out to professors while applying?  Listen in to hear what the team has to say. 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.450] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’re listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my cohost Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Today think we’re going to talk about faculty. It’s something that MBA applicants rarely speak about. You talk about admission standards. You talk about the jobs you get. You talk about the quality of the networking or the brand of the school. But really, do you get to the heart of the academic experience, which is directly correlated to the quality of the faculty and the dedication, commitment professors have to the MBA program, to the students. This is a timely topic because this week we are publishing our annual look at the world’s 40 best under 40 business school professors. There is a very good representation of schools that are outside the United States and, in fact, are not well known, schools that are highly ranked but have professors that are just stellar in every possible way. And I want to talk to both Maria and Caroline about their experiences in their MBA programs and what value the faculty actually added to not only the learning, but the student experience. And I know in my own life, professors who I have had have been incredibly instrumental.

 

[00:01:32.420] – John

I came from a working class background with no real role models, professional role models in my family. And so faculty that I have been lucky to have and have taken interest in me, I found invaluable to my early thinking and my career. So, Caroline, I want you to take us back to your days at INSEAD and recall a professor or two who really you think made a difference in how they made a difference.

 

[00:02:02.870] – Caroline

Sure, there’s a lot of great professors at the top business schools, right. Like INSEAD. So I’m a bit spoilt for choice, but I think something that stands out to me is when you get a professor who can turn a subject that could otherwise be quite dull into something that’s absolutely fascinating. So one professor that stands out in my mind for that I didn’t see it is David Young. So he’s an accounting professor. He’s won several awards for being an outstanding teacher on the MBA program. And I don’t know how he does it. He’s just got amazing delivery. He’s funny, he engages people, and he’s got tremendous depth and breadth of knowledge. So he can pretty much handle any question. And he’s very good at just bringing in stories and anecdotes that bring it to life. So I really loved his classes, which I didn’t expect to be thrilled about doing. Right. I mean, I had done some accounting courses before I went to INSEAD, so it wasn’t something that I was excited or thought I particularly desperately needed. And sometimes in those core courses, if you feel that you’ve got a background in that topic, then it’s easy to sort of switch off a bit and feel unengaged.

 

[00:03:21.720] – Caroline

But I remember his classes very well. And it helps you to absorb the knowledge when someone is able to bring a subject to life in that way. So he’s someone who stands out to me as really talented. And I think the sense of humor definitely helps in sort of connecting with an audience in a business school environment. So he was very good at making it fun and interesting, which is not an easy task with accounting, not at all.

 

[00:03:53.110] – John

And one of the interesting aspects of choosing the best. We look at their research impact, but we do heavily weigh student opinion on their ability to communicate ideas effectively and to inspire students. And most of the professors have done exactly what you encountered at NCR. They’ve taken a subject that they thought would be either a grind or a grueling class. And suddenly these subjects come to life and they find themselves in some of the most inspiring classes they’ve ever been in. And it’s in topics like not only accounting, as you mentioned, but the statistics in particular, or finance or business analytics. And an increasing number of people on this year’s list are teaching new subjects like artificial intelligence, machine learning, sustainability, diversity, and inclusion, and have been acclaimed for both their research and their ability in the class to translate those subjects into very actionable takeaways in engaging in compelling ways. Now, Maria, you were at Harvard. Harvard is known to have fantastic professors who orchestrate really dynamic case discussions. Do you recall one or two professors who had an impact on you?

 

[00:05:17.600] – Maria

Well, I was also going to mention my accounting professor.

 

[00:05:22.850] 

Accounting.

