What’s New In MBA Admissions
Maria |
June 28, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, our hosts will bring you the insightful highlights from the recent AIGAC conference attended by Maria, with of course a special focus on the MBA admissions industry. Discover the notable shift discussed as Columbia Business School transitions from rolling admissions to a three-round format and valuable insights on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) in admissions.

They also dive into the acceptance of alternate tests like the new GMAT and GRE formats. Explore the rise of older applicants, potentially a result of pandemic-related delays, and the potential for tailored full-time MBA options for individuals at different career stages. Lastly, they touch upon the challenge of “summer melt” and its implications for admissions officers when admitted candidates opt not to enroll after submitting deposits.

Don’t miss out on captivating discussions about MBA admissions, AI in education, GMAT, GRE, and the evolving landscape of business education.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.370] – John

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. We want to talk about a couple things today. One is AIGAC. Now, you probably don’t know what AIGAC is, and I hate acronyms, but it stands for the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants. And in late May they met. And these are largely MBA admission consultants, not necessarily all graduate schools. And one thing that they do is they talk about the industry, they talk about trends, and they meet with admission directors of various schools who often kind of tell what they expect in the marketplace, as well as how they’re going to maybe change their application requirements or their essays. One of the big changes this year at a major school is Columbia Business School, which for years has had a rolling admissions policy and for the first time in memory, for sure, has gone to a traditional three round format. Maria attended the AIGAC conference and I wonder if you might share some of the highlights.

[00:01:25.620] – Maria

Yeah, absolutely. It was a super packed I mean, these are conferences that go from 08:00 A.m. Until 10:00 p.m. At night, well, including meals. It’s not all conference stuff, but yeah, a few of the takeaways that were really surprising to me that I can share were first of all, we have talked here on this podcast several times about AI and Generative, AI and ChatGPT and what is that going to mean for writing essays, et cetera. And it was interesting. There was sort of a range of opinions from admissions officers. Some of them seemed, on average, a lot less freaked out about it or concerned about it than I expected them to be. For example, one of the officers said something like, well, we can tell if a candidate has written an application for another school, so I feel pretty confident that we’ll be able to tell if a candidate has written one with ChatGPT. Another officer sort of likened it to using Grammarly. Right? It’s sort of the natural evolution. We started with spell check and that little paperclip in Microsoft, probably before a lot of listeners to this podcast were born. You guys, there used to be a little paperclip in Microsoft that would appear and try to help you and it was not helpful.

[00:02:34.270] – Maria

We started with spell check and then we went to grammar check and then it was Grammarly. And so this person just said, well, this is just sort of a natural evolution of that because the ChatGPT cannot invent the content for you, no matter how good it is. But maybe it could be sort of a writing tool to help people become better writers. As a side note, this is not AIGAC related necessarily, but I know an English teacher who’s a high school English teacher in Los Angeles who said that she’s actually starting to incorporate ChatGPT into some of her lessons because she’s like, it’s here to stay. And if it can help my students learn to become better writers themselves, then we just have to embrace it anyway. I was like, oh, I hadn’t thought.

[00:03:10.670] – Maria

Of it being a tool to help people. Like, if you write it your way and then you put it in the ChatGPT and it spits back something that’s a lot better, then maybe it teaches you. I think that’s overly optimistic because I think people may or may not want to put in that level of effort and they’re just tell me, Just do it for me.

[00:03:26.370] – John

Maria I was recently at Cambridge and a professor told me that he wrote an article and then he put it into ChatGPT and he asked the bot to edit the article and it really functioned as an editor as well, and a rewrite person. So there is that.

[00:03:45.190] – Maria

Yeah, hopefully. I think the challenge, though, would be if ChatGPT, it might know how to cut out words, but how do we know that it’s cutting out the best words in terms of what’s relevant for an MBA admissions reader and what isn’t? It might just cut out words willy nilly, but also cut out really good stuff in addition to really irrelevant stuff.

[00:04:04.750] – John

As we know it makes up stuff too.

[00:04:07.550] – Maria

Sometimes it just makes it what was some of the stuff? Yeah. Listeners can find that old podcast episode and the one where it made up some fun facts about John randomly. I think it was your 25.

