Tailoring Your MBA Application For Round 2 Programs
Maria |
December 14, 2021

For most individuals, this is the time of year when they need to go shopping, but for MBA hopefuls, it’s crunch time for round 2 applications.

But don’t worry; Maria, John, and Caroline know what to do! In this episode of Business Casual, they cover the following:

 

  • Things to consider when crafting your round 2 MBA applications (You should certainly listen to Maria’s advice!)
  • How to make it appear like the school you’re applying to in round 2 is your first option (even if it isn’t)
  • Why it’s never a good idea to wait until the last minute to prepare your application
  • Why you shouldn’t rely on others or only prepare for your round 2 MBA application when you have free time (spoiler – it won’t get done!)
  • For those with partners who are ALSO applying to business school (or already attending) – Maria and Caroline discuss the challenges of applying as a couple (but also the potential benefit) 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.630] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. And Caroline, of course, is the co founder of Fortuna Admissions and the former director of admissions at INSEAD. We know what this time of the year means for you. We don’t mean that you’re going to be rushing out or rushing online to do your Christmas shopping. We know that for many of you, it means putting the finishing touches on your round two applications because the deadlines for those round two applications is right around the corner. And as soon as Christmas is over and New Year’s is over, they start to strike like dominoes and fall one after the other. So what we wanted to kind of talk a little bit about is if you had filed an application in round one and you’re tailoring it for round two, what are some of the things you need to keep in mind? And we actually have a piece on the site and it is called how to Tell Your MBA Application for Round Two Programs.

[00:01:16.520] – John

It is written by one of Caroline’s colleagues, Amy Hugo, and it’s an excellent piece, and you should read that. But Maria, I wonder what your general guidelines are.

[00:01:29.570] – Maria

I think if you’re applying in round two, having already applied in round one, I get that you are probably exhausted at this point. You are over it. The last thing you want to do is put together another essay. But I think I like to quit that until you have an acceptance in hand. Every school is your first choice school, so you just need to sort of smack yourself out of it, get some coffee brewing. I don’t know what it takes to motivate you, but you need to bring that same amount of energy. Even if you’re around two schools might not have been your first choice schools, even if whatever it is, you just need to keep bringing that energy to a round two application because I get that you’re tired, but you just have to force yourself to do it because applying in round two, if you apply with sort of a lackluster or if your energy is not there, if it’s clear that you didn’t really do a lot of homework and you just threw this application together very quickly, it’s not going to go well. So why even bother? It’s almost like don’t even bother applying around you if you’re just going to half Bake it.

[00:02:37.190] – Maria

And I also tell people a lot of times I’ll get emails from people who are saying things like, well, gosh, I had my interviews and now it’s just a waiting game and I’m so stressed out and how do I pass the time and how do I keep myself occupied? And my answer is start writing essays for round two schools, because best case scenario, you won’t need them. But if you do end up needing them, at least you’re ahead of the game because you will have spent four, five, six weeks working on them instead of two weeks. So that’s my advice.

[00:03:04.370] – John

And this is true that during that crunch time between Christmas and New Year’s, people are feverishly trying to finish up and get things done.

[00:03:11.990] – Maria

Yes. And mistakes are made and things get sloppy.

[00:03:14.240] – John

Obviously, because we’re all human beings and every school wants to know that they’re your first choice. It’s kind of like if you were dating multiple people, but you want every one of them to know that you’re really the one, but you’re really not the one. How do you pull that off in an application?

[00:03:35.650] – Caroline

Are you speaking from experience, John?

[00:03:38.510] – John

No, not me.

[00:03:39.610] – Caroline

Anything you’d like to never confess to while we’re on air?

[00:03:47.450] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:03:47.850] – Caroline

Now you’re absolutely right. Now I think it’s even more important in some ways in round two and in round one, because he said a lot of people are applying now because they’ve been dinged in round one. And it tends to be panic time because they maybe had their hopes up for round one and assume that they were getting somewhere and their hopes have been dashed. And so a lot of people start working on their applications for round two quite late in the game because they weren’t sure that they would have to do it. And they also know that for a lot of the top schools, this is the last chance really to get in for the next season. Right. Hbs doesn’t even have around three other schools have round three, but very few places left. So this is your last chance. And people start to panic. So we definitely see that. And candidates sort of throwing out applications left, right and center, and scattergun is never a good strategy. Right. So schools see lots of applications in round two from people who are a little bit half hearted, a little bit sloppy, not quite clear, very sort of general statements about the motivation for the school with very few specifics.