 

[00:05:27.990] – Maria

For the exact same reason, right? I had taken an accounting class in undergraduate. I thought it was just the most horrific waste. It was just like memorizing this and debits and credits. And I was like, oh, this is terrible. When I saw that accounting was required, I thought, oh, no, I’m just going to have to grit my teeth and get through it. But we have this professor named Asis Martinez Harris, who I think is now he was at Notre Dame for a while. Maybe now he’s at Cornell. He was, first of all, super funny, but he was able to make me care about a chemistry and made me realize like, oh, wait, this isn’t just an exercise in memorization that I’m never going to use in the real world. I think one of the things that he did and this is something that I think the best professors always do is they keep in mind the fact that they are teaching a room of very different people, people who are coming in from all kinds of different backgrounds and people who are going out into the world into all kinds of different professions. And so they are able to explain things in a way so that anyone, even someone who’s never seen a balance sheet before, can at least understand and follow along, but also not provide lessons or takeaways that are so specific that you think, well, what am I ever going to use this?

 

[00:06:40.780] – Maria

Right. So he was able to give us lessons in here’s how accounting can actually be useful for any of you. And so I thought that was really great.

 

[00:06:54.130] – John

Yeah, totally. And the professors on the list are nominated. They’re quite a few nominations. And then we look at their contributions in the world of research and their topic, what value they’ve added to the topic that under discussion. And we heavily weigh a student opinion on the ability of a person to really communicate those ideas clearly in an inspiring way in the classroom. So it’s not just one or the other. Both and both are really important, of course, in the world of education. Now I wonder from the two of you, how important is it for an applicant to think about the quality of the faculty and determining what school to apply to? And how do you do that, Caroline?

 

[00:07:45.660] – Caroline

Yeah, I think the quality of the faculty is important. I think candidates shouldn’t focus too much on the star professors. Often schools are famous for a handful of professors. Right. And you shouldn’t set your heart on getting into a class with those professors because they may or may not be teaching when you are taking that course. Right. So you need to look at the quality overall rather than the ones who are the best known professors and have the best known reputation. But I think it’s great if you can go to campus sitting on some classes, look at which faculty are teaching in the subject areas that are particularly relevant for you. And if you know that you’re going to be focusing on a specific subject area, then if you’re focusing on particular electives, look at who will be teaching that, look at their research and look at whether that’s going to be something that’s particularly relevant for you. So, yeah, the quality of faculty is important. I think that a mistake that candidates sometimes make is that I mentioned that sometimes they focus too much. People get caught up on they want to study with this particular style professor.

 

[00:09:10.800] – Caroline

And it’s very common to read the same names again and again in admissions essays.

 

[00:09:16.440] 

Right.

 

[00:09:16.690] – Caroline

So they’ll often be saying, I want to come to this school because I want to come toINSEAD, for example, because I want to study with Reddy Moburn and Chan Kim, because they’re so famous for blue ocean strategy. And you read that hundreds of times when you’re an admissions file reader in INSEAD, it can look like a rather superficial knowledge of the school if you’re sort of regurgitating the same star names that other candidates are focusing on. So if you’re going to talk in your application about the faculty, then show that you’ve really done some genuine research and it links specifically to your interests and your career focus and try to get beyond the most obvious names.

 

[00:10:03.970] – John

Caroline, you make a good point there, because obviously people who go to Wharton may never even see Adam Grant except on his Twitter feed. And people to go to Harvard will hardly go to class with Michael Porter. They’ll see his building with his entire staff located, and he has a whole building dedicated to him and his work at the Harvard Business School. But they may never glimpse Michael Porter. And it’s often the unheralded professor who, in fact, have the most impact, particularly on students. And those are the ones that tend to be on this list, in fact. Now, Maria, what’s your take on how an applicant should evaluate faculty? It’s often said that if you have a particular interest, for example, it’s not a bad idea to contact the faculty in advance and talk to them about their coursework, their research, to see if, in fact, you’re going to have some exposure to some faculty members in an area that you’re deeply interested in.

