The Businessweek MBA Ranking Controversy
Maria |
October 19, 2021

Ajani Jain, Deputy Dean of Yale School of Management, sparked a controversy with his recent analysis demonstrating how inaccurate and distorted the Bloomberg Businessweek is, in terms of their MBA ranking and methodology, when he attempted to recreate their approach.

In this episode of Business Casual, Maria, John and Caroline discuss the Businessweek MBA rankings and their overall impact. Listen to hear discussion on:

 

  • Why all three of them were already skeptical about the “rankings” (And what exactly John means by that)
  • Why Maria thinks that of all the rankings, Businessweek is always the one with the ‘wild swings’
  • Why Maria praises Jain’s writing on how he approached the matter with Bloomberg in this episode. (It is certainly without a doubt intellectually humorous!)
  • The team debate the question “Do MBA rankings really matter?” Is it more important than a genuine and authentic reputation that data analysis and statistical ranking systems do not obtain?
  • Is ranking manipulation a criminal offense punishable by law?
  • One fact that will enrage the faculty: applicants value rankings three times more than faculty quality when choosing a program. (The statistics gathered from applicants will astound you!)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.330] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. We’re going to talk about a big controversy that’s in the news right now. We broke the story upon Poets and Quants. It’s an analysis by Anjani Jain, the deputy Dean of Yale School of Management, on the latest Businessweek ranking of MBA programs. He pulled apart all the numbers and put them into an optimization model, and Lo and behold, found that he could not replicate their ranking if he used the exact weights on five indexes that they used to measure the quality of an MBA experience. In fact, if he runs the analysis on the weights that they provide and state in their methodology, 79 of the 84 schools that would be ranked would have a different rank, and some of the schools would have dramatically changed rankings. One glaring example, Wharton, which already was ranked 9th in the Businessweek ranking, would actually fall to 28th if the proper weights were accorded based on this analysis by Anjani Jain. Now I should point out that Businessweek is saying that Anjani’s analysis is incorrect. It’s inaccurate. You can’t possibly attempt to replicate the data without having the raw scores as opposed to the scores that they actually published online and in the magazine.

 

[00:01:50.930] – John

Anjani argues that it doesn’t make any difference if the actual scores published in the magazine and online are truly reflective of the raw scores. It doesn’t matter whether you have the raw scores or not. Caroline, what do you make of this?

 

[00:02:06.100] – Caroline

Yeah, I agree that it looks very dodgy indeed, and that Businessweek has not responded very clearly to the challenges, so definitely looks very suspicious. I think they’re trying to make some excuses now and close the discussion, but it definitely looks like something is a mischief, which is very concerning.

 

[00:02:29.450] – John

Yeah, exactly. And now, Maria, I know. Well, all three of us are skeptical of these rankings to begin with. If you’ve listened to our podcast in the past, you know that. And we had a whole podcast not long ago devoted to the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking, where we kind of tore it apart. But, Maria, what’s your take on all this?

 

[00:02:50.420] – Maria

Yeah, I think of all of the rankings, Bloomberg Businessweek has always been the one that kind of has these wild swings back and forth. And I think it’s because my impression is that it’s a very subjective ranking. And so if you organize a bunch of people together and you say, okay, guys, Businessweek is going to be reaching out to you, and it’s really important that you say that our academic experience was the best thing in the world because that’s how they rank, whether or not it’s a good academic program. I don’t think that you should rank a business school based on a popularity contest solely on people’s opinions. Or what if a bunch of graduates are grumpy in a particular year? And I don’t know, I do think that there should be some emotional component. Right. Are you happy you went to the school? Something like that. But I don’t think that so much of it should be so qualitative. So, yeah, I think there’s just something fundamentally wrong with Businessweek, how they’ve been doing this anyway. And so even if they had like, let’s say, let’s say if what Deputy D and Jain is saying is correct, and they got these weird results, like super weird results.

 

[00:04:00.710] – Maria

And they were like, oh, no, this doesn’t look good. So we need to kind of mix things up a little and change it around. Even if that’s true, the fact that they are getting such weird results, that should be a signal to them as an organization. Like, wait a minute, this is weird. One school in Texas, does it really have the best academic experience? I’m sure it’s a great academic school, but isn’t really the best. Maybe we should look inward and with a bit of maturity and say maybe our own ranking isn’t very our own methodology is not that great. I will say, as a side note.

 

[00:04:35.510] – John

In context of what you just said, Marie, if I may, Marie is referring to the fact that under the Businessweek surveys of students, UT Dallas is number one in terms of their learning category, which seems pretty surprising, right?