[00:04:22.710] – John

What’s interesting is OpenAI calls this hallucinations and they basically justify ChatGPT making up stuff when when it can’t find information as exactly what humans would do. They just make up stuff. I find the whole notion of hallucinations fascinating.

[00:04:44.030] – Caroline

That’s like it’s on drugs.

[00:04:47.130] – Maria

From now on, whenever I make any sort of mistake at all, I’m just going to call it a hallucination should be my excuse for Noah. So in general, I was really surprised because I thought there was going to be a lot of hand wringing and gnashing of teeth and stress, but overall it was a pretty much spell check. But on steroids or on LSD as a case. Another thing that was interesting was different opinions about the alternate tests that are coming up. So, in other words, the new GMAT, the new GRE. I think Harvard has said that they will not accept the new GMAT this year just because it’s coming out a little too close to the round one deadline. And then they want our people should they wait, should they not wait? Just like, let’s just not even introduce that variable into the mix. I believe that’s been their position so far. But another school said something like, I’ll take any measure of academic horsepower I can get. And so whether it’s a short GMAT, a long GMAT, a short GRE, I don’t care I just want to know that they can handle the work in my program.

[00:05:56.160] – Maria

So overall, I was also surprised by just there sort of seemed to be kind of a yeah, sure, bring it on attitude about the new test. And then another trend that I had sort of I think some of us who work in this field had noticed anecdotally, but they confirmed it was that there was a larger influx of older candidates in this year’s applicant poll, sort of noticeably so. And I think the theory was that because of the pandemic, perhaps people were either waiting to see what would happen with the pandemic, or perhaps they had to care for elderly parents or for whatever reason, they suspect that. What happened is that there was a build up of people, maybe in their late 20s, early 30s, who were thinking of applying to business school and then did not apply to business school. And now with the Pandemic quote unquote over, they all kind of appeared this year. So the hope is that things will level out a bit more in the next year or two, and that will not continue. Although someone from one of the schools said it seems to him that perhaps the current MBA, as it stands, given that it is targeting people at a certain point in their lives, at a certain point in their careers, maybe some of the schools should start reconsidering what they offer and what is the MBA.

[00:07:09.680] – Maria

And maybe there is a full time MBA option, not just the executive MBA, but maybe a full time MBA option for people who might be a little bit later in their lives versus what we think of as the typical MBA candidate. I don’t think anyone jumped up and said, yes, we’re going to offer that tomorrow. We’re going to restructure everything to cater to this audience. But it was an interesting thought exercise, right? We’ve seen a proliferation of the Master’s programs targeting more early stage people in their career. So it would be interesting to see if that then follows with more full time types of options for people who might be a little bit later. But so those were the three things that I took away.

[00:07:51.540] – John

That’s interesting. Was there any talk about volume of applicants in the current or in the forthcoming application cycle? Do people expect apps to go up, down, stay the same?

[00:08:06.490] – Maria

I think it’s really anyone’s guess. I think that there’s just everyone kind of like, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the upcoming season. We don’t know what’s going to happen. I think right now, honestly, a lot of the admissions officers are just so worried about summer melt. And that is to say, like, the people they give the offers to. Oh, here’s another thing that a couple of them shared, is that they’ve found a lot of people have started putting in multiple deposit goals. In other words, that’s always happened, right? People will always take the bird in the hand or three birds in the hand versus why not put in a bunch of deposits? But one of them noted that that’s happening a lot, and that makes sense from a candidate’s perspective. Right. Why not play the field a little bit longer? But it also makes it very stressful for an admissions officer who doesn’t know just because you have $1,500 in hand from someone, they might still disappear on you. And so I do think that I think the summer is not going to be a fun one for a lot of our colleagues and peers and people that we like who work in admissions, because I think they’re people that they thought were going to apply or sorry, who were going to enroll, just might vanish.

[00:09:21.070] – Maria

And that is very stressful.

[00:09:22.970] – John

Yeah. Caroline, what are your thoughts about Maria’s observations?

