How Competitive Will MBA Admissions Be In 2021-2022?
Maria |
September 7, 2021

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline debate whether or not this year’s admission session will be less or more competitive than the previous ones, considering the number of variables that influence the candidate pool.

They also discuss law school vs. business school and which is more competitive given Harvard Law School had more applicants than Harvard Business School this year for the first time in years. 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.510] – John

Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with our co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. Maria, of course, is the founder of Applicant Lab and a Harvard MBA. And Caroline is the former admissions director of INSEAD, an alum of the school, and the cofounder of Fortuna Admissions. So two things for this week that we want to discuss. We had predicted that this past admission season would likely be the most competitive ever. And when we think about competitiveness, what we really think about are the basic stats, GPAs, GMAT’s and selectivity, the acceptance rate based on the number of applications received versus admits and the seats available in a given class, it turns out to have been much more mixed. So we want to put that into perspective and we want to make a prediction about this coming admissions season and whether or not it will be as competitive as this last one has been or less. So the other thing we want to tackle is law school versus business school. For the first time in many years, Harvard Law School drew more applicants than Harvard Business School.

[00:01:27.600] – John

The admit rate is lower than it is at the business school, and that’s a total reversal of what it had been. More telling, perhaps, is that the law school received 17.8 applicants for every classroom seat this past year, while Harvard had 10.7 candidates for its seats. But let’s turn first to this past admission season. And Caroline, do you think it was more competitive than the previous season but still fall short of being the most competitive season ever?

[00:02:04.200] – Caroline

Yeah, I don’t think it was the deluge of applications that we thought it might be, but it was an incredibly competitive season. It’s very difficult to know. Right, because there were so many variables last year that were creating changes in the applicant pool, challenges for international applicants thinking about potentially studying in the US or in other countries that sort of put a damper on things, challenges taking the tests, the test centers being closed, and then the online test. Some people weren’t very happy with the online version of GMAT. There were a lot of different things going on. It’s difficult to dissect exactly how that impacted the actor Paul at different schools, but I do think that in general, more people threw their hat into the ring than might have otherwise done had we not had the pandemic and the various changes that threw leaks into turmoil last year. So I do think it was a very competitive season, but very challenging for the schools because some people were applying in a rather speculative manner. So not necessarily some of that additional volume would not have been at the highest quality, and then some of those accidents would not have been the most committed applicants either.

[00:03:19.760] – Caroline

So very difficult for the schools to manage their yield in the context of so much volatility so certainly a very interesting season. The job market bounced back faster than we expected. Right. So when there’s a strong job market, typically business school applications volume can be a bit depressed because people are getting great job offers and they’re getting promotions and they don’t feel the need to go back to business school straight away. And so I think that strengthening of the job market more rapidly than you would normally see after an economic downturn meant that there wasn’t such a dramatic increase in application volume after all, which in many ways, actually, I think it’s a good thing because the problem is if you have a huge surge in application volume, it can sometimes be followed by a big dip. Right. Because people who might have otherwise applied in twelve months time or in two years, suddenly everyone applies at once, and then that can mean that it’s drying up your pipeline for future cycles. And so it’s not always a good thing that there’s a big surge in application involved at one time.

[00:04:30.060] – John

And Maria, what was your take on this past admission season? Of course, we’re still waiting for some schools to report.

[00:04:36.770] – Maria

Yeah. Like Caroline said, there are so many variables and so many unprecedented variables that I think last year was very competitive. I think this year is also going to be a difficult to predict year, because I think on the one hand, we’re going to have a lot of reapplicants who last year applied during the very competitive year last year, who might have otherwise gotten in but who didn’t get in. And so now they’re reapplying this year. So I think it also shifted forward in terms of pipeline. I think it might have also in some ways shifted forward very competitive candidates to this season. But I think this year will be equal to or maybe even lower volumes than last year, because with the world kind of well, at least we were hoping a few months ago that the world would be back to normal. Now in some parts of the world, it’s not going back to normal as quickly as one would hope. But in general, I think that this downturn was not one that was due to some sort of systemic weakness in the overall economy. It was sort of this external shock event that does have there is a way out if enough people were to comply with it.

[00:05:45.210] – Maria

And so I think that that’s why the recovery in the economy has been so much faster. And so I think the impact on business schools will also be faster. I think it’s going to level out relatively quickly.

[00:05:56.610] – John

Yeah. When you look at the schools that have already announced their number, it is a mixed bag. Word was up two and a half, Harvard up 5% in applications, Kellogg 20%, Columbia was down a little bit. Not a lot. You had increases at Yale, Duke, Cornell, Anderson, Duke and Cornell. They were on the order of 12%, you pretty much had across the board increases in GMAT class hours, but in many cases that was because the GMAT scores had plummeted the year before when the pandemic hit hardest and the market flooded with applicants and probably applicants that were having trouble getting a good test result when the switch was to the online test. So you got Wharton, they’re up eleven points on their class average. For the GM, you look at eleven points, UVA Darden up twelve, Cornell up ten, UCLA up eight, Yale up six, and Dartmouth, they stayed the same at Kellogg, which saw that 20% plunge in applications because it had such a massive increase the year before, and the median at Harvard remain the same. So I think you’re right. I think while it’s still fairly competitive, I don’t think we’re going to see a bloodbath.

