Why INSEAD Is Welcoming Lower GMAT Scores
Maria |
February 8, 2022

One of the benchmarks that most MBA applicants struggle to meet is the GMAT score. INSEAD, which is known for having one of the most elite business schools in the industry and is notoriously stringent when it comes to GMAT scores, has opened its doors to accept and admit students with GMAT scores lower than they have previously accepted. 

For MBA aspirants, this is definitely a big and head-turning opportunity that Caroline (whose alma mater is INSEAD), Maria, and John tackle in today’s podcast. Listen to hear why they think the decision to accept candidates with lower GMAT scores is a win-win situation for both the school and potential MBA students.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.570] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Maria Wich Villa and Caroline Diarte Edwards. You know them well by now. Caroline, of course, is former admissions head at INSEAD and the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. And Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. And I just have to tell you that in the past day or two, Caroline broke a big story for us. We put it up on the site in less than 24 hours. It achieved over 30,000 page views, which is pretty darn good. And I will tell you why. It’s because Caroline found out that INSEAD is looking at GMAT scores a bit differently these days and in fact, is open the door to receive and admit students with GMAT scores that are lower than they have been in the past. Caroline, why don’t you tell us how you followed this and got onto it?

 

[00:01:16.090] – Caroline

Yeah, I know visionary Fuji very well. He’s head of admissions at INSEAD, so we worked together for many years. Visually, absolutely wonderful. And we keep in touch regularly. So I was chatting with her recently. A client had mentioned that she had said on a recent admissions webinar when they were discussing a particular case that someone with quite a low quantitative percentile on the GMAT actually didn’t need to reapply. So I was curious about that because traditionally, INSEAD has been incredibly strict on the GMAT. So for many years, the policy has been candidates need to get 70 or 75% on the quant and the verbal, and they really look at that breakdown much more than total score in order to be credible candidates. And that has been the case for many years. And it was sometimes frustrating for me when I was at in Seattle when we would turn away potentially fantastic students who hadn’t quite made that score. Now, sometimes in the past, for sure, there were exceptions to that rule, but it was very much the exception rather than the rule that people below that level would get in. So now, finally, the admissions committee has agreed that candidates who have not achieved that threshold if they have otherwise strong academic credentials.

 

[00:02:42.950] – Caroline

And it’s important to emphasize this, if they have strong undergrad and clear evidence that they have what it takes academically to succeed on the program, then the school will consider them much more seriously than they might have in the past. And now it’s important to emphasize that you still have to have those strong academic credentials and be able to demonstrate that you’ll do well on the program. And that’s partly because it’s a one year program. So the pace is fast. Right. And that’s why INSEAD has traditionally been much less flexible on the GMAT than some other schools. Even I’ve had clients get into schools like Harvard and Stanford who would not get into Insecure because of their GMAT. Right. And because it’s that one year format. The pace is fast. I sometimes joke, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. You have exams every eight weeks. There’s no time to sort of gradually get up to speed and brush up your core skills. When you start the program, you need to hit the ground running academically. So they do need that reassurance. And they’ll look at not just your undergrad, not just your GMAT, but they will also look at your work experience.

 

[00:03:57.510] – Caroline

Some people are using a lot of advanced quantitative and analytical skills in their work, and they will give credence to that as well as demonstration of quantitative ability.

 

[00:04:08.760] – John

Yeah. Now I often wondered if one of the reasons why INSEAD was a bit tougher on the GMAT was because professors are on the admissions committee and have a role in admitting students. And I wondered if professors may think that the GMAT is more important than it probably is. What do you think of that?

 

[00:04:31.390] – Maria

That’s for sure.

 

[00:04:32.190] – Caroline

So at INSEAD, the admissions committee is composed of half faculty and half alumni.

 

[00:04:38.280] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:04:38.600] – Caroline

And so I think it works very well because they bring different perspectives to the decision making process. So whilst all of these people understand the whole picture, the holistic process and the different criteria that INSEAD are looking at, the self interest of the alumni is that they want to recruit students who are going to be incredible professionals, super successful, wonderful ambassadors for the school, and great people to have in their future network. And so are more interested sometimes in the professional track record than the academic side, whereas the faculty wants to have the smarter students in their classroom. Right. So they may give a bit more weight to the academic profile. And overall, it works out very well. They balance each other out. It makes for some very good discussions. Right. Where people are challenging each other, and it’s not this sort of group think where they immediately jump to a conclusion about a candidate, but there is genuine discussion and debate, and it sometimes gets pretty heated. So I think that’s very healthy to have that balance. But it does mean that sometimes the faculty can be very persuasive and sometimes can really lobby against submitting candidate where they don’t feel confident about the academic credentials.