 

[00:04:54.130] – Maria

I’m sure, I’m sure it’s an amazing school. But come on, the number one learning. Come on. Even when they first get that data back, even before they move to analyze it, and before they move to do all these machinations and this sort of Cirque du Soleil twisting themselves into a pretzel to try to get the to try to claim that their methodology works. Like, maybe internally they should be like, maybe our methodology is kind of lousy because this doesn’t really pass the test. Although I will say, just as a side note for all of this, if I were Businessweek, I would sort of snarkily point out that, hey, Jain, when you redo it, it just so happens at your own school, jumps up four points of four places. And it just so happens that Yale is now again in the top ten, especially because we know, I think we might have mentioned at some point before in one of our conversations that I think Yale in particular has been really trying to game the rankings or to increase the ranking these past several years, anecdotally I’ve seen a much bigger emphasis on GMAT scores at Yale, for example, than I did 15 years ago.

 

[00:06:09.550] – Maria

If I were Businessweek, I would sort of reply with that. But regardless of where you stand on this, this is like, get out the popcorn, read this article, go to Poets and Quants. And right now, because it is such great, it’s such compelling reading, although I don’t remember what his E score is to save my life. But the other thing that’s great is that really just like James writing is so awesome. I love my favorite phrase that he uses it’s a deceitful canard. As a society, we don’t use the term canard enough. And I, for one, applaud Deputy Dean Jain for his wonderful writing, which has just been a delight to read, even if I don’t understand the statistics behind it.

 

[00:06:53.890] – John

Yeah. His response to Businessweek is a really wonderful reading. He calls Businessweek statement disingenuous and nonsensical and yes, a canard, among other things. And then there’s all the analysis, which some of it is above my pay grade in my head. And I never had the benefit, like you two, of taking statistical courses. So while you 2 may know everything about this, including the difference between a normalized score and a Z score, I don’t have a clue.

 

[00:07:33.950] – Maria

Don’t look here.

 

[00:07:36.110] – John

Now, again, I need to point out that I’m the culprit who originally created the MBA ranking back in 1988. But I want to add some context here. The ranking has changed dramatically. Back when I did it, it was a simple customer satisfaction survey that measured the satisfaction of the latest graduating class and the employers who hired them. That’s it simple. And it was cleaned in that way and pure because it was so simple. And I had hired a PhD in statistics who ended up becoming the President of Cooney, the College system in New York, to be my consultant to make sure that we were doing the right things. And I think a lot of these ranking organizations put the fear of God in business schools to report correct data and not to interfere with any surveys of student opinions that they may do. It’s also incumbent on them to have transparency, to operate with full integrity, and to provide the data that would actually allow for more rigorous analysis of the results. And, of course, that’s not happening here. The big question is just an interesting, entertaining fight that we can sit by the sidelines with a bag full of popcorn and enjoy.

 

[00:09:03.350] – John

Or does this fight really matter?

 

[00:09:05.430] – Caroline

Caroline, the rankings do carry rates, right? People pay a lot of attention to them, for better or for worse, from prospective students who are thinking about ways to apply to recruiters, to faculty who are looking at which schools they want to work at. It does have a broad impact. And so they have some responsibility here to respond more clearly to the claims, I think.

 

[00:09:35.190] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. It’s worth pointing out that there’s only one of the five major rankings that actually does audits of school provided information, and that’s the Financial Times. And I believe that they audit programs every three years. And I got to tip my hat off to them for actually going to that extra step to ensure more integrity by the schools, because obviously the schools are under significant pressure to push numbers in their favor, no matter what they are. But to your point, rankings are consequential. They do matter. Two years ago, the association of International and Graduate Admissions Consulting, we call that AJAC. And we’re here as a member. They surveyed MBA applicants, and out of nearly 2000 responses, here’s what they found. They found that nothing mattered more in school selection than rankings and reputation, two factors that, let’s face it, that largely become inseparable. So when you ask the applicants what were the top factors influencing specific choice of schools, 63% of them sided rankings with an equal number of sighting reputation. Now, I’m going to state a fact that it’s going to enraise a lot of the faculty who listen to our podcast.

 

[00:11:02.270] – John

That means, according to this survey of applicants, that applicants value rankings three times more in selecting the program than faculty quality. Faculty quality got 21%. The cost of the program got 23%. GMAT or GRE scores attained, meaning it affects where you apply, 27%. Think about that. 63% said ranking, 63% said reputation. They both go hand in hand. It’s kind of remarkable, frankly. And then when GMAT surveys its folks and they did so in 2021, earlier this year, they found that rankings was a key information resource for researching programs. 45% of domestic MBA applicants said it was 49% of international MBA applicants said it was. So it’s clear that these rankings sway people one way or the other because they do affect your impression of brand. And this is particularly true when you get past Harvest Erin Wharton, and then you start getting into the other schools, which, after all, enroll and get applications from far greater numbers of people than the combined numbers at Harvard, Stanford and Wharton, where I think no matter what their rankings are, it really doesn’t matter because people won’t believe that they’re ranked poorly. No one’s going to believe Wharton’s current rank of nine in Bloomberg Businessweek, and no one would believe the reconstituted ranking, which shows Wharton is number 28.

