The Ugly Truth About MBA Waitlists
Maria |
March 15, 2022

In this episode of Poets and Quants, our hosts John, Maria, and Caroline will talk about the dreaded wait list that everyone is not ready to talk about. If you are currently in limbo, you’re not going to like the answers, but you will definitely learn from them.

Points of discussion:

  • Why do waitlists exist in the first place?
  • What are the possible reasons why you landed on the waitlist? Where did my application go wrong? Where did my interview go wrong?
  • What are your next steps once you find out that you are on the waiting list?
  • What should be the right level of connection between you and the admissions office?

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.450] – John

Hello, everyone. It’s John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co hosts Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. We are going to talk about something that no one wants to be part of. It’s kind of like when you’re in limbo, you have no idea what’s going to happen. We’re going to try to tell you what’s going to happen. You’re not going to like the answer, but we’re also going to give you advice if, in fact, you land in limbo, which in our terms would be the dreaded wait list. Every business school in the world, that is the highly selective ones, of course, have wait lists. And people are going to find themselves on these lists shortly as the round two notices come out from many of the applicants. And as we all know, round two tends to be the largest single round. And over the next few weeks, people would be notified by schools on whether or not they got in or were rejected or in the euphemism of Harvard Business School were released. And then there’s that other group of people that are going to be in limbo.

 

[00:01:14.060] – John

I want to ask Caroline, who had been director of admissions at INSEAD, why do wait lists exist in the first place?

 

[00:01:24.170] – Caroline

It’s a very useful tool for the schools to manage the class. So when the school admits around the candidates, they have no way of knowing exactly how many of those candidates will actually accept their offer and finally turn up on campus. And the admissions office has some very specific goals about the size of the class, the profile of the class, the diversity, et cetera, et cetera. And they can’t control exactly who among their admits is going to accept the offer. So they need to have some buffer so that if people turn down the offer that they’ve made to them and some will inevitably, even at the very, very top schools, then they have someone else that they can bring in who will replace that person in the classroom. So it’s really an essential tool for managing the class and particularly for managing the class profile, I think. And towards the end of the season, the admissions team will be scrutinizing very carefully the composition of the class, who is left on the waitlist, and who would be the best fit for the waitlist, given the spots and the buckets of profiles that they’re looking to sell.

 

[00:02:40.820] – John

And it’s also used as a protection for yield, which obviously is you admit a certain percentage of students and then only a certain percentage enroll. People who are on the waitlist are more likely because you’re having some communication with them to be certain. In other words, you’ll know that they’ll enroll, right?

 

[00:02:59.370] – Caroline

That’s right. So the yield is always lower on waitlisted candidates. So that’s also an issue for the schools, right? Because if you admit someone straight away, there’s a much higher chance that they will actually accept the offer if you put them in limbo, as you said, many of them will start focusing on a plan B.

 

[00:03:18.560] 

Right.

 

[00:03:18.920] – Caroline

Which makes sense because they have no guarantee that they’re going to get an offer. So that’s an issue for the school because they don’t know if they make an offer to waitlisted candidates, whether they will actually accept that. And so when I’m advising candidates who are waitlisted, it’s important to show that you are still motivated. Right. And you may have more or less opportunities to do that depending on the school. But it’s important to show if you genuinely do want to go to that school and if you genuinely would accept the offer, communicate that clearly to the school because they have no way of knowing that otherwise. And many waitlisted candidates will just sort of disappear from view and stop responding to communications from the school because they’ve moved on and they’ve assumed I’m probably not going to get in, so I’m going to forget that option and move on to something else. The school doesn’t know which type of candidate you are. Are you someone who is actually going to accept the offer if we make it, or are you someone who’s just focusing now on the plan B, unless you tell them now.

 

[00:04:26.340] – John

Maria, I’m thinking to be put on the waitlist is a special cruel form of purgatory and MBA admissions. Let’s face it, you’ve worked really hard to put in a great application. You studied really for many hours, days, weeks, even to get a good score on the standardized test. You lined up your recommenders, you’re waiting for a real decision, and instead you get a well, maybe it’s a special kind of torture, I think. Can you speak to the feelings, the pain, the emotional scars of applicants who end up on a wait list?

