Who Gets An Admit In The Final Round?
Maria |
February 29, 2024

In the latest episode of Business Casual, the hosts tackle the topic of final round MBA admissions. They explore the nuances and potential outcomes for individuals applying later in the admissions cycle, offering a comprehensive overview of how various business schools perceive these late applications.

The conversation also highlights the critical importance of presenting a thoroughly prepared application, regardless of the submission deadline. The hosts emphasize the necessity for candidates to articulate their reasons for applying later and provide practical advice for those contemplating a last-minute application.

This episode helps listeners gain an understanding of the strategic aspects to consider when submitting an application in the final rounds, including insights into the differing approaches of top U.S. and European MBA programs.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.210] – John

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. Caroline, of course, is the former admissions head at INSEAD and the co founder of Fortuna Admissions. And Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab. Now, let’s say you missed round one and round two. And you’re wondering, what are my odds if I apply to the final round of a school’s admissions deadlines? Well, we want to give you a little advice. We want to tell you who gets accepted in the final round, who doesn’t, and how viable is that? Know you always hear from folks like Caroline and Maria. Apply early, put your best foot forward as quickly as you can. Of course, that also assumes that you can file the best possible application during round one or round two. But obviously, when you’re applying to round one, all the seats are open. When you apply to round two, most of the seats are open. When you apply round three, there are far fewer classroom seats available to you. Caroline, what are sort of the guidelines of applying in a final round or one of the final rounds in the event that a school has more than three rounds?

[00:01:33.030] – Caroline

So this discussion came up because my colleague Emma Bond was chatting with David Simpson, who’s the head of admissions at London Business School, and he was talking about how they see a misconception, particularly in the US market, that it’s too late to apply to London Business School in round three. And so we decided to do this session to address what are the differences, which schools would encourage applications in the final round and which schools and in which cases. May it be better to then wait until the following season? So for London Business School and for INSEAD, both schools are very encouraging of candidates to apply in the final round. When I worked at INSEAD, one of the things that we implemented was a system to do our best to forecast the volume of applications that would come in round by round. And INSEAD has four rounds and of course, two intakes per year, so eight rounds over the full year. And we allocated spots accordingly to try to keep the level of competition as consistent as possible over those rounds, because I didn’t want to be turning away people in the final round who were fantastic and who I would have admitted in the first round.

[00:02:51.790] – Caroline

Right, so you can rest assured, if you’re applying to those schools, that you have a strong chance if you do apply in the later round. Now, the picture is very different at the M7 schools. So my colleague Judith Hadara, who’d been head of admissions at Wharton, was talking about her experience at Wharton and how it plays out at the M7 schools. So there are far fewer places in round three. And so the US schools are. Those top us schools do encourage candidates to apply in round one and round two where possible, particularly the traditional feeder profiles into business schools. So candidates applying from finance, from consulting, from tech, are best advised to apply in round one or round two. She also talked about the fact that sometimes those candidates think, I have to get in round one. Round two is too late. No, that it’s fine, right. There is no difference between round one and round two. You don’t have to submit your application in round one. But for those candidates, round one and round two are the best options. But she did say that they would still get some great candidates in round three and they would keep some spots for those people because they expected that every year.

[00:04:06.860] – Caroline

But it was really a case of cherry picking specific profiles to build out the diversity of the class. All three panelists talked about how it was not uncommon to see entrepreneurs applying in the final round. Not quite sure why that is. Maybe their circumstances change and for whatever reason, they are looking to jump into business school. Perhaps it’s not such a long term plan that they formed. Like someone who’s working, consulting and has probably known for two or three years that they’re going to apply to business school. For entrepreneurs, circumstances can change much more quickly. And so the M7 schools, they do keep slots for candidates like that who have a really unusual, outstanding profile. But otherwise, particularly for those very top schools, if you don’t fall into that category, then you are probably best off waiting to round one.

[00:05:04.450] – John

My assumption has always been that round three, there is an additional criteria that admissions officials consider that is less relevant in round one and round two, and that is the crafting of the class. So you’re looking at where there are holes in your diversity, whether it’s geographic location, whether it’s industry background, could even be a more traditional diversity criteria. And you’re plugging those holes so that the crafting of the class becomes far more important in round three than it does in one and two when you’re just simply picking the best of the candidates in the pool. Maria, you agree with that?