 

[00:12:45.070] – John

So it doesn’t matter for those schools, but it matters for everybody else pretty much. And then you have this sense that, look, you know, it matters because people cheat. Next month, the former Dean of Temple University’s business school is actually going on trial in federal court for allegedly cooking the books and providing fraudulent data US news that allowed his online MBA program to be ranked number one for four consecutive years. And this is a criminal indictment. It’s the first time the government has actually gone after a school. And it’s been for alleged fraud, which is pretty darn remarkable. And that trial is going to be getting a Philadelphia courtroom, I believe, in the second week of November. Sorry. But Marie, when you chose the school, you weren’t thinking about rankings, were you, because you went to Harvard?

 

[00:13:50.850] – Maria

No. You know, it’s funny. I basically looked at, like, people I admired and where they had gone to school. And then also I looked at people that I didn’t like so much. And a lot of them all randomly, perhaps coincidentally, had all ended up going to another well known school. And so I was like, well, that helps me narrow it down pretty considerably. And yeah, actually, I believe at the time Wharton I mean, Harvard has always been obviously, because it’s Harvard. But Wharton at the time I was living in Asia, and my boss was like, well, Wharton is a better school. Right? And I was like, I don’t know. Wharton is sort of famous worldwide for being like the business school. And so I don’t even know if I looked at the ranking. We’ve talked in the past about why we chose our respective schools, but the people around me were at least my boss at the time was like, oh, I thought Wharton was the better. I’m surprised that you’re taking Harvard INSEAD, but they were just such different programs that I chose the one that I thought was best for me. So I don’t know.

 

[00:14:53.650] – Maria

It’s a shame because I do think that it’s interesting that the three of us have spent so many years in the space, and we’ve seen not just the fluctuations in the rankings, but we’ve seen clients or people that we’ve interviewed or anyone like that who goes to different programs. And many of them have wonderful career outcomes, really, regardless of whether they go to a school that one year is ranked second and the next year is ranked 7th. And so we can see that the rankings themselves, in terms of outcome for your life, don’t really matter a ton. But every year, people coming fresh into this process, it’s a fresh batch of people every single year. And so it’s brand new to them. And so it’s understandable that the rankings is the first place they would look. And I guess it’s understandable that they would place a lot of weight on it. It’s just sort of a shame that we can’t sort of transmit our collective wisdom into their brains and feel like it’s not nice, but it’s not the be all and end all of the experience.

 

[00:15:53.530] – John

That’s really true. And Caroline, obviously you picked INSEAD because you wanted a far more international global experience, and that’s what you got there.

 

[00:16:02.450] – Caroline

Yeah.

 

[00:16:03.550] – John

INSEAD great school was a terrific MBA program. It has been for a very long time. I’m sure rankings didn’t come into the picture for you either.

 

[00:16:14.240] – Caroline

No, they didn’t. I don’t remember consulting the rankings, but I think people it’s something that’s sort of in the background.

 

[00:16:20.490] 

Right.

 

[00:16:20.750] – Caroline

People are aware of them, and I know that it does create a reaction. So I’ve seen that when I was working at it yet that when the score went up in the rankings, stakeholders get very excited. And when the score went down in the rankings, they’d been knocking on the Dean’s door and wanting explanations. So people do take notice. Right. Even people who know these schools incredibly well. Alumni, donors, et cetera. They do keep an eye on these things and they want to understand what’s going on. So even though you may know it’s all very well and appreciate its value, regardless of what particular publication says, people are aware of the impact of the rankings have on other people. So the influence that that has and they care about the sort of public reputation of the schools. And so I do think the rankings have disproportionate influence, unfortunately.

 

[00:17:29.450] – John

Absolutely. Well, no matter how this plays out, meaning, will Businessweek ultimately concede that it made an error or will it never do that? And the argument will just be out there? I think the one good outcome of all this is that it makes us do exactly what we should be doing treating these lists more skeptically, looking at them probably more for entertainment value than for the reality that this school is number three and that school is number five and the other school is number eight. Again, I’ll always say the benefit of a ranking is generally the underlying data that comes with it. And without rankings, I don’t think we would have had the kind of disclosures that we’ve seen in the last quarter of a century where you know what the average GM out of entering classes, you know the average GPA, the number of years of work experience, you know what the outcomes are going to be in terms of average salary, signing bonus, percentage of people who have a job offer at graduation and three months later. These are all stats that often go into rankings and they are public because the rankings exist.

 

[00:18:48.140] – John

And I think that’s a positive thing for people to help make informed decisions about where to go. Meantime, pop your popcorn set in your sofa and read all the stories and Poets and Quants in the back and forth between Bloomberg this week and Anjani Jain and make up your own mind. That’s all makes sense. All right, Maria Caroline, thank you so much. Watch again for your wisdom and your smarts. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants you’ve been listening to Business Casual.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The Businessweek MBA Ranking Controversy
Maria |
October 19, 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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