 

[00:06:01.180] – Caroline

So clearly this has been a policy that they have thought through very carefully, and they will have agreed this with the admissions committee. Right. It’s not just visiony who’s decided this and imposed this on the admissions committee. It would have been very much a sort of strategic decision that’s been taken after a great deal of thought and discussion by the committee.

 

[00:06:23.170] – John

Yeah. One consequence of this, which is a positive consequence, is that people who otherwise might have been discouraged from applying might more readily apply as a result of this policy change. This has been the difficulty for Stanford for years. The school with the highest average GMAT score for its incoming cohorts always worries that it’s losing a lot of fantastic candidates merely because that number is so high and it turns a lot of people off. You think you don’t even have a chance to get in? Marie, I’m sure you’ve seen this with some of your clients over the years where they look at those scores and they just say, hey, I can’t get that. I can’t get that score. So I don’t have a chance. Even though when a school publishes a median, obviously half of all the people who get admitted are under the median, and roughly the same is true for an average. But people do talk themselves out of the way, right?

 

[00:07:24.390] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. And it really is a shame because, as Caroline said, it is a holistic process if one of the things that the school is looking for is ultimately to identify people who will in the future be very successful alumni who will be on the cover of whatever magazine and will make the school proud. Oftentimes those people may not necessarily be the best standardized test takers. And so I do think that sometimes I will say that I have worked with people who did not do very well as well on the GMAT, and I urged them to take the GRE, and then they were accepted with the GRE. So going back to last week’s discussion, I do think that there’s a little more forgiveness and wiggle room if somebody submits with the GRE score. But, yeah, what’s remarkable about what Caroline has uncovered is that every school or most other schools have always said, oh, it’s a range. Just submit. It doesn’t matter if you think you’re a strong candidate, but insane. It was rare in that it actually officially published. If you don’t have at least 70, 75%, whatever, you can apply.

 

[00:08:29.830] – John

That is really unusual.

 

[00:08:31.280] – Maria

Yeah, they were pretty overt about it. And so I wonder if maybe they started letting in a couple of people where if it is really half professors and half alumni, there may have been some people where the alumni were banging on the table and saying, no, we have to let this person in, and then maybe they got in and they did perfectly well in the classroom, and maybe that got the professors to loosen a little bit. I did have a candidate once from Africa who had a mid 600 GMAT who did get into INSEAD. But again, this was a case of someone whose international experience was out of this world. It was one of those things where I’m glad that they had a letter of recommendation because I would almost think it was embellished or exaggerated. But no, it wasn’t like this person had literally been their company moved them to Brazil and they had to teach themselves Portuguese and negotiate with a village. No, they had to learn Portuguese and negotiate with a village because it was a multinational Corporation that was going to do something in this village. And the villagers were rioting against this company, and they had sent other Brazilian people who weren’t able to quell the villagers.

 

[00:09:35.890] – Maria

And she was able to go learn Portuguese and negotiate with the villagers for a happy outcome. And I’m like, oh, my God, you are amazing. And so in that one of the amazing things she did. So I was like, okay, in this case, your story is just so good. Let’s just give it a shot with it, Zeyad, because, wow, talk about international diversity of experience. So anyway, maybe I suspect someone like this amazing young woman got into INSEAD with a lower score, probably kicked some pretty serious butt in the classroom. And maybe those little data points start showing the professors that, yeah, you don’t have to be so stringent on the standardized test.

 

[00:10:18.970] – Caroline

That’s a good point. I think, Maria, that it’s definitely going to be more the case for candidates who bring that sort of diverse perspective. So if you have that type of profile that’s somewhat unusual in the pool, then you’re going to have a higher chance of doing well. Then if you have a very common profile.

 

[00:10:43.350] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:10:43.660] – Caroline

And you’re up against very stiff competition from a lot of other candidates who have similar profile to you, but they’ve aced the GMAT. So that’s also something to keep in mind that the GMAT I don’t think the average GMAT is going to go down dramatically anytime soon. Right. So they’re still going to be admitting most of the students who have a very strong showing on the GMAT. So it’s going to be more the candidates who bring that additional dimension of diversity and just have those fascinating profiles like you described that are going to get more serious consideration with the lower G match.

