What MBA Admission Officials Are Talking About
Maria |
June 6, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts examine the impressive financial benefits for MBA graduates from top U.S. business schools. Recent trends show significant salary hikes, exemplified by a 29.1% increase at Chicago Booth, which consistently surpasses inflation. Despite a drop in MBA applications, the substantial pay rises highlight the persistent value of an MBA in a fluctuating economic landscape.

Caroline points out how MBA career services adeptly adjust to changing recruitment trends, securing superior job offers for graduates. Maria notes that the consistent salary boosts not only mitigate inflation concerns but also solidify the strong investment return of an MBA. This episode effectively showcases the enduring appeal of the MBA as a wise investment for securing financially rewarding careers. Tune in for insights into why an MBA remains a prudent financial decision in today’s economy.

 

 

 

 

 

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.370] – John

Well, hello there. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. We’re going to talk about the behind-the-scenes intelligence of admissions. Maria just did a European tour. She went to three leading business, business schools in Europe. More importantly, she attended the annual conference of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants. That conference attracted something like 23 different schools and their admissions officials. This is where the admission consultants and the schools get together and talk about what’s going on in the world of admissions in business schools. Maria personally also visited INSEAD, IESE in Barcelona and at just say Paris, right out in the outskirts of Paris. Maria, what did you discover top line from the AGAC conference?

 

[00:01:16.330] – Maria

Yeah. One of the things that an overarching thing that was really nice to see was, I think, originally, AGAC was founded with the intention of trying to build a bridge with admissions officers, a bridge between admissions consultants and admissions officers. I think at the very beginning, when the admissions consulting industry started out, it was viewed with understandable levels of skepticism, distrust, at the very minimum, bewildrement, and at the worst, perhaps an active dislike of admissions consultants from admissions officers. I think what AGAC has managed to do over the years, this was my eighth year participating in one of the conference, but it was started perhaps 10 years before that. What these original pioneers did is they were able to establish these relationships with admissions officers and to not only inform them of what we do and to let them know that members of AGAC also adhere to a certain level of professionalism, experience, and a code of ethics. For example, we will never write an essay for someone. They can rest assured We can’t say that everyone in the field is this way, but you can rest assured that if someone is an AGAC member, that they are not, in fact, doing really sketchy things.

 

[00:02:23.990] – Maria

What this has allowed, why am I going into this background? Because this has allowed, I think, over the years, the admissions officers to begin to go from an uneasy accepting that we’re there and like, Well, we don’t really like that admissions consultants exist, but we’ll put up with it, to an uneasy piece. I think that’s even now transforming a bit more where I think admissions officers can see that admissions consultants, we can actually share information with each other that is actually quite valuable that we can provide because we get to talk to the applicants six months, three months, a year before We see these applicants way before they see them. We are the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, of saying, Hey, here’s what we think is coming down the pike, you guys. You guys need to be aware of the fact that this AI thing, a lot of people are going to be using. We don’t agree with it, but we think that a lot of people are going to be using ChatGPT, for example. You might want to be on the lookout for that. I think over the years, it’s evolved into a much more collegial spirit, so much so that I think the pinnacle of this, certainly that I’ve ever experienced, was that when we were at Acha Ese, one of the associate deans actually gave a little talk thanking admissions consultants for the work that we do in helping people get exposed to more schools that they might not have considered, helping open their eyes to which school might be the right fit for them.

 

[00:03:49.890] – Maria

I think Linda Abraham and Max, some of the original AGAC founders, I think would be shocked at the 180 degrees. The good news is that now that we have this collegial sharing atmosphere, we are able to learn. Nothing super confidential is ever revealed, of course, but we are able to at least share what we’re seeing in the market. And so based on that, there were several sessions in which we covered lots of trends that both sides of the table are seeing. I can jump into some of those.

 

[00:04:27.060] – John

Yeah, we’d love to hear. I’m sure number one is probably the use of artificial intelligence to complete one’s application. Is that kosher or is it not kosher? And what’s the expectation?

 

[00:04:39.140] – Maria

So the usage of AI is surprisingly more kosher than you might think, not to start and create your application materials because that does feel a little bit like cheating. And besides, as we have experienced ourselves with the experiments that we’ve run here on this very podcast, there are hallucinations that can happen. It’s That’s a really bad idea. But the idea that AI could be a tool so that when you get to a certain point in your writing process, let’s say you’re 20 words over the word count limit, or you want a sentence to sound a little bit more powerful, If you use the AI in that way to not fundamentally change the substance of what you’re saying, but maybe to help you get it over the finish line, it’s essentially being viewed as a glorified version of spell check. From that perspective, it is, in fact, for many, many, many schools. I will say, though, that I think some schools are increasingly planning on introducing video, timed video essays, that Kira talent platform for a variety of reasons. I think the Kira talent essay is, one of the admissions officer said that it has been a tremendous boon for them in terms of if they think someone is going to be asked to interview, they will then watch the Kira talent stuff, and that helps really them filter right off the bat.

 

[00:06:01.550] – Maria

Like, oh, maybe this person we shouldn’t, or, Wow, this person really is a diamond in the rough. We should invite them to interview. Some of the officers had said that this is an incredibly useful tool, and then even more so in the context of, at least not yet, you cannot yet fake an AI version of yourself in video. All the more reason for the schools to start embracing that. One thing that was interesting is that there were a few schools that actually said that they are actually exploring using AI themselves to help With, only to be clear, very logistical aspects of the admissions process. So nothing with evaluation. There is no plan whatsoever for there to be an AI to say, Let’s pick the 20% of people we should accept. But things like interview scheduling. You invite a bunch of people to interview, you’ve got alumni, you’ve got students, it’s a big mess. Can we use AI to make that scheduling process easier? Things like that. Can we use AI to… I think one of the examples was something like events, targeting the people in our applicant pool that might be interested in certain events in a less manual way than what is currently being done.

 

[00:07:07.760] – Maria

I thought that was interesting that even some of the admissions officers were saying, Yeah, maybe even I’ve used ChatGPT to write an email to someone, to a candidate, if it was a delicate conversation.

 

[00:07:19.820] – John

Maria, what about the notion of detection software? I’ve read that some schools were using software to detect whether or not AI was used on essays. Is that something that anyone really cares about, or we’ve gotten to the point where we’re accepting the use of AI, and we’re just trying to counsel people to limit it as a background editor thing?

 

[00:07:43.440] – Maria

Yeah, my sense of that was that I think that one of the main plagiarism checkers, I believe, is called Turnitin. I think that Turnitin had claimed that they were introducing an AI detection component, but it wasn’t clear, is it really implemented? If it It has been implemented, how accurate is it? I think it’s hard for a tool to detect whether or not AI has written something. I think the biggest tell is, is the language simply empty? If so, a human can tell that. If the essay simply says, I want to come to your business school to learn the school of business because I like to business, it’s pretty clear that maybe a person didn’t write it. I did not get the sense that there was this, we are hell-bent on, we will track down anyone who used AI and we will throw out their application with pitchforks and torches. I did not get that sense, whether or not the tools can actually detect it. It certainly was not the thing where I was hearing people saying, Yes, Absolutely. The plagiarism detection software is doing a fantastic job of highlighting AI. I think that might be a feature that they’re trying to roll out, but if so, it’s not this overwhelmingly successful top-of-mind feature that’s been offered yet.

