Landing The Most Lucrative MBA Jobs In PE, VC & Hedge Funds
Maria |
July 13, 2021

On this week’s episode of Business Casual, listen to John, Caroline and Maria tackle TWO topics: 

First, many post-MBA jobs are known to be extremely lucrative. Among the most sought after roles are roles in private equity, venture capital and hedge funds. What does it take to get one of these roles? How does one get a chance at entry into what can be considered an “exclusive club”? 

Secondly, a lot of MBA programs are dropping their requirement for two letters of recommendations for only requiring ONE. Is this going to be a trend? Why are schools moving in this direction? And what makes for a strong recommendation letter? 

Listen to find out!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.330] – John

Hi, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast featuring my co host Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. And Caroline, of course, is the former director of admissions at INSEAD, who now is co founder of Fortuna Admissions and advises a lot of applicants on how to get into a great school. So we have two topics today. First topic is we are seeing more schools, and we expect to see more schools go with only one recommendation letter for applicants. Columbia Business School and MIT Sloan are two of the M7 who do this. We have heard that there will be another major school shortly to announce one recommendation letter policy. We’re going to talk about is this going to be a trend and why and why is it so difficult to get good recommendation letters to begin with? The other topic we’re going to explore we’ll do this first is the jobs post. MBA really are among the most lucrative jobs available to an MBA graduate. And that would be those jobs in private equity, venture capital and hedge funds that pay massive amounts of money to people.

 

[00:01:21.280] – John

Just give you a sense of this. Stanford MBA last year who went into private equity, their average first year compensation, $200,667 investor capital, $197,000. Those numbers include someone at Stanford who went into private equity at a base salary of $400,000, and someone else who went into venture capital reported a $300,000 based salary. Now you might think that there aren’t a whole lot of people who are in this position to take these jobs, to get these jobs, but in fact, today an increasing number of people who are in the elite MBA programs are seemingly landing them. So at Harvard Business School last year, 18% of the class went into private equity, 5% into venture capital and 7% in hedge funds. At Stanford, 15% went into private equity, 9% in venture capital. At Wharton, a little bit less so, but not so less, 12% into private equity and little over 4% adventure capital. What does it take to get one of these jobs, Caroline?

 

[00:02:27.710] – Caroline

Well, I think they’re really cherry picking students from top business schools. So they’re looking for often blue chip credentials. Right. So they’re hiring candidates who have worked in banking or perhaps have even worked in another private equity house or bench capital before coming to business school. That is the ideal background, right. They love hiring people from the industry, but otherwise, if there are any career switches and it’s incredibly difficult industry to switch into because they tend to hire people who, as I said, who are already in it. And so many people want to get into it. So it’s incredibly difficult to get hired into it if you don’t have that background. But otherwise they tend to hire people from investment banking or other financial services backgrounds and also people from the top consulting firm. So typically McKinsey, Bayne and BCG, those candidates can have a shot at getting interviews with private equity and venture capital firms.

 

[00:03:28.290] – John

Yeah. So it’s almost like an exclusive little club. An entry into the club is almost dependent on whether or not you’ve even worked in the club before or have one of these, like, elite type jobs at an investment banking firm that’s very well known and highly selective, or a highly selective elite global consulting firm to even have a chance to enter through the crack in the door. Maria, do you agree with all that?

 

[00:03:57.410] – Maria

Yeah, I think there’s a difference between private equity versus venture capital. The two are often lumped together with their cute little acronyms, but they are actually fairly different in terms of not only the work that they’re doing, but what groups of people they hire from. So I think my gut is that it’s easier to get into VC because if you have helped build a business before or if you can show that you add value to their assessment process in terms of maybe technical expertise or some other type of expertise of growing a business, I think that VC is a bit more open. Private equity, though, is a pretty specialized skill set. And part of the reason why they hire people who have already done it is because they know they won’t have to spend so much time training folks on what the job is. I mean, it’s a job that really values intense work ethic. And if somebody did two years of an analyst program on Wall Street and then from there leverage that to get a job, say two years at a private equity firm, then private equity firms coming to the MBA program.