 

[00:05:05.220] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s almost like you’re so close, right? So it makes it almost that much worse, in a sense, versus a rejection. Because with a rejection, you say, okay, fine, they didn’t want me. I wasn’t the right fit, whatever it was. But with a waitlist, it’s like, well, we do think you’re good enough, but you’re not quite a Slam dunk. So we definitely think you could be on our team, but we’re not sure that you’d be a starting player. So it’s like this weird, sort of like it’s a compliment. And I know it’s very hard for obviously for candidates to feel this way, but it really is a compliment in some ways because they say something like, what went wrong? I’m on the wait list. What went wrong with my application? What went wrong with my interview? What do you think happened? And I say, well, nothing wrong happened because they would have just rejected you. They wouldn’t have even bothered to put you on the waitlist if something had gone wrong. So, yeah, it’s like you did everything right, and we really like you, but we’re not sure if we’re going to propose or just leave you in the friend zone.

 

[00:06:07.640] – Maria

And we’re playing the field. I use a lot of dating analogies, so it is kind of like we’re playing the field, like we’re not going to make a commitment, but we might want to date you. So let’s just see who else is out there. And I think that’s especially true for people. I mean, the good news is if you go on the waitlist in round one, I think it’s all the more agonizing, although I do think round one wait list, people have a better chance of getting in. But it could be. I think there are a couple of main reasons why people get on a waitlist. One is sort of an obvious weakness, such as we really like you, but your Gmail wasn’t really quite high enough. We’re not really sure that you can handle the coursework, but many times, especially at the more competitive schools where pretty much every candidate who makes it that far can handle the coursework, it can often be about, yeah, we really like you, but let’s just wait to see who else is out there. Let’s see in round two, if there’s someone in your bucket. Right. So let’s say somebody works in consumer packaged goods or they’re working consulting or they’re an engineer.

 

[00:07:09.250] – Maria

It’s like, yeah, you’re really good within your little world, but maybe somebody better is out there who’s going to apply around too. And so I like you, but let me see if I can get somebody better. And so that’s I think a particularly torturous thing because also it’s so out of your control. Right. You have no idea.

 

[00:07:31.730] – John

Yeah. This reminds me of my latest guilty pleasure, Binging Love Is Blind on Netflix. Do you know the concept?

 

[00:07:42.750] 

No.

 

[00:07:43.290] – John

Okay, here’s the concept. The show’s creators put a bunch of single men and single women, not together, but in separate rooms. And then they each go into pods where they can’t see each other, and they essentially date sight on scene. And the goal is to make a connection, an emotional connection with someone so that you are so smitten by them that you actually propose. And after you propose, you get to meet the person for the first time. The whole idea being, of course, we’re obsessed with physical looks, and this is an attempt to really focus on the personality, the person, the values instead of the physicality. And then they send these couples off to Mexico for a week vacation, after which they have to be married. But while they are in this pod situation interviewing each other, they are in limbo because many times one doesn’t know how the other feels. You can’t read the body language, you can’t see them at all. You can’t touch them. So you’re limited by a person’s voice in what they say. And it’s kind of like being on a waitlist.

 

[00:09:07.710] – Maria

I’d much rather be on a waitlist than a show.

 

[00:09:11.490] – John

That sounds terrible, but it’s an entertaining show. I have to admit.

 

[00:09:18.310] – Maria

Train wrecks are all train wrecks are entertaining to watch.

 

[00:09:21.220] – Caroline

I get it.

 

[00:09:23.950] – John

But back to the waitlist. I’m thinking this is a particularly difficult decision or time for a candidate who is, let’s say, has two admits from schools that they would be perfectly willing to attend. But then they’re on the waitlist for the school that they really want to attend, that’s sort of their dream destination. And then waiting around and playing one school against each other and deciding, okay, should I go to the two schools that have already admitted me, or do I wait till the very end to see if the school that I really want to attend will take me off the waitlist? And the truth is, the odds of getting off the waitlist are not all that good. Is that right?