 

[00:08:59.400] – Maria

Yeah.

 

[00:08:59.820] – John

Bottom line, everyone expects AI to be deployed by candidates, and they’re not particularly bothered by it, it seems.

 

[00:09:10.800] – Maria

Again, if it’s just simply being used to polish things, again, I’m thinking of it more as if you’re using it as a glorified spell check, then obviously, if you use it to make up and invent things that you haven’t actually done, then that’s really problematic. But if you’re just using it as a tool to enhance your own communication style to the extent that in the workforce, you might also be using it to enhance your emails to clients or your emails to help you check your financial models if you become a banker or whatever it might be. I think that there’s a resignation at a minimum, or if not an embracing of the fact that this is the future, people are going to be using it. At the very minimum, let’s just at least hope that they’re using it in an ethical way.

 

[00:09:56.430] – John

Yes. Caroline, as we’ve talked before about AI and using it for applications. I mean, we’ve discovered together that it comes off as either dense or incredibly formal in a way that it’s really easy to detect that this is not an authentic statement from a candidate.

 

[00:10:18.380] – Caroline

 Yeah, I find it very bland, a very neutral style, which makes sense, right? But I absolutely agree with Maria that It can be a useful tool at a certain point in the process when you already know what you want to say. It can’t tell you what you should say in your application, or it’s not a good idea, as Maria said, to have AI tell you what to say. So you need to come up with your story and your key messaging, and that’s the bulk of the work, frankly. But yes, it can be a great tool for some of that fine-tuning. Sometimes the challenge is, as Maria said, getting from 300 words to 150 words, and It can help you with some of that process. I like how with AI, you can play around with different prompts, and you can ask it to do something, you can ask it, Give me another version of that. It can give you lots of different things to play with. I think at a certain point, it can be useful input, but you don’t want to outsource too much of your effort to AI.

 

[00:11:24.080] – John

Exactly. Maria, what were some other big takeaways?

 

[00:11:28.260] – Maria

Another one is that a number of schools were talking about that they have been seeing an increase in applications. I think the narrative maybe a year or so ago was, Oh, the applications are falling. It does seem that there is an increase in applications. However, it’s not clear if that necessarily means that there’s an increase in the number of applicants or if it’s more that more applicants are simply submitting, whereas in the past, they may have written five applications or four applications, maybe now they’re doing nine. While it’s a welcome thing to have more applications, who doesn’t like that? The problem is that I believe it might be making yield a little bit more difficult because now, instead of saying to yourself, Well, I’m probably one of three schools that this person is considering, now it’s like, Oh, gosh, am I one of 10 schools that this person is considering? What does that mean in terms of managing my yield, making offers? Obviously, I’m not going to say which school said what, but I will say that one school said that… Because one of the admissions consultants said, Hey, what was up with waitlist this year?

 

[00:12:33.790] – Maria

It felt like everyone got wait. It felt like everyone in round two got waitlisted. Sort of quipping that. It wasn’t literally true, but it did feel like there was a huge amount of waitlisting going on this year. One of the schools said, Look, we had an unexpectedly high yield in round one. We did not expect so many people to take our offer in round one. With so many of those spots taken in round one, we were stuck in round two. I I think the schools are in a tight spot because if they’ve built these predictions in the past based on previous behavior, and if you say, Okay, well, I think there’s a pretty good chance that if the person’s done this, and I can be pretty comfortable that they’ll accept my offer, it seems like those rules might be going out the window if there’s an arms race, so to speak, of, Well, if everyone else is applying to five schools, I’m going to apply to seven, and if everyone else is applying to seven schools, I’m going to apply to nine.

 

[00:13:25.820] – John

Well, Caroline, as the co founder and the director of Fortuna, one of the larger admissions consulting firms out there. I wonder, were you seeing a trend in the past year where applicants were hedging their bets a bit more and applying to a greater number of schools than they had in the past?

 

[00:13:42.580] – Caroline

Yeah, I’m not sure that we’ve seen that, to be honest. But then maybe because often candidates will work with us on their most competitive schools, and they may be working on other schools by themselves. So often they’ll work with us on their three or four top schools because they want to make sure that they’ve put everything they can, made every possible effort to put their best foot forward for those schools. And that gives them a great foundation that they can leverage for their applications. So we don’t always have the full picture of all the traditional schools they’re applying to.

 

[00:14:17.130] – John

Yeah, that’s a good point. So maybe the increase in applications is a result of some people applying to more schools than… I mean, typically, you apply to three to five schools, I think, right? I mean, generally, most people do.

 

[00:14:37.000] – Caroline

Yeah, I would say probably more like five than three, especially if you’re applying to very competitive schools, right? Because there is a large element of luck involved. Absolutely. It can be quite random.

 

[00:14:52.040] – John

Exactly. Also, I know that at one of the schools you visited, the one in Barcelona, I DSE, their increase in applications exceeded 20%, and they are increasing the size of their incoming cohort this fall by 20%, adding a sixth section as a result of that application increase.

 

[00:15:16.810] – Maria

I wasn’t sure if that was confidential, but that had been floated. John Burn with a scoop.

 

[00:15:22.890] – John

I scooped it, wrote it.

 

[00:15:25.570] – Maria

Wow, okay. Yes. When I saw the people, ISE’s reps in London, and I said, I hear you’re increasing your class size.

 

[00:15:36.920] – John

They said, What? How do you know that?

 

[00:15:39.920] – Maria

I guess someone else, someone attending the conference must have seen that You had said this because somebody asked them and they got the say. There was no definite like, Yes, we’re definitely doing it, but it was like, Oh, how did you hear that? We might be doing it, which I think says, yes, they are, which, by the way, is a testament to just how strong their program is. I mean, it’s one thing to say we’ve got an increase in applications. It’s another thing to say that increase in applications is also translating to an increase in yield such that we have so many more qualified candidates that we can expand the class considerably.

 

[00:16:15.920] – John

To be sure, that’s a contrarian move because most schools are actually struggling to fill seats, particularly second and third tier. Many of the smaller programs that are really in suboptimal size are actually losing money in Europe as well as the US.

 

[00:16:32.940] – Maria

Sure. Yeah. But I do think that given… I mean, one of the benefits of us visiting these schools is you get to learn, just like how we tell candidates that they should try to visit schools. It’s also good for us as admissions folks to visit schools because we get to see so much more than just what’s on the website or what’s on the brochure. I was impressed with all of the schools that I visited, but I can see why ESA has been having this increase. It’s a very program, lots of case-based discussions, lots of leadership, emphasis on leadership. I can understand why they’re having the success that they’re having. Good for them. I’m thrilled to hear it.

 

[00:17:13.420] – Caroline

It’s a beautiful place. It’s a beautiful campus. Oh, my gosh. Beautiful location.

 

[00:17:18.720] – Maria

The fact that it’s space.

 

[00:17:19.800] – John

Can you beat Barcelona as a place to hang out for a year or two? I mean, really?

