The 2024 Financial Times MBA Ranking
Maria |
February 21, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts dive deep into the nuances of the 2024 Financial Times Global MBA Ranking. They meticulously examine Wharton’s resurgence to the number one spot after last year’s exclusion, highlighting the complexities and controversies surrounding MBA rankings. The episode doesn’t shy away from discussing the unexpected ranking drops of Harvard Business School to 11th and Stanford to 23rd, providing a critical analysis of what these changes signify for the institutions involved.

A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the evolving emphasis on sustainability within MBA programs. The hosts also argue for the integration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into business education, underscoring the urgent need for future business leaders to be adept in these areas. This episode offers an in-depth exploration of the shifting landscape of MBA rankings and the increasing importance of sustainability, making it an indispensable listen for anyone interested in the direction of business education globally.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.450] – John

Well, hello everyone, it’s John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You are listening to business casual, our weekly podcast. And as it always occurs around this time of the year, the Financial Times came out with its 2024 global MBA rank ranking. There’s quite a bit of news to cover in this ranking. Wharton makes a big return. Last year, you will recall, Wharton disappeared entirely from the list for the first time ever, and it was because the FT couldn’t get Wharton alumni, or at least enough of them, to respond to its survey. And Wharton failed to meet the minimum response rate that satisfied the FT. So they were kicked off the ranking altogether. This year, they returned to the number one spot, which is actually a fairly familiar spot for Wharton. In this ranking, they have won the number one spot. Twelve out of the 26 times that the Financial Times has ranked full time MBA programs. That’s more than any other school. Number two, in fact, is Harvard at seven and Stanford at three, along with London Business School at three and INSEAD at three. So twelve times. That’s quite a remarkable record of success, given the ups and downs of all these rankings.

[00:01:28.470] – John

Perhaps bigger news than Wharton’s return to number one is where Harvard and Stanford ended up. I will tell you that where they ended up is completely and totally shocking. Harvard plunged seven places to rank 11th. That’s the lowest Harvard Business School’s MBA program has ever ranked in the Financial Times. Stanford did even worse. The school took a complete nosedive. It dropped 19 places, hard to believe to rank 23rd, 23rd among full time MBA programs. Now, I’m going to point out that obviously that’s a ridiculous result. But when you’re dealing with numbers and metrics, and the FT uses 21 different metrics to crank out its annual ranking, almost anything can kind of happen. And if you look closely at the FT’s charts, one of the weird things about it is that Stanford was given an absolute zero in one category. And even though that category only accounted for a 3% weight in the ranking, getting a zero really is a wallop. The zero that the school got was for international faculty. Yes, the Ft rewards schools if they have a high percentage of faculty who are not from the home country of the school. Now, the year before, Stanford did just fine on this measure, but apparently the school failed to respond on this question on the survey.

[00:03:10.450] – John

And so the FT, instead of reverting to the score that it gave Stanford a year earlier, simply basically gave them a zero, even though last year the FT reported that 45% of the school’s professors qualified as international. So I think that glitch somehow accounted for the dismal performance of Stanford in the ranking. Yeah, there were other factors as well, and we’ll get into them and I’ll just give you the top ten because that’s always important. Wharton, as I said, is number one. INSEAD repeated as the number two school. And I have to say that in many recent years, INSEAD has performed consistently in this ranking. Columbia business school was third and fell from first place last year, which was something of an anomaly because Columbia has never been first in this ranking other than last year. That third place was a tie with SDa Bocconi in Italy, which went up three spots. IESC in Barcelona was 5th. 6th, there was a tie between northwestern, Kellogg and MIT Sloan. Eight was London business school. Nine was Cornell, which is actually a drop of one, even though that would feel rather high for Cornell. And then Chicago.

[00:04:32.700] – John

Booth came in kind of low too, in 10th place, even though that was a one place improvement over the year before. Caroline, what do you make of this?

[00:04:42.750] – Caroline

Well, it certainly grabs headlines, doesn’t it, when Stanford drops to not even the second tier of ten to 20, but below 20th rank. I don’t think it’s going to put many people off from applying to Stanford, to be honest. And it’s a shame that they didn’t sort out that data glitch because do you think that position reflects badly on the ranking or does it reflect badly on the school? I think most people will decide that it reflects badly on the ranking rather than actually being a true representation of Stanford business school. So I think it’s a shame that they didn’t figure that out. Surely they could have called the school and given them a chance to come up with that one data point.