[00:09:27.490] – Caroline

Yeah, it was very interesting. I was particularly interested to hear what they had to say about AI. I do think that the schools are still trying to figure it out, and that may be why they didn’t have a clear policy. I was checking online what the schools say about their policies on AI, and it’s sort of a moving target at the moment. And I think the schools are sort of struggling how to juggle. There’s a fine line to tread right. For business schools, because on one hand, they need to embrace AI, because their students need to understand how it works and understand how to leverage this technology for their future roles.

[00:10:14.170] – Caroline

Right? That needs to be sort of integrated into the curriculum so that they can really know how to use that strategically in whatever role they’re going into. But at the same time, they’re academic institutions with standards to uphold. And I can imagine that professors are not too keen on students using AI willy-nilly to do all of their assignments. And I would imagine that there would have to be some consistency at some point in policies that they have on the academic side and in admissions.

[00:10:48.590] – Caroline

From what I understand, I think the schools are sort of trying to figure this out. It sort of all happens so quickly, and it’s not easy to figure out what the implications are for admissions and then academically as regards academic policies, and then also as regards helping students learn about it and be able to understand how they can leverage AI in the future. So I think it’s a very complex issue for schools, and I suspect that there are a lot more discussions going on behind closed doors that they’re not necessarily sharing in public yet.

[00:11:27.630] – John

Yeah. Right now, this year’s conference was in New York and Connecticut, which probably means Yale and the New York schools. Did you pick up any intelligence, Maria, as to why Columbia went to a more traditional three round format for their deadlines this year?

[00:11:48.130] – Maria

I don’t want to speak for them on this. I would suspect that just in terms of the complexity involved with having to manage rolling deadlines and the early decision. And if what one of the admissions officers said is true about people putting in multiple deposits, then the early action, the binding early decision of Columbia perhaps was starting to become essentially meaningless, right. As more and more candidates were, I think, applying early to Columbia, getting in and then saying, woohoo, I now have a 6000 for $6,000, I have a call option on an amazing school. Now it’s time to apply to some other schools in round one and see how well I do. I suspect that’s how a lot of people were using early decision recently. And if that started increasing, then it effectively, from a yield management perspective, it makes the early decision not nearly as useful as it is intended to be. But one quick thing. Caroline mentioned a second ago, she made the great point that AI tools are here to stay, as if schools need to be able to train their students to adapt to it. The Dean of Columbia Business School spoke to us and here’s a little plug for Columbia.

[00:12:52.570] – Maria

He pointed out that they are incorporating a ton of AI, a whole bunch of technology and forward facing classes into their curriculum and something like a huge percentage of their electives didn’t even exist five years ago, that they are constantly refreshing. I can’t remember if it was 2030. 40% of their electives are constantly being refreshed. And obviously every school is going to always keep up with the times. But it did seem like an overwhelmingly high number of elective refreshes. And it’s something like they introduced a class on Python programming for MBAs, and again, a huge, I want to say roughly 30% or more perhaps, of MBA students have taken that Python class as sort of a sign that students realizing that these skills are just going to be valuable. And so business schools, I think, are instead of saying like, well, go take Computer Science 101 down at the undergrad campus, I think schools are going to increasingly incorporate that. So we can definitely start seeing more out of that from Columbia’s curriculum. All schools well, but it’s just their.

[00:13:57.070] – John

Top of mind because they hosted us exactly now. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of schools are now posting their application deadlines for this forthcoming admission cycle. And a number of them, most of them who have posted deadlines have posted their essays. We see any interesting changes on the essay front and what is expected of applicants this forthcoming season. Caroline, do you see anything interesting?

[00:14:29.750] – Caroline

So HAAS has introduced a video question. So I think that’s interesting. And we’ve discussed before that there has been a trend for increasing use of video in applications over the past few years and that with the advent of AI that it makes sense for schools to perhaps rely more heavily. On tools like video because it’s perhaps harder to gain that than it is a written application with AI tools, ChatGPT and so on. So unlike some of the other schools which use the Kira platform to generate questions that you would need to respond to fairly spontaneously in a sort of interview style. So schools like Inclusive, for example, use the Cura platform and they will give you 45 seconds to prepare and then 60 seconds to respond, right? And they would cut you off after that. So it’s more of a sort of spontaneous exercise with this half video. You can prepare it in your own time and record it and I think you can prepare a two minute video to introduce yourself. So it asks you to briefly introduce yourself to the Admissions Committee, explain which leadership principle resonates most with you. So it’s referring back to the Berkeley defining leadership principles and I think you mentioned earlier, Maria, that that was one of their interview questions before so that they’ve brought this forward from interview into the initial application and incorporated that as a video question.

