Why This MBA Admission Season Is A Once-In-A-Generation Opportunity To Get A Yes From A Top B-School
Maria |
June 15, 2022

Predictions have been made – the expectation is that application volumes this admissions season are going to be significantly down in comparison to past years. We’re coming off of a pandemic-related surge in app volumes the last two years, the strong US-job market is keeping a lot of would-be applicants OUT of the MBA applicant pool, and there’s an increasing trend for Europeans to want to “stay home” and attend European Programs.  

Our hosts in this episode of Business Casual discuss this prediction and why that translates to a potential once-in-a-generation opportunity for many applicants to get a yes from a top b-school (and maybe a slightly better chance at getting off of the waitlist this summer for a few folks).

Additionally, what do applicants really WANT out of an MBA? Why do they pursue one in the first place? The team revisits the core reasons for pursuing an MBA and discusses why applicants should keep their long term goals in mind as they’re maybe reconsidering applying right now.  

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.750] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host, Caroline Diarte Edwards, and Maria Wich-Vila. Maria, of course, is the founder  of Applicant Lab. It’s sort of a do it yourself journey where she becomes your Sherpa through many videos and instructional, I guess. What would you say? Instructional? What? Tutorials.

[00:00:35.180] – Maria

I say interactive exercises.

[00:00:37.370] – John

Okay, how about interactive tutorials? I love that word. Tutorial, you know, so much the better. Sounds good. Caroline, of course, is the former head of admissions at INSEAD, as well as the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. And if you want a shorter to hold your hands for the entire process with a lot of coaching in between, that’s the place to go. So there are two things we want to talk about today. The first thing is the prediction that this coming admission season is a lifetime opportunity to get into a great school, and we’ll explain why. The second thing we want to talk about is what prospective students really want above all else in an MBA program. But first, we want to address the coming admissions market. There is a sense that with applications down, particularly from domestic US applicants to US schools and European applicants who are increasingly favoring staying home and near home and applying to European schools, that business schools are going to be hard pressed to find both US citizens and Europeans in the applicant pool this coming year. Part of this is the result of very strong job market in the United States, which is keeping many young people who otherwise would not be applying to graduate school back in their jobs.

[00:02:11.990] – John

They’re getting raises and promotions to keep them where they are because talent is in short supply and there are plenty of opportunities. Even if you don’t want to stay at your company, there are plenty of opportunities to move on your own without the need for a graduate degree right now. So that’s leading to a significant decrease in the number of domestic apps. And with a recession around the corner, I might add, you could expect that if, in fact, the recession materializes next year, as some predict it will, there will be the typical soaring rates of application flow to the business schools, which will make it harder to get in. Caroline, it was one of your colleagues, Matt Simons, who said, basically your chances of getting into a great school this year might be better than they’ve ever been. What do you think?

[00:03:08.810] – Caroline

I think that’s definitely the case. We saw such a tremendous surge in applications triggered by the pandemic, and so it’s a cyclical market. So if there’s a surge, that’s going to be followed by a drop at some point. And so I think application volume is dropping right now for the upcoming season. With such a strong job market in the US, so less incentive for people who are working in some countries where the job market is so strong to leave their positions and head off to business school. They may feel now is not the right time. Right. Because they’re getting promotions, they’re getting great job offers, they’re getting pay rises, and so they feel less motivated to pull out of that and head back to graduate school. And at the same time, it’s more difficult right now, I think, for the US schools to attract some international applications. So, for example, from China, much lower volumes from China than they may have seen in the past. And the currency fluctuations, the dollar is nearly at parity now with the Euro. Right. So it makes it incredibly expensive or more expensive than it may have been in previous years for candidates who are based in the Eurozone to buy into US tuition fees.

[00:04:32.870] – Caroline

And so they may be more incentivized to stay closer to home because of those currency dynamics. So I do think that there’s going to be a drop in application volume this fall, and therefore, meeting the competition will probably be less than usual. And therefore, if you are thinking about going to business school, then go ahead. This is a great time to do it. This may be an opportunity to get in to a school that you might.

[00:04:59.680] – John

Not otherwise got into, particularly because if a repression does materialize in the following year, as is often the case, applications are counter cyclical to the economy, and they go up really fast. The other aspect of this is for people who are currently on wait list, which basically have been sort of Neverland, right? I mean, pretty much people who get taken off a waitlist typically or very few. But this may be a very different time, right, Maria?