 

[00:10:08.530] – Caroline

That’s right. There’s always more candidates on the waitlist. I would say then more than double what they could potentially admit.

 

[00:10:16.700] 

Right.

 

[00:10:17.020] – Caroline

Because there’s different groups of people in the waitlist. Right. So it’s not that everyone on the waitlist could potentially take the place of anyone who turns down the offer. Right. So if someone turns down the offer who is, I don’t know, a female engineer from China, they’re not going to replace that person with an investment banker guy from New York. Right. They’re looking to fill specific profiles. So you do need quite a few people on the waitlist to have that many options, right. So inevitably, there are far more people on the waitlist and could possibly be admitted. So, yes, your chances are low, although they would be higher if you have got an unusual profile. So if you are the investment banker or the management consultant or the Indian male engineer, then your chances are going to be less than someone with a more unusual profile. But if someone’s got an offer or they’ve got a number of offers, you said from schools where they think it’s a great school, I would be very happy there. I wouldn’t turn down those schools for the sake of possibly getting into your dream school, but probably not getting into your dream school.

 

[00:11:39.370] – Caroline

Right. So I would never advise someone to turn down those other options. Potentially what they could do is accept an offer and wait to see what happens with the waitlist. But they will probably have to pay a deposit in the meantime. So they will have to be ready to forego that deposit for the sake of keeping that option as a backup.

 

[00:11:58.830] – John

Right. Now, Caroline, you mentioned earlier that one thing a candidate should do if he or she finds himself on the waitlist is to at least let the school know that you are motivated, you still want to go there, and that if you were, in fact, admitted, you would say yes. Are there other things that, Maria or Caroline, that you think candidates should be doing, because I guess you could become pretty annoying if you continually contact the school.

 

[00:12:27.720] – Caroline

Yes, that’s right. I mean, I’ve certainly had the situation where I was managing a waitlist at, where people are just calling all the time and they become a pest and they’re constantly trying to deluge the admissions office with additional recommendation letters. It really becomes a negative rather than the positive.

 

[00:12:51.260] – John

Did they send you wine and chocolate?

 

[00:12:54.950] – Caroline

No, they should have.

 

[00:13:00.270] – John

French wine is with chocolate, right?

 

[00:13:03.390] – Caroline

Yeah, that would have worked. So there’s a delicate balance to strike, and it depends on the schools. So the top US schools, I’m sure they’ve had some terrible experiences with candidates like that who’ve become incredibly annoying, and also all the other people who get involved, who start trying to put pressure on the admissions office, alumni and other donors and so on, who are getting involved on someone’s behalf. So it can get quite painful to manage. So in some cases, they will tell candidates to please not send in additional elements. But I think in most cases you can send in a statement about your motivation for the school, and you should definitely take advantage of that. And if they don’t tell you to not communicate with the school regularly, I would say be in touch with the school, like maybe every three or four weeks just to show that you’re still motivated. You would still accept that offer that you haven’t disappeared, which some other candidates will have at that stage.

 

[00:14:10.370] – John

Right.

 

[00:14:10.680] – Caroline

So you want to stay on their radar screen, but be thoughtful about what you communicate to that stage.

 

[00:14:16.480] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:14:16.940] – Caroline

Try to communicate something that is useful, maybe some updates on your profile, but don’t bombard them with a lot of additional information that may not be relevant.

 

[00:14:28.410] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:14:28.740] – Caroline

So it’s an important balance to strike.

 

[00:14:31.660] – John

Now this may be also your strategy should change, perhaps depending on what school you are involved with. Is that right, Maria?