 

[00:04:54.690] – Maria

So a pretty good idea that the people that they’re hiring know what they’re doing. So I sort of understand why they are this way. I think there is this. My former boss, my first job out of College had been a former banker at Lazard Freyer’s Investment Bank. And he taught me how to build the financial models that they use. And one of the things he said that he was pretty bitter with me. He was like, I spend 100 hours a week and I sacrificed two of the best years of my life in order to learn this stuff. And you’re learning it, and you don’t have to sacrifice so much. And he was actually sort of bitter about it. He was actually very bitter about it. He was actually very bitter about it. Like, it’s not fair. Like, you’re out of here by 07:00 p.m. Every night and you’re going to walk away with the same skill set that I sacrificed so much for. And so I also think that there’s a certain element of and I think we see this with the medical school field as well, with people who do residencies. And you hear these hellish stories of like the 7500 hours shift in the residency.

 

[00:05:46.810] – Maria

I think that part of it may be this idea that I went through this horrible boot camp, and I’m only going to respect people even if they can do the job. I’m not going to respect them unless they also suffered in the same way. But that’s just my own armchair psychologist take on it.

 

[00:06:04.430] – John

In other words, you’ve got to pay your dues. You’re going to be put through a boot camp. You’re going to be given hell. And if you’re not, you’re not worthy.

 

[00:06:11.770] – Maria

Yeah. I knew how to build a model as good or better than the typical banker by the time I was done, because Lazard in particular is very good with modeling. And so learning from him taught me the skills. But he was like, yeah, but you didn’t really earn it the way I earned it. I’m like, okay, buddy.

 

[00:06:27.890] – John

Why do these firms pay so much money?

 

[00:06:31.280] – Maria

Because they charge a lot of money, right? They charge their clients money. They make money for their clients, and they take a lot of good care from that. If they buy a firm, a company in private equity, let’s say they buy a company for $500 million and then sell it for $3 billion, they get a cut of that as they should. And so they pay their staff accordingly.

 

[00:06:55.170] – John

We will explain what carry is a really interesting element of the compensation. So as high as the base salaries or the sign on bonuses might be wealth, the real gold in these jobs is in the so called carry. Who wants to explain what carry is?

 

[00:07:13.710] – Caroline

Well, it’s the percentage that you will get. It’s part of the ownership of the companies that you’re investing. And typically you have to stay with the organization for a certain lengths of time to realize that upside. And it’s going to be worth something if ultimately the company is sold, as Maria said, and you realize a big upside. But as you say, is often how they make the really big Bucks.

 

[00:07:41.030] – John

Yeah. And the other interesting thing, of course, about these industries is that they’re not like McKinsey, Bane, BCG or Morgan Stanley or CD or Apple or Facebook or Google or Amazon. They hire generally in the ones and twos from MBA programs, and they tend to hire only from the most elite schools. I mentioned the stats from Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. Once you leave those three schools, these stats are so small, most schools don’t break them down in their employment reports. So outside of a Blackstone or Carlisle, two of the real big players, it’s almost hard to find these jobs because the players are generally unknown. They’re not well known, they’re not that big. So when they hire someone, it’s a big deal. And that, I would think, makes it that much more difficult to penetrate these industries. Do you think?

 

[00:08:37.480] – Caroline

Yeah, for sure. They’re hand picking candidates. And as you say, they’re often not high visibility first. They need to have such high visibility. So it’s very much word of mouth.

 

[00:08:50.990] – John

Do you have to know somebody to get into this? So let’s say you haven’t worked as an analyst for a PE or venture capital firm. Is it impossible to get in if you don’t really work hard on the networking aspect of getting into one of these firms?

 

[00:09:09.750] – Maria

That’s one of the benefits of business school. Right. Is that you’re going to be in classes with people who are either doing VC already or are going to do it soon. And so they might not be able to hire you right away, but they might be in a position to hire you several years later. So I have several classmates who did not start in DC right after business school, but they went to either very innovative divisions of large companies or they went to start their own company and successfully sold it. And so then at that point they entered the VC space later on. I do think with VC it’s easier. And I do think that with enough networking, which is, again, the value when we talk about like, oh, these more elite business schools tend to not give as much scholarship money. Well, there’s a reason for that, right. Because you are getting a network that if you hustle enough, you could convert into these more lucrative jobs, right?