 

[00:11:15.200] – Maria

Yeah. So first of all, just to sort of build on what Caroline was saying, I would look at groups of professors and I tell people to look at course offerings, like how many courses are offered as a thing that interests you, what is the name of the course like if you can even see the syllabus online, which you often can? So an example I like to give a lot is healthcare. Right? At some schools, they have a huge health care focus, but it’s mostly on the payer and insurance system in the US. And Navigating, if you’re running a hospital, if you’re running an insurance company, versus at other schools that also have a health care concentration, it might be more about how do you launch a new biotech product. So those nuances, both of those schools will say, well, we have a great healthcare program. But once you start digging into the classes, you start to see the differences. And so I would also not pin my hopes on one specific professor. Right. Because as Caroline said, they might be on Sabbatical, they might be on loan to another school for the year. And also in terms of courses, you don’t get to take every course you want to take.

 

[00:12:17.010] – Maria

So you have to sort of put in, you get a certain number of points or something that you allocate. So you rank your classes that you want to take. And most people would either get into their first or second choice class, but you wouldn’t get both. So even if both professors are at the school and they are both teaching, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get to take those classes. So I also think another point I’d make is that I think sometimes some of the celebrity professors, just because someone is really good at giving presentations at business conferences or has done some amazing research paper, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to teach very well. And so I would also avoid putting too much stock into their celebrity status in terms of they might know a lot, but they might not really know how to communicate it in terms of mentioning it in your applications. I agree with everything Caroline said. How long does it take to say, oh, look, Adam Grant teaches at Wharton. Young Maimon is at HBS, which, by the way, Young Maimon was one of the best professors I had.

 

[00:13:20.260] – Maria

She’s a marketing professor. She’s incredible. But anyway, it’s so easy to sort of quickly skim. And so it doesn’t seem like what did you really do your research? So if you are going to mention a professor, go a little bit deeper into maybe the ones that aren’t so famous and really tie in their research interest to their very specific research interest into your very specific career interest. Now in terms of contacting them, it’s interesting. I think some admissions officers at some schools are okay with it. I think it shows initiative and go getter attitude. My personal take on it is that I just sort of feel like it’s kind of a rude. It’s not very respectful of their time, in my opinion. I think once you get into multiple schools, if you’re already in the school, then sure, here’s my career interest. I really want to do sustainability, I don’t know, water purification, entrepreneurship. Let’s talk. But I just feel like bothering a professor because, let’s be honest, some people are never getting into business school. Some of these schools that they’re targeting. So if I call famous professor at Stanford, but there’s no way I’m getting into Stanford.

 

[00:14:37.130] – Maria

And I try to ask her, like, can I have a 15 minutes conversation so that I can mention you in my essay? I don’t know. I just feel like you’ve kind of wasted the professor’s time and I really feel that way. But I do think that can always say get lost. Yeah. I mean, they can always just say get lost or not respond. So, yeah, maybe that’s it. Maybe if you try it and a professor writes back, you should assume that they are okay with potentially wasting half an hour of their lives talking to you. But then, I don’t know, I would say, if you’re going to do that, then you really need to bring the good. Right. If you say, oh, I’m just interested in water purification, entrepreneurship, and I really want to talk to you because you’ve done research on that. And then I get on the phone with you as a professor and I’m like, So what have you done in this field? And you’re like, Nothing. I read an article about it in Fast Company that seemed cool. Oh, God, I think that would be especially frustrating for them. So I really don’t advise.

 

[00:15:34.960] – Maria

But this is all very, you know, everyone’s got their own different opinions on this sort of a thing.

 

[00:15:41.890] 

Yeah. Caroline.

 

[00:15:44.830] – Maria

Yeah.

 

[00:15:45.230] – Caroline

I don’t think you’ll get very far if you try just cold calling a professor because they do get several inquiries and they’re not going to have time to deal with you, you’re probably just not going to get a response, quite frankly. But there are ways of learning more about the faculty, and often schools will use the faculty in marketing events so they may run master classes online in person. So those give you great opportunities to hear the faculty and potentially engage with them. So I think it’s better to look for events or look for opportunities when you’re visiting a campus to interact with faculty rather than just reaching out to them in a sort of completely random fashion. I just don’t think you’d get very far with that. When I was applying to INSEAD back in the prehistoric times, I was lucky to be asked by a friend to come with me to a conference at the school, which was about strategy and the blue ocean strategy professors mentioned Renee Mobon and Chan Kim were there, and that was super interesting. And I got the chance to sort of meet them and interact with them a bit.