[00:04:59.530] – Caroline

And those will quickly get filtered out and put aside, I think, even more in round two because schools are well aware of that phenomenon of people applying as a second choice to schools in round two. You have to make an even greater effort in this round to show and articulate that motivation and really make it genuine and authentic. I think that’s absolutely critical. And then also what we see is candidates think, well, I’m going to have some time off over the holidays, so that’s when I’m going to work on my applications and I’ll put it all together then. And that’s never a good idea to leave it to the last minute, because a good application is not something that you can Cook up in a week or two. It takes time. It takes reflection. You’re going to go through some iterations. It’s like a fine wine, matures over some time, at least weeks and months rather than years. But it’s not an overnight process. And often candidates will sort of procrastinate thinking, I’m going to take some time off over the holidays, and I’ll work on it then and often overestimate how much free time you’ve got to be busy with other things over the holidays, family obligations and social activities, perhaps.

[00:06:20.130] – Caroline

And so people overestimate how much they can get done during that period. And then also, if you’re seeking other people’s feedback, if you’re working with a coach or you’ve got maybe a colleague who’s been to that school who said that they will review your application for you, don’t count on them on having a ton of time over the holidays.

[00:06:39.770] – Maria

Right.

[00:06:40.030] – Caroline

And the same with your recommenders. That should all be done and dusted before the holidays because people disappear over the break. And it’s often the case that people are in a panic at the beginning of January because the recommenders haven’t been contactable over the holiday period and they don’t know if they’ve submitted or not. So please don’t leave everything to that holiday period because it’s often a recipe for disaster.

[00:07:07.230] – Maria

To add on to what Caroline was just saying about recommenders perhaps not being available during the holiday. There are other people you also need to be contacting as part of this process, one of the major ones being current students or recent alumni, because that shows a school that you have actually taken the effort to not simply research on the website, but actually reach out to a student, set up a call with them, talk about the program, talk about the club. What was the media conference like last year? Tell me about jobs and private equity, whatever it is. And so those students themselves are also going on break. So you really want to try to wrap up any loose ends that involve other people as soon as possible?

[00:07:51.450] – Caroline

Yes, I agree. And I think that often candidates do a lot of research or hopefully they do a lot of research and start a process when they’re figuring out where they want to apply and sort of finalizing that target list and preparing application process. And sometimes that effort sort of dries up a bit once they get down to working on the nitty gritty of the application and moving forward with the process. And it really should be a consistent, ongoing effort to, as Maria said, network with people who have relevant, similar interests to you, continue to learn about the school, follow what they’re doing, keep up to date on the latest research coming out of the schools and so on, because all of that knowledge will enrich your application and not just the written application, but very importantly, hopefully the interview stage and it will make you much better prepared candidate. And that’s not something, again, that you can sort of prepare overnight. It’s really a long term effort that you should be consistently doing over several months.

[00:09:00.290] – John

Right through the process and becoming acquainted with faculty. If you know that you want to specialize in a certain area, get to know the faculty now, because that contact, that interchange that you may have could find its way in an essay just elevating your interest in the program in a way that would impress admissions, right?

[00:09:23.670] – Caroline

Yeah, for sure. Many moons ago when I applied to Insecure and a friend of mine who had been to INSEAD invited me to a conference at the school. And then I met a professor there who I then stayed in touch with. Anything that you can do that helps you to build those connections, makes you a better prepared candidate, actually gives you a stronger sense of why you really want to go to that school, what it is that motivates you, what you want to learn while you’re there. And you never know who might put a good work, who might put in a good word for you with the admissions committee. So all of that outreach will pay off and might pay off in ways that you don’t even anticipate.

[00:10:07.770] – John

Now we’re recording this on a day in which Harvard Business School has sent out notifications to their round one applicants. Caroline, you just mentioned offline that you have some good news. Why don’t you share that.