 

[00:09:58.780] – John

Exactly. Now, you could look at this as an opportunity or as a problem. Private equity, venture capital and hedge funds. This is totally a white, male dominated field. And if you look at the stats, they’re really startling. There was a McKinsey study back in 2020 only a year ago, and it’s found that only 20% of senior leaders at private equity firms in the US are women, less than 2% are black, less than 12% of people of color. Another study released last year by women in VC found that less than 5% of venture capital firm partners are women, and only a third of those are women of color. Now one wonders, okay, with all of this emphasis on diversity and inclusion and the pressure being placed not only on these firms but firms overall, is there a crack in the door to allow more women and more people of color who have MBAs a shot at these three industries? I will tell you that one school thinks that way, and that is UVA Garden, which just announced a new program. It’s a full ride scholarship program for twelve people every single year who are either women or people of color into a two year curated experience that basically is meant to prepare you for one of the three industries, VC, PE or hedge funds.

 

[00:11:31.680] – John

And it will include everything from an internship to sponsorship by one of the firms to ongoing lectures to an independent project where you produce a pitch deck that then you can use to help land the job. And after you land the job, it will include everything from continued coaching and mentorship to help you succeed in these firms. And their goal is to, frankly, get more women and more underrepresented minorities into these three fields. What do you think their chances are of success?

 

[00:12:05.140] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s a very worthy endeavor. As you say, it’s a very male dominated and not incredibly diverse industry from ethnic perspective. And firms have been aware of this for some time, but I think they feel more pressure now to take action to change that. I’m sure that the school has recognized that there’s an opportunity to bring a pipeline through because there will be recruiting opportunities. The firms are looking to recruit a more diverse workforce, but as we’ve said, they’re often recruiting people from a very specific background and even coming from the same industry. And so if that pipeline isn’t there to start with, then it’s very difficult to change. You really have to start from the very beginning. And so I think it’s a very interesting idea and a very smart move by Darden and to also build relationships with recruiters who might otherwise not be recruiting so much at Darden. Perhaps they would be recruiting otherwise at seven schools, but with this program, it might give an opportunity to the school to attract recruiters who might not otherwise be coming to the school.

 

[00:13:20.490] – John

Yeah, that’s really true, because I rattled off those figures at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. At Darden, according to their stats, roughly 2.4% of the class goes into private equity and venture capital. They say they have a record number right now of placement in DC and PE internships and full time jobs. 21 members of the full time MBA class of 22 are completing summer internships, and seven of their graduates in 2021 accepted full time roles in those fields. But clearly that’s far and away pretty small compared to Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. But so this is a real effort to make this a much more substantial part of placement and career development at Darten and to do it through the lens of diversity and inclusion. It’s kind of an interesting way to go about it. Maria, what do you think about this?

 

[00:14:24.010] – Maria

Look, it’s great that they’re doing it. The more diversity and inclusion we get, especially in fields where women and people of color have traditionally been shut out, the better. I certainly don’t think it’ll hurt at all for this program to exist. I do think it’s a little funny. I think if anything, I don’t know that they should be getting full scholarships. I think if anything.

 

[00:14:42.170] – John

They should be paying extra for because they’re going to leave jobs that are going to make them a fortune.

 

[00:14:47.950] – Maria

Yeah, they’re going to make a lot of money. I think one of the most important things they can offer is, in fact, that sort of apprenticeship, mentorship aspect, because I know venture capital in particular is an apprenticeship. It’s primarily an apprenticeship model. There are programs that have been out there for years. One of them is called the Kaufman Fellows Program, and I know because I was a Kaufman Fellow where they’re trying to bring like, women and minorities more into VC. But basically their pitch is like that they select people. It’s essays and interviews and like two days of interviews and all this stuff, and then they are basically giving the VC firms the stamp of approval, and they’re saying, okay, you don’t need to worry about training these green new venture capitalists. We will train them for you. That’s what we at the Kaufman Fellows Program do. So I wonder if Darden is at least on the venture side, copying, taking inspiration from what the Coffin Fellows have been doing have been doing all along. And I think so far it’s been a pretty successful program overall. So the more the merrier. And even if you train someone to become a venture capitalist and let’s say they don’t get that job right away, they might get it in 15 years.