[00:07:24.360] – John

Someone out there was asking, I think a legitimate question about whether or not they’d be an admissions bloodbath in this season would be incredibly competitive. And I wonder, too, what kind of activity the two of you are seeing. Maria Applicant Lab for round one deadlines, and Caroline, for your consulting firm, for people preparing for round one.

[00:07:49.310] – Maria

Yeah, for me, I think the volumes are up a little. I think the biggest change, though, is less in volume and more in how early people decided to start to get ready. I think the rumors of last year’s challenging environment trickled through, and so I think a lot of people decided to get started much earlier than they might otherwise. And I think that there’s a little bit more anxiety and uncertainty in the applicant pool just because of the variability of the past year or two.

[00:08:18.600] – John

Yeah, that makes sense. Caroline, are you seeing stabilization of the growth you saw the previous year for round one?

[00:08:27.620] – Caroline

Yeah, we’re seeing similar volumes, so I think it’s going to be strong, but I don’t think it’ll be up versus last year.

[00:08:34.220] – John

Right.

[00:08:35.020] – Caroline

And I agree with Maria. We saw a lot of people signing up very early. It seems to get earlier every year, and that’s a good thing.

[00:08:43.360] 

Right.

[00:08:43.540] – Caroline

I think it’s good to start earlier rather than later, but definitely a lot of people are getting serious about their applications in the spring this year.

[00:08:51.950] – John

Caroline, do you think, as Maria does, that we’re going to see a surge of reapplicants in this new round?

[00:08:59.110] – Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s somewhat inevitable after a very competitive and a bit of a crazy season and the disruption of last year, that there will be people who didn’t get into a school of their choice last year and therefore reapplying now. So that can raise the level of competition overall because often they are very well prepared candidates. Right. They’ve been through the cycle. Once they’ve learned from that process, they’ve probably hopefully reflected on why they didn’t get in the first time round, and hopefully they’re coming back with a better application next time round. So they can often be incredibly strong applicants. And, of course, the school the schools just take them seriously because they understand that if you’re reapplying, you’re serious about this, you’re really motivated, you really want to go to that school if you’re coming back a second time. And sometimes people even apply more than two times. Right. So the schools do credit those applicants for their commitment and motivation, and that can give them some additional credibility and therefore create strong competition for the fresh batch of applicants.

[00:10:07.830] – John

Yes. Now, neither of you think there was a so-called bloodbath in the 2021 admissions cycle, right?

[00:10:15.620] – Caroline

It wasn’t. No. I mean, it was definitely a very competitive year, but great candidates were still getting into great schools. So I think the level of competition was a bit higher than usual. But I don’t think it was sort of completely extreme.

[00:10:34.490] – John

You take that same position, right?

[00:10:36.570] – Caroline

Yeah.

[00:10:36.980] – Maria

I wouldn’t call it a bloodbath, but I did see some people who I think in prior years with fewer applicants and a little bit less competition, I think in prior years, they might have gotten into school that perhaps they didn’t get into last year. So then they were stuck with the difficult choice of do I take the bird in the hand, or do I turn down that one school and then reapply next year to my dream school with nobody really knows what’s going to happen, it’s hard to advise them on what to do.

[00:11:04.440] – John

Yeah. Exactly. What did you find that they did? Did they hold off or did they decide just to go?

[00:11:11.020] – Maria

I think most people decided to go. Well, personally, there is just so much variability on a regular year, much less than a year. So I tend to say take the bird in the hand. There are so many amazing schools. You’re going to get similar, if not identical, opportunities at most top schools, et cetera, et cetera. And also with the return to in person learning, which has happened this year, I think that a lot of the doubts from previous years are no longer, you know, you might as well just go. You’re going to have a great time, you’re going to get a great education, and you’re going to have a great outcome pretty much regardless of where you go, because at the end of the day, it’s the person that makes the career, not the school. And so if you hustle and network and prepare for certain types of interviews, you’re going to get certain types of jobs regardless of if you’re at a fancier school or not. That’s my opinion. So I think a lot of them took it. But I also was like, I don’t know. You don’t know what’s going to happen next year.

[00:12:09.210] – Maria

Just grab it.

[00:12:12.810] – John

Seize the day.

[00:12:14.500] – Maria

That’s right. Car pay, acceptance.

[00:12:18.810] – Caroline

I like that.

