The U.S. MBA Programs Favored By International Students
Maria |
February 1, 2025

In this episode of Business Casual, John Byrne, alongside Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, delves into the shifting dynamics of international enrollments at top U.S. MBA programs. They explore the intricate balance between domestic and international student ratios, influenced by factors like domestic applicant trends and political climates, notably the Trump administration’s impact. Georgetown, Washington Foster, and Columbia Business School are highlighted for their significant, albeit declining, international cohorts.

The analysis reflects broader trends in global business education, emphasizing the need for diversity in academic environments to enrich learning and mirror the global business landscape. Schools are adapting to fluctuating international interest, which is reshaping their recruitment strategies and potentially the future landscape of MBA education in the U.S.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.960] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila. We, every year, take a look at those class profiles that come out from all the top schools in the world, and we do our little analysis on them. And this past week, we’ve taken a look at international enrollments at the top US schools. And there’s some really interesting data here. We identify the US MBA programs with the largest number of international students, and those that have gone up, and those who have gone down. Traditionally, in the US, many of the top schools aim to have about a third of their student body from outside the US for the purposes of diversity and to give different perspectives in the classroom. But those old rules have been thrown out a lot because there have been consecutive years of domestic applicant decline. And So many schools have become more reliant on international MBA students. And then you have, of course, the Trump factor, which did impact, we believe, the 2024 incoming classes because it was clear that he was running and there was some concern over whether or not he would be reelected, and of course, he has been.

[00:01:33.870] – John

We expect to see a more significant decline in this coming year. But I want to just give you a sense of what we found. The schools with the largest international cohorts are Georgetown. This last fall, fall of 2024, 49% of the students at Georgetown in the MBA program came from outside the United States. That is down 10 points, incidentally. At Washington Foster, it’s 46%, also down 10 points. At Columbia Business School in New York, it’s 46% as well, down only one point. At Indiana Kelly, it’s 46 as well, down from 58%, so that’s a 12-point decline in one year. I think you’re getting the trend line here, which is essentially fewer international applicants and students, because I think that in many cases, these enrolled numbers are indicative of the applicant pool. There are a few schools that went up. Unc Kenan–Flagler went from 34% in ’23 to 43%, Washington Olin went down 51 to 44. Michigan Ross, pretty much steady, 43 and 23, 44 and 24. Caroline, you’re our international expert. What do you make of these numbers? And what did they tell you about the state of business education education in America?

[00:03:01.360] – Caroline

Well, there’s always going to be some fluctuation in these numbers. As you said, it’s a function of the application pool, and there’s always going to be a cycle of different factors, international applications, domestic applications, how the economies are doing in different countries, and what that means for the number of people applying to business school and who feel confident about coming to the US and confident about leaving their jobs and going abroad, potentially. I think it also reflects the domestic rebound, so an increase in applications from domestic applicants, and so schools not being as reliant as they may have been in some past years on the international application pool. So I think that schools won’t be too concerned about these numbers because I think it’s probably as much a factor of an increase domestically in candidates coming through rather than a decline internationally. But there probably is some fall off internationally. And I think that with Trump running as President, there was concern about the implications for candidates coming to the US who might feel that they may be coming to a less welcoming environment. We certainly saw that having an impact last time around under the Trump presidency.

[00:04:25.050] – Caroline

And then, of course, concerns about visas. And if candidates are coming from overseas study in the US. For many of them, it’s a tremendous investment. It’s very costly to do an MBA in the US, even if you’re a domestic student and earning a salary in the US. Most of these programs were looking at a full-time two-year programs. It’s a huge investment. If you’re coming from India or Latin America or Africa, many other countries, your earning capacity is not the same as someone coming from US or perhaps someone coming from Western Europe. And so it can be quite an intimidating prospect, and you got to have a lot of confidence in your ability to get a return on investment as well as access to financing, of course. And perhaps fewer candidates have confidence that they will get that return or they will have a guaranteed return if they’re not sure that their ability to stay in the US post MBA is guaranteed. Because although I don’t know. I think an increasing number of students do have great opportunities in their home countries, right? And we’ve seen more MBA graduates going back to India, for example, rather than staying in the US or staying in Europe post-MBA because of the increase in great opportunities there, still many of these students are looking to make a career move internationally post-MBA.