 

[00:15:56.630] – Maria

Right. So I think that there’s certainly no downside to this.

 

[00:16:01.910] – John

Yeah. And it’s interesting because they’re not destroying money at this. And Incidentally, all the scholarships are merit based. It’s not need based, but they’re devoting themselves to a new suite of elective courses, the networking and mentoring from current industry professionals, access to career programs and leadership experiences with these VC and private equity firms through internships and Fellows programs, and then the independent study as well, that would be overseen by Darden faculty member as well as the sponsor, the company sponsor. So it’s really a pretty comprehensive program to put more people who aren’t there into this industry, and we’ll see how it goes. I think it’s a fascinating experiment, and particularly because it’s at a public University that is not in the M seven. And we do know, as we said before, these firms tend to love candidates from the really truly elite, highly selective schools out there with elite backgrounds, no less. It’s not only should you be going to Harvard, Wharton and Stanford, your undergrad probably needs to be stamped at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc. E to actually get into these firms. But I do think this is the right time. People are under a lot of pressure to diversify the people that they bring in, particularly in this field, where really it’s white, male dominated over and over and over, and it has been for many, many, many years.

 

[00:17:35.780] – John

This could be a really nice opening and could result in some meaningful gains for a lot of people. The other thing we wanted to talk about or recommendation letters, and we’re interested because we just found out that another major school, we can’t tell you who it is, but it’s a big and important school in the game, and they’re going to go with a one letter recommendation policy, joining Columbia and MIT, which already require only one letter. What do we think of this? Is this good? What does it say about the difficulty of getting recommendation letters that are honest and Truthful and useful to admissions? Caroline, what do you think?

 

[00:18:20.450] – Caroline

It is very interesting, I think that maybe there’s a number of factors playing into this. The US scores in particular over the past, I would say ten years or so have whittled down the elements of the application, and so they’ve tried to streamline it a bit to make it easier for people to apply. And I think this may be part of that effort, just one less hurdle for people to overcome to apply. I am sure there is also an element of they are tired of reading recommendations that are clearly written by the candidate themselves, and that is definitely happening more and more. I mean, I’ve seen it over the past few years. Increasingly. It’s definitely a trend of candidates being asked by the recommenders to just ride it themselves. That happens much more frequently now than it did even five years ago and go back 1020 years think it was a very different situation. I think the schools are fed up of reading something that is clearly not entirely authentic, and perhaps there is overlap as well between the recommendations. From an NCR perspective where I work, I think it would be difficult to go down to one recommendation because the average work experience at NCAA for MBA students is about five and a half years.

 

[00:19:47.310] – Caroline

Right. Most of them have had more than one job and they may have had quite different work experience across two different positions or they’ve been promoted. There’s quite a bit of breadth there, and it can be difficult to get to full perspective on that from one recommender. So I think it may also be that the schools are looking to appeal to the younger candidates and make it easier for the younger candidates to apply. And if you’re only sort of one or two years into your career, it could be difficult to come up with a second recommendation. Right. I mean, the ideal recommender is your current supervisor. That’s the sweet spot. Right. And if you’re one or two years into your career, you’ve got your current supervisor. You may not have a former supervisor that you could go to former boss. And so then who do you ask? Do you ask your boss’s boss? Do you ask somebody who’s worked with you, but they’ve never supervised you? So I think there’s also an element of appealing to the younger candidates who write early in their careers and making it easier for them to apply.

 

[00:20:54.730] – John

Years ago, actually, it was in 2013, we wrote a story on how many applicants actually write their own recommendation letters. It was based on a survey put out by a Gap, which is the trade association for Admission consultants. And the survey was of applicants in that given year, and it found that 38% of applicants wrote their own recommendation letters. But the admission consultants back then believe the number was much higher, with as many as six of ten letters actually being written by NBA candidates. If you had to guess what percentage of recommendation letters today are actually written by applicants, what would your guess be?