[00:05:33.710] – Maria

Yes, absolutely. I think precisely for the reasons that Caroline and you have talked about, because the economy is doing so well and a lot of employers are desperate to hold on to talent. I’ve had some clients reach out to me and say, look, I was just offered the post MBA role I was hoping for now. So why would I go get the MBA? And I don’t have a good answer for it. I’m like, well, you could think about the long term skill development. But yeah, honestly, if I were in your shoes, I would also reconsider if this is why you’re going to business school in the first place. So I think the summer is going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity as well for people on the waitlist as well. I recently a couple of days ago, I heard from one of my clients who got off of the Harvard wait list, which is one of the tougher ones to get off of, only because their yield is so high. So many people who are offered a spot there take that spot and they’re committed to it. The minute they get that acceptance letter, they’re like, cool, I’m all in.

[00:06:32.150] – Maria

So therefore, getting off of the HBS wait list is usually pretty dire, a little bit tough to do. So I’m definitely seeing sort of anecdotally people already getting off of wait lists, and it’s just the beginning of June. So that to have that movement this early in the summer versus, say, July or August, it’s a pretty good indicator that I think a lot of people are opting to stay in the workforce. And I don’t know that they should, because I think what goes up must come down. And so right now your job might be awesome, and they just gave you that promotion. And then next year, if there’s a huge recession or some other wave of monkey pox, whatever takes over the world, you might be furloughed, right? You might be furloughed, or you might get laid off, as we have said, ad nauseam on this podcast, like the MBA is a long term something you do for your long term career. So I would urge anyone listening if you’ve got an offer in hand, even if your employer is trying to sweeten the pot for you to stay, I would just kind of think about that long term.

[00:07:39.240] – John

Yeah, that’s really good advice and advice we’ve given people over the time that we’ve been doing the podcast. I have heard that one top admissions official at a major school is predicting that this summer for the schools will be a bloodbaths, a blood bath in the sense that there will be a lot of people who will not attend, who were invited to attend. That’s called summer melt.. Summer melt is an actual term that admissions people use and typically results in. You have three offers. You can only accept one, or maybe for personal reasons, you decide not to go. And it’s usually a small percentage who don’t go for those kinds of reasons. But this year, because companies are actually fighting to hold on to their professional employees, the summer melt is going to be a lot larger than it typically is. So for those people on the waitlist, this is a good time. Not that it’s really a great time to go on anyway, let’s face it. But if you had to choose your time, this is the time to choose. The other evidence of how strong the job market is for young professionals occurred this past week.

[00:08:52.560] – John

Uva Darden became the first school to report some career stats for the class that just graduated two weeks ago. Median base salary for Garden MBAs up 21% to 175k. That is extraordinary. I think the last time we saw increases year over year of 20 plus percent. We’re probably thinking back to the 1980s in really the heyday of the MBA degree, when school is going to produce enough MBAs. Universities didn’t have enough business schools to produce them, and salaries were just galloping forward 21%. I don’t think anyone has seen a 21% year over year rise at median base salary in decades, and it’s not like a high percentage of the class wasn’t reporting in yet. In fact, 92% of the class received a full time job offer by graduation. That’s very high, particularly at graduation. Usually that’s a number you might see three months later. And 89% of the class accepted their full time offer by graduation at Darden. So that’s really good proof of how strong the market is for MBAs. And then you have to think if you’re an employer who has a young professional who is really hard working and brilliant, you don’t want to lose them.

[00:10:23.740] – John

So you’re going to offer them 20 plus percent increase in pay and greater responsibility and opportunity to do something that they really want to do. And that’s making for what we think will be a really great Commission season for those who want to apply to highly selected business schools. It still means you got to have the goods. I mean, isn’t that current, Caroline? Isn’t that right? And Maria, you can’t just go in there thinking, okay, now it’s my chance. I have that well below average GMAT score. My transcript from my undergraduate years is a mess. I haven’t been all that successful at work since I graduated from an undergraduate institution. Now is my chance to get in, let me tell you. No, because the applicant pools are very deep, and while your chances are significantly improved, we think in this admission season, you still got to prove that you can do the job and you’re still worthy of getting into a great school, right?