[00:05:30.680] – John

Yeah, that’s a really good point. I mean, what does it take, given the consequences to its own ranking, incidentally, in terms of the rankings credibility, to make a single phone call to a PR person, for God’s sake, at Stanford and say, hey, you failed to fill this out. We have to give you a zero if you can’t give US the number. I mean, as simple as that.

[00:05:51.940] – Caroline

So, Caroline, you’re absolutely, and, you know, as you say, they’ve performed well on that criterion in past years, so there’s no reason to believe that they actually are at a zero. But it also points to the fact that there’s very little to choose between these top scores. Right? So a small difference on one particular element, which only represents a very small weighting in the ranking, can make a huge dramatic difference in the outcome. I think that speaks to the fact that people reading the ranking need to keep in mind that these are great schools and it doesn’t really matter if the school is at number one or number ten, to be honest, it’s a fantastic cohort to be part of. And there’s so little to choose often between those top schools that actually, it’s a somewhat false exercise to put them in a ranking. And also, really, the premise of a ranking, I think is false. Right. It assumes that there is a single order in the world of business schools and that we should all agree with. But everybody has a different view on what is important about the quality of a business school.

[00:07:08.280] – Caroline

And it very much depends for a candidate on what it is they’re looking to get out of the experience. And so I think that the rankings take themselves far too seriously and have way too much influence. Definitely. Much more influence than they merit.

[00:07:23.480] – John

Yeah, definitely true. Maria, your take on this year’s FT ranking?

[00:07:28.750] – Maria

Yeah, I mean, look, I applaud the FT for taking into account so many different variables and also in being so transparent and open in what the results were for each of them. But it’s almost like too many cooks in the kitchen, too many metrics in the ranking. And I do think that some of them, like, I applaud, for example, that they look at, say, the carbon footprint rank of a school. That’s wonderful. We should all be using less carbon on board with that 100%. But I don’t know how relevant something like, say, the carbon footprint rank is to. If I were looking to apply to a business school right now, not sure how super relevant that is in terms of me trying to find the best possible school to attend. So it’s almost like they, I love how much data they have, but it’s almost like they’ve lost sight of what’s actually important in their pursuit of. Okay, we’ve got these 21 different variables that we’re going to ask about, and I agree with Caroline. It’s a little bit strange that if they were missing a data point from Stanford, I mean, if I were applying to Stanford and if one of my recommenders didn’t submit in time, they would probably say to me like, hey, you’re missing a recommendation.

[00:08:39.070] – Maria

What’s up with that? So it feels a little bit odd that they would be penalized because they didn’t. Is it an important data point to have or is it not financial times? If it is important, then you owe it to the school to try to follow up. And if it’s not important, then why are you asking it? So there’s sort of a draconian, got you moment to that part of the story that doesn’t feel good. I don’t feel good about that. I wish that that weren’t part of this.

[00:09:08.910] – John

Yeah, true. In the same know when Wharton disappeared off the ranking last year because it failed to meet the minimum response rate. I don’t even know what the minimum response rate is. Now, FT points out what it is, but they have actually made exceptions because of the pandemic years. And it doesn’t tell you how much lower that response rate is based on its adjustment due to the pandemic. But also, it’s kind of silly to have a ranking without Wharton. And this year, incidentally, they have a ranking without Michigan Ross, which routinely in the US, places among the top twelve MBA programs in the United States. And they’re completely missing from the ranking because they apparently failed to meet this minimum response rate required by the FT. I get that you don’t want to publish stuff that’s basically reliant on really thin or flimsy data, but you have a lot of other data and you have historical data and you have some data. And I think rather than just throw a school out, maybe they’re on the list with an asterisk or something, because it only hurts the credibility of this ranking more than it hurts any given school.

[00:10:24.900] – John

I think it’s just sort of insane. Now, the other interesting thing that the FT does, and this is relatively recent, okay? So for the last three years, the FT has been publishing a metric that it does not use in its MBA ranking. Now, I know Maria is going to disagree with me about this because she doesn’t think this metric is all that important, but I just want to point out something about this. What this measurement purports to measure is the overall satisfaction in the MBA program that was experienced by alumni. Now, yes, it’s true that if you go to Michigan, Ross, for example, and you rate your overall satisfaction, you don’t know what that person’s satisfaction would have been at Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, London business school, or any of the other schools that are ranked. But to the extent that in everything that we look at today, whether it’s a Yelp ranking of a restaurant or a rotten tomatoes ranking of a movie, we do look at what other people who have experienced something think about the product, the service. And this data is gathered by DFT, and they do a relatively good job with overall good response rates on their alumni surveys.