 

[00:17:24.170] – Maria

You cannot.

 

[00:17:25.650] – John

No.

 

[00:17:26.120] – Maria

That I could say with certainty. You cannot beat Barcelona. I don’t know. It’s probably one of my favorite cities on Earth. The campus itself is gorgeous, and it was just breathtaking. It’s a view. You can see the whole city and then the sea beyond, the ocean.

 

[00:17:43.590] – Caroline

I mean, it’s just- Yeah, it’s fantastic.

 

[00:17:45.590] – Maria

Not too shabby.

 

[00:17:47.710] – John

Was there a surprise that you took away, something that you would not have expected? Because we’ve talked about the use of AI, and we’ve talked about increasing and decreases in applications. But I wonder if you came away from the conference and your visits to the schools with something that you didn’t know that was surprised you.

 

[00:18:06.830] – Maria

Let’s see. There were some other things that we did talk about the testing landscape.

 

[00:18:12.870] – John

Yeah.

 

[00:18:13.590] – Maria

Nothing very surprising, but some of the schools that have offered, say, not test optional, but waivers, I think Ross calls it a statement of academic readiness. They have different policies around it. So some of the schools are considering keeping those in place. One thing that I was surprised to see, it was not surprising to hear that the GRE has been increasingly taking more and more market share away from the GMAT. That part was not surprising. What was surprising was more and more programs seem to be accepting the executive assessment. I feel like a few years ago, maybe only one or two programs accepted the EA, and I think more and more programs are full-time MBA programs, not executives. Full-time MBA programs are accepting the EA, which might be a… I can’t help but wonder if that’s a response to the acknowledgement that the new GMAT focus is, in fact, a harder test. There were a few folks at the conference who either do just test prep only or test prep plus admissions. A couple of the test prep, one of the test prep people in particular said that they felt that the GMAT focus was a much harder test.

 

[00:19:23.390] – Maria

Take that. Wow. I haven’t taken it, so I have no idea. But they said, and they were like, Which is great news for me as a tutor, But not so great for applicants. I wonder if the EA is seen as being a standardized test that from a psychometric evaluation perspective is in fact a very valid test, but may not be quite as stressful as the GMAT focus, perhaps that might be, and this is me speculating, but that might be behind why some of the full-time programs might be more accepting of it despite the fact that it was originally intended to be simply for the executive and part-time applicants. I thought that was pretty surprising.

 

[00:20:03.870] – John

Yeah. Now, you visited Caroline’s alma mater, INSEAD, and I wonder what your observations are. Caroline, I wonder if you might rift off of Maria’s observations?

 

[00:20:18.060] – Maria

It was beautiful, and I want to be able to enroll again. Can I redo my MBA, and can I do it at INSEAD this time? I love it. I mean, as we’ve chatted about before in the past, we all The three of us, we are a pretty international group. The very explicit international focus of INSEAD, all of the European programs have an incredible amount of diversity, far more nationality diversity than the US programs tend to have. But in Zad in particular, the fact that you could do… There’s so much flexibility around you can do a few months in Fontainebleau, France, and you can do a few months in Singapore. Then, I don’t know, we’ve also got this stuff in Abu Dhabi. I mean, it was It was amazing to me just how incredibly global the experience is and how flexible it is. If you want to do this, if you want to do that, if you want to do an internship, well, we have an option where you can do an internship, or we have an option where you can do all these different things. I thought it was really… It’s one thing, again, it’s one thing to see on the website where they say, We have this following options available.

 

[00:21:22.340] – Maria

That’s another thing to actually go to the campus and to meet the person who was from the admissions office who was leading our tour, was himself an alumnus of the program. Hearing him talk about things that his friends had done or that he had seen current students do in terms of really tailoring that inside out experience to their exact needs and interests is fascinating. Who wouldn’t want to spend some time in France and in Singapore. I mean, it would be a dream come true.

 

[00:21:51.130] – John

Well, Caroline lived a dream.

 

[00:21:53.550] – Caroline

She lived a dream. It was great. Now, I can attest it. I think one of the wonderful things about INSEAD is, as you said, you get to experience these different things, but they’re also very different places, right? So Fontainebleau is this gorgeous old little town in the middle of a beautiful forest, and you can spend a few months there, and then you can spend a few months in Singapore, which is a thriving metropolis in Southeast Asia, so completely different experience. But on both campuses, you are with a group of people who are equally diverse, who have incredible diversity of professional backgrounds, nationalities, bringing so much to the classroom. So you have that same richness of experience, but just in a very different environment. So I certainly encourage people, if they are going to Inciad, to to do the campus exchange and to go to both campuses, because it is, I think that’s one of the wonderful things about INSEAD is that they have these two parallel campuses where they offer the same MBA program. There There are differences in the electives on offer because, of course, in Europe, you’ll have some more European-focused electives, and if you’re in Singapore, that’s where you’ll get the Asia-focused electives.

 

[00:23:10.390] – Caroline

But otherwise, there are a lot of… You can take the same courses across both campuses. I think it’s quite a unique option to have that opportunity.

 

[00:23:25.080] – John

Indeed. It sounds like you had a really worthwhile, fun trip.

 

[00:23:30.270] – Maria

I sure did. Very informative. To Caroline’s point about the distinctiveness between Singapore versus Fontaineble. Singapore is this hyper modern city with lots of glass, shiny structures. Fontaineble, I felt like Belle in the movie Beauty and the Beast. At the beginning, we’re like, She’s walking through the village, and I was like, Oh, I half expect a baker to hop out and just hand me a baguette and be like, Bonjour, mademoiselle. I’d be like, Oh, merci beaucoup. But I did not, in fact, get a free baguette. But it felt that way. It was this magical, beautiful French town. I will say also, HEC, that’s a school that I, again, you read about it, but I had not appreciated or understood quite how residential the HEC campus is. It is on the outskirts of Paris, maybe 45 minutes to an hour away. It is accessible, though, by public transportation. But I didn’t realize, for example, that about 80% of the first term students there live on campus. There are dormitory buildings everywhere. It’s like this wooded campus where everything is in one central location. That’s quite different from, I think, a lot of other business schools around the world, not just in Europe, where, sure, we’ve got the campus in one area.

 

[00:24:52.340] – Maria

Here are the buildings, the academic buildings, but where you’re going to live, well, you’ll live in an apartment off campus. At HEC, it’s everything. They had a gymnasium, they had a rugby field, they had athletic fields, they had a chapel, a nondenominational chapel, dormitories. It really was this self-contained campus, which I think would really help create a strong sense of community because when you’re not just studying with people, but also living alongside them and going to the gym, and then there’s also a bar, even a pub on campus. Also, I didn’t realize fully before that Ache Esay is only business. It’s not the business part of a broader university, similar to INSEAD, I believe. But as opposed to other sometimes business schools where it’s the blah, blah School of Business, part of the broader University of blah. That’s really their focus. I also had not realized that I think the largest percentage of European-educated Fortune 500 CEOs or something comes from Asha Asha. I did not verify. I did not do any due diligence as to whether or not that clay, I don’t know why they would lie about that. But I was like, oh, that’s really impressive.

