Why The MBA Is An Ideal Way For A Military Veteran To Transition To Civilian Life and a Business Leadership Role
Maria |
November 10, 2022
As we celebrate Veterans Day, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline will discuss more about vets in this episode of Business Casual, the podcast that covers all things related to MBA / business school admissions.
 
Keep reading to see which topics we covered in our discussion, check out 2 organizations helping veterans pursue higher education, or jump straight to the podcast directly (just want to skim what we talked about? You can jump to the transcript)!

  • Why is pursuing an Masters in Business Administration (MBA) one of the best paths for military veterans transitioning back into civilian life? What career opportunities in business leadership roles are available for veterans?
    • (Here’s a hint: Graduate business school can be a clean slate / fresh start on a business career! Many employers, in particular, management consulting companies and investment banks, are more than happy to hire veterans who have gotten MBAs! They see you as a potentially perfect combination of real-world leadership experience, combined with a formal management education. It’s a given that you have discipline, strong work-ethic, and often, have deep experience leading groups of your peers in performing difficult tasks!)

  • What are the advantages or relevance of being a veteran when applying for an MBA in terms of experience, reputation, and knowledge?
  • How can a veteran best describe or explain their experiences in their MBA admissions essays, resume, and interview to maximize their chances of acceptance?
  • What should former members of the armed forces consider NOT doing as part of their graduate school applications? That is, what are the most common mistakes?
  • Is one type of experience more valuable than others?
    • (e.g. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines? Training others? Leading them in to battle? Running operations on a base? Becoming an instructor at a service academy? Working on designing new technologies, such as defense or aerospace?)

  • Speaking of the military service academies such as West Point, Annapolis, etc., do graduates of those programs have preference or an advantage when compared to veterans who might have done ROTC at another college?
    • (Hint! Not necessarily — it’s what you did in the military, how much leadership you demonstrated, that matters more than where you did your undergraduate degree!)

  • As a veteran who has been shaped and molded by experience throughout his or her time in the military, what are the transferable skills or topics of discussion that you can bring to the class if you get admitted?

If you’re a veteran interested in getting an MBA to transition into a business or management career after the military, here are some resources you might want to check out!

  • Service2School: a non-profit that provides free resources (such as individual mentors who are current students or alumni of various colleges and universities!) to apply to a number of opportunities in higher education: college / undergraduate, masters of business MBA, and law school JD. The link to their MBA-specific application resources is here: https://service2school.org/mba-resources/
  • VeteransGuide.org: helping veterans get the maximum VA benefits they are rightfully entitled to. Of particular interest to readers of this blog is their assistance with getting GI Bill benefits to help fund your pursuit of higher education: https://veteransguide.org/va-benefits/gi-bill/
  • ELFI.com: an organization designed to assist borrowers with student loan refinancing as well as undergraduate, graduate, and parent private student loans. Many current service members and veterans are unaware of loan forgiveness options available to them. To help students, they’ve created a guide to Military and Veteran Loan Forgiveness Programs: http://www.elfi.com/military-veteran-student-loan-forgiveness-programs
  • And of course, ApplicantLab.com to give you expert, detailed advice on how to craft your best application! As someone with the self-discipline of a veteran, the Lab might be perfect for you, since presumably you are a strong self-starter… and I am honored to have helped many veterans in the past get into amazing MBA programs! ๐Ÿ™‚

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.810] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. Today we’re going to talk about Veterans Day. We’re actually recording this on Veterans Veterans Day, although you won’t hear it for a few days. And we want to talk a little bit about how veterans often use MBA programs as a transition to civilian life. Who’s best qualified to get into a great MBA program from the military? Who, if you can’t get into Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Kellogg, Columbia, you name your M7 or top 15 school. Will a second tier school help you as well? And if you are in the military and you’re thinking about wanting an MBA and you want to start right away, should you go online? And will that ultimately help ease the transition into civilian life when you leave the military? So we’re here with, as always, Caroline Diarte Edwards, the former admissions director of INSEAD, who is the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. And Maria Wich Villa, who is the founder of Applicant Lab. Maria, you’ve worked with some people who are from the military and help them transition into MBA programs and ultimately into civilian life.
 