 

[00:11:28.340] – John

I wonder if some of this is related to the school’s goals to increase gender equality, to increase diversity overall in its program. INSEAD had 33% women in its MBA program in 2018, was 37% in 2021. It has a goal of reaching 40% in the 24 25 academic year. This is according to the Dean. We also happened to have an interview with them online. He stopped by the office in San Francisco, and our managing editor interviewed him. And they’re getting a lot of applications from Africa now. In fact, in the last cycle, he said applications from Africa doubled. And what we know and this is another thing on the test as far as I’m concerned, women tend to score less than men, even though their GPAs tend to be higher and they do better in the classroom than men. Africans score less. In fact, when you look at GMAT scores by country, the African countries have among some of the lower GMAT scores. So when you get applicants from Africa and you want greater representation from Africa, the standout candidates don’t have as high GMAT’s as they might in India, China, or some parts of Europe.

 

[00:12:54.920] – John

And then the problem is that in Europe there are very few female applicants, according to the Dean Dentiate. So if you want to reach these diversity goals, you’re going to have to be a little more flexible on a standardized test. That is, after all, only one element of many in the assessment of a person’s ability to come and do well in an MBA program. Do you think there’s some of this in the background?

 

[00:13:20.890] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. And that’s what they’re targeting. As Visually said, they’re concerned that candidates who would be fabulous students at INSEAD might be self selecting out of the pool and not applying because they haven’t got that 70 75th percentile. And they see that and they’re put off and they go to other great schools. And so this is specifically designed to broaden the pool and make it easier for some candidates to apply who might otherwise have gone elsewhere. And it doesn’t mean also I mean, as she said, it doesn’t mean necessarily going to get in straight away, right?

 

[00:14:01.650] – John

Definitely not.

 

[00:14:02.540] – Caroline

So they’ll take them forward to interview. If they like the profile, it may be that they will ask the candidates to retake the test. If there are still doubts about the academic ability of the candidate, then they may go back to them. And they regularly do this. They regularly ask candidates to retake the test if they love their profile, but they’re just concerned that they haven’t yet demonstrated that ability to cope with a very, very intensive and demanding program. They may ask them to retake the test.

 

[00:14:34.580] – John

And last week we pretty thoroughly covered the decline in GMAT test taking volume, which is now at historic lows. And we talked about how many programs are now test optional or are more generously waiving the need for a standardized test. I wonder if some other schools, in addition to INSEAD, are doing this without making any sort of announcement or it’s just a little more quietly being done. Maria, do you think that’s true?

 

[00:15:06.320] – Maria

I think it would sort of have to be. Again, the proof is in the pudding, right? If they have been slowly but surely letting in more and more candidates with perhaps less than stellar test scores and those candidates are kicking lots of butt when they get to campus, then that also speaks to the limitations of the test. And so why should I take the test as seriously if it may be an indicator, but clearly it’s not the only indicator of someone’s academic potential. I did want to very quickly point out one quick thing about the score discrepancies between, say, Africa versus China and India, because sometimes people get upset about it and they’re like, I’m from India and it’s BS that I get discriminated against. And people from Africa get this sort of affirmative action treatment. I’m pretty sure that GMAC themselves. I don’t want to put, like, words in their mouth, but I remember once watching a presentation where someone somewhere had done research into they asked people, how much time did you spend studying for this test? And people in countries like India and Africa, which have very heavy testing, those are test taking cultures, right.

 

[00:16:10.980] – Maria

Your entire life is determined by one or two exams that you take as a teenager. And so those are very test heavy. People will reach out to me. I quit my job last year to study for the GMAT, and I’m like, oh, my God, what are you thinking? Right. It’s like, oh, that’s a terrible idea. Oh, well, in India, we do it all the time for the civil service exam. And I’m like, what’s not like that in other places. But I think the average is like the average person in India or China studied something like 200 hours. These numbers are not accurate, but it was something like hundreds of hours. And the average person in Africa studied like 5 hours. Right. So it’s also a culture. It’s not just like, oh, well, these people are less qualified than I am, and yet they’re getting in. It’s also like, hold up. Maybe if you had only studied for 5 hours too, maybe you wouldn’t have gotten that 760 just because it’s just not, of course, thanks to the Internet, etc. And word is getting out like, hey, you should probably study for like several weeks or months.