 

[00:17:03.650] – Caroline

So if you do have opportunities to attend some events or have somewhere like that to interact with faculty, then that’s great. But otherwise there’s just so many candidates out there and these people are incredibly busy, so don’t be surprised if you try and reach out to them and you don’t hear anything back. What do you want to ask them as well? I think a lot of the questions that you may have there are other people in the school whose job it is to answer your questions. Right. So the schools have armies of admissions and marketing staff whose job it is to respond to candidate inquiries and answer any questions that you may have about the program. So that should be your first point of call unless you’ve got a really good reason and something relevant to share with a particular faculty member.

 

[00:17:57.750] – John

Yes, good point. I’m going to ask a question that may seem a little dumb, but I’m going to ask it anyway. How come in all the discussions that we have had about the MBA and business school, we focus so little attention on the academic experience? And I’m thinking most applicants probably focus far too little attention on the actual academic experience. It’s going to be at the heart of their two year or one year time in an MBA program. Shouldn’t we be thinking a little bit more about that?

 

[00:18:33.060] – Caroline

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen applications from candidates who are very focused on the networking. They’re very focused on their career, and they almost seem to forget that they’re actually applying to an academic institution. And sometimes that can manifest itself as sort of being very dismissive of the academic requirements. And okay, my GPA wasn’t great and I flunk the GMAT. But hey, look at my fantastic career accomplishments and look what I’m going to do after my MBA, and they get very short shrift right from the admissions committee because you do need to thoroughly understand that these are very demanding academic programs and you’re going to have to study hard and you need to show that you have the ability to do that and the motivation to do that. So I think when people talk about the motivation for applying to school, often they’re focused on aspects that are related to their career. And that’s absolutely understandable because why are you paying so much money and investing so much in your education when it’s so that you can advance in your career and get some return on investment at the end of the day? But I definitely do see candidates who aren’t fully aware of the fact that they are being evaluated not just on the professional accomplishments and professional goals, but also they are applying to academic institutions which are to a large extent faculty play a very significant role in management and sometimes even in admissions decisions.

 

[00:20:07.290] – Caroline

And they want smart, intellectual, academically engaged candidates joining the program. Right. They want smart people in their classrooms who are going to study hard and really get involved in the projects and the debates and so on, and not just come for the networking opportunities and the recruitment opportunities.

 

[00:20:31.900] – John

Maria, what’s your take on this?

 

[00:20:34.090] – Maria

I completely agree. I often find myself telling especially people who perhaps didn’t have a stellar academic background. And also, like, I’ve taken the GMAT five times and I can’t seem to get above a certain score. And it’s so unfair that this means that I can’t get into a top program. And I tell people the schools are not simply going after things like a high GMAT score out of a sense of vanity, although I do think that there’s a little bit of that going on. But it’s because they want to make sure that you’re going to be able to keep up and contribute to their classroom environment. And I like to tell people they’re not being mean about it. It is not a good outcome for you to get into a program that moves at a faster pace than what you’re comfortable with or that covers topics at a level of depth that maybe you’re not interested in. So they’re actually, in some cases, maybe doing a favor. If you’re not really looking for a highly academic experience and maybe certain schools aren’t best for you, you can get an amazing education, but one that is perhaps less quantitative or less work intensive at a different school.

 

[00:21:49.150] – Maria

So yeah, it’s still school, folks.

 

[00:21:54.910] – John

There you go. Well, I will ask readers to have a look at our top 40 under 40 professors of the year. If anything, whether you’re going to a school that they’re teaching at or not, I think you’ll be inspired by their stories. What turns them on, their research interests, what makes them exceptional professors of business education? And I think it will just make your appetite even greater for entry in an MBA program and enjoying these incredibly brilliant people who have a lot to teach. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’re listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast.

 

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Why B-School Faculty Matter
Maria |
May 19, 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

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