[00:05:46.670] – Maria

I do. And I think that in round three, some other similar logistical types of factors may come into play. I only say this as someone, I can only speak anecdotally based on people who I see who have success getting in in round three. But I wonder if also part of the thing that comes into the equation is thinking about, like, okay, well, we’re already in April or May by the time these final round decisions come out. And if pre coursework types of activities start in, say, August, that only gives us a few months for someone to assemble any sort of work or study visa that they might need, assembling financing, moving to another part of the country. So I sometimes wonder also if part of it, in addition to trying to fill out the class from a diversity perspective, if it might be easier for me. I mean, it would be heartbreaking for all parties involved if a really fantastic candidate were to apply in round three, and only due to the time constraints, were then unable to enroll a few months later. That would be a big waste of everyone’s time and just lead to a lot of unnecessary heartbreak.

[00:06:49.500] – Maria

So I also think that there may be an element, perhaps, of if you do know that you are going to need either time to get a study visa or time to assemble your financing, I think you also might want to try to avoid round three. I can’t speak know. Obviously, Caroline would know better than I whether or not that actually impacts who gets in in round three. But it could just be a coincidence on my part, but it makes sense. It could just be my brain trying to make sense of otherwise random bits of data. But that’s just something I’ve anecdotally noticed.

[00:07:19.090] – John

And Caroline, I think you mentioned in our pre call that David Simpson at LBS said they get more domestic candidates in their final round. And that makes sense, because if you are an international student, you need a visa, you need a little more time. The other thing to consider, I imagine, is if you want a scholarship, if you want a discount on the tuition, you should be applying early. Round three, there’s going to be less money available, if there’s any money left at all. And round three is going to be really hard for an international applicant to actually move abroad and find a place and get the required visa to study in the country. Right?

[00:07:59.440] – Maria

Yeah.

[00:07:59.770] – Caroline

So both Vijay and David talked about how they do keep scholarship funds for the final round, but it may be that there are more restrictions in that round, particularly for INSEAD, where they have some specific scholarships that are dedicated to round one and round two. And those are not available in round three, but they do keep some funds available because they know that they will get some good candidates who need some support at that stage. Another thing they talked about is that, as you say, there are candidates who apply in the final round and then realize, oh, my goodness, there’s so much to organize, right. I’ve got to move countries, figure out my family, figure out funding, figure out somewhere to live, and hadn’t anticipated all of that. And sometimes those candidates will then ask for a deferral. And David talked about how, in fact, sometimes they think some candidates apply in the final round, thinking that, well, I’m ready to apply now. I’m going to submit. If I get in, I’ll ask for a deferral, because I’m actually not ready to go now. And it’s not going to be too much of a scramble to get my act together to be on campus in the fall.

[00:09:07.390] – Caroline

And they talked about how that’s a really bad strategy because schools don’t like giving deferrals. It messes up their class composition to have people asking deferrals. Lots of people do ask deferrals for deferrals, but usually those requests are denied unless there is a very specific circumstance, like there’s a medical reason, or sometimes they may get a deferral because they’re not able to get a loan, but if they had a bit more time, they can demonstrate that they would be able to get their financing. But you have to have a very good reason. And most of the time, those deferral requests will be denied. So they flagged that as an issue that sometimes people are applying without having thought through probably the implications of when they would get admitted and when they would need to turn up on campus.

[00:10:00.450] – John

The other thing here is, I wonder if there’s like a hidden booby trap in applying late, and that is admissions directors may feel, well, look, you’re one of these people who delay everything, procrastinate to the last moment, and then you try to get something done and you cram it, as opposed to someone who’s very well prepared and thought out and is applying early. This goes to the old cliche, right? The early bird gets the worm. Is there some of that psychological disadvantage that a candidate may have in applying in a late round?

[00:10:42.830] – Caroline

Well, I would say that I think they see different types of candidates in the final round, and it is often a different mix to the candidates they see in rounds one and round two. So those candidates who are on that path where they know that they’re going to apply to a business school at some point if they turn up. So your management consultant, if you turn up in round three, you probably need to explain to the school why you’re applying in round three, because that’s quite unusual. So they see some fantastic, outstanding, unusual candidates in round three. And it may be that their circumstances have changed. And also, those people are not necessarily in the mindset of someone who is working at a McKinsey or a Goldman, where they’re surrounded by people who’ve been to business school and they’re well aware of the timeline and they’ve been thinking about it so far and ahead, that it’s just much easier for those people to get their applications in early than someone who comes from a more unusual background where they’re not surrounded by all of that support.