[00:11:24.590] – Caroline

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the people that it will really make a difference for are those high achievers who might struggle to get in because they have quite a common profile.

[00:11:34.380] – Maria

Right.

[00:11:34.750] – Caroline

So the management consultants or the investment bankers or the engineers who are applying in vast numbers to business schools and are incredibly well qualified. Right. Often have fantastic undergraduate track records, great GMATs, very impressive professional achievements, etc.

[00:11:52.670] – Maria

Etc.

[00:11:52.940] – Caroline

Etc. But struggle, unfortunately, to get into the very top schools just because there’s so many of them applying. And so I think it’s those profiles that will really benefit from this downturn, because, as you say, you still have to be very well qualified, and they are incredibly well qualified, but they just may not face quite as much extreme competition from vast numbers of people with similar profiles applying.

[00:12:19.170] – John

Right now, the other thing I’m thinking about is the psychological impact here when admissions offices go through a period where the yield decline significantly. And I think we’re going to see that with the summer mill and with companies fighting so hard to keep their people, they may be a little nervous and actually may be more willing to commit to people earlier in the cycle, particularly round one. Maria, do you think that holds any water, or is that just me speculating?

[00:12:51.590] – Maria

Yeah. I think when things are uncertain, you go for the candidate in the hand versus the candidate in the Bush. I do think that that will happen. Of course. Then in that case, I think the downside to sort of shifting more of your focus on around one as an admissions officer is that then there’s a whole extra several months in which that person might decide that they don’t want to come, that you’re giving them three extra months to go to their employer and say, give me a counter offer. What are you going to give me so that I don’t leave? So I’m not sure. I think if I were an admissions officer, I might try to front load my round one acceptance, but I think I would just lean very heavily on my waitlist because nobody knows. I mean, we don’t know if the again, if the monkey pox recession, something hits in October. Now our round two is suddenly going to get crazy. And boy, oh, boy, we gave away all of our spots in round one, and I wish we wouldn’t have. So I don’t know if hopefully they won’t jump the gun too much.

[00:14:02.570] – Maria

But, yeah, I mean, get that application in sooner because since right now things are hot, take advantage of that and don’t hold on to don’t hold off on applying, understanding that who knows what might happen in a few months.

[00:14:19.790] – John

That’s true. Caroline, you would agree that round one is the round you got to go for if you want to take advantage of this decline in applications, because if the recession starts to kick in in the fourth quarter of the year, you’re going to see a rush of people to try to get in second round.

[00:14:37.970] – Caroline

Absolutely. And if the schools, as you say, face a lot of summer melt and struggle with their yield for the class starting this fall, they will be under a lot of pressure to deliver better numbers for the following season. And so the temptation will be to make the most of round one in a context of uncertainty. But I do think, as Maria said, in that context of uncertainty and volatility, they will no doubt wait list quite a few people because they just don’t know how things are going to evolve. Round two, who knows if we’re actually going to go into recession?

[00:15:16.910] – Maria

Right.

[00:15:17.080] – Caroline

There’s a lot of talk of recession, but it may not transpire. So round 2 may not deliver the volume that they expect. So in which case they will start clearing people pretty quickly from the waitlist. But I would certainly encourage candidates who are ready to submit earlier rather than later this season.

[00:15:39.770] – John

Right must be predicting a recession. He says he’s going to lay off people in advance of the recession, even though his electric cars are as high as they’ve ever been. Jamie diamond is worried about a financial meltdown next year. He said it could happen. Let’s hope it doesn’t. But if it does, you know what’s going to happen. Application is going to explode again. They always have that is certain. So if you want to take advantage of this window, move through it, move through it quickly and make it happen. So this goes to the second issue that we want to discuss today, which is what do prospective students want above all else in an MBA program and published a survey by an organization called Niche Grad Searcher. And there was a sort of predictable response to this question among the MBA students who filled it out. The other prospective MBA students, not surprisingly, people were going to MBA programs to advance their careers. 37% reported being motivated by a planned career change, which actually on some level is low compared to what we know because the vast majority of people who go into full time MBA programs at the schools that we talked about and we cover are wanting to do a career switch.

[00:17:13.730] – John

Caroline, what’s your sense of that? Would you say that most people either want to advance their current career or simply want to change careers, and that is those are the two primary reasons people seek an MBA?