[00:10:26.070] – Caroline

Several clients who’ve just been admitted to HBS, including a married couple. So it’s been great fun to work with a couple and wonderful that they’ve been admitted to the school together. It will be great experience for them to go to HBS together. Sometimes it’s tricky for couples applying. Right. Because it’s so hard to get into those top schools and doubly hard to get in together at the same time to the same program. So I’m really thrilled for them that it’s worked out.

[00:10:59.620] – John

And it’s pretty rare. Maria, how often do you see couples applying to a single school and both getting in?

[00:11:07.050] – Maria

It’s difficult. Right. Because I think in that case, if you’re talking about a school that has a 5% 10% acceptance rate, each one of those people now has to be in that top 10%. I don’t believe that schools will say, well, this one person is not that great, but they’re a package deal, so we should take them both. I don’t really think that happens. And actually, I worked with I don’t think they were married or just in a committed relationship, but with a couple earlier this year, that against my recommendation. They wrote in their optional essays like, I am applying with so and so we are a couple. And if you’re not going to let us both in, then don’t let either one of us in. They also said, and don’t tell us which one of us was the weaker candidate, although the school would never really bother to say that the school is never going to be like.

[00:11:55.820] – John

Well, sorry, you’re an outcome.

[00:11:58.830] – Maria

I don’t know. But I will tell you that very candidly. And this was hard for me to convey, but one person in the couple was a very strong candidate and the other one was mediocre, probably not getting in. And so I tried to convey I was like, that’s really risky. So if one of you gets into HBS, the other one could go to MIT Bubc. There are so many schools that they could go to in the Boston area. They could go to Tuck, which is 3 hours away. And so I said that’s really risky. And I didn’t want to say to the stronger partner in this case was a female. I was like, your boyfriend’s not nearly as impressive as you are. I didn’t quite say it that way, but I was like, this is a really risky strategy, and it’d be a real shame if you limit yourself, especially because if they’re not married, like, oh God, what if they break up later and then this very promising woman curtailed her? Anyway, I tried to talk them out of it, but I don’t think I was able to. So I’m sad about that.

[00:13:07.080] – John

Yeah. That really increases the odds of rejection. I would think if you do that, it’s just got to be much more complicated, unfortunately. And I would also think that if you’re a couple applying, you really should apply around one, right? Don’t you think?

[00:13:25.560] – Caroline

Yeah. And I absolutely agree that it’s not a good idea to tell the school if you don’t admit my partner, then don’t bother admitting me. It seems a bit petulant, but I think it’s absolutely fine to tell the school if you are a couple applying. Sometimes couples aren’t sure. Should we mention it? Should we not mention it? The schools are happy to know that you’re both applying. It shows commitment and motivation. Right. That you have this plan that you would like to go to the school together. As you said, John, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to admit someone who is below par, but it’s helpful information to have. And in some scenarios, if you’re thinking about, well, this person, we’re not sure if it’s their weightless material or whether they should be a straight admit. It can be useful information to know if their spouse or their partner has been admitted or not, or also wait listed just to help the school manage the decisions and know what impact that’s going to have on the candidates. So it’s absolutely fine to mention it. I just wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.

[00:14:42.430] – John

The other news this week is every year we do name a Dean of the year. This year we did it, and we had a big celebration for that Dean just two days ago on the campus. The Dean of the year this year is Jeff Brown, who is the Dean of the Giese School of Business. Sorry, the Giese College of Business at the University of Illinois in Champagne and it’s primarily because of all the advances that they have made in the online learning space where they have the disruptively priced IMBA for 22 five and have increased their enrollment from pretty much zero five years ago to over 4300 students. And that’s just one aspect of what has been done there. But if you’re interested in why we named Jeff the Dean of the year, go and look at the site and look at our profile. Meantime for all you round two folks, good luck to you. Hope you found this useful. I will again refer you to Amy’s piece which I think is really helpful just to think through your final steps before you actually hit the submit button again. It’s how to tailor your MBA application for round two programs.

[00:16:04.250] – John

Otherwise good luck. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve listening to Business Casual our weekly podcast.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Tailoring Your MBA Application For Round 2 Programs
Maria |
December 14, 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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