[00:11:52.160] – John

Yes, there’s irony here, isn’t there? Because if you’re working in investment banking or consulting, you’re in a real grind. I mean, you’re putting in 60 to 80 hours a week of work. And if anyone had an excuse to delay and wait, it would be those folks. And the nontraditional candidates, I would assume, would have more time. So automatically you might think, well, those are the people who have the time to apply around one, around two, and yet that’s not the case. So it’s kind of a contrarian view of who should apply when and why. Right?

[00:12:31.470] – Caroline

Yeah, I think it’s partly the level of competition, and you just have to anticipate that there’s going to be a lot of people applying from the investment banks or from consulting or from tech firms. And so you just have to start the process much earlier. And it’s true, it is very challenging for some candidates to do all of that work, but they just have to start earlier, anticipating that the final round may not be the best idea for them.

[00:12:57.290] – John

I know that Caroline and Maria are type a personalities, and I’m sure that neither actually applied in the final round. Maria, you were around one candidate, weren’t you?

[00:13:11.530] – Maria

I was around one candidate to one school. And then when I got into that school in round one, I thought, ooh, maybe I have a chance at a better school. And then I applied to another school. In round two, though, I will say I think I submitted. I think the application was due something like midnight Hong Kong time. I think I submitted it, like, at 11:58 p.m. And 20 seconds. It was one of those things where you could keep uploading or making little edits. And so I was ready, but I was like, oh, let me change. That’s why I tell people, do as I say, not as I do. I definitely learned from the near heart attack that I had at that moment. So that’s why I tell people to not wait until the last minute, but certainly not round three. I don’t think I would have bothered.

[00:13:49.330] – John

Into Harvard in round two?

[00:13:51.100] – Maria

Yes.

[00:13:51.840] – John

And where did you get into in round one that gave you the confidence. To apply to Harvard?

[00:13:56.400] – Maria

Another very good.

[00:13:58.570] – John

Oh, you don’t want to mention this school.

[00:14:02.010] – Maria

I don’t think that it’s relevant. It’s a very good school that is on par often with Harvard. So anyway, I will say, though, that going along the sort of like, okay, the overrepresented folks tend to apply in round one. I think if you are from an overrepresented group or most people, I tend to advise a lot of people, like, look, you might want to explain in the optional essay why it is that you’re applying in round three if the fact is that you were in the military and you had to go to a base or something and you were unable to apply, or perhaps you only recently found out about the MBA and you thought, oh, this is a really cool thing, maybe I should explore it. And then you yourself just didn’t simply realize, like, oh, wait, there’s this whole hierarchy of different rounds and there’s all this strategy behind it, and you go into it with very good faith and like, oh, cool, I still have time. That’s great. You might want to just sort of explain your background now. By the way, as a side note, make sure that your GMAT test history supports that.

[00:14:57.010] – Maria

Right? You don’t want to pretend that, oh, I’m in the military and I just found out about the MBA, but I’ve taken the GMAT four times already over the past two years, and that’ll sort of ruin, you know, back to the point of if you are from an overrepresented group and you’re applying in the round three, I think it does behoove you to at least realize that there’s going to be a question mark in the reader’s head. And I sort of tell people, whenever there’s a question mark, just address that question mark up front. If you think there’s going to be a question mark, there probably is. So you should probably address it up front. And maybe it’s that you just recently found out that your firm is going to sponsor you or you just recently found out some sort of piece of very relevant information. But I do think that most people, if they are from an overrepresented group, not only are most of the spots already taken in the first two rounds, but I think also there’s a lot of folks in your bucket that are also already on the waitlist. So you’re not simply competing for one of a few spaces that is left but you’re also realizing that other management consultants and other bankers and other tech people are already on that waitlist.

[00:15:56.710] – Maria

It just makes it so much harder. And sometimes I tell people, like, don’t think of it as being too late to apply this year. It’s that you’re super early to apply next year. Hooray. That’s a positive spin on its hazard.

[00:16:08.470] – John

Now, Caroline, you did apply to INSEAD round one, didn’t you?

[00:16:12.890] – Caroline

I think so. It was a long time ago. I can’t quite remember, but I think I did because I remember being admitted well ahead of the program. So it must have been either round one or round two out of the four rounds. But then I was a management consultant, right, and I was surrounded by people who’d been to business school, several of whom had been to INSEAD. So I decided very early on in my career that I really, really wanted to go to INSEAD. So. And I actually went after six years of work experience, because I worked in London as a management consultant for four years and then I worked in Paris for two years. So I had been thinking about it for about five years, I think, before I applied. So I had plenty of time to plan. But Maria is absolutely right. If you do apply in the final round, and especially if you come from more of those common profiles, then just explain, and that’s perfectly fine. If there’s ever anything that seems like something that they might want to ask you about, as Maria said, don’t sweep it under the carpet, just address it up front, because it’s just better to be transparent with the schools.