[00:01:27.620] – John

What’s your take on this?
 

[00:01:29.240] – Maria

I think the MBA is an excellent transition into civilian life. It’s probably one of the best routes in I do think that veterans definitely have some advantages in the application process, but also some disadvantages. So the advantages are that nobody can question your loyalty, your work ethic, your ability to get things done, even in difficult circumstances. The biggest challenge that military candidates have is that the admissions officers may or may not understand what is elite and what isn’t. So it’s the same with anyone who has a very specialized job. You can read a resume and say, oh, I know exactly what that means. I know that this position is a very difficult one to get. I know that getting that sort of commendation or that transfer means that you’re the best of the best. But sometimes you can’t assume that the admissions office will know that. So it’s up to you as a candidate to really explain in the resume and or the essays or even your recommendations to really point out what about your previous background has been extraordinary.
 

[00:02:30.850] – John

And you mentioned something about being highly selective. And we all know that candidates who go to highly selective undergraduate schools and have highly selective jobs often are favored in elite MBA admissions, in part because they’ve already passed through very fine screens. And I’m just going to say it here. Admission directors are often risk adverse. And if someone has gone to Yale and Princeton and ended up at McKinsey or Goldman, they’re a sure bet. I mean, you don’t have to worry about making an admission mistake. So I wonder if, in fact, some of these jobs that the military might have may or may not be highly selective. But that’s why it’s important to describe exactly how hard it was to get that job, right?
 

[00:03:20.400] – Maria

Yes, exactly. And for example, if you have there are apparently something like occupational codes or military occupational specialties. And so those are literally almost like number codes that say, okay, this is exactly what my job is in the military. So, for example, if you have a position, if your military occupational specialty code is like, say, a level above where it should be in terms of your age or the number of years of your service, or if you’re performing the duties of someone who is at a higher level, you have to sort of explain that and make sure that it’s clear as one example. But the good news is about the military is that almost everything is quantified. So at the end of every type of volunteering or not volunteering, but every type of work that you’re doing, you will be given a rank. So I was ranked number two out of 200. I was ranked number one out of 40, whatever that is. So that’s another thing that you should use to your advantage, right.
 

[00:04:18.040] – John

Caroline, your thoughts?
 

[00:04:19.650] 

Yeah.
 

[00:04:19.920] – Caroline

I mean, it’s a great path. As Maria said, the MBA is a wonderful springboard for a career transition, and it can open so many different doors that would otherwise be closed. And that’s the fantastic thing about going to business school, people coming from a vast array of backgrounds. Right. It just gives you a fresh start and gives you credibility with employers that you wouldn’t otherwise have. So it’s a great education to get. The important thing is to think about what are the transferable skills that you have built, because sometimes candidates are concerned that my experience isn’t relevant to business school.
 

[00:04:59.610] 

Right.
 

[00:04:59.800] – Caroline

What am I going to have to contribute to the classroom compared to someone who’s an investment banker or someone who’s a management consultant? My experience is very, very different. I haven’t worked in business before. But what you need to think about is breaking down the elements of your experience and the skills that you’ve developed into those transferable skills that will be relevant to business school, but also very importantly relevant to future employers and recruiters. So leadership skills are obviously a key area that people are able to build in the military, often to a much more advanced level than someone coming from civilian life. And breaking down the elements of that and communication teamwork, the ability to work under pressure and stress, you’ve probably developed that to a much more advanced degree than someone who’s come from a different background. It’s important to think carefully about your profile and think about it, not so much in the military terms, but in terms of those specific skills and abilities that you’ve developed. And breaking it down, thinking about how you can convey a clear story about how you’ve developed as an individual and a professional during your time in the military and the part of that has put you on and who you are today as a result of that experience.
 