 

[00:26:07.290] – John

That’s true.

 

[00:26:07.950] – Maria

I think they’ve been around longer than INSEAD. So I’m sure INSEAD is going to catch up.

 

[00:26:12.360] – Caroline

Yeah. It’s also that as you say, it’s the top undergraduate business program in France. So if you’re coming out of high school and you know that you want to go into business and study business economics, there’s no better place to go than as you say. And that’s been the case for many years. I think that’s where a lot of those CEOs, that’s the route that a lot of those CEOs have taken. So the MBA is a later addition to the school, but clearly, they had an incredible foundation to start with because of that strong undergraduate and master’s program that they had.

 

[00:26:52.840] – Maria

Sure. They do have the broader programs, they have the longer history. But I think they said something like 80,000 alumni. That’s That’s a huge because they have so many programs, because they have a camp, they have a ton of dorms where people can live. It was just very interesting to, again, once you go see it, you’re like, Oh, all the pieces come together in your head. You’re like, I get it now. Yeah, it was a really valuable trip, and I got to see three amazing programs, and it was fantastic.

 

[00:27:22.340] – John

And your travels ended in a very familiar place, your Alibata, Harvard Business School, where you were attending the 20th class reunion of your husband. So what is it like to go back to a Harvard Business School reunion?

 

[00:27:40.290] – Maria

Oh, it is. I mean, it’s so wonderful.

 

[00:27:43.620] – John

I really What if you’re a failure and you go back?

 

[00:27:48.720] – Maria

Oh, okay. Well, that ouch. That is a harsh judgment. Well, I mean, first of all, I’d like to think that a lot of people from I’m sure this isn’t everyone, but I like to think that enough folks, at least maybe not at the one year or the five year or even the 10 year reunion, but I would like to think that by the 20th year reunion, most folks are secure enough in who they are and in the choices they’ve made and the trade offs that they’ve made. How would you define a failure? Some people might not be making as much money, but maybe they’re running nonprofits that are really helping change the lives of children. Maybe some people… I’m not sure. I’d like to think that most people would have the maturity, certainly at this age, to hopefully not refer to themselves or think of themselves as failures or to think of other classmates of theirs as failures. If anyone is that shallow and unpleasant, then I’m glad that I don’t know them. I’m glad that they’re not in my friend’s circle. I don’t know that a lot of people necessarily think that way. If they do, I would surmise that they just simply don’t show up.

 

[00:28:58.870] – John

What’s it like to go? What happens at a Harvard Business School reunion?

 

[00:29:03.300] – Maria

First of all, it’s an absolute whirlwind. Actually, before we hopped on the podcast, I wrote a very heartfelt apologetic email to someone that had been waiting for an email response from me for several days. I was like, I am so sorry, but I have not been by my computer for the past three days. It is just a whirlwind of you’re walking around the camp. First of all, they have different educational sessions. Many of the professors, the most popular professors, will give classes. They also have activities for kids, and they even do things like a case study for teens. If you’ve got a teenager who wants to get a taste of what it’s like to participate in a case study, a professor will facilitate a discussion for teenagers to get a taste of the case study. They have things for all ages, people who bring families, people who don’t bring their families. They have sessions on every possible business topic you can imagine, AI, renewable energy, anything like that. Arthur Brooks gave one of his talks on happiness, and that’s become his wheelhouse that he’s become famous for. Then when you’re either going to those sessions or you literally walk 10 feet and you bump into someone you know.

 

[00:30:12.920] – Maria

It’s like, Oh, my gosh, how are you? How have you been? Let’s talk and let’s catch up. It’s really wonderful. It’s fantastic. You go from 9:00 in the morning until 1:00 or midnight. I can’t pretend that I stayed awake until 1:00. I’m not My liver’s not that powerful. But other people did. In the airport the next morning, we ran into several other folks who were also coming home to LA from the class, and one of them had been out until 2:00 in the morning, and I was very impressed by that. But it’s wonderful. I do like to think that, hopefully, by the 20th reunion, a lot of folks… I like to think that people were already not superficial to begin with, but even maybe perhaps some of the more superficial people have mellowed out a bit. If people are hyper competitive, if they were hyper competitive in the past, maybe they’re not hyper competitive anymore. Or again, maybe they’re still there and I just don’t talk to them because I choose to surround myself with people who are very friendly and down to earth. But it’s just wonderful. There’s just some really good human beings, and it’s energizing to be around people who are smart and passionate about whatever it is that they’re doing in their own little corner of the professional world and people who are just fundamentally, so many of these people are just good people, and I loved it.

 

[00:31:35.480] – Maria

If it’s meant to help me donate, to encourage me to donate, it works. There you go.

 

[00:31:41.080] – John

It’s very effective. So, Caroline, I’m sure you have attended many reunions at INSEAD. I’m imagining that they’re very similar to what Maria described at the Harvard Business School. Am I right?

 

[00:31:54.060] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. It’s incredibly intense. And as Maria said, it’s really inspiring. It’s so wonderful to be back with those incredible people and to reconnect. And it’s a big trip, right? Because I’m in California, I’m going back to Fontainebleau. It’s normally during my kids’ school year, so it’s a lot of logistical organization to try and extract myself from life here for a few days. But it is incredibly enriching to be back in that environment. And something Maria said that I really agree with is that you do see, I think, a change in people’s to choose over time. And so I had my 20th reunion last year. I’ve also been attending my husband’s Stanford GSB reunions over the years. And definitely by the time you get to 15, 20 plus years, people are much more relaxed and much more interested in connecting on a human level and understanding what’s going on in your life, not just in your career, right? But more interested in how people are doing in their families, their life, their marriages, their life experience. And it’s not just all about who is the most successful and who’s company is IPOed and all of that.

 

[00:33:15.990] – Caroline

So I think that’s a really good evolution to see. And I would agree with Maria as well, that people come from all different experiences as well. You have people who are incredibly fast track in their career and have achieved extraordinary things. And there are people who have made a complete career change and people who have taken time off to raise children. And I don’t think there’s a lot of judgment about that, especially, I think, as time goes on. And I think it’s very precious to be able to maintain those relationships over time, especially as people are spread all over the place. Hbs, the community is pretty dispersed, and INSEAD, probably even more so as people come from all over the world. So it’s a very special moment when those people all come back together and reconnect.

 

[00:34:14.440] – John

That’s great. The all of this conversation about reunions reminds me of one of my favorite stories that we ran at Poets and Quants. It’s called Love, Sex, and Money: A Revealing Class Portrait of the Lives of Harvard MBAs. We got our hands on a survey that was sent to a class at Harvard Business School for its reunion session. There were 85 questions on that survey, and they really give you a really good glimpse of what life is like to have a Harvard MBA and what your life is personally like, what it’s like professionally. It’s quite an incredible story. You were going to say, Maria.