[00:17:25.050] – Caroline

And they also understand that people’s circumstances change and that’s perfectly fine. Sometimes people apply in the final round because they’ve been made redundant from their jobs. Right. And that happens. The economy goes through ups and downs. Younger people are often the first to be laid off. If there is a wave of layoffs, schools understand that it doesn’t count against you. There are always people heading to business school who applied right after being made redundant. So if you’ve been laid off, then that might be a reason to apply in round three as well. So the schools always have those candidates coming through, especially in economic downturn. So that’s a perfectly valid reason to be applying late as well.

[00:18:08.800] – John

Now, Maria mentioned the dreaded word in admissions waitlist, and I’m going to bring this up because obviously there’s no waitlist for round one, there is one for round two, but that’s a big round. Round three, when you’re getting. Now you’re facing not only the lack of seats that have been taken by round one and round two candidates. Now you’re thinking about, oh my goodness, these schools are holding a bunch of people in limbo for round three. So doesn’t that even more narrow your prospects or are they just safeties? And we know some schools carry fairly significant waitlist into the final rounds, right?

[00:18:56.010] – Caroline

Yeah, that is a good point. They will be comparing especially round three candidates with what they have on the waitlist. So that is your competition as well. But again, if you have a common profile, then there’s going to be more of those common profiles on the waitlist. So that will be your competition as well as your round four fellow candidates. But if you have a more unusual profile, then probably you don’t have as much competition from the waitlist. So it really depends on the profile that you have.

[00:19:29.830] – John

And isn’t it true that practice makes one better? So in other words, I could justify applying in a final round on the basis that, number one, it gives me practice for the next year and then I can be an early candidate. So all is not lost because you can always reapply. And I don’t think that’s really taken against you if you were rejected, particularly in a late round. Maria, do you buy that?

[00:19:56.270] – Maria

I agree that being a re applicant is not necessarily held against you, though I do know realize that as a re applicant, you may need to either answer a different set of essay questions or add an additional essay, the reapplicant essay, where you pretty much explain, like, okay, you just applied three months ago, six months ago. What’s new? What’s changed? Why are you back again? So I would not take it frivolously if someone is, especially if they’re younger in their career and there isn’t some sort of economic emergency or reason why they must enroll in the upcoming months. I do usually tell people that I would rather see you wait until round one and just submit one really strong round one application than to send in a half baked round three application and then three months later like, hey, it’s me, I’m back again. But now my career goals are a little bit better because I’m a little bit savvier about this whole thing and it’s a little too much to, I always try to tell people, like, look, even if you’re so young in your career that you’ve never been in a hiring position before, put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager, right?

[00:21:00.390] – Maria

Like, what if someone in your group, you had an open job opening and you had a certain deadline and someone was really late and then they just applied to that and their resume was a mess and then they applied again a few months later. At a certain point you’d say, like, well, why did you waste my time the first time? So I think if you think you’ve got a solid application in round three and a good reason for why you didn’t apply, you know, but on the other hand, don’t just say like, whoop, I’m just going to throw in a round three Hail Mary with no real intent. I know I’m not going to get in, but why not just realize that then you would then have to explain your reasoning later on? I don’t think it’s held against you to be a reapplicant, but there is an actual change to your application strategy. You will have to write either a different essay or an extra essay later on, so just be cognizant of that extra layer of scrutiny that will be given later on.

[00:21:48.470] – John

Yeah, good point, good point. My goodness, there’s a lot to think about here, isn’t there?

[00:21:54.390] – Caroline

There is. And something else that came up is that Vijay mentioned an interesting point about the dynamics in the early round versus the final round. So she talked about how often round one candidates, they know that they’re applying to multiple schools, right? So it’s often those early birds who are applying to a laundry list of schools to see where they’re going to get in. And they may therefore be less loyal to any of those individual schools, whereas what they see in the final round is that often those candidates have not applied to so many schools. And so the good candidates in the final round are often more loyal than those round one candidates. So that’s something that the schools observe and that they appreciate about the strong candidates that they see coming through in that final round. But they also do mean. David talked about how there’s a polarization in the final round where you have some really strong candidates who are coming through. Maybe it’s the entrepreneurs, some really great. I mean, for LBS, some of the best domestic candidates come through in the final round, or just people for whom their circumstances have changed and round three is the right time for them.