[00:11:46.470] – John

And because they’re surveying people three years out. I’m willing to say that those responses are a little bit more honest than surveying people while they’re still in the MBA program or they just graduated because that distance from the school itself helped provide a little more perspective, I think now on this measurement, even though it’s not counted, it is reported by the FT. And guess who’s number one? Stanford, which is the school ranked 23rd. And guess who’s number two? Dartmouth College’s tuck school, which makes total sense to me. And then the University of Virginia’s Darden school actually takes third place. What we did in our coverage of the rankings is we looked at these numbers over the three years that they have been disclosed by the Financial Times and then put them all together. And sure, Stanford, Dartmouth, Virginia, number one, two, three. Harvard is number three as well, tied with Virginia. IESC is fifth, Cornell is 6th, Chicago Booth 7th, Northwestern, Kellogg, a MIT, Sloan nine, and Columbia ten. And we just think that’s really interesting data that deserves to be highlighted. What do you two think about that?

[00:13:10.750] – Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s great that they’re collecting that data, and I agree that it’s useful to look at, and I think with a lot of this data, it’s useful for looking at those individual criteria and house calls, rank, and then a candidate can decide what is important to them and which of those criteria really matter for them individually. I think it’s interesting that in that list that you’ve put together, John, on the satisfaction ranking, then you have a lot of US schools or the international. The European schools are further down the list, which is different to how the overall ranking looks. Right. The overall ranking, the international schools come out much more highly. And I wonder if there’s a cultural element to that, because having studied in Europe, coming from Europe and living in the US, people in the US are definitely much more enthusiastic about their educational institutions, right. And they’re very proud of their educational institution, and that’s sort of part of the culture and tradition in a way that it is not to the same extent in many European cultures. And so I can imagine that alumni from some of the international and European schools may be more vocal about their criticism than a US alum may be, and a US alum may feel that whenever they talk about the business school, then they need to be a champion of that school.

[00:14:44.010] – Caroline

So I do think that cultural differences may play into that. That’s true. Also, there’s very little to choose between the top again, like the top 20. Right. So the top 20 in that list, they all have 93, 94, index with Stanford at 100. So it’s not like there are any big gaps there in that top cohort.

[00:15:07.310] – John

No, and that’s one of the problems with the data. And it’s probably why the FT doesn’t include it, because the results are so closely clustered together that it makes the result less meaningful on some level. I mean, sure, if you look at the top ten and 20, and then you look at the bottom ten or 20, there’s some good variation, but there’s not a whole lot of variation between the top 20 schools. And also, I should point out, given what you said, that I totally agree with you, because when I was doing the ranking at business Week and we surveyed recently graduated alums, I purposely separated the international schools from the US schools because I felt that our ranking depended so much on that alumni data that the differences, the expectations and how people fill these forms out differed enough that I didn’t think it was fair to include all the schools and bundle them together. Regardless, on our top 20, when we looked at three years of data, the Indian School of Business is on there. INSEAD is on there 18th, IMD is on there at 17th. Cambridge is on there at 14th, Bocconi at 13.

[00:16:25.770] – John

And in that top ten, there is only the one European school, ESA in Barcelona in number five. But if you do look closely at the numbers, man, they’re really close to each other. So you got to be careful in terms of interpreting this or over interpreting it. But I think it’s a fascinating data point. And after all, if a rankings purpose, and this goes back to what Caroline said, is to really measure the quality of the MBA experience for applicants who use a ranking to help choose or target schools. Yeah, carbon footprint certainly isn’t something that reflects on the quality of the MBA program or your MBA experience. Overall satisfaction certainly does. And there are a number of other things that don’t really reflect on the quality of your MBA experience. Like how many internationals or women are on the advisory board of a business school. Or for that matter, how many of the professors have doctorate degrees, regardless of whether they even teach and show up, or they’re in the back room doing research, which the distinction isn’t made in the FT ranking. And how important is scholarly research to the actual MBA experience?

[00:17:43.110] – John

Yes, it’s important that your professors are on the leading edge of knowledge in their fields, but in most cases, the way research plays out in business calls is so much of it is divorced from practitioners and real life that very little of it comes into the classroom and is useful. So there are those things about this ranking that make you scratch your head because it has nothing to do with how much money you might be able to get given the brand, how well the career services office has worked on your behalf. These are things measured in this ranking, or do you think you achieved your aims as a result of the MBA program? What percentage increase in pay did you receive three years after you graduated compared to your pre MBA salary? Things like that are all I think relevant. But what I love is that you can parse this thing, and the Financial Times does a great job in allowing you to parse the data to basically build a customized ranking for yourself. Caroline, I think you would agree with that, right?