 

[00:35:01.900] – Maria

I was going to say, and as Caroline was speaking, one thing that occurred to me that you mentioned that set off an idea in me is that I think part of what mellows people out is that the older you get, the more you start to realize that sometimes your success has been because of your hard work and your talent, but sometimes it’s just been luck. When you’re 25 years old and you’ve only been lucky and you apply to a World Top Business School and you get in, I think you go in with the idea that I have been completely responsible for my own luck. But just wait around, wait for life to happen to you. I think it’s very humbling. I think some folks have to acknowledge that, Wow, I was lucky. I did go to work for Facebook instead of of Friendster. Both of them were equally attractive startups 20 years ago, but one of them died and the other one is huge. Classmates have started startups. Some of them have IPOed and some of them have gone bankrupt. Actually, one of my friends has an industrial a company, and he is going through something very difficult right now.

 

[00:36:07.820] – Maria

His company, unfortunately, a worker was actually mortally wounded at the site recently. The first time ever. That’s traumatizing for you as a business owner to have someone. I think people are also open about struggles that they’re having. Wow, this is some heavy stuff. There’s also personal emotional challenges. People have children with special needs. People’s marriages might not have worked. Some folks have unfortunately passed away, or some classmates have been widowed or widowers. I think that might be another part of it where I think it’s more likely if you are going to have a charmed life that at age 26, your luck might still be… That your tank of luck might be at the 100% meter, but it will eventually start to run out just because life is what it is. I wonder if that might also be part of just general maturity, but also things like that happening that might help humble people and might be what leads to the more human side of folks coming out at these events.

 

[00:37:19.660] – John

 The survey I referred to in the story that we wrote about it, which is really exclusive, you should know that it was for a 25th reunion at Harvard. 47% of the class admitted to being fired from a job, 14% were divorced, 13% said they’ve been fired twice, 4% said they lost a job three times in the 25 years since graduation. So yes, it’s not all hunky-dory, but by and large, these are good charmed lives. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thank you for that report, not only about reunions, but also, of course, about your trip to Europe and your visits to three schools and the AGAC conference. We hope you enjoyed it, and we hope that someday you will be attending your reunion and you’ll feel as good about it as Caroline, Maria have when they attend theirs. Hey, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
What MBA Admission Officials Are Talking About
Maria |
June 6, 2024

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Well hello everyone, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants, welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-hosts Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Today we have a special guest, Heidi Hillis from Fortuna Admissions. She is based in Australia, is a senior expert coach for Fortuna, and has three degrees, all from Stanford, a BA in English literature, that’s my degree, an MA in Russian studies, and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business. And we have Heidi here to discuss some really fascinating research. Here’s what Fortuna did. They dug into the last Two class profiles of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

That’s the class of ‘23 and the class of ‘24. They looked up all these folks on LinkedIn to identify a little bit more about their backgrounds, including their former employers and their places of undergraduate education to come up with an incredible analysis. Heidi, welcome.

[00:00:46] Heidi Hillis: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

[00:00:48] John Byrne: Heidi, what is, what are the big takeaways from your deep dive discovery?

[00:00:54] Heidi Hillis: It’s hard to know even where to start. I think there’s a quite a few interesting kind of trends that we’ve seen that have taken place over the years. We were mentioning before the call that traditionally there hadn’t been, 10 years ago, if you’d looked, you wouldn’t have seen so many tech companies represented, but now there’s a big presence of tech companies who are feeding a lot of these MBA programs in Stanford in particular.

I think that the thing that was really interesting was, looking, not just at where the companies that were feeding the students, the applicants to Stanford. When they were working there, when they were applying, but actually the paths that they took prior to their current job.

So how many people were working, if you look at McKinsey, for example, or Bain and BCG, those are obviously companies that feed a lot of applicants to the program, but we found 20%, which seemed to be normal of, the class came from consulting, but if you actually look into the numbers in their background, You would see that actually 37 percent of these two classes had worked at McKinsey sometime prior, or actually in consulting, so it was, it’s The kind of the patterns that are behind, what you would normally see in terms of what Stanford tells us.

So you get a sense of the paths that people have taken. And so that’s something that was really interesting to see.

[00:02:16] John Byrne: Absolutely. And of course, this is this analysis goes so far beyond what any applicant would learn by simply looking at the class profile that the school up because, this level of detail is never available to people.

[00:02:33] Heidi Hillis: No, and yeah, for example, you could see that, Stanford will say that they have around, each year around 50 percent of applicants are international, which is a great statistic and gives you lots of hope if you are an international student. But when you dig into the numbers, you actually understand that.

75 percent of the people who get into Stanford actually went to a U. S. University. So even if you’re international, it does have does seem to have kind of an advantage of having been educated in the U. S. That seems to be something that they look for. However, I think. The concentration of universities in the U.

S. that are feeding to Stanford is something also that, if you’re looking at it, you might find a little bit dis, disconcerting. There’s a few programs that are really, obviously the top. Programs as you would expect places like Harvard, Stanford, Yale, the Ivies but if you look at the international universities very diverse from all over the world, really lots of people from different places, which is also really interesting.

[00:03:38] John Byrne: Yeah I tell you, one of the things that struck me in the data is how consistent it is. 10 years ago, we did the same exercise at Stanford and a bunch of other. Schools from Harvard and Dartmouth and Columbia and talk and a few others and back 10 years ago, we found that 25. 2 percent of the class of 2013 were from Ivy League colleges.

And the Ivy League 8 schools, not including Stanford. And if you included Stanford, it would have been 32. 6%. So now, let’s move forward to your data. And in 23, 30. 7 percent went to Ivy League schools, even above the 25. 2. And in 24, 27. 9 percent went to Ivy League schools. So it looks like Stanford has gotten even a little bit more elitist than it was.

Yeah,

[00:04:41] Heidi Hillis: It’s, it is it’s what the data says, right? Obviously, this is a sample. We have 80 percent of the two classes. So we don’t know where those other people went. And that might skew the data a little bit in another direction. But it is, if you look at there’s 15 schools, that include the Ivy’s and then you have UC Berkeley and obviously Stanford that really are contributing, 49 percent of the class of 23, 47. 3 percent of the class of 24. So that is a pretty heavy concentration and But, if you actually look into the data, you see a lot of people also, each of these is actually an individual story.

You see a lot of people who come from other schools as well. So it’s not like you have to give up hope if you come from a different school. I see a lot of individual stories that, from the whole range of U. S. schools that really are feeding into Stanford. So I think what the data doesn’t also tell you, unfortunately, is how many of these Of people from these backgrounds are actually applying.

So

[00:05:39] John Byrne: good point.

[00:05:40] Heidi Hillis: It’s it’s hard to know. And sometimes I think people this is. A path that a lot of people who go to these schools plan to take from the very beginning. So I would see, it would be interesting to know that I don’t know that we will ever find that out. But, um, that’s something to keep in mind as well.

[00:05:56] John Byrne: Yeah. And that’s a fair point. Because how reflective are these results of the applicant pool reflective of an elitist attitude probably a combination of if I had to guess, but, it is what it is, and these institutions obviously are great filters, so you come from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and you go to Harvard or Stanford or Penn, and you pass through a fine filter, and it makes you less of a admissions risk than if you went to, frankly, the University of Kentucky and worked for a company that no one knows of.

That’s just the reality of elite MBA admissions, right?