[00:06:23.330] – John

Right. I wonder if you really want to go to an elite school, is it necessary to have gone to a military Academy like West Point or the Naval Academy, or is it possible to get into Harvard in the United States with a degree from a non military Academy school if you’re a veteran? Any thoughts on that?
 

[00:06:47.300] – Maria

Yeah, I can take that one. Absolutely. So there are a couple of different paths into the military. The main one is going to a service Academy. The other one is you can do ROTC at another undergraduate institution. And then the third option is officer candidacy School, which is for people who are essentially my understanding of civilians. And then you basically go through this very intense training program. And if you survive it and get out the other side, you are, in fact, given a leadership position essentially equivalent, I think, if you had gone to one of the academies. But don’t quote me on that. But the point is there are those three different entrance points, and each one of them is actually, I think, a viable path in it’s more about what you do once you’re in the military. So, for example, I had a former client who had gone to an elite College undergrad, had done a couple of years in some sort of standard post College, pre MBA type of role. I don’t remember if it was banking or consulting, but then decided to enlist in the Marines, went to officer candidate School, and did end up going to HBS.
 

[00:07:47.570] – Maria

And when I spoke with him, he said one of the things that at least HBS in particular seemed to really value more so than where you went for your undergraduate experience was infantry or frontline combat type of experience. So because Caroline just mentioned the advanced leadership skills, I don’t care how good of a banker you are, how amazing your spreadsheet work is if you’ve never actually led people in battle or I worked with someone once who literally jumped out of a helicopter with ten other Navy people to rescue someone. When you have those sorts of stories and you think about a transferable skills, maybe you’re not helping out of a helicopter, but if you’re meeting a big deadline at work, you’re going to be able to keep your cool and you’re going to be able to motivate people. So he said that it was more about within the military who has had either the bigger leadership roles, as in leading people in a combat situation, or also in my experience, there are certain groups within the military that are, for example, creating innovations or are trying to develop the next generation of you name it.
 

[00:08:55.890] – Maria

Right. Warplanes or missiles on Marine submarines, whatever that is. And I’ve had good luck with people who are working for those innovation divisions, even though they are not on the front lines, but they do have really interesting stories. They are often managing budgets. They are often managing dozens of people. And so those experiences in particular really stand out. And one final one that stands out is I worked with someone once who was actually a graduate of one of the service academies and had been asked back as an instructor. And when I ran out of my other former client, he said, wow, that’s a really big deal if the Academy asks you back to be a teacher after a couple of years. So it’s not enough to simply be in the military to get into, as you said at the beginning, John, the schools are looking for any indicator of elite performance that they can use in a proxy. And so even within the military, there are definitely some assignments that are more plum or more elite than others, as it were. And so the schools may not immediately know that, but they are starting to get a better sense as more and more veterans apply.
 

[00:10:02.710] – Maria

And again, it’s up to you as a candidate to let them know.
 

[00:10:05.880] – John

Caroline, are the schools that are known to be super friendly to veterans?
 

[00:10:11.370] – Caroline

Well, there are some schools that have special programs and clubs and so on. So MIT Sloan, they have a Veteran’s Visit day where you can go as a group and understand how you would fit into the program and what you can get out of the program specifically for your profile. Some of the schools have clubs for veterans, so I think Tark and Wharton have veterans clubs. It’s good to connect with people with a similar profile at the schools so that you can understand what resources you’ll have, what support you’ll get, what sort of community you’ll be part of. So definitely do that research ahead of time and try to reach out to current students who have come from a military background or alumni to understand to what extent they found a like minded community at the school supportive community and how they felt that veterans were welcomed into the program.
 

[00:11:15.750] – John

Yeah, I would think that the alumni club, or rather the veterans club on campus would be the ideal place to go and just talk to different people about the experience that they’re having at the school and what they did to get in would be very valuable, I would imagine.
 