[00:18:54.890] – Caroline

Yeah, I really appreciate that they share the data. And another thing I appreciate about this ranking is that they audit the data. So they do go round to the schools, and I can remember that at INSEAD when they came and went through everything, and they are very meticulous and they do go round to the schools regularly. So I think, therefore, this data, on the whole, is probably more reliable than some of the data in other rankings.

[00:19:21.500] – John

Yeah. And they’re the only ranking organization that actually does independent audits. I think it’s every three years they audit results and they use an accounting firm to do so. And that is definitely best practice. And no one does it. And I give the FT great credit for it. It’s also, by and large, I mean, really the only truly global ranking. And you got to give the FT a lot of credit for the fact that it’s trying to look at these programs no matter where they appear in the world. And that’s a plus, too. Maria, is there any other thing you found in this year’s ranking that kind of raised an eyebrow or your thoughts worth mentioning?

[00:20:04.350] – Maria

Yeah, no, I think just to echo what Caroline has said, the best thing about the FT ranking is that they lay out all of those 21 different metrics, and you can slice and dice and you can download a CSV, you can go down all kinds of fun rabbit holes with ordering things in different orders. Yeah, I mean, I think the only thing that I would highlight is that something like 56% of the weight of the ranking comes down to alumni responses versus 34%, which is more quantifiable. Right. More like quantifiable facts. And so I do think that if you’re going to use this ranking as a place to really inform your decision making, try to prioritize the 34% of the ranking that is based on numbers as opposed to, as you alluded to earlier, my biggest concern with this ranking is that with so much of it based on alumni opinion, to the extent that you can only go to one business school pretty much in your life, it’s kind of hard. If I think my career services office was good or not good, how do I know? Because I’ve only really encountered one career services office, so I would just help folks to use it with a grain of salt.

[00:21:22.310] – Maria

But I do love the fact that the FT ranking does, it does have that international flavor to it, and I think it does bring forth some programs into the minds of applicants that they might not either be considering, or maybe they’ve heard of the program and they were considering it, but the FT ranking helps them consider it more seriously, whereas before they might not have. So I do appreciate that breadth in terms of also kind of highlighting certain schools, let’s say in China, for example, that you might not otherwise think about. So I do like it from that perspective as well.

[00:21:57.000] – John

Yeah, those are all really good points. And I should say, though, last year there were major changes in the methodology that did result in more of a roller coaster ranking. This year’s ranking was less volatile. Nothing was changed in the methodology. So you were comparing apples to apples this year. And last year I should mention that the FT wanted to modernize its ranking, and so it added a metric on ESG issues and it added the net carbon rank of a, you know, while, you know, I think question these two data points in terms of what does it really mean for a quality MBA experience? It’s interesting. Now, I will say about the ESG measure, and here’s what they’re trying to do. They’re measuring the proportion of teaching hours in core courses dedicated to environmental, social and governance issues and climate solutions for how organizations can reach net zero. Now, this data is all self reported by the schools, and so you really can’t check it against anything. It’s basically put your finger in the air and guess. And I’m assuming that most schools pretty much do that. I mean, how certain can you be about the actual number of teaching hours devoted to ESG topics in the core, never mind how important it is or unimportant, or whether a field project or an experiential learning opportunity in this field might be more meaningful than just devoting an hour or a few hours to this.

[00:23:44.520] – John

But to the extent that it’s self reported by the schools, and it’s like a squishy, goofy kind of number, I don’t know how reliable it can be. And what’s interesting is the European schools do exceptionally well, on this, the US schools don’t do nearly as well. And in fact, in the top ten, the only US school, if you’ll even call it a US school, because it’s really more international, with campuses in London and elsewhere, is Holt International business school at number nine, right behind INSEAD at number eight. The first prominent US business school that comes into play is Yale at 14th and UCLA at 15th and UVA Darden at 16th. But the vast majority of the schools are European. And I think that does make sense to some degree because I think the European schools have been much more pioneering in the area of ESG, sustainability, and sort of the United nations goals on ESG than the US schools have been. And they’ve really been first movers in this area. It’s one of the reasons why we in fact named INSEAD’s MBA program the program of the year last year, given its big emphasis on sustainability.