[00:06:40] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. And so you will see that the people who are not going, you’ll see a lot of the people who you would, the profiles that you would expect, the Harvard undergrad that then goes to Goldman that then was working at a PE firm.

That’s a really typical profile that you’ll see. But you’ll also see some really, unique and interesting ones, which I think, Okay. Helps you understand that if you don’t have that path, you also have a real chance at these schools, and maybe even more of a chance, again, not knowing, how many of those Goldman P.

E. Harvard grads are applying. So I’m thinking of the guy that I saw who he went to UPenn undergrad, studied engineering, started out a kind of pretty typical path working in private equity, but then made a big pivot to work for go to Poland where he was working in a real estate investment firm and the head coach of the Polish lacrosse team.

So you have really interesting profiles like that, that you can see that. aren’t necessarily taking that typical path. And sometimes that really does help you stand out.

[00:07:42] John Byrne: True. Maria, what surprised you most about the data?

[00:07:48] Maria Wich-Vila: Wow. I think we already covered, the, one of the biggest ones was the number, the percentage of people who would had some sort of either their undergraduate or graduate education within the United States.

Intuitively, I had felt that was true. And sometimes when I try to, give some honest, tough love to applicants from certain countries, and they’ll say, oh, but Maria, I think you’re being a little too pessimistic. After all, X percent of the applicants at these schools are international, and Y percent are from a certain geography internationally.

I’ll say yes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all Solely from that area. A lot of them are, do have significant international educational experiences. I think another, speaking of the international piece the percentage of people who had significant international work experience as well was something else that really jumped out at me.

Because it would signal to me that Stanford really does value this global perspective both within probably its domestic applicants and also its international applicants. So I thought that was also a really interesting piece of data that jumped out at me.

[00:08:52] John Byrne: Now remind me what percentage was that?

[00:08:56] Heidi Hillis: People who are international

[00:08:58] John Byrne: who have had international work experience.

[00:09:01] Heidi Hillis: I think it was 30%.

[00:09:02] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it’s pretty

[00:09:04] John Byrne: impressive.

[00:09:04] Caroline Diarte Edwards: 30%, which I was thrilled to see. As well as coming from in Seattle and Europe. Obviously the international schools put a heavy emphasis on international experience and I hadn’t fully appreciated that. A school like Stanford would also.

really value that to the same extent. And it’s great to see that candidates are making the effort to get outside of the U. S. and get international experience because I think you gain so much from that exposure. And you bring more to the classroom if you’ve got that experience. I know that both Maria and Heidi.

I’ve worked outside of the home countries as well. Pre MBA and I think that you just have so much more to contribute to the whole experience. And it was great to see that 30%.

[00:09:50] John Byrne: What else struck you, Caroline?

[00:09:53] Caroline Diarte Edwards: We talked about the concentration of academic institutions, and I was also surprised about the concentration in employers.

So while there is a very long list of employers where the students have worked pre MBA when you dig into the career paths that they’ve taken there is some interesting concentration. Heidi had noted that the reports that There are 26 companies that account for nearly one third of the class in terms of where they were working right before Stanford.

But when you look at their whole career history, those same 26 companies represent over 60 percent of the class. So that is, yeah, that’s quite extraordinary that so many of the class have experience of working at quite a short list of companies.

[00:10:46] Heidi Hillis: I think that’s reflective of, if you really think about it, you have a lot of these companies.

You’re talking about the Goldmans and the Morgan Stanley and McKinsey that have really large programs that recruit out of undergrad that are really training grounds for. A lot of people that then on to do, work in industry or go on to work for in finance in particular, a lot of people starting out at some of these bulge bracket banks and then going into.

Private equity or smaller firms. So the diversity within finance in terms of where they were working prior to MBA is quite large compared to consulting because there just aren’t as many consulting firms, but a lot of people in financing, a lot of different firms, but they, a lot of them really do start out in these training programs, these analyst programs that are so big and popular.

[00:11:34] John Byrne: Yeah, true. And looking back, I did this exercise as well. The feeder companies to Stanford 10 years ago in the class of 2023, 22. 8 percent from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and your data, 22. 5 percent work there. Incredible consistency over a 10 year period. When you look at the top six employers 10 years ago, they were McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and JP.

Morgan Chase. They accounted alone for 34 percent of all the students in the class of 20, 2013 at Stanford. In your data for 23 and 24 they account for 29. 8%, just a few percentage points less. So remarkable consistency. And I think you’re right, Heidi, this is a function of the fact that these firms bring in a lot of people who are analysts and actually expect them after 3 to 5 years to go to a top MBA school.

So there’s a good number of them in the applicant pool to choose from and let’s face it, they’re terrific candidates.

[00:12:46] Heidi Hillis: Yeah. I think another pool of really terrific candidates that you see, and I don’t know what the 2013 data was saying, but is the US military, which is really, I think, again, something that I felt having worked with lots of military candidates myself, understand that, Yeah, intuitively, I would have expected, but to see it in the data is actually really interesting.

You just see Stanford in particular, I think, is really looking for leadership potential, and it’s so hard to show that as an analyst, as a consultant, but as in the military, these people have such incredible leadership experience that it really helps them to stand out.

[00:13:23] John Byrne: Yeah. And let’s tell people what the data shows.

How many out of us military academies,

[00:13:28] Heidi Hillis: In all in total, we had, 20 over the two years. So that’s in the two classes that we found. So that’s, a pretty large number. And they come from all the different academies, right? So you’ll find them from different, not academies, in the army, navy and the marines.

So you’ll see that. And you also see quite a few, in the data we’ll, we see a lot from the Israeli military as well, but that’s actually a little bit difficult to because every Israeli does go into the military. So it’s they have that in their background. Any Israeli candidate would have Israeli military background as well, but again, that’s.

Place that people can really highlight their leadership. So you had eight people from who had been, who were Israeli and obviously had military experience where they were able to demonstrate significant impact and leadership prior to MBA.

[00:14:18] John Byrne: Yeah. In fact, 10 years ago, roughly 2%. of the class went to either West Point or the U.

S. Naval Academy. Good number of people actually from the military. Maria, any other observations?

[00:14:34] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, I was also surprised at the fact that within those top employers And when we look at the tech companies, it was Google and Facebook and Meta with a pretty large showing. Google was actually the fourth largest employer after the MBBs and, but then, I was expecting there to be an equal distribution amongst those famous large cap technology companies.

So I, I would have expected even representation amongst Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, et cetera. And yet. Apple and Amazon only had one or two people each versus Google at 25. So I thought that was really fascinating and it makes me wonder if perhaps it’s a function of maybe Google and Meta might give their younger talent more opportunities to lead impactful projects, perhaps.

I’m just guessing here, but maybe Apple and Amazon perhaps are more hierarchical. And maybe don’t give their younger talent so many opportunities, but I was really surprised by that. I would have expected a much more even distribution amongst the those famous those famous tech companies.

[00:15:40] John Byrne: Yeah. You’re right. And I crunched the numbers on the percentages and Google took three and a half percent of the two classes and that’s better than Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase. Facebook had 2. 7 percent and Microsoft at 1. 5, and I was shocked at Amazon because, Amazon is widely known as the largest single recruiter of MBAs in the past five years.