[00:05:55.920] – Caroline

And so if they feel that they don’t have complete confidence in their to do that, then they may be less inclined to apply in the first place.

[00:06:04.100] – John

Yeah, exactly. In our sample, across 29 top schools, 21 saw declines between 23 and 24, five of them by double digits. The rest, I guess, eight had increases, generally fairly slight. Maria, can you really get a true global education in America?

[00:06:25.590] – Maria

I don’t know that any American school would provide as global of an education as as the INSEADs of the world or the other programs, mostly in Europe, where, say, 90% of the student body is from another country that is not the home country. But that having been said, American business schools seek out and enroll international students for a reason. There’s definitely a big benefit to having various perspectives from various markets across the world in your classroom. While I will acknowledge that I think that the INSEADs of the world probably do a better job of being purely international, I think the US schools have a nice balance of bringing in those international voices from some of the world’s largest economy, some of the world’s perhaps smaller but faster-growing economies, some of the world’s struggling economies. I think they do get a really good mix of voices into the classroom. I do think that you can learn quite a bit about international markets by attending a US business school. I also think that many of the students who come from overseas, I believe that they may be coming to the US to learn about the American capitalist business system.

[00:07:43.920] – Maria

If part of the goal for them is to learn more about American culture and American management practice and all the different ways that America does things, it may have flaws, but it still is a very strong system, there there is a benefit to the international students to coming not only to be immersed in the US in terms of living here, but also in being in a classroom where there are at least as many American students, if not sometimes a two-third to one-third approximate ratio.

[00:08:14.670] – John

True. Caroline, do you think there’s a tipping point? In other words, an ideal percentage of international students to have in a US classroom, what do you think it would be?

[00:08:23.190] – Caroline

Well, I think that’s hard to judge, but if you look at the numbers, it does seem that schools have a target of roughly somewhere between 30 and 40 %. That seems to be the number that they return to after some blips here and there. But that seems to be where they are the most common average of international students. And so that suggests that they find that they want to keep internationals as a minority in the classroom for the reasons, no doubt, that Maria said that they want it to be It’s primarily a US-focused experience because the domestic applicants are most likely staying in the US post-MBA. And so whilst it’s useful for them to get some international perspective, that doesn’t need to be the core of what they’re learning. And the international candidates are likely planning to stay in the US post-MBA as well. And therefore, they are looking for more of an immersive experience rather than a purely international experience. So I suspect that that’s what they’re aiming for. What I’ve also heard is that schools can sometimes get pushback from alumni if they have too large a percentage of international students. And alumni start to get concerned that it will impact the alumni community in the US if there’s 50 % international students, and therefore people might be eventually leaving the US, that could dilute the impact of the alumni network in the US.

[00:09:59.480] – Caroline

So I’ve heard that there has been pushback in the past about that. It does look for the numbers. They’re targeting roughly a third of the class as that magic number.

[00:10:12.050] – John

Yeah. In the big three, Wharton is at 31 Harvard at 35, and Stanford at the high end of the big three at 39. Then of the M7 schools, I think the schools that have the greatest international representation would be Columbia. That makes sense because New York is a magnet. It’s 46% at Columbia. At MIT, it’s 40%. Those are the numbers at the really elitist schools, put it that way. Then actually, at some of the secondary schools, you have higher numbers of percentages of international students, I think in part because they probably can draw higher quality international students than maybe even domestics if if you’re not in the top 20, let’s say, which is an interesting part of the composition of these different classes. Now, we said that in Europe, you can get a truly global education because 90%, if not more, of the students in most European business MBA programs are going to be from outside the given country. That makes for a very different learning experience. It’s not only very multicultural, but because there’s no center, meaning you go to an INSEAD and really, even though the main campus is in France with another campus in Singapore for MBAs, the location means, in my mind, much less than it would in the school where the cohort is dominated by domestic students.

[00:11:57.550] – John

Would you say that’s true, Caroline?