[00:25:04.780] – John

But it is interesting data. Now, INSEAD number two. Now, what’s your commentary on that, Caroline? Because obviously you’re anciod expert.

[00:25:16.110] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s great news for the school. And I think what matters in these rankings is not the latest headline and how the numbers have shifted from one year to the next, but the longer term trends. And I think that is more meaningful. And I suspect next year we’ll be talking about Stanford jumping back up to the top of the ranking. Right? So this will be a blip year for Stanford. So to me, it’s more about the longer term trends. And INSEAD has been a really consistent performer in this ranking and has done well for many years. And I think that speaks to what an outstanding program it is across many different elements in this ranking. And that reflects the fact that it’s a very rigorous, a very innovative program, that it has an outstanding faculty body, very talented students, great career opportunities for people going off to post MBA jobs all around the world. So I think that that consistent performance speaks volumes about the school.

[00:26:17.210] – John

True. Now let me ask Maria, if you’re an applicant, what’s your advice to that applicant? Should the applicant ignore the FT ranking altogether? Should the applicant come to it with a healthy skepticism over the result? Should an applicant then parse the data based on what’s important to the applicant? What’s your advice to someone out there who is putting together their consideration set for what schools they intend to apply to, what schools to research, what schools to really focus on? How does this ranking help or hurt that process?

[00:26:57.990] – Maria

Well, I think what I would tell folks to do is, I think, look, any source of data, any data can be good data depending on what you’re trying to figure out. I would tell them, I think for this specific ranking in terms of how to best use it, I would have them pull up the page where the FT defines each one of these metrics and tells you exactly how they figured it out, like the methodology page, because that is really going to help you realize, for example, that the salary numbers are not absolute dollar or euro figures, that the salary numbers are adjusted for purchasing power parity, which might matter a lot for you or it might not matter for you. And so I think as long as you’re aware, if you take it with a grain of salt or a little bit of skepticism or not, maybe not even skepticism, just awareness of which different metric. What’s the source of this data? How are they mixing and matching and parsing and slicing and dicing the data? Because that’s going to then help you say to yourself, okay, if I go to the site and I say, okay, I want you to rank it according to whatever career services effectiveness or whatever that one is.

[00:28:02.640] – Maria

If I then look on the methodology page and I realize that that’s more of a subjective one versus an objective one, then I will then know, okay, maybe I should take this with more of a grain of salt. So I think my biggest piece of advice, and this is probably true for any ranking, but especially just because the FT has so many different pieces of data in it, is really look behind the headline or the top of the chart where it says, okay, this is the weighted salary. This is the value for money, right? Like the value for money rank, right. Okay, well, how do they figure that out? Oh, this is how they do it. Do I think based on how they do it that this is what matters to me, or should it not? But I love the rankings as at least a starting point. If for no other reason, if you are completely new, especially folks who are new to the business world in general, right? Because if you’ve already been working in banking or consulting or the corporate world, you’ve probably encountered people who went to some of these schools. So you might be coming into it with already a bit of a decision set in your head.

[00:29:01.610] – Maria

But if you are completely new to the world of business schools, sure, use this as a starting point to at least highlight some schools that you should perhaps look at. But don’t take anything as etched in stone or the gospel. The truth. This is the truth. Go into it with an open mind.

[00:29:20.550] – John

And that’s really good advice because the problem with most rankings is that people look at the list and they don’t look under the hood at all. They don’t really know what’s getting measured and whether it even matters to them. And yet they’re using these rankings to make very important decisions for themselves. And if anything, just being more knowledgeable and aware of what is being measured and whether it matters to you, and whether in fact it’s, let’s say, a factual result or a result that you can basically pull out of a hat, is an important element in bringing a healthy evaluation to what the ranking is saying. And you mentioned value for money. It’s worth pointing out that while Stanford MBAs have the highest alumni salaries, according to the Financial Times, and that’s nothing new, we’ve been reporting that Stanford MBAs generally make the most money out of business school, and shortly after business school, more than any other MBA program in the world. Yet on the FT’s value for money rank, the Stanford ranks 95th out of 100 schools. Now, how is that possible if Stanford MBAs are among the highest paid, not among are the highest paid MBAs in the world, period.