 

[00:17:08.190] – Maria

But for a while, people were just like, well, it’s a test. And so I’ll study a little bit and I’ll just take it and see what happens. Anyway, I just wanted to point that out. I don’t remember the exact figures, but it was a pretty dramatic delivery.

 

[00:17:21.970] – John

I think we recall that research as well. Yeah. I mean, look, in South Africa, the mean GMAT score of a test taker is 505, and that tends to be on the high side for most African Nations. And so the other question here is, when an admissions official looks at a GMAT score, do they actually look at what the overall score is in a given country so that they actually are seeing? Okay, well, this person has performed well beyond the typical candidate from their country. Is that even taken into account?

 

[00:17:58.520] – Caroline

It is to a certain extent, not necessarily such a granular level of country by country and what is the average? And so on. But certainly admissions staff are aware of the regional differences that you mentioned.

 

[00:18:14.510] – John

Egypt is the average score. Ethiopia 447, Cameroon 427. Botswana 409. These are the average scores in these countries. Clearly, if you want to recruit and basically place a bet over the next quarter century, what’s going to be the most important economies emerging in the world? You’re going to place big bets on Africa, and you’re not going to be able to get massive big GMAT scores. Kenya 463 is the average. Some of these countries, it’s just like all in the 400s. It’s remarkable. So if you score a 600 from a country where the average is 450. Man, you’re really doing well.

 

[00:19:03.350] – Caroline

Yeah, right.

 

[00:19:08.070] – Maria

I was just going to say the country of China clearly thinks that Africa is going to be the next hotbed of growth. They’re investing so much money into that region that I know in the US, we may not be quite as it may not be quite on our radar, but other countries are taking note, other superpowers are taking note. And so, yeah, I mean, if you want talent, they need to start grooming that talent now to be ready for the opportunities later.

 

[00:19:31.430] – Caroline

Yeah.

 

[00:19:31.700] – John

And this goes back to how standardized test scores kind of are discouraged diversity, because we know based on the fact that if you’re an underrepresented minority and you grew up without the benefit of College educated parents speaking about professional things in public policy in the economy around the dinner table, you’re not going to score as well as someone who had those advantages. And so if you want to increase the diversity by recruiting more under represented minorities, you’re going to have to look at other aspects of their application to more fully evaluate them than a standardized test score because it’s just not going to work. And we’ve said this before about the test is in English, and students who are taking this test who didn’t grow up with English are also at a natural disadvantage. So you have all of these other factors that have long plagued standardized testing in general and are increasingly being acknowledged by University admission officials, whether at the graduate level or the undergraduate level, because they contradict goals for diversity. And I think that on some level, this move by INSEAD needs to be looked at in the context of these newer trends where schools want and have put great emphasis on diversity and inclusion and equity and gender balance and greater representation from countries around the world that are more diverse in the typical industrialized economies.

 

[00:21:20.070] – John

And if that’s going to happen, there’s going to have to be more flexibility in interpreting a standardized test score.

 

[00:21:26.740] – Caroline

John, I’m glad that you raised your children talking about public policy and the economy at the dinner table. I’m afraid that conversation at my dinner table is more about please don’t throw food at each other and stop arguing. Maybe my kids are going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to taking the GMA, but just to be able to the advocate and argue in favor of the team in terms of diversity, it’s very difficult. Right. For schools evaluating candidates from all across the world. And so it’s actually in some ways a benefit for candidates coming from different backgrounds to have a data point that enables them to be compared to the Wall Street investment banker and the McKinsey, London management consultant. Right. Because although they may not do, they may not get a 730 like those other candidates. It enables them to demonstrate academic ability and potential for the program in a way that may not be quite so obvious from their background, which may largely be because the school just is not familiar with where they went for their undergrad and they don’t know the company that the candidate is working out. And so that unfamiliarity with their background can also be a barrier.

 

[00:22:47.030] – Caroline

And so there’s also a benefit in taking the GMAT from the GRE in that it’s a common data point across the pool and it means that it gives you credibility and it reassures the school of your ability, which is especially valuable for candidates where they’re concerned. The school may not know that my undergraduate program was incredibly demanding and I did brilliantly and they may not know my company. They wouldn’t have heard of this, and they don’t know how difficult it was to get this job and how well I’m doing right. So there is a benefit in having that common data points.