[00:11:59.460] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s It’s a very different experience. It’s a very different learning experience. So as you said, at schools like in Seattle, on a business school, the other top international programs in Europe, they’ve always sought to craft a class of people from very different countries, backgrounds, so that diversity has always been a core part of these MBA programs. And over time, 20, 30 years ago, that diversity was more European dominated, and And now it is much more global than it used to be. And it does create a magic in the classroom when you have people from such very different cultures and such incredibly different life experiences and professional experiences. And so that’s a huge part of what draws people to those schools and what you will learn in that classroom. You will learn so much about the challenges of working across borders, different cultural practices, the challenges of working in international teams. I mean, you will experience that because you will be working in teams with people from very different backgrounds. And you might think that because someone has gone to INSEAD and people have something in common, if they’re heading off to business school. They are bright young professionals, very motivated, very ambitious, etc.

[00:13:22.050] – Caroline

Yet you get some terrible culture clashes in those teams. And every year there are people knocking at the door of the program management team saying, I just, you have to change my team. I cannot work with these people anymore. I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. Happens every single class, and they always say, no, sorry, you’ve just got to make it work. That’s part of the learning experience, and they have to get through it however painful it is. And it often is painful, right? It is extraordinary how people from such different backgrounds, even though they have come to the same in place and therefore have different things, have some things in common, how differently they can see things and how differently they might tackle a problem or even how their expectations about it, how a team will work together can be very different. So that’s definitely a key part of what MBA students will take away from an experience at a school like that. And that is very relevant if you are internationally mobile, if you are targeting a career where you will likely work outside of your home country or work in a very global organization where you be working with international teams, that’s incredibly valuable.

[00:14:38.100] – Caroline

And recruiters recognize that. Recruiters come to schools like that to recruit for multiple offices around the world. They’re not just recruiting for Europe or for London or for a short list of offices. They’re typically recruiting for many offices around the world because they know that they can parachute in a graduate from one of these top international programs pretty much into any country, and they can be successful. Of course, there can be language challenges. If you don’t speak the local language in many countries, it It’s going to be difficult to get a job. But there are many countries where you can go and work with where the primary language will be English. Of course, many of these schools as well, people do have language skills beyond English, because if they are not native English speakers by definition, they are bilingual, and then many people have a third language as well. So many people are able to function effectively in business in a language that is not their first language.

[00:15:45.070] – John

Now, Maria, I’m thinking, okay, I’m a fire breathing capitalist, and if I go to a US school, I’m going to find more fire breathing capitalists who want to make real money and have a real impact. There are a lot of international students who may disagree that purpose of business is to make a lot of money and may actually be more inclined to think that business has responsibilities to society, to its customers, to its suppliers, to its employees, which, let’s face it, isn’t Business schools in the US primarily taught the shareholder model of governance for many years. They have broadened that to the so-called stakeholder model. But nonetheless, I’m going to just bet that the more US students in the classroom, you’ll have more fire breathing capitalists. It may be a little uncomfortable to hear people say, Oh, well, business doesn’t have to make a profit. It just has to make enough money to pay its employees because the responsibilities that business have go far beyond the responsibilities to the owner to return money on their investment. What do you think, Maria? Am I going to have big fights in Europe that I won’t have in the US?

[00:16:55.910] – Maria

I mean, I didn’t go to business school in Europe. I don’t That’s an interesting theory because I think one could also argue that the people who believe that their country’s less capitalistic, for lack of a better term, if they believe that the less capitalistic model is the right way to go, then they probably aren’t seeking an MBA in the US. Many of my international classmates… I mean, one of my classmates from HBS was named to Forbes list of top venture capitalists, private equity investors in China a few months ago. Presumably, I don’t want to speak for her, but presumably she came to the US to learn how to become a very good investor, and she has succeeded massively. I do think that some of the cultural differences may revolve around what is the role of capitalism? Should shareholder value reign supreme or should there be more of a triple bottom line? I also think, though, that the international students are often coming from markets in which government intervention looks a lot different than in the US. I think that they be coming from markets where there are many more constraints around everything from the ingredients they use in their cosmetics and food to the import tariff situation and protectionist policies.