 

[00:21:36.770] – Caroline

My God. Well, certainly the majority. I mean, there’s also degrees of writing it. Right. Have they written the entire thing themselves and the recommended just copy pasted, or have they worked on it together? Have they given them some bullet points? So there’s a Gray area there. I think it’s good for candidates to discuss the recommendation and even give them some bullet points and give them some input because you want to make sure that they know what is expected of them, because as admissions director, I did read recommendations where literally the response to each question was one or two lines, and that was not very helpful, and it didn’t add any value to the candidacy. So you do want to make sure that the recommended knows what is expected, and they’ve got some talking points that fit with what you’re saying about yourself. Right. And they’re highlighting strengths that are complimentary. But yeah, it’s a shame if people then go down the road of fully writing the whole thing themselves. I dread to think, frankly, what the percentage is. What do you think, Maria?

 

[00:22:46.030] – Maria

Yeah, I think, like you said, there’s providing guidance to your recommender, which I actually think I actually encourage people to do, only not because it’s cheating, but just because oftentimes recommenders might not know what is a business school even looking for with the best of intentions, focus on a task that you completed that is very impressive to the boss, but has no impressiveness at all for an admissions committee. So I do advise that people sit down with the recommender, either literally or perhaps Siberia over email. And so they’re like, look, I’d really love for you to focus on this story and that story, and then that way you can also avoid that overlap. Right. If you’ve got two recommenders, both talking about that same project, what a wasted opportunity. I would think in terms of people who do that, I would think it’s in the 80%. In terms of people who write it themselves. Yeah, probably around 50. If you could hook people up to a lie detector test, I think it would be at least 50%. I do think that it’s so easy, though, to tell, especially for certain people for whom writing does not come naturally.

 

[00:23:53.170] – Maria

They don’t realize how obvious it is that they have written their own recommendation. But people, they have voices when they write, they use certain terms of phrase, terms of phrase. They use certain expressions or certain figures of speech. And if that same figure of speech is in your essay, and then I see it on the next page on your letter recommendation, I’m pretty sure that you wrote your own recommendations, and yet I don’t see that. It’s interesting.

 

[00:24:13.230] 

Right.

 

[00:24:13.400] – Maria

Because the schools, they protest and we don’t want this at all. They protest, and yet I don’t necessarily see them punishing. It’s almost like theatrical for me.

 

[00:24:27.860] – John

Here’s the other thing. I wonder if by requiring only one letter of recommendation, is it more likely that they will be Truthful, in other words, that the actual recommender will do it? Does it increase the odds instead of requiring more than one, is there a greater temptation for the applicant to just do it when the recommender says, hey, can you just draft something for me? What do you think, Caroline?

 

[00:24:55.970] – Caroline

Well, it could go either way. I mean, if you’re looking at some of the firms where they’re sending a lot of people to business school, and so some of the managers and partners are solicited frequently for recommendations, it’s going to reduce their workload. Right. So a lot of these people are frequently writing recommendations, and so if the schools switch from two to one, theoretically it could have their workload and perhaps I’ll pay more attention to it and put more individual effort in. So that could be the positive side of this.

 

[00:25:30.230] – John

Interesting thing is in Colombia’s case, for example, they’re actually telling you who they want the recommendation letter from, and they’re basically saying it should ideally be from your current supervisor. And if for any reason you can’t get one from that person, they’re asking you to submit a statement of explanation as to why you can’t. So if you’re going to recommend one, I think you have to be more stringent about who you accept two, right, Caroline?

 

[00:25:56.340] – Caroline

Yes. And the current supervisor is always the ideal recommendation. In any case, I often speak to candidates who are concerned about asking their boss for recommendation because then they’re signaling that they’re going to leave. But in general, that conversation in most cases goes very well. And it’s much better for you to get that currency provider because the schools want to understand how you’re performing now, what impact you’re having now. And probably as time has gone on, you’ve taken on bigger projects and got more responsibilities. So you’ll probably have a more impressive recommendation from someone who’s supervising you now than from someone who supervised you a couple of years ago.

 

[00:26:42.450] – John

Do we think there are going to be more schools to do this? Obviously, we know of one that will, and we have Columbia and MIT, which two big members of the M Seven, which one would think might send a signal to a lot of other schools that this is okay and it’s worthwhile. What do you mean?