At one point, they were recruiting a thousand MBAs a year, but in, in one sense, maybe Amazon quite doesn’t really have the prestige. For Stanford MBAs who might rather work elsewhere, I think that might be is, you look at the employment reports at a lot of the other schools and Amazon is number one at a number of schools and very low percentage of people from Amazon going to Stanford.

We don’t know, of course, how many. Leaving Stanford and going back to Amazon, but it can’t be that many.

[00:16:41] Heidi Hillis: I wonder if there’s something about just a proximity effect here. You have the plate, like the meta and Google just being so close to Stanford, maybe it just, attracts more people applying because they.

They’re almost on campus and maybe, just being Amazon all over the world and different places could be not attracting as many. I don’t know.

[00:17:03] John Byrne: Yeah, true. The other thing, the analysis shows, and this is what you also gather from the more public class profile is really the remarkable diversity of talent that a school like Stanford can attract year after year.

It is, it blows you away, really. The quality and the diversity of people despite the concentration of undergraduate degree holders or company employers, it’s it’s really mind boggling, isn’t it?

[00:17:33] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, they come from everywhere and really interesting paths and even the people I think that, have those kind of typical paths, you see a lot of diversity within them as well.

So I think, even if you’re coming from a Goldman or a McKinsey having lived in another country or gone to done a fellowship abroad or running a non profit on the side. These things are actually what helped them to stand out. But you do see some really interesting, I think, profiles, too, of people who’ve just done, you get a sense of what it would be like to be in the Stanford classroom.

People from really unique and different backgrounds. People who come from all different countries and lawyers, doctors people who have run, nonprofits in developing countries people running large programs for places like Heineken or Amazon too. But, it’s a real diversity of backgrounds.

[00:18:27] John Byrne: Now, Heidi, I wonder if one is an applicant. Is this discouraging to read and here’s why if I’m not from Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and if I didn’t work for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google am I at a disadvantage and should I even try? Some people look at the data and come away with that conclusion.

[00:18:52] Heidi Hillis: I think it’s a reality check for a lot of people. I think it’s just, it’s really, it just helps people understand, what it, the difficulty of this, why it’s so competitive, but I think that there is, again, behind the kind of the percentages, you do look at these individual profiles and I would get, I would actually take a lot of hope from it if I were looking, as an applicant, because especially if you are.

Maybe a little bit more of a big fish or small fish in a bigger pond or big fish in a smaller pond you go to Rice or you go to Purdue or, and you do really well, those are the people who, they’re definitely looking for that diversity of background as well as the international.

I think that’s really neat. think that, instead of looking at the data and saying, why not, why I shouldn’t even apply, it’s why not me look at these other profiles of people who have taken really unique paths that that do get in. So I think it is actually a Kind of a mix of both, it is a reality check for a lot of people, but it’s actually, there is so much diversity in the data as well.

I think also one thing that we haven’t really covered is about is just the prevalence of social impact in, that’s really taken hold of the class. I don’t, again, going back to your 2013 analysis, I’m not sure how easy it was to tell that, but a lot of you can see reflected in the both the types of organizations people are working for, but also their titles and the kinds of work that they’re doing that that there’s a huge 40 percent of the class of the two classes had some kind of social impact in their background.

Whether that’s, running their own nonprofit on the side or volunteering or. Running trans transformational kind of programs within companies that are, either in finance or consulting or in industry. That’s a big trend. I think that people can take heart from as well.

So if you’re working if you feel like you’re in an organization where you’re not getting the leadership that you. can use to highlight your potential for Stanford, that’s definitely a place you can go is working for in volunteer capacity for a non profit or on the board of a of some kind of foundation.

Those are the kinds of places that you can highlight your potential

[00:21:00] John Byrne: true. And I know we have a overrepresented part of every applicant pool at an elite business school are software engineers from India. And I wonder in your analysis, how many of them did you find from like the IITs?

[00:21:18] Heidi Hillis: That’s a good question. The IITs, it was again, it was one of these you have about 50 percent of classes internet, so 25 percent of the class. was educated outside of the US. The IITs are going to be up there. Let’s see from India, 2. 1 percent of the class came from India. So probably, I don’t know offhand exactly how many of those were IITs, but

[00:21:43] John Byrne: I’ve had a lot of them.

[00:21:45] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, probably a lot of them. Although I think, that’s the other thing is that people who come, to work with me from India, they feel like if they haven’t gone to IIT, then that’s going to be a disadvantage. But I think, you’ll find that there are, there’s representation of other universities as well.

Definitely.

[00:22:00] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I was just looking at the list of undergrad institutions. And for example, you’ve got Osmania University from Hyderabad. So it is not, it’s not all IIT. Okay.

[00:22:12] John Byrne: Yeah, exactly. And Caroline, 1 of the things about the institutions that are really represented here and that I don’t really see unless I missed it.

I didn’t see a Cambridge or an Oxford. Two of the best five universities in the world. And I wonder if that’s just a function of fewer people in the applicant pool or what? What do you think that could be about?

[00:22:36] Caroline Diarte Edwards: I had a look through the uk Institutions and you have got cambridge in there.

I think I also noticed. Bristol university there are a few different universities. So i’m aston university, which is not it’s not on a par with Oxford or Cambridge. So I think that speaks to the point that Heidi made that you don’t have to have been to an elite school to get into Stanford.

Aston is a good solid university, nothing wrong with Aston, but it’s not it’s not one of the top UK universities. So there’s definitely some interesting variety in the educational backgrounds of the students going to Stanford. And

[00:23:16] John Byrne: then, yeah, it is if you’re a big fish in a small pond, like Afton, you’ll you could still stand out in the pool.

[00:23:26] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely. There’s a lot of really interesting background, you have look hard on blue and you have Miami University and some really smaller universities abroad. I think. Again, it’s really, if you look at that, it does give you hope because it’s really what you do afterwards and if you, obviously, if you come from one of these schools, you probably want to be in the top, 5 percent of the graduating class, you want to show that you have the GPA that can support an academic background that they feel comfortable that you’ll be able to compete academically, but, and maybe that’s what you’re Offset by the, the GMA or the scores, you don’t know, we don’t have those on here.

But, um, the path post university really becomes much more important in those cases. What you’ve done since then where you’ve, how you’ve risen from starting at a entry level position to, running a division or heading a country group or something like that.

[00:24:21] John Byrne: And as far as Cordon Bleu goes, every good business program needs a Cordon Bleu, for God’s sake, right?

You want to eat well at those NBA parties, don’t you?

[00:24:32] Heidi Hillis: Absolutely.

[00:24:35] John Byrne: Maria, I’m sure that was true at Harvard.

[00:24:38] Maria Wich-Vila: I wasn’t the one doing the cooking but I certainly, I was certainly a member of the wine and cuisine society where I happily participated in the eating and consuming a part of that.

But to, to the point that we were just recently talking about. regarding being a big fish in a small pond. Not only have I seen it personally with applicants that I’ve worked with who did not attend these elite universities, but even many years ago, I attended a, an admissions conference where Kirsten Moss, who was the former head of admissions at Stanford, she actually told stories about how they’ve accepted people who even attended community college.