[00:30:40.580] – John

It just doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. And incidentally, I should point out that in terms of value for money, Stanford’s scholarship assistance is very generous, probably second only to Harvard, which is the most generous when it comes to financial aid and scholarship or fellowship money. So it’s heavily discounting its MBA for a good number of students, just as Harvard is, and they’re making the most money. And yet the value from money rank is 95 out of 100. That’s just hard to compute or believe. And there are a lot of anomalies like that in this ranking, as there are with all attempts. The other thing that Caroline pointed out and Maria pointed out is a number of metrics here, which are overwhelming 21 different metrics. And what that does, it makes it harder to read the ranking because it’s more difficult to figure out what was it that caused a school’s rise or decline. Because there’s so many metrics to look at, and this is a moving target. The ranking is dynamic, meaning that everyone’s rank on any one of these 21 metrics can change from year to year. The changes can be incredibly small and insignificant, and yet they all loom large in the overall ranking.

[00:32:03.520] – John

And you can’t quite tell very easily why a score is going up or down or why it should matter to you. And this is somewhat problematic as well. I like really simple approaches, which for years, while you can argue with this, the simple way that Forbes used to rank MBA programs when they ranked them is basically return on investment. So they would look at what the cost of the degree was and then what the return was on it. And even though it’s a short term measurement, because you’re not looking long term, what that reward would be, it’s just very helpful and simple. You get one data point, you can look at it, you can agree with it, disagree with it, but it’s simple to understand, and you can quickly see why a score would go up or down in that ranking. I’m not saying that rankings should only be one or two data points, but I think 21 is like everything thrown into a stew that you have left over in the refrigerator and you don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know that your stew comes out really well when you throw 21 different ingredients in it and you can’t taste one from the other because they’re all blended together.

[00:33:21.910] – John

Caroline, you got to agree about that.

[00:33:24.660] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s a great analogy. I love it. It is quite a hodgepotch. Just one thing going back to ESG, I do appreciate that they are shining a spotlight on this. And though I absolutely agree that it’s very debatable and it won’t be something that is important to some MBA candidates, it is something that a lot of MBA candidates do care about deeply. And I agree with you that this is much more central to the strategy at European schools than it is in the US. And I see that reflected across society and in the US. I think ESG is just. It is coming to the surface more, and it is more of a concern, but it is not fundamental to the strategy and the day to day concerns of businesses and government and schools in the same way here that it is in Europe. And that needs to change. Right? Otherwise, we are all in deep trouble. We will not have the next generation. They’re going to have to resolve this climate crisis, and business schools need to take a lead. And we talked about this on the podcast last week about how business schools need to stake a claim, and they need to set a good example and help to point the direction that businesses need to go in.

[00:34:54.860] – Caroline

And so I appreciate that the FT is shining a spotlight on this, and I wish that US institutions across the board would integrate this more into their strategy and their day to day practices.

[00:35:08.700] – John

Yes, agreed. So, for all of you who want to read more about this, we do our typical two story treatment of it. We do the ten biggest surprises. So you’ll see the Financial Times 2024 MBA ranking, ten biggest surprises. Look it up. A lot of data, a lot of parsing of the ranking in a way that you’ll never get anywhere else. And then we have, of course, our big story on the ranking itself and our initial analysis of the ranking. What’s good about it? What’s not good about it, what? The big movers are both up and down on the list. And you’ll find that fascinating as well. I’ll just say this because it’s true and it’s a mystery to, okay, because every organization that ranks business schools does a horrible job of covering its own ranking. This was true over at Business Week. This is true at the US News and World Report. This is definitely true at the Financial Times. You get the most superficial coverage. And it’s kind of remarkable. Like if you read the Financial Times own coverage of its own MBA ranking, which it’s making a major investment, editorial investment in this ranking every year, and yet its story is just a disjointed hodgepodge of things that are just so superficial.

[00:36:27.330] – John

It’s like shocking. You won’t know that Michigan Ross is not on the list. And why? Because the FT won’t tell you. You won’t understand that Harvard fell to its lowest rank ever and so did Stanford. And that Stanford is ranked 23rd. You got to look in the table. You came not in the story. And up and down. The coverage is abysmal. And I’m not just signaling that for blaming the FT for that. Every organization that does a ranking, despite the investment they make in it, does a poor job of reporting it. And this opens the door for US to do a really good job. And we are in the weeds. And I think if you really want to understand this and any other ranking, this is our forte. We get under the hood and we point out the crazy stuff and the stuff that might matter and help you make sense of these lists. So if you don’t want to read the footnotes, if you don’t want to read the methodology table, if you don’t want to really get into it in a level that, that would require some time, read our coverage. I think it would be really helpful to you.

[00:37:34.880] – John

And thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The 2024 Financial Times MBA Ranking
Maria |
February 21, 2024

[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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