Wharton’s Class Profile, Kellogg MBA Pay & A Controversy At Harvard
Maria |
August 22, 2023

In this week’s episode of Business Casual, our hosts delved into the latest MBA admissions trends across three of the top business schools, and explored academic controversies within one of them.

They discussed Wharton’s ability to maintain high standards despite a 14% drop in applications, highlighting the consistent quality of top-tier MBA applicants. Kellogg’s robust employment numbers for the Class of 2023 reinforced the enduring demand for MBA graduates.

Additionally, they addressed a controversial case involving a Harvard Business School professor accused of research misconduct, underscoring the importance of due process and equitable treatment within academic institutions. The hosts reflected on the conflict between leadership teachings and the handling of the controversy, emphasizing the need for consistency in upholding values and principles.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.290] – John

Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. I’m John Byrne with Poets and Quants. And I have with me my co hosts Maria Wich-Vila Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline, of course, as you all know, is a co-founder of Fortuna Admissions, and the former head of admissions at INSEAD, and Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. We have had a lot of bit of news since we were gone on vacation and other things during this last part of the summer period. First and foremost, I think, and this is of great interest to all the applicants out there, Wharton released its class profile, and what’s interesting about it is that applications to the MBA program last year fell by 14%. That’s more than 1000 fewer applications than the school received a year earlier. But lo and behold, Wharton was able to maintain its record average class. GMAT score its high undergraduate class average for GPAs at undergraduate institutions, and achieve gender parity for the second year in a row with 50% of the class composed of women. And I think it just speaks to the depth and the quality of the MBA applicant pool at the top schools.

[00:01:38.530] – John

Maria, you agree?

[00:01:41.470] – Maria

Yeah absolutely. You know, I think it’s funny. Sometimes people, applicants in particular, understandably so, try to read the tea leaves of what do these trends mean? And this year it’s more people are applying or fewer people are applying. And if there are fewer people applying, does that mean it’s, quote unquote, easier to get in? And the fact is that, no, the standards are still going to be the same. I mean, statistically speaking, from a pure numbers perspective, it might appear to be easier to get in, but the fact that the GMAT scores are remaining the same and a lot of these other metrics are remaining very high, really does point to the fact that it’s never easy to get into a school like Wharton. And so hopefully, if anyone out there is trying to say, well, there are fewer applicants, so I’m going to roll the dice. Yeah, you should roll the dice. No matter what. But don’t expect it to be a vastly different landscape.

[00:02:34.070] – John

Yeah, that average GMAT score 733 for the second straight year and the GPA average was 3.6. Caroline, do you think we’re going to see this at other schools as they begin to report their class profiles?

[00:02:48.250] – Caroline

Yeah, I think that we will see that there was a drop in the last season of application volume, but I think that we will also see that the top schools have done a very good job of maintaining the quality of their class. And as you say, these schools have a really strong pipeline year in, year out of outstanding candidates. And people often make a big story about, oh, application volume is up a bit, or it’s down a bit, and that makes a big difference to your chances of getting in in one direction or another. But it doesn’t necessarily make a big difference because what happens is you have this solid, strong pipeline that is coming through year in, year out. And actually what happens when there’s a spike in application volume, it’s often not the best quality candidates who are throwing their hat into the ring at that point. And I saw that when I was at INSEAD and we saw that during the pandemic as well, that when there’s a surge in application volume, it’s often quite speculative candidates, people who maybe hadn’t planned necessarily to do an MBA, it’s not part of their sort, know, was not a long term ambition.

[00:04:03.050] – Caroline

But suddenly their circumstances may have changed and they think, oh, what am I going to do? Well, perhaps that’s a good idea to head off to business school. And maybe they are not the best prepared candidates, right? Maybe they don’t have the same quality of profile as some of the candidates who have been plotting their path to Harvard or to Wharton or to INSEAD over a number of years. And so those fluctuations in application volume can be a bit misleading because it doesn’t actually mean that there’s a dramatic difference in the competition. And it may actually make more of a difference for schools who are a bit further down the pecking order. But for the top schools, they have this really loyal base of prospective candidates coming through regardless of the cycle. And that’s what we see here that Wharton, regardless of quite a big drop, as you say, in application volume, it has had apparently virtually no impact on the quality of the class.

[00:05:14.450] – John

Yeah, really remarkable and a testament to really the quality of applicants at the top schools. And I agree with you that second tier schools, this is going to look a lot different. But at the very top, we’re talking the top 1520 schools, we’re probably going to see equivalent drops, at least double digit drops for last year’s admission season, but pretty good stats overall. Another M seven school reporting a stat is Kellogg. Now Northwestern. Kellogg did a little sneak peek at their preliminary employment numbers and it’s really the first hint at what the job market was like for the Class of 2023. And lo and behold, despite all the talk about, oh boy, is there going to be a recession or not, or MBAs who took jobs with consulting firms who are often asked to delay their start dates and all that. But at Kellogg, which sends more people into consulting as a percentage of the class than just about any school, median starting salary went up $10,000 to 175,000 to start, which is really good news not only for Kellogg, but I think we’re likely to see that elsewhere. And if you look back to pre pandemic days at those median starting salaries, you will see that the increase is on the order of almost 25%.