[00:11:37.290] – Maria

I also want to give a shout out to an organization called Servicetoschool.org that’s Servicetoschool.org all one word. It is a nonprofit that does help people from the military make the transition to civilian life. And one of the things they do offer is advice for MBA, as well as College and other types of educational pathways. So reach out to them for sure.
 

[00:12:00.100] – John

Yeah, I know one of the heads of that organization in San Francisco, and it’s a terrific organization. You’re going to get help for free, and you’re going to get help from people who really have done this before and have done it well. The person I knew went to Stanford and got his MBA. He was a terrific guy. Service to school. Look him up. Really helpful. Now here’s another thing about veterans. When they apply, typically they’re older than mainstream NBA candidates and elite programs. And I wonder if admissions officials automatically know that. Look, if you were in the military, you had to sign up for X number of years, and so you might very well be in your early 30s instead of 28. Does that need any explaining or do enough admission officials understand that?
 

[00:12:55.890] – Caroline

I think that’s fine. It’s often the case that candidates from nontraditional backgrounds will be a bit older than the average candidate. So I don’t think that you need to explain that. Certainly if you’re not far off, not many years off the average, if you’re early 30s, they will understand that you’ve had a certain commitment, and it’s taken a number of years to get to the point where you are and to be ready to make that transition out of the military. So I wouldn’t feel that it’s a disadvantage. And I don’t think that you need to be concerned about explaining that away.
 

[00:13:34.360] – John

Good. And what about the European schools? Do you think that they are as friendly as the US schools for veterans?
 

[00:13:41.730] – Caroline

Well, I’m not sure that there are many sort of specific programs that you have in the US. So in the US, you have domestic clubs and paths and support organizations, as we’ve said, geared up to helping people from the US military get into US based schools. So it’s a little bit different with the international schools because there’s people coming from all over the world and a lot of different backgrounds. And so you may not have those sort of specific channels for a specific military going into a domestic school. But having said that, the schools have incredibly diverse student bodies, and that will always include some people with military backgrounds. So certainly in ICS, for example, a lot of people coming from Israel have very strong military backgrounds. That’s a common track to see and worked with candidates from the British armed forces going into international business schools. So it’s a common path. Candidates from military organizations all over the world would look to apply to business school to make that career switch and make a transition.
 

[00:15:03.410] – John

Yeah. And just as a mainstream MBA candidate going to a European school will be in a more globally diverse cohort, the military candidate also would be in a more diverse, globally oriented veteran cohort because they’re going to have veterans from all kinds of different countries, which kind of makes for an interesting experience in and of itself.
 

[00:15:27.040] – Caroline

Yes, it is. And these calls are specifically looking to recruit very diverse profiles. And the military often has great experience as well by the nature of their assignments. And the international schools are specifically looking for that international experience. So certainly it can be a great background to have a very relevant background for those international programs.
 

[00:15:51.830] – John

So let’s say you don’t exactly have the staff background to get into a top 25 school. Is the second tier school going to do going to be just as good to help you make a transition into civilian life, something like an Arizona State University of Georgia, one of these kind of schools. What do you think?
 

[00:16:17.210] – Maria

Yeah, I absolutely think look, John. Well, it’s better than nothing. It’s much, much better than nothing because people seem to forget that business school is still school. Surprisingly enough, you actually go to class and you learn things. Imagine that. I think the skills that you will learn at a business school. One of the reasons I think all three of us are so in favor of the business school education is that it does cover so many different topics that can be applied in so many different situations. So even if you should go back to the military or something related to public service, you’re still going to know how to build a budget. You’re going to have an idea how to manage a team. You’re going to have an idea of how to position things, to market them or to convince other people of them. So I think that the skills that you get in terms of the two years that you spend in business school or even the one year if it’s an accelerator program, the amount of information that you’re going to get that will help you make some sort of a career Pivot, it doesn’t have to be from a fancy school.
 