[00:18:12.140] – Maria

I do think that there sometimes are some cultural differences, but I also think some of those differences in mindset come from operating in a country where the government plays a much more active role in regulating business. This is a great question because right now, I’m immediately going to hang up and I’m going to call my husband and be like, What do you think about this? What did you experience at HP? Because my mind is racing right now as I try to think through the international students. I don’t know because there were many domestic applicants who were very social enterprise-oriented, who have gone on to stay in the social enterprise space. I don’t necessarily know. Oh, yeah. Then I have another Japanese classmate who went to work for a hedge fund. I don’t necessarily know that it’s cultural per se. I think that maybe someone’s professional background has more to do with it. I can’t help but wonder if the people who might come from these more altruistic countries, perhaps they intentionally seek a US MBA because they want to experience that different because in their hearts, they are a little bit more capitalistic, so to speak.

[00:19:19.840] – Maria

That’s the experience they’re looking for. That’s the education they’re looking for, and that’s why they come to the United States. Very thought-provoking question. Thanks, John.

[00:19:28.660] – John

I remember in the years I lived in London when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister, her critics were saying, We don’t want America’s jungle capitalism in our country, the survival of the fittest mentality where we don’t take care of our citizens in terms of health care, our social safety net has been greatly diminished over the years and will continue to be under this new administration, unlike many European countries where you have a lot of vacation time, much more balanced with your family and your friends, your health care is pretty much taken care of. The state embraces you as opposed to rejects you. It’s a very different culture and attitude. I think if I were an American going to a French school, for example, I might collide. My capitalist views may collide greatly with these more… How would I put it? The gentle capitalist views of my last mates. Caroline, you had that experience, although I see you as a fire breathing capitalist.

[00:20:35.940] – Caroline

Absolutely. You definitely get a huge diversity of perspectives at the international schools. And so I don’t think you’re going to have a dominance of perspective that American capitalism is bad and European more social capitalistic approach is letter, you’re just going to have very different perspectives. And I can remember it, it’s yet, some of the most right wing, rabid capitalists were the finance professors. And they were working at an international school. And so there is definitely a diversity of perspective amongst the students and the faculty. And I think that enriches the experience and the debate for everyone. You have some very interesting debates as a result. Themselves. But I mean, what is different at the international schools, I think, and I’ve heard the professors talk about this as well, is that professors who have taught at both US schools and a school like in Seattle, London Business School, is that in the US schools, you tend to have a more common way of thinking, and that is no doubt driven by the fact that vast majority of people are coming from US culture. And even many of the international students, we talked about they have 30, 40% international Some of those will have also been working in the US before they go to business school, so they are not necessarily coming from a completely different mindset.

[00:22:08.550] – Caroline

In an international classroom like INSEAD, it can be much more challenging for professors to manage that debate and discussion because there is less likely to be a groupthink perspective where you are just going to have a wide variety of perspectives and opinions and very opinionated people with very different takes on different situations. That is going to just come up more frequently, inevitably, in an international classroom than it is in a US business school classroom.

[00:22:45.750] – John

True. I also think with the re-election of Trump, we’ve doubled down on jungle capitalism. I mean, all you had to do is look at his inauguration and all the tech pros behind him getting better seats than the Supreme Court justices, than senators and congressmen or even former presidents. If you want to think about the big guerrilla of capitalism, it’s Elon. He is a guerrilla, and he behaves like a guerrilla, and he was there full regalia. We’re doubling down on jungle capitalism. Although I can bet you those tech pros will be looking for handouts from the government in terms of less regulation and more government funding for this or that. Sure enough, I think today the news is that Trump is putting $500 billion into AI, and all these companies are very eager to have their hand out to get a piece of it. So much for all that. Anyway, we think, obviously, international students greatly enhance the learning experience. Today, in any real corporate job, they’re going to have great exposure to different countries and different cultures and the different people in them, and you’re going to have to work with them effectively. Schools that are devoted to that and using that expertise in the classroom are going to give you a better MBA education than those that don’t.

[00:24:11.910] – John

There you have it. Take a look at our story. It’s called the Top US MBA programs with the Most International Students. Meantime, we’ll see you next week. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The U.S. MBA Programs Favored By International Students
Maria |
February 1, 2025

[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

New around here? I’m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!