[00:17:28.610] – Caroline

Yeah. I think, as you say, actually, most of the people applying to the very top schools are looking to make some sort of career change, and that’s why they’re willing to make such a big investment in their career, because they want to open doors that might otherwise remain closed if they didn’t head off to business school. So while there’s always a core group of students who are heading off to business school to advance in the current sector and current field, there are far more students who are looking to make some sort of career change. And the vast majority of people will actually there’s always students who go to business school thinking, I’m going to carry on being a management consultant, and I’m going to go back to that afterwards. And then they have a change of heart when they’re at business school because it is a very transformational experience. And a lot of people have a change of heart while they’re there because they’re exposed to all these amazing opportunities and possibilities that might never have crossed their mind. And you learn a lot about yourself and you gain a lot of skills and discover possibilities that might not have crossed your mind.

[00:18:37.390] – Caroline

So that’s one of the wonderful things about business school. Right. Is that people go through this wonderful transformation and are able to go on to do things that they would never have dreamed of doing beforehand. So definitely a huge amount of change going on in people’s careers post MBA.

[00:18:59.270] – John

Another reason why people get graduate degrees is to get into fields that are otherwise close to them. And that’s certainly true with the MBA. Obviously, if you want to get into strategic management consulting, while Ibanking may be more open, it’s only open to undergraduates generally. So if you want to go into a banking and you’re not in a banking or a venture capital and private equity, although those fields are much harder to get into. Anyway, an MBA is a route to those jobs because without an MBA, it’s very difficult to get into those industries. Isn’t that true, Maria?

[00:19:38.150] – Maria

Yes, absolutely. The MBA, especially if you want to get into investment banking. I mean, if you’re in the military or whatever it is that you’re doing, if you were to just reach out to the banks, it might be. Now, some of the banks actually have started programs for veterans specifically targeting veterans. But it will be a lot easier for you to go to business school first and get that skill set because I don’t work for a bank. But I would guess if I were, I would think to myself, well, they’re about to spend two years learning all of these skills that I then don’t have to train them on. Right. I think it definitely helps some people get into some of the more standard post MBA routes, management consulting and banking being the two biggest ones. I will say that there are a lot of post MBA roles, to your point, that are, in fact, very difficult to get into without prior experience. Not just private equity and hedge funds, but even consumer packaged goods is one that they really do want to see some sort of marketing background especially well for their brand manager types of roles.

[00:20:46.850] – Maria

Yeah. I think this is why it’s also important for people to do a lot of research. Right. It’s one thing to say, well, 80% of people change their minds, but some of them are in a better position to change their minds than others in terms of what career they want after business school. And so just this is why I think it’s important if you are a veteran or if you are currently in the nonprofit space, reach out to the current veterans clubs, nonprofit clubs, etc. Find other people at the business schools who have your Premba background and ask them essentially point blank. Right. Here’s what I want to go work for a hedge fund after business school after being in the Peace Corps for two years. What do you think? Because don’t take it from me. Right. Do your research. You never know if there’s that one diamond in the rough who’s able to make that switch. But if so, you’re going to want to find out who they are and what exactly they did.

[00:21:35.930] – John

Yeah, that’s really good advice. The other piece of this is many people are often referred to employment reports at business schools to get an idea of the possibilities that a given school may provide. And I wonder if the two of you have any suggestions on how to read an employment report, because there’s a lot of kind of apples, bananas, oranges here. In other words, one employment report can be very different from another and very hard to compare against. There are some schools there are other schools that don’t reveal that at all. There are some schools that reveal average pay and not median pay. There’s some schools that report the opposite. So sometimes it’s difficult to compare apples and oranges and employment reports. But in general, what kinds of things should people be looking for and thinking about? Because here’s a good example. Kellogg puts a lot of people into consulting jobs and has done so for quite a few years, and it surprisingly has a small representation in the world of finance. Now, does that mean that if I want to go into finance, Kellogg is a less desirable school, or is it a more desirable school?

[00:23:01.270] – John

Because frankly, I have fewer people in my class who want those positions. How do you read that?