[00:23:11.360] – Caroline

But they’re really dedicated to going to business school and they’ve put together a really strong application and they probably haven’t applied to many schools at that stage. So you have those candidates and then you have the candidates who applied to laundry list of schools in round one or round two didn’t get in and they’ve gone down their list and clearly they are not as well prepared, have probably submitted a rushed application, which is always a bad idea, as Maria said, and they just don’t have a deep understanding of what the school is about. And that comes across. Right. The schools want to be your number one choice, right. And they know that you may well be applying to other schools and you probably are, but you still need to put together a convincing argument in your application for why that school is the one that you love the most and that is your number one choice. And they do get a batch of final round candidates who do a very bad job at that. So it’s interesting that they see these sort of two cohorts in the final round, some really strong candidates and some very weak candidates, or not necessarily weak candidates, but just people who have done a bad job of putting together their application.

[00:24:20.530] – John

Is there ever a waitlist for the final round? In other words, admission says, wow, this person is terrific. This person is as good as any we saw and admitted earlier. But frankly, we don’t have any more room. Do I then tell the candidate, hey, look, we really like you. Unfortunately, the class is full, but if you apply in round one in the next year, you’re going to get preferential treatment, so therefore you’re effectively on a waitlist of sorts. Does that ever happen?

[00:24:53.390] – Caroline

Well, I would occasionally waitlist people when I was in it yet in round three, but it’s a much smaller number of people. Right. Because you know that you’re going to have fewer places, but with every round, you’re waiting to see who is going to accept the offer. And so if there are some borderline cases who are just as good as the people you’ve just admitted, and you know that you would love to accommodate them. If other people turn down the offer, then they may be waitlisted. But schools try not to waitlist many people in the final round because they know that they will have very few spaces left. And as for waitlisting to roll forward to a next class, that’s quite unusual at the top schools. I know that, for example, at INSEAD they did do that during the pandemic when there was this massive surge of applications, and it was also a time when a lot of the classes were virtual. Everything was disrupted. So then they did offer people places for a subsequent class, but that was quite an unusual time for many reasons. So normally the schools are not going to waitlist someone and say, okay, we’ll just roll your application forward to the next class.

[00:26:10.170] – Caroline

But it may be that you can get some feedback from the school on whether they would encourage you to apply so reapply in a subsequent class. So I would give people feedback on waitlisted candidates whether we thought that they should reapply or whether we thought they should not reapply, so that they have some clarity on whether they have a chance in a future class. But as Maria said, if you’re going to reapply, ideally you can show some evolution, and that can be difficult to show if you’ve applied in the final round and then you want to reapply in the next class in round one. Right. You will just have the space of a few months, so it’s difficult to show that you’ve come back as a new, improved candidate in just three or four months. So it’s better to wait. If you think that your chances are very slim in the final round, then you’re better off waiting for that round one rather than rushing to submit in the final round.

[00:27:14.250] – John

So let’s do a summation here in the form of do’s and don’ts. Clearly, if you work in investment banking, consulting, or in tech, the three big feeders to MBA programs, you should be applying early. If you’re more of a nontraditional candidate and have a decent reason for applying last, you should. And you should probably do the optional essay that explains why you’re applying then any other do’s or don’ts. Maria to end this with, I think.

[00:27:52.120] – Maria

Just be realistic about what the situation is going to be, what the odds are going to be, and what the ramifications are. If you are not accepted, then realizing that as a reapplicant, there might be some additional things that you might have to do. And therefore, if that does impact your strategy, you may want to wait.

[00:28:12.750] – John

Right? Another do is if you’re an international applicant, you’re better off applying early than later because of the visa issue. And even though schools may reserve some scholarship money for late candidates, the truth is most of the money is gone. If you really are expecting in need a discount on the tuition, you’re probably better off applying early as well. So there you have it. Right? I think that sums up everything that we’ve discussed. Of course, there are a lot of nuances to this and a lot of subtleties which have made this a really fascinating discussion. I think that if I were applying, I’d be a non traditional person, right? I’m a poet and a writer, so I can get away with applying late.

[00:28:58.590] – Caroline

There’s still time for you to get in in the fall.

[00:29:01.200] – John

John oh, there is some hope for.

[00:29:04.050] – Maria

All.

[00:29:07.950] – John

Right, for all of you listening, thanks for tuning in. And if you’re going to apply in a final round, do so with confidence. Make sure you’re putting your best foot forward and make sure you’re in the pocket and you’re not in the mainstream as an applicant because most of those positions are going to be taken. All right. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

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Who Gets An Admit In The Final Round?
Maria |
February 29, 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!