[00:06:48.690] – John

Really impressive. What does that tell you about the market, maria, I mean, one of the.

[00:06:54.520] – Maria

Principal tenets of capitalism is supply and demand. And it says to me that employers deeply value the value that an MBA graduate from any of these top schools can bring. And so I think this is an important thing for folks to keep in mind once they do get accepted, if they do not get the scholarship support that they were expecting, don’t despair because there’s a really good chance that you’re going to be making pretty decent salary when you graduate. And therefore paying back the student loans will in fact, be pretty feasible.

[00:07:33.030] – John

And not to mention the sign on bonus, which in consulting is $35,000, which that goes a long way to helping pay down your debt or taking a very extravagant vacation and not worrying about your debt, which maybe some people might actually be tempted to do. Caroline, you know, those.

[00:07:55.990] – Caroline

You know, it’s really encouraging to see this data, right, because we have been concerned about what’s happening with the job market. So it’s very impressive to see these numbers. And it’s quite an extraordinary bump that you mentioned, John, from that data that you highlighted, compared to the pre pandemic salary data, so up 25% since the class of 2019, I mean, that’s quite an extraordinary increase. So, again, a wonderful testament to the value of an MBA from a top school. I have heard anecdotally that some graduates from the classes this year have had offers not rescinded, but they’ve had employers have said, okay, we’re not going to bring you on in August or September. We’re postponing for a few months. So I have heard that from some people who are graduating this summer. So I guess that wouldn’t necessarily be taken into account in this data that we’re looking at now, right? Because they would probably still be reporting their packages even if they are not starting immediately. But nevertheless, as Maria said, it’s a very impressive testament to the value of the MBA and the demand that is out there despite a somewhat wobbly job market.

[00:09:19.490] – John

True. In fact, we just have a story right on the homepage today. I’ll just read the headline, which is kind of amusing. Newly hired consultants are getting paid to sit around and watch Netflix. So while many people in the consulting field who took jobs or many MBAs who took jobs in consulting and have been asked to delay their starts are getting some kind of stipend or pay before they actually start work, part of this is an attempt by some firms to say, hey, if you have three, six months of delay, why don’t you volunteer and work for a nonprofit and we’ll pay you what we intended to pay you? In this way you can do some community good. And so that’s what’s kind of behind that. But true enough, that’s not really going to affect the actual numbers on pay and a Kellogg that has not done so the other interesting thing about the Kellogg report is what Kellogg didn’t reveal is the percentage of graduates employed at graduation. And three months later, that’s to come when the full employment report comes out in the fall. Last bit of news we want to talk about is a big controversy over at the Harvard Business School.

[00:10:39.710] – John

Some of you may have read that one of the superstar professors there, Francesca Gino, who is an Italian born behavioral scientist of some note, highly popular at the school among MBA students and her colleagues, was caught up in allegations that four of her research studies had data that had been manipulated in one way or another. There is a blog out there called Data Colada by three business school professors that made these allegations. Harvard Business School put together a three person committee of former and current faculty members to investigate them. They concluded that there was a problem and that research misconduct did in fact, occur in this case. And they recommended that she be placed on unpaid administrative leave, that she be stripped of her title at the Harvard Business School, that she be banned from campus, that she would be prevented from ever publishing again on any Harvard Business School platform, including the Harvard Business Review. And that proceedings should begin to strip her of tenure. Stripping a professor at a business school of tenure is a big deal, and it becomes a bigger deal at the Harvard Business School. Now, what’s interesting about this case is that Gino recently filed a $25 million defamation lawsuit against the dean at Harvard Business School, against Harvard University itself and the authors of the blog that initially made these accusations.

[00:12:26.990] – John

And the lawsuit is filled with the kinds of details that really make you severely question whether she was treated fairly, number one. Number two, whether in fact Harvard and the dean breached her contract with the school on a number of details that I’m not going to really get into here. But meantime, two law school professors have independently at Yale and at Harvard, questioned Harvard’s treatment of her, and both basically are suggesting that she has a good case and Harvard is likely to either settle or lose. Now, this is your alma mater, Maria, so I should give you the chance to talk about this first.