 

[00:14:40.840] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. And many schools really are quite open about what they are looking for on the waitlist. They will tell you you will get assigned probably a wait list manager, and they will say exactly like we want an update from you. If you’re still interested by whatever March 5, whatever that date is, send us the update. Some schools, this is not nearly as common, but some schools will even if someone’s on the waitlist, they might even communicate with you and say, look, we’re just really worried about your GMAT quantity. We don’t want you to struggle if you get in here. But, yeah, for the most part, just for starters, follow instructions. And then I think one of the things I think you can do that helps demonstrate your commitment to the school is that a lot of schools, especially now in this pro bid world, are doing online conferences. And so there might be like a women’s conference or a crypto conference or something like that online. And many of those happen in the spring. So I often tell people just sign up for the conference and attend it. So that way, at the very least, you can email the admissions office and say, hey, I’m Super interested, blah, blah, blah.

 

[00:15:42.400] – Maria

And I just attended the women’s conference last week, and it was wonderful. Really made me feel like I was part of the community, et cetera, et cetera, because that is essentially a free it takes time. But aside from that, it’s a way to demonstrate for them that you’re really interested in another way to communicate.

 

[00:15:59.220] – John

Right. Rather than say, hey, is there anything new you got to report stuff that is somewhat substantial or to Caroline’s point, adds value to your candidacy to maybe tip the odds in your favor, right?

 

[00:16:13.610] – Maria

Yeah. And I think it’s really important to also step it up at work. So step it up at work or in your community service. So that way you have something of substance to send instead of just like, well, I’m still hanging out, right? If you say something like, oh, last week I completed a project, or I’m up for a promotion next month, which is going to give me new managerial responsibilities. So when I get to campus in six months, I’ll have that much more to share with my classmates. And that’s a good idea if you’re on the waitlist. Also, if you’re planning to reapply next year anyway, because it will just make you that much stronger of a reapplicant.

 

[00:16:47.190] – John

True. Now, I’ve also heard people go after additional recommenders. You get a new recommender above and beyond the required number that’s asked for by the school, and you basically had that person say, hey, I understand that my friend or my colleague or my employee has been put on the waitlist. I just want to reaffirm that person’s. Incredibleness is worthwhile, or is that wasted time?

 

[00:17:20.590] – Caroline

It can be if they have a useful perspective to share. So it’s not at all necessary in every case. I think it depends on who you’ve already had as a recommender and whether there’s someone who brings a really useful additional perspective and perhaps knows the school particularly well. That stage, perhaps an alarm recommended, could particularly help as someone who can speak to your fit with the community. So if you have someone who’s going to really add an extra dimension, I think that is useful. But if you don’t, don’t worry about it. It’s not essential by any means, especially if you’ve already had two strong recommendations. If you’re confident in what has already been submitted, and that’s maybe something to check. Right. If you’ve been waitlisted, maybe touch base with your recommenders. And if you don’t know what he says about you, now might be a good time to check. I mean, it’s also something I think it’s important to say if you’ve been waitlisted, it’s an opportunity to take a step back and think about why you might have been waitlisted rather than a straight admit and sort of reevaluate every step of what you did and what you presented.

 

[00:18:34.130] – Caroline

And is there something that you could have done better? And it could be how you work with your recommenders.

 

[00:18:40.170] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:18:40.380] – Caroline

And I’ve seen candidates who haven’t been practiced in coaching the recommender and therefore maybe the recommender didn’t understand what was expected of them and submitted something that was way too light, as in didn’t really say very much about you or give much detail. So that can occasionally be an issue.

 

[00:19:00.310] – John

Let me make it more provocative scenario here for everybody. What if since I filed my application, I bumped into a family friend who said he knows Henry Kravis, who gave $100 million to Columbia Business School, and I am now on the waitlist at Columbia? Do I flick that switch and try to get Henry Kravitz to write me a little note to get me off the waitlist?

 

[00:19:30.710] – Maria

Maria, I mean, is Henry Kravitz going to write a note that says I’m going to withdraw my 100 million dollar donation if you don’t let this kid in? Probably not. If it’s someone who doesn’t even know you, then Holy cow. I don’t see how that adds any value at all. I have heard a rumor once of someone who was the CEO of a very elite private equity firm who had one of their employees on the waitlist. And that person did write a letter to the admissions office basically saying, like, boy, it would be a real shame if we didn’t recruit as often. I don’t know if that’s exactly what was said, but that person had at least some sort of a pull. They could at least they had a negotiating chip.