[00:12:20.970] – John

I like that. Law school versus business school. I think that for some people, this is actually a consideration, even a debate. And we know law school had been on the Wayne for a number of years, even much more than business schools before the pandemic increase. And in many cases this past year, we’ve seen historic rises at the elite law schools and application volume, but they’re climbing out of a big hole, recovering from a much deeper and sustained dip than B schools. But what was interesting to me is seeing that Harvard Law School was up a third in application this past year, nearly 10,000, while the Harvard business goal was up a mere 5%. And Harvard Law School drew more applicants for fewer positions than the business school and, in fact, cut its admit rate nearly in half, from 12.9% to 6.9%, when the Harvard Business School admit rate is around 9%. I’m wondering, Maria, when you were on campus, could you tell the law school students from the MBA students?

[00:13:32.100] – Maria

I couldn’t, but I don’t know that there was a whole lot of cross registration. I mean, I did take a business law class my second year, which was the hardest, most intensive class, I think one of the hardest classes offered at the school. And so I wouldn’t have had any law school students enrolled in that because why? I don’t know that I had a lot of cross registrants in general in most of my classes, but that could have just been because of the classes I took. So, no, if there weren’t any, I couldn’t tell. But I do think that I did. Well, there were a few where it was just the case method is just such a unique style of managing a classroom and discussing a topic that I do think that some of them you could sort of tell maybe sometimes that they weren’t quite sure what to do, and they would raise their hand and then talk for 20 minutes and you’re like, no, stop. But aside from that, you really couldn’t tell.

[00:14:22.790] – John

And there was a general belief, though, that as law school applications were really in the tank for quite a few years, they really dramatically dropped many schools, reduced their enrollments. There were some law schools that went out of business. There was a sense that had become more of the all purpose degree and that many people who would have gone to law school in past years decided to go to business school instead. And I think there’s a certain number of people who actually think about either one. And I wonder, Caroline, what advice you might have for people who know they want a graduate degree, they know they want a professional degree, and they’re deciding between a law school degree and a business school degree. What kind of advice would you give them?

[00:15:05.800] – Caroline

Well, I’m a little bit biased. I looked at becoming a lawyer at one stage and did some internships and found it frankly rather dull. So I personally have a preference for the curriculum that you get at business school rather than law school. I find it much more interesting and much broader. But having said that, law school is also a great foundation. It’s a well trodden path as well, especially in the US. It can open a lot of doors. If you get into a great school, that’s a fabulous credential to have. I think that some of this may be driven by people coming out of undergraduate and looking to get their post graduate degree straight away. Right. Because they’re going straight into law school, whereas with business school in vast majority of cases, you need to go off and get at least two or three years of work experience first. And I think there is a trend of students coming out of an undergrad and wanting to continue their education and secure their master’s degree straight away. We’re certainly seeing that in Europe with the growth of master’s degrees and people going straight into Masters from undergrad in much larger volumes than had been the case in the past.

[00:16:21.070] – Caroline

So I think that law school is benefiting from that, that they’re getting great applicants, wonderful undergrads who just want to get on with their education and get their graduate degree straight away and don’t want to have to wait another few years and also face the uncertainty of whether they will get into business school at later dates. They apply to law school, they get into a great school, then they’re gone. Right. They’re off the business school market earlier. And that’s also why the business schools launch the two plus two types of programs to compete with that and to try to secure some of those great students who would be considering going straight to graduate school after their undergrad. So giving them the option to secure their place at business school at the same time, at an earlier stage, at the same time that they would be securing a place at law school.

[00:17:18.010] – John

Looking at the Harvard Law School class profile that was just published, it’s pretty darn impressive. I mean, the class GPA is 3.92 versus the Harvard Business School GPA is 3.69. Lsat scores. We’re at a historic high 174, where we know the GMAT scores at Harvard remain the same. There are 19 Fulbright scholars in the law school class, just remarkably impressive group of people. And of course, they enroll a smaller class than the business school, a little over 500 students compared to the more than 1000 that were enrolled, which is the largest class ever in the history of the Harvard Business School this year. But do you think law school students are naturally smarter than business school students.

[00:18:14.210] – Caroline

Obviously, fantastic academic credentials.

[00:18:16.750] 

Right.

[00:18:17.110] – Caroline

I think those are amazing statistics that you just reeled off about the qualifications of the class. But I don’t think that there’s necessarily any huge difference between someone who goes to business school versus someone who goes to law school. But perhaps the emphasis at that stage and admission is a little bit more on academics.

[00:18:40.780] – Maria

Right.

[00:18:41.100] – Caroline

Because when you’re being in business school, there’s much more weight on the work experience. So that is a huge part of why people get in. And fantastic academic credentials are not going to get you alone, are not going to get you into business school.

[00:19:00.040] – Maria

Very true.