 

[00:23:27.340] – John

True. I’m going to go back to what Maria said last week, her strategic advice to the Graduate Management Admission Council. Promote the executive assessment. It’s a shorter test. It’s an easier test. People could still get confidence. That is, the admissions officials can still get confidence in the person’s ability to do the meager quantity in the core curriculum in an MBA program. And everyone will be happy because they don’t have to study for three months to get a 700 plus score. Maria, I still think that’s the best advice ever for them.

 

[00:24:07.000] – Maria

I know they should call me.

 

[00:24:13.330] – John

Totally true. The other thing that’s happened this week and this is something that we’ve talked about in the past as well, is Harvard announced its round two decisions, meaning that the school released thousands of applicants in round two, released as their euphemism or rejected, and invited several hundreds of people to interview. And so this week there are a lot of very disappointed people out there who were turned down by Harvard Business School. And I know in the past, in fact, you could look this up because I thought we had great advice for you. If you were feeling down and disappointed after being rejected by Harvard Business School, you are not a loser. You are in very good company. The types of people who get rejected are really superb, and in many cases, there’s very little that separates them from the people who were chosen to be interviewed. But I wonder if you two might console many of the people who were turned down this week. Maria, what do you say to them?

 

[00:25:27.670] – Maria

And this is going to sound flippant, but I don’t really mean it that way. It’s Harvard. It’s not Hogwarts. I say that frequently. It’s not like, oh my gosh, I either get into Harvard Business School or my life is over and I’m going to be a troll that lives under a bridge. No, there aren’t these sort of binary outcomes in life. So not only is it like, look, I think we’ve spoken in the past about where people reach out and they’re like, what went wrong? And it’s like sometimes something went really wrong. Sometimes if you write a terrible essay or if you’re completely unqualified, sure. But most of the time it’s not that anything went wrong. It’s just that there was somebody else who maybe edged you out on ways that you will never know and you could have done nothing about it. And it’s not a reflection on you, but it’s also not a reflection on your future potential and where you’re going to go in life. I don’t say this to be sort of consoling in an artificial way. There are so many amazing MBA programs out there. As long as you go to a school that has a decent core curriculum, you’re going to get 80% of the education that is important from business school anyway.

 

[00:26:37.150] – Maria

And what you end up doing with that education is up to you. If you look at the Fortune 500 CEOs, yes, some of them have MBAs from fancy school, but a lot of them don’t. So it’s not like, oh, you have to get this MBA that has to be from Harvard otherwise. So sad, sad, trauma. And I also think, by the way, there are people who graduate from Harvard Business School who don’t necessarily achieve career success, who struggle professionally. They might have been the admissions mistakes a little. I know they like to say that they don’t make admissions mistakes, but I think sometimes they do. And so it’s also not like, oh, well, if I get in that’s it my life is rainbows and Sunshine for the rest of my life. So, I mean, you tried. God bless you. You wouldn’t have gotten in if you wouldn’t have tried. But please don’t hype yourself into thinking, thinking that like, oh, it’s over. And now, I don’t know, I should just cry for the rest of my life.

 

[00:27:44.250] – John

There was one comment on Reddit from someone who was rejected. He said he had to just go into a business meeting and he was doing everything he could to hold himself together.

 

[00:27:57.550] – Maria

It is tough for some people.

 

[00:28:00.650] – Caroline

It’s like the first time they’ve ever been rejected from it. They really want it right.

 

[00:28:05.270] – Maria

It’s a good point. That’s a good point, Caroline, especially the people who went to Yale undergrad Goldman Sachs or McKinsey gotten everything they’ve ever applied for. And this might be right. That’s a great point. It might be the first time someone told them no.

 

[00:28:19.990] – John

So let me remind all of you out there who were disappointed this week that there are plenty of other great schools and fantastic MBA programs that will very much invite you in and welcome you and will help you achieve your dreams. You don’t have to go to a Harvard or a Stanford or an INSEAD London Business School to get a great MBA education, to have a great career and a meaningful and influential one. So I think it’s always important to keep that into perspective. Meantime, I hope you enjoyed our podcast this week. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Maria. And good sleuthing, Caroline on that big breakthrough story on INSEAD accepting and welcoming lower GMAT scores. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’ve been listening to Business Casual.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Why INSEAD Is Welcoming Lower GMAT Scores
Maria |
February 8, 2022

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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