 

[00:20:16.630] – John

But certainly do you know what the result was?

 

[00:20:19.600] – Maria

They did get in.

 

[00:20:20.680] – John

I bet you that was Harvard.

 

[00:20:22.370] – Maria

Yes, it was. But it was at the very last minute, this person had actually already put in a deposit and had actually moved to another city. Because the other thing is, Caroline was saying, like, the private equity buckets are pretty full bucket. So what I’m guessing happened is that somebody else from the private equity bucket probably got off the Stanford wait list. And then that creates a domino effect. Like, okay, we have another private equity seat open. So this guy gets it, and then that guy quit his other program and then there’s scrambled to find someone else at the last minute point.

 

[00:20:54.170] – John

That’s really an interesting point about admissions. There is a cascading effect. So from the decisions made at Harvard to Stanford awarding INSEAD to London Business School, lots of other things happened to the schools below them. Right? So depending on who gets rejected, depending on who gets put on the waitlist, depending on who gets taken off a waitlist, it affects the admission decisions of schools that are further down on the ranking list. And that cascading effect is pretty significant in terms of what’s called summer melt and yield and all kinds of things that admission officers worry about on a regular basis, isn’t that right?

 

[00:21:39.530] – Caroline

Yeah, absolutely. It’s very tricky to manage, right. It’s an art, not a science. No way of exactly predicting how many of your admits are going to finally turn up on the first day of the program. Right? It depends on a lot of different factors. So that is very tricky for admissions officers to manage. And I would imagine that if you are a school that is further down the pecking order, it’s a bit hard. The issue with yields that we discussed about that we discussed earlier with waitlisted candidates is going to be even trickier.

 

[00:22:13.990] – John

Right.

 

[00:22:14.370] – Caroline

So I’m sure that it’s harder for them to assume that someone who’s been waitlisted, who then they can offer will actually join the program. I think it’s easier for a Harvard or a Stanford or a Wharton to make an offer to wait listed candidates than it is and hope that they will actually come versus some other schools. So those schools cannot count on filling all their places and using the waitlist to the same extent that those top schools can. So they have to admit a large enough people that they can assume that there will be a certain level of attrition and that they will end up hopefully fingers post craft with the right class size and profile at the end of the day.

 

[00:23:03.120] – John

Okay, so here’s a question. How often should I be contacting admissions so I don’t become a pest, but I make it very clear that I really want to be there. I really want to occupy a seat in that new full cohort come hell or high water. Should I contact them once a week? Should I contact them once a month while I’m on the wait list? What’s the right level of connection?

 

[00:23:29.430] – Maria

So I think about once a month is probably a good metric to follow. I would also be a little bit strategic about it. So, for example, if you are around one wait listed candidate and you know that a school has recently had its round two deadline, I advise people to reach out sort of shortly after the round two deadline to sort of remind them as they’re going through the other profiles, like you who, here I am. Don’t forget about me as you consider my bucket. Right. So I think that there’s that I will also say, by the way, like, the whole thing of like, I really want to come to your school. I don’t think that really sways at a Harvard or Stanford or a Wharton as much, only because they’re like, yeah, we know. Sometimes I read these post interview reflections for the Harvard interview, and it’s like, I just want to reiterate that if I’m accepted, I will code your school. And I’m like, yeah, they know, yeah, it’s a little less effective for those schools. But yeah, for the other schools. Showing them you love them. You got to show them you love them.

 

[00:24:29.460] – John

All right, there you have it. So if you find yourself in limbo over the next few weeks, know the odds are against you. But no, you need to reach out, make the school know that you really want to go. Don’t be a pest however and when you communicate with the school you should communicate something of a substance that adds to the value of your application. That makes it more likely that you get off the list. Otherwise you are in purgatory admissions. Purgatory. Well, thank you for listening everybody and thank you Maria and thank you, Caroline for all your great advice and insight. 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 Ugly Truth About MBA Waitlists
Maria |
March 15, 2022

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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