[00:16:11.370] – Caroline

So I think those video questions are very useful. And of course, as an Admissions Committee member or as a file reader, you often don’t get to meet a candidate in person because it’ll often be other people who will be conducting the interviews, given the volume of interviews that are being done. So videos can be a really nice way to get a glimpse of the candidates, right? So that two minute glimpse can be a very useful way to sort of cross check things like communication skills. How does the person get their story across? And is there some coherence between how they present themselves in video and how they present themselves in the written application? How they present themselves and how the recommender presents themselves? So it’s a very interesting addition to the overall puzzle that comes together to build a picture of the candidate. I have to say that I’m not a huge fan of those pre recorded videos that candidates put together. I personally prefer the Kira format where it’s more of a sort of spontaneous exercise which although that can be quite stressful for candidates, right? It’s not easy to have to respond to those spontaneous questions where you have just a few seconds to prepare and then you have to deliver your response, then you’ve got 60 seconds and it cuts you off.

[00:17:35.750] – Caroline

It’s not an easy exercise, but I do feel that sometimes candidates tie themselves up in knots in thinking this has to be beautifully produced, it has to be professionally produced and they do like 1000 different cuts of their video and that is not necessary. But I think they feel pressure to look like a movie star in their video, right? And maybe if you’re Maria and you live in Hollywood then that’s very doable. But to the average candidate then that’s quite an intimidating exercise, I think. So I prefer the more spontaneous type of videos, where I think that also the schools get a better sense for how the candidate communicates in a more spontaneous format, rather than something where they’ve perhaps just learned a script and they are delivering a script that they’ve pre prepared.

[00:18:35.510] – John

Right. That’s interesting. Any other new things that you’ve noticed, Maria?

[00:18:41.970] – Maria

Well, at Poets and Quants, you guys already ran a great article about the changes to Columbia’s application. So getting rid of early decision, moving to rounds. I also think they got rid of their question on what’s your favorite movie, song or book and why, which was sort of a chance for a bit of creative expression in the past. And now they’ve replaced it with a question around diversity, equity and inclusion, which actually was a question they had a few years ago. They’ve resurrected it, and I was actually analyzing it a couple of days ago. And if you look more closely at the wording, the bar, I think has raised. So when they introduced that question, I believe in either 2020 or 2021, it was more around when have you been challenged around diversity, equity, inclusion? They list out these sorts of kind of four or five different things that they look for, like advocating for others or trying to end systemic prejudice or things along those lines. And then the question used to say, talk about a time you were challenged around one of these, and now the wording is much more around, tell us what actions you took.

[00:19:49.050] – Maria

So I thought that was really interesting. Right. Because I think the school is indirectly saying, like, look, it’s one thing if two years ago you had no idea systemic racism, it was all news to you, but we’re now in 2023, and hopefully you’re trying to lose others more in things like conversations. You don’t all have to save the world. Like I tell people, this is not a Nobel Prize Prize competition, this is a business school competition, but hopefully you’re at least trying to become somewhat more inclusive, even if you broadly define that inclusivity. So I did think that that was an interesting change as well.

[00:20:26.250] – John

Yes. So for all of you out there who are tracking this and intend to apply either round One, round Two, round Three in the forthcoming admission season, you can check out Story. It’s called MBA application deadlines for the 2023-2024 admission cycle. Harvard, Stanford and Wharton are already done with their deadlines, and so is Yale and Duke and UVA. Darden in Michigan and new other schools are posting them. As we move forward and closer to those round One deadlines, we update the story every single day when a new deadline comes out or when new essays come out. So it’s a good place to just see put in your calendar those dates when you’re going to have to meet these deadlines and get your application underway.

[00:21:22.890] – John

Otherwise, thank you for listening. And Maria, and Caroline, a joy as always. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our  weekly podcast. See you next week.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
What’s New In MBA Admissions
Maria |
June 28, 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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