[00:19:01.300] – John

And obviously more women. 54% of the Harvard Law School class is female, compared to 46% at the business school. 56% of the law school class. Incoming identify as people of color, foreign access of the roughly 27% of Harvard Business School, different kind of people are definitely attracted to law, even though they may never see the inside of a courtroom. Let’s face that, right. I mean, how many people from law school really become lawyers and state lawyers? Precious few, I think. Now, Maria, you also at one point considered law with business. What made the difference for you in choosing the NBA?

[00:19:46.230] – Maria

Well, I think to the point that you just made a few people have seen the inside of a courtroom. I spent the summer I thought I was going to do public interest law. And so after my freshman year of College, I spent a summer working for a domestic violence legal clinic where I was helping women file for protective orders. And I was going with them into the courtroom. And it was just the study of the law. I’m studying the law and seeing, okay, what are these women? How does the law work and what do you have to do to get something called an ex parquet order? And how does that work? But then the practice of it was so repetitive. I mean, it was just the same thing over and over again. And then the reality was that the police officers wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do. It was very discouraging. And so I enjoy studying law from an academic perspective, and it’s sort of a bunch of logic puzzles for me. But then the actual practice of it, I think, is a lot of arguing and yelling and putting a semicolon instead of a comma and making sure that all the terms are defined in, like, Appendix C, where there’s, like by constituent we mean, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:20:53.190] – Maria

And by revenue we mean. And it’s just like, oh, my God. So that was sort of off putting. I realized that it was just sort of every day was the same, was very similar. I’m surprised to see that. I think Caroline is on to something that I think there’s just been so much uncertainty in the past year and a half that I think a lot of people may be graduating from College just want some certainty of we’re not sure what’s going to happen with the pandemic. Let me just go straight to grad school. I do know that law school admissions are almost entirely based upon I believe there’s actually a formula, at least in the past when I looked into it, it’s actually like they literally take your GPA and your lSET score and run it through a formula. And that essentially tells you if you’re getting it or not. It has very little to do with your personal qualities, which I think would explain why there are so many sociopaths in Congress who went to law school. It checks out. So I think it’s not that the law school applicants are smarter. I think it’s just that the sort of if you are pre law, they basically tell you major in whatever the easiest thing is.

[00:21:58.190] – Maria

So that way you maximize your GPA and just study super hard for that LSAT, because not a whole lot else matters. But I’m surprised to see it because I feel like not only is the practice of law, I feel not as exciting, but I also feel like it’s very geographically limiting. Right. Like, if I want to move to Spain and if I studied law, I would have to have a very niche practice. You have to pass the bar exam in different States.

[00:22:24.750] – John

True. From one state to another without having to go through an exam to get to the bar. Right?

[00:22:32.550] – Maria

Exactly. And it’s not like an easy exam. It’s not like a walk in the park exam. I think maybe, Caroline’s, if I had to say why, I would go with Caroline’s hypothesis that it’s just people want certainty. And so let’s just park ourselves in law school for three years and see figure out our lives at that point.

[00:22:54.210] – John

That’s an expensive place to park. Very expensive. I mean, people complain about the cost of business school in an MBA over two or even a one year period. Imagine three years in law school. And yes, if you do hit the jackpot out of law school, particularly out of an elite school, you’re starting salaries 200,000. But nonetheless, if you’re smart enough and you get into a great consulting job or finance job, you’re close to 200. Over 200 anyway, with an MBA in two years. And there’s a lot more scholarship money at business schools than there is at law school, by far. So obviously, we’re all big advocates. And let’s just put that out there, okay?

[00:23:41.730] – Maria

Besides, there is no conflict of interest. There’s no crowd.

[00:23:49.210] – John

Does anybody love a lawyer? Come on.

[00:23:55.490] – Maria

What is it? Hate the sin, love the sinner. Lawyers are wonderful people, even if their jobs are not.

[00:24:02.960] – John

Okay, you must have some good friends or lawyers.

[00:24:07.610] – Maria

I do.

[00:24:08.870] – John

All right. But there you have it. Harvard Law is actually more competitive than Harvard Business School this past year, drawing more applicants with higher GPAs and lower admit rate, which is a surprise. It’s the first time in many years that has occurred, given the slump in lost call applications that was deep and far reaching for quite a few years. And then this coming competitive season for admissions, it will be as competitive as last year, given the increase in reapplicants and given what the early signs are, but we don’t expect it to be any more competitive and we see a stabilization in the market coming for this next admission season, which is right around the corner. All right, Maria, Caroline, thank you, as always, for your smart and thoughtful remarks. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
How Competitive Will MBA Admissions Be In 2021-2022?
Maria |
September 7, 2021

Episode Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really loved that story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think this is a fantastic idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

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

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

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

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

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

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

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

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

John Byrne:

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

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

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

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

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

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

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

Maria

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