[00:17:17.620] – John

Yeah. And you’re going to make connections as well, and you’re going to get a lot of help, typically if you go to a really good second tier school. So those are the schools I would look at the second group in the 50 after the top 25, are all great schools that are going to help someone make a really good transition to civilian life. The other issue, which I find a lot of military people do, is they take online courses. And obviously, there’s a large portfolio of online and BA programs today, including at very good schools like the University of Michigan, Carnegie millenn, Indiana University, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, Rice and others. And I wonder what you two think of someone in the military who is stationed abroad but might want to get started on an MBA program in anticipation of leaving the military two years, three years out. Should they be going to an online MBA program, and would that help them? Maria?
 

[00:18:30.130] – Maria

Yeah, for the same reasons that we just mentioned. Right. I think the education is still there. Obviously, the networking opportunities are not going to be there quite as much. But to the extent that it will help you make that transition perhaps a little bit more quickly because you can probably get part or all of much of the degree while you are still serving in the military, perhaps then it could help accelerate that. And really, you just need that first job out of business school. Once you get a job anywhere in the private sector or in a, quote, unquote business role, as long as you do well in that job, that’s what’s going to matter. It’s your track record professionally that then begins to speak for itself. And that’s where you build your post military career. So even though the opportunities may not be quite as elite or as shiny, you can still make a really good life for yourself. You just need to get that first job and do well in it. And if you’ve already been in the military, you will probably do well because you have that work ethic and that spirit of commitment.
 

[00:19:30.190] – Maria

So I still think it’s worth it.
 

[00:19:32.550] – John

Yes, Caroline, you agree?
 

[00:19:34.290] – Caroline

Yes, I do. I think it depends on your goals. Maria said and Maria said it’s an academic experience. Right. A big part of why people go to business school is to build a foundation of knowledge, and you can get a lot of that through these online programs. So in terms of knowledge building, giving you that strong foundation, that will give you the ability and the confidence to land job post MBA and do well, be professionally successful. With a lot of those online programs, you can achieve that you don’t have necessarily the same opportunity to build close knit relationships. You need to think about what are your goals from the program and whether the program that you’re looking at. If that’s online, that’s going to give you the ability to move forward in the right direction. But in terms of facilitating a career switch and building the knowledge that you need to make a switch and have that springboard to open doors, then a lot of those programs would be a great opportunity as well.
 

[00:20:46.130] – John

Yeah. I would offer this advice. If you’re looking at online and via programs don’t necessarily go for the cheapest ones. And the reason is because there’s far less career support and coaching in a bargain based on online MBA than there would be in one that’s priced a bit higher, where they can afford to basically set aside resources that are for career development that would help with the transition from the military to the civilian life. Indiana Kelly would be a really good option here because they’re not a six figure online MBA program as some are. I think there are about seven or eight of those now, and those are all great programs, and you’re going to get a lot of support. But that’s really expensive. Indiana Kelly, I think, is priced in the right range, and they have terrific coaching. In fact, they offer a career coach for life in their online MBA program. And all other coaches are trained to be executive coaches, and they have really an amazing career machine at that school. So that would be one option. And if you’re shopping for an online MBA, you should ask to talk to alum who have been in the military and who used it for the purpose that you’re using it for and ask them directly, what kind of help did you get from the school to get to land your first job and even after that and did you have comrades in the program that you felt a meaningful relationship with even though you were taking your degree long distance?
 

[00:22:33.070] – John

I think those are important questions to ask to sort of kick the tires before you actually commit to an online MBA experience. Well, this is our salute to veterans. We honor you, we thank you for your service and we really do think an MBA is a superb experience, a one or two year program in between these two important chapters of your life that I think would be really an incredible experience for you and really smooth that transition and set you off on a really great trajectory. So, Caroline and Maria, thank you for offering all that great advice and for me. John Byrne at Poets and Quants thanks for listening.
 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Why The MBA Is An Ideal Way For A Military Veteran To Transition To Civilian Life and a Business Leadership Role
Maria |
November 10, 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 โ€˜23 and the class of โ€˜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

New around here? Iโ€™m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I โ€œscaled myselfโ€ by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read ourย rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!