 

[00:27:02.070] – Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s interesting with two M seven schools, that’s a big move, right. So I would imagine that others will probably follow suit.

 

[00:27:11.970] – John

Maria, what do you think?

 

[00:27:14.250] – Maria

Yeah, I think they will. It sounds like that second recommendation is not yielding a lot of value, and it certainly is a lot more work. I personally think it’s sort of a shame because I think most human beings out there can charm at least one senior person in their company. But to be able to charm and also manage. Right, because you have to manage your recommenders. And recommenders are, by definition, people to whom these are people who owe you nothing. These are people who normally senior to you or their clients or something like that. And so I do think that being able to get more than one recommendation is a positive sign of someone’s political finesse. But it sounds like the schools don’t feel that they’re getting a whole lot of value out of it. So why put everyone through the pain of getting a second recommendation and reading a second recommendation if it’s just creating busy work for everyone all around?

 

[00:28:05.380] – John

That’s true. But Caroline Maria raises a good point there. It does require more finesse and more skill to get two recommenders as opposed to just one. And that may tell you something about the candidate in and of itself.

 

[00:28:18.770] – Maria

I have to get three recommendations. When I applied, I needed three. I was sweating bullets on that third one. I was like, what am I going to ask? So I don’t know. I think it has value as an exercise for the candidate just to show that they have three people, two or three people willing to go to bat for them.

 

[00:28:35.950] – John

But oh, well, the other interesting thing about this, I think there is a problem that Caroline mentioned. There are a lot of NBA candidates who don’t tell their bosses that they are going to an MBA program, and after all, you apply to a certain set of programs and you don’t know for sure that you’re going to get in. And frankly, the odds are against you to begin with, given how selective they are at the top end and you don’t want to signal to them. And in this case, you kind of have to you have to tell your direct supervisor to get the best recommendation letter for your application or multiple recommendation letters. So you’re kind of put in this very difficult place as well.

 

[00:29:20.180] – Caroline

Yes, that’s true, but it’s something that candidates often get very concerned about and honestly recommenders understand that you are probably going to have a career in the long term that is not going to revolve around that one person working for your current boss. And ultimately, you’re probably going to go on to do something differently. And hopefully they want the best thing for you as an individual and happy to support you in pursuing your longer term goals. So it’s very rare that a boss is not supportive of this. It does happen, but it is rare. They normally are able to find in the depths of their hearts and generosity of spirit towards their staff and support them in their goals. And also, people understand that you’re putting yourself through a competitive process and it might not work out And I don’t think people should be embarrassed about it if they don’t get in. It happens all the time. Great. People get rejected from the top schools every year and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

 

[00:30:32.490] – John

The other thing about one recommendation letter, though, is you put all your marbles on one person While generally you should have the kind of relationship with your recommender to really know that you’re going to get a very positive recommendation from them. It’s surprising to me how many recommenders say things that hurt candidates and I say this as an outsider who has had the privilege of sitting in admissions committee meetings at three different schools over the past years and having someone at those committee meetings read a recommendation letter that’s shockingly damaging to a candidate. So if you only have one recommender and they say something that’s even just slightly damaging Would it completely knock you out? Or if you had two or three that one slightly damaging comment might be in the context of two overflowing with praise recommendation letters that would therefore offset whatever slight handicap you’ve been given.

 

[00:31:41.110] – Caroline

What do you think it’s like having one interview versus two?

 

[00:31:44.790] 

Right?

 

[00:31:45.100] – Caroline

It’s more pressure for that one event to go well, yes, it’s going to mean that that individual recommendation Is going to carry more weight to the process and you’re right, there is more risk involved.

 

[00:31:58.090] – John

Well, there you have it. So we have Columbia, we have MIT, we have another third school about to announce that it’s going to one recommendation letter policy for applicants. You’ll find out soon enough. As soon as they announce it, we can say it, right?

 

[00:32:12.290] – Caroline

Absolutely.

 

[00:32:13.390] – John

Good. Okay. Well, there you have it. Thanks for listening to Business Casual. If you want a job at PE, VC or hedge funds make sure you have a good recommender. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Landing The Most Lucrative MBA Jobs In PE, VC & Hedge Funds
Maria |
July 13, 2021

[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

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