[00:23:08.870] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s a tricky one. First of all, I would say it’s important to look at the list of recruiters and if you’ve thought through your career goals and figured out which employers you’re targeting, just make sure that they’re actually coming to recruit people from the school that you’re targeting. Right. And look at how many people they’re recruiting. So generally, I would say if you’re looking to go into finance, it’s a positive sign. If there are several financial institutions coming to the campus and they’re recruiting in larger volumes, it suggests that when they come to your school, they probably have several positions that they’re looking to fill. They’re probably coming to campus to give presentations. They’re going to be interviewing on campus. It may make it easier to secure an interview. But it’s also true that you want to be at a business school where you can stand out. Right. So you want to be at a school where you can distinguish yourself among the student body if you’re looking to get into a field that is incredibly competitive. And so do look at the profile of candidates that they are recruiting and whether you have the right profile.

[00:24:28.140] – Caroline

Right. Because the most competitive field, private equity, as Maria said, and so on, they are not recruiting just any MBA student from top business school. They are scrutinizing profiles and hand picking certain students to invite to interview. And so you need to understand whether you have even if you go to that school, whether you have the right profile to secure an interview with your target recruiter.

[00:25:04.430] – John

Maria, do you have thoughts on that?

[00:25:07.250] – Maria

Yeah, I think it’s a fine line. I think it depends which post MBA route you want to take. I think. Yes. For example, let’s take finance at Kellogg. Yes. The good news is that you’ll have less competition. But I also think that employers are looking at it less from a school by school quota. And I think they’re just looking for the talent that will fill their needs. And so I would guess if I’m an investment bank based in Chicago and I interview people at Booth and I interview people at Kellogg, I might be selling more of my pool with people from Booth only because it is more quantitatively. It is more famous. It is more well known for being quantitatively rigorous. And I’m not trying to imply that Kellogg is not quantitatively rigorous, but it is certainly known for that. And so I wonder if part of it is, yeah, I might stand out more if I’m at Kellogg, but also I would worry a little bit about am I going to have the resources around me if I want to switch into something like finance? Are there going to be enough students around me that will help guide me in making that switch?

[00:26:07.430] – Maria

Because if everyone from the sort of Midwest area who’s a finance whiz goes to Booth, yeah, there’ll be more competition there, quote unquote, but also there will be more people who can help me and who can show me the ropes and things like that. But I would say for the more niche, not necessarily niche, but for the less overwhelmingly popular routes. I do think that’s also looking at the higher percentages makes a huge difference, things like entertainment and media, real estate or health care. That’s where you can see tremendous variability from school to school. And that is definitely an indicator. If you want to go into real estate and one school sends twice as many people on a percentage wise basis as another school, that’s probably a pretty good indicator that’s a more developed path or entryway into that field. Now, I would also say, don’t trust it blindly. As Caroline said, you’ve got to reach out to people, because the other thing that might happen is at a certain school, it becomes sort of like it’s like the circle of life from The Lion King, like if a school is known for sending people to real estate, they might attract more people from real estate.

[00:27:13.580] – Maria

And so that’s something that I think one thing I want folks to be a little bit cautious of is if you’re talking about, let’s say, working at McKinsey, a school might say, yes, we sent 50 people to McKinsey last year, but what you don’t know is that 30 of them were from McKinsey anyway. And we’re sponsored. And so getting to the core of which school is really going to actually help me make a switch. And I wish there were an easy magic one solution to this, but it really does come down to just reaching out to the consulting club at different schools and saying, hey, here’s what I do right now. How many people in the consulting club looked like me two years ago? And where are they going now? Because that’ll at least it’ll strengthen your application because you’ll be able to point to that as evidence that it is a feasible switch. But you’ll also when that first tuition bill comes due, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable about taking out that loan or whatever it is and making that investment that you might have to make which is a substantial one indeed.

[00:28:17.150] – John

In fact, the survey we just mentioned has affordability very high up is a concern that many prospective students have about graduate education in general. Again, we urge you to look at the long term, not the short term. And if you are looking at the long term, you might think this is a great time for you to apply. We think it is we think you should apply in round one. That’s what we think. So there you have it. Maria and Caroline, thank you so much for all your help here. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’re listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast.

Why This MBA Admission Season Is A Once-In-A-Generation Opportunity To Get A Yes From A Top B-School
Maria |
June 15, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah,

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

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

So

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How many out of us military academies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And because you see in the data that works.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

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