But within the context of that community college, they had really moved mountains. And she said that one of the things that they look for is, Within the context and the opportunities that you’ve been given, how much impact have you had? So maybe you don’t have an opportunity to go to Yale or MIT or IIT for your undergraduate, but whatever opportunity you have been given, have you grabbed that opportunity and really made the most of it and really driven change?

So she specifically called out, I believe, I believe there were two students that year at the GSB who had both started their educations, their higher educations at community college. Anything is possible. It really is about finding the people who, wherever they go, they jump in and make an impact.

[00:25:55] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that to that point, I think it can almost be a more difficult if you’ve gone to Harvard and then worked at one of these, gone on one of these paths because we know that there’s, that’s an overrepresented pool in the applicant pool to stand out among those to have had that, that pedigree sometimes can be a disadvantage, right?

If you haven’t done as much as you should have with that, or if you started at that high level to show that level of progress over the course of your career is actually a little bit more difficult. Okay. And coming from a community college and rising to, a country level manager in some places is actually puts you at a significant advantage, I would say.

[00:26:31] Maria Wich-Vila: Because it’s hard for those people, it’s hard for those people to stand out, but also I think some of them go on autopilot, right? I think some people are on this kind of achievement, elite achievement treadmill, where they’re not even really thinking about what do I want to do with my life?

They’re always reaching for whatever that next, what’s the best college to go to? It’s Harvard Princeton. Yeah. Okay. Now that I’m here, what’s the best employer to work for? It’s McKinsey, Bain, BCG and without actually perhaps stopping to think about what is my passion? What impact do I want to make in the world?

And so I feel sometimes those autopilot candidates, I feel a little bit bad for them because they’re doing everything quote unquote and yet sometimes when you speak with them, that passion just isn’t there. And I do think that may ultimately harm them in the very, very elite business school.

Admissions because business schools want people who are passionate because at the end of the day, in order to do hard things, you’re going to need passion at some point to get you through those low periods. And so I think that’s something business schools look for. And I do think that sometimes these.

These kind of autopilot candidates might sometimes be at a disadvantage.

[00:27:29] Heidi Hillis: Yeah, I think that, to that point look in the data, when you look at it, you see so many people who’ve gone to McKinsey, Bain, Weasley, or Goldman, but then there’s a, you see a lot of success for people who’ve actually pivoted.

So those pivots that are post The second or third job really do show you that, if you’re if you get a candidate who’s coming from, still at McKinsey, okay, that’s fine. They have to be the top 5 percent of McKinsey, like they have to be going to get so many McKinsey applicants that the only the, you can look at the data in a couple ways.

One is, oh, my God, they took 12 people from McKinsey and the others. Oh, my God, they only took 12 people from McKinsey, right? That’s So if you want to be one of those 12, you have to be the top 12 in the world, right? Whereas if you’ve gone to McKinsey and then done an externship at a health care startup and then moved on to be a product manager at for health at Google, that kind of a path is definitely showing a little bit more, maybe risk taking, maybe ability to follow your passions.

So I think that. When I see candidates who come to me, for example, and they’re like, not thinking about applying now, but maybe in a year or two, I say, look for an externship, maybe think about pivoting out of one of these places and looking for some operational experience.

And because you see in the data that works.

[00:28:42] Maria Wich-Vila: And they’re doing themselves a service not only in terms of enhancing their admissions chances, but even just in terms of determining, what do I want to do with my career? If I do eventually want to go into industry, what functional role do I want to have?

What industry do I want to work in? So it’s, it actually benefits them in the long term to do that as well, even if they don’t go to business school. I think those secondments and externships and second job, post consulting jobs are extremely valuable. Totally agree with you.

[00:29:06] Caroline Diarte Edwards: And I’m sure they also bring more to the classroom as well.

I would think that’s also why Stanford is selecting some of those candidates, because not only have they worked at McKinsey, but they’ve also led a non profit in Africa or worked in private equity or whatever it is. So they have much more breadth that they can bring to the classroom. And I think that It’s seen as a very valuable contribution

[00:29:29] John Byrne: in Heidi.

Did you see that? The majority of the candidates to examined actually did work in more than one place, right?

[00:29:37] Heidi Hillis: Yes, most of them did. There were very few that, you see working at one place. And I would say that those are people that would have really risen through the ranks.

Someone who’s worked at Walmart and become, started in, I don’t know, in one state, but then to become a regional manager and things like that really are going to onto a global role. The people who have stayed at one place really have shown significant career progression within that.

And then the other people I think you do see a lot of movement. The big. The most typical would be from investment banking to private equity and then you do find in finance, there’s a little bit less kind of movement into other industries. You see a lot of people staying within finance, but within finance.

Yeah. Yeah. The other industries, especially consulting or other, tech, people are really moving into other places and it’s becoming, it is a little bit difficult. We have these categories that we’ve talked about, for example, healthcare, but it’s hard to categorize some of these companies.

Are they healthcare? Are they tech? There’s a lot of overlap. And so everything’s a little bit of tech in something nowadays. So whether it’s finance and fintech or education and ed tech or health care and health tech, these are all merging and combining. It’s hard to categorize them.

[00:30:53] John Byrne: So looking at the data here I wonder if you’ve seen your old classmates in the sense that these new people are very much like the people you went to school with at Stanford. I

[00:31:05] Heidi Hillis: put this out and it’s really interesting to a lot of my classmates downloaded the report and read it. And a lot of them came back and said, oh, boy, I would never get in now.

It’s these people are super impressive. I think that you see a lot of. It’s just become more and more competitive. And I think that with more information and more people every year applying, it is becoming really difficult. I think that you do see a lot of, I am encouraged by the diversity part of it that you see still Stanford.

I feel like they do take risks on some really interesting profiles and candidates that maybe some other schools are less likely to do. And so that’s what does give me. A lot of hope when I get some kind of really nontraditional candidate who wants to, their dream school is Stanford. I feel like, I say all the time, there’s a 6 percent chance.

You’re going to get in, but there’s 100 percent chance. You won’t get in if you don’t apply. So you’ve got to, you got to give it a go. And that’s, the attitude that we take to it.

[00:32:04] John Byrne: Indeed. So for all of you out there read Heidi’s article on our site, it’s called who gets in and why exclusive research.

Into Stanford GSB and I’ll tell you one conclusion I have about this is that, man, if you really want to get into Stanford, you need a Sherpa, and and Heidi would be a great Sherpa for you because the, just the profiles of these folks, where they’ve been, what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished in their early lives is so remarkable that To compete against, in this pool for a spot in the class you need every possible advantage you can get.

And and having an expert guide you through this trip probably would be a really big advantage. So Heidi, thank you for sharing your insights with us and the research, the very cool research.

[00:33:01] Heidi Hillis: Thank you

[00:33:03] John Byrne: and for all of you out there. Good luck. And if you want to go to Stanford, you got to check out this report.

Okay. It will inspire you to up your game, even if you are from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or wherever McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Google, you want to look at this report and you want to really think about. What it will really take to get in. I think it will inspire you, motivate you to really put your best foot forward.

Thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants.

Maria

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!