[00:13:11.310] – Maria

Yeah, I mean, as with all things lawsuit, one never knows what is the truth and what is merely yeah. I have no idea who’s right and who’s wrong. I will say, though, that I think whenever any sort of potential, quote unquote crime is committed, whether it’s shoplifting or fudging data in your study or selling nuclear secrets to Saudi Arabia, whatever it is, I do believe in the power of due process. Right. And there is a law and there are laws that need to be followed. And I believe that Harvard Business School did, in fact, have a process in place that was meant to deal with allegations such as the one that Professor Gino encountered, and it’s my understanding from her lawsuit that those processes were not in fact followed in her case. One of the allegations is that, for example, when she finally met with the Dean, he basically said to know you’re not allowed to speak, which is shocking and honestly it’s a little embarrassing. I am not actually very familiar with this Dean who’s been around for only a couple of years. I did not encounter him, so I can’t comment one way or the other.

[00:14:15.640] – Maria

But I do think that it’s a shame that in a school that prides itself on selecting people for leadership potential and on training future leaders, that this does not any situation where you call someone into your office and you say, okay, shut up, you’re here, but you’re not allowed to say anything. I don’t think anyone would say that that’s a good leadership technique. Who knows who’s right, who’s wrong, who’s not lying? Maybe everyone’s lying, maybe nobody’s lying, who knows? But if these allegations are true, it doesn’t sound like it was handled in a fair way that would have been applied perhaps to other professors in similar situations. So that’s disappointing.

[00:15:05.660] – John

Yeah. And that meeting was the only meeting that Dean had with her, even though he had first heard about these allegations two years. Mean, any good leader would have immediately confronted her directly and asked about this instead of waiting to the end when you’re going to deliver a decision and incidentally, then you tell her you don’t have the right to speak. And you bury your head in a piece of paper and read word for word what the punishment is, which is appalling. Absolutely appalling. That occurred. Even if she’s guilty, even if she did commit fraud, that’s not the way you deal with something like this. It’s really unbelievable that something like that could happen. And this is at Harvard Business School where previous deans have taken great pride in running a very tight ship. Process means a lot at the Harvard Business School. There are a lot of rules and guidelines and regulations that have been promulgated with the approval of the faculty and that are followed religiously. Sure, I get that all universities are highly politicized environments, but they’re also in many cases collegial environments and that’s not the way you treat a colleague.

[00:16:23.530] – John

Caroline, any thoughts?

[00:16:26.010] – Caroline

Yeah, I agree. And Maria, you often say I’m very diplomatic and I love the way that you said that telling someone that they can’t speak in a meeting is perhaps not the best leadership style.

[00:16:39.470] – Maria

I’m learning from you, Caroline.

[00:16:42.930] – Caroline

Your time in England this summer was very well spent.

[00:16:46.230] – John

Okay. This reminds me of the scene in Barbie when the Kens take over, come in and they’re brow beaten into being women again and assuming the secondary role in society. Imagine you come in and the man tells you, no, you’re not going to speak during this meeting.

[00:17:08.970] – Maria

Go get me a brusky beer in my mojo, dojo.

[00:17:12.100] – John

There it is. Okay, I know that Maria saw Barbie now.

[00:17:16.010] – Maria

Sorry, Caroline. Go ahead.

[00:17:18.990] – Caroline

The irony of a school that is supposed to be teaching people how to lead and manage teams and train the next generation of business leaders and actually practicing leadership like this is extraordinary. I mean, schools are sometimes not the best practitioners, right? They sometimes don’t practice what they preach. But this seems to be quite an extraordinary example of not practicing what they preach. And I mean, apart from anything else, right? I mean, schools are very concerned about their reputation, and surely he would have been aware of the terrible PR that would fall out of the way he handled this. So I just find it extraordinary that it seems to have been so badly handled. Know this is awful publicity for the school. And as you know, Harvard has so many policies and procedures in place and is so carefully guards its reputation that you wouldn’t expect this to come out of Harvard Business School, of all schools.

[00:18:23.430] – John

Yeah, that’s really true. And after she filed the $25 million defamation lawsuit in US district Court in Boston, eleven days later, obviously feeling pressured by what was going on, the dean sent an email to the faculty. And even in the email, he sort of shifts the onus for the actions that were taken against her on the investigation committee, as opposed to standing up and saying, I believe this was the right thing to do. I made this decision. And it was backed, sure, by whatever conclusion the committee had. But it’s almost like he’s not even wanting to stand up and courageously be a leader in this sense and saying, yes, I made a decision and I stand by the decision. Really sad, but at least we have good news from Wharton and Kellogg. All right, there you have it. That’s the latest stuff that’s happened. We’re looking forward to getting back to our normal routine next week. And thanks for listening. This is 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"
Wharton’s Class Profile, Kellogg MBA Pay & A Controversy At Harvard
Maria |
August 22, 2023

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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