Year In Review: The Big Trends & Stories In Business Education
Maria |
December 21, 2023

In this episode of Business Casual, the hosts delve into how AI revolutionizes business education. They discuss the integration of AI into MBA programs and admissions processes, and how it creates new opportunities and ethical challenges, leading to the development of novel policies. They also explore how this technological shift reflects in the evolving formats of the GMAT and GRE tests, adapting to changing applicant preferences amidst a decline in traditional MBA program applications. Additionally, the episode highlights the increasing focus on sustainability and healthcare in MBA curricula, as well as the growing importance of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in MBA applications.

In this rapidly changing educational landscape, marked by technological advancements and shifting needs, adaptability and forward-thinking become essential for students, educators, and institutions. So, listen in and get involved.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.530] – John

Hello everyone. It’s business casual, the weekly podcast of Poets and Quants. I’m John Byrne with Poets and Quants, of course, with my co hosts, Maria Wich Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Caroline, of course, I’ll remind you all the time, was the former admissions head of INSEAD a program that today we just named the program of the year, incidentally, for the lead on sustainability. And of course, Caroline also is the co founder of Fortuna Admissions and gets to work with many of the applicants out there to the elite business schools. And Maria is the founder of Applicant Lab, who also works with a lot of new applicants, both virtually and in person. So here we are, the end of the year, and we thought we’d look back over the year and kind of highlight the top stories in business education. We’ve come up with a pretty big list of things that have really been impactful. And Caroline, I’ll start with you because you were the first one to mention what is at the top of my list. Artificial intelligence.

[00:01:19.350] – Caroline

Yes, of course, it’s the year of AI and ChatGPT, Bard and so on, which has become an incredible phenomenon this year. And we are all figuring out how this is going to impact a lot of different industries, and I think we’ll see a lot of transformations next year. But I think it’s a challenge for schools, both academically and in admissions. And everyone is trying to figure out how to grasp this and how to integrate AI into their curriculum, because of course, students need to be at the cutting edge and AI is going to have a dramatic impact on business. And students need to understand what the possibilities are and need to be able to harness this technology. And so schools are figuring out how to integrate this into the curriculum and how to enable students to take advantage of this technology. Of course challenges academically as well, because schools are concerned that people will be taking shortcuts in their learning journey using AI. And some schools have come up with quite strict rules and policies about how students can use AI. Sometimes they’re not allowed to use it and sometimes they are able to use it, but they have to be transparent about that and own up to it.

[00:02:46.730] – Caroline

And of course, it’s a concern for the admissions office and who knows to what extent candidates are out there using AI and to what extent recommenders are also using AI to turn out their recommendations. And I think that we will see an increasing reliance by schools on video questions and interviews as a result, because those are harder to fake, as it were, with artificial intelligence. And we’ve seen increasing use of video questions. More schools are embracing those options to get a snapshot of the candidate live and see how they communicate. And I think that those exercises are a great opportunity for candidates and a great opportunity for the schools to get a feel for how the candidate thinks, how they react in a spontaneous context where hopefully they have not figured out how to use AI to respond questions.

[00:03:56.090] – John

It’s a big deal. It really is.

[00:03:58.360] – Caroline

And it’ll just be very interesting to see how it plays out over the coming years, because it’s going to have a massive impact, for sure, on the education industry. So lots to come, I’m sure.

[00:04:09.070] – John

And the ripple effects are amazing, right? Because as we know, GMAT and GRE introduced much shorter tests, and GMAT got there by eliminating the writing requirement, just as admissions officials are having some concern over whether or not essays are being basically done by ChatGPT instead of by applicants. So you would think that that could give GRE, which still has a writing requirement, an advantage. The other thing we’ve seen is the first professor who’s actually used ChatGPT and generative AI to actually create a course in disruptive technology, where the professor fed ChatGPT essentially the outlines of every single lecture he would do, and had ChatGPT create the scripts for each lecture. Then the professor edited them, then fed them back into software attached to generative AI to create an avatar of himself delivering those lectures. And in 20 or 30% of the actual online classes, the students that actually be engaging with an avatar instead of a real person. This is over at the Gies College of Business, and he is the head of disruptive technology there. This, you know, I don’t see this as something that’s going to happen in many courses, but certainly in the course on disruptive technology, it seems to make sense, and everyone is discussing the impact of it.

[00:05:47.230] – John

And I’ve had deans tell me that they’ve actually used it to write sympathy notes to people who’ve lost someone dear to them. I’ve had professors tell me that they now use it as an editor for their scholarly papers. And we know this is only the very beginning of how sophisticated this is going to be. Maria, what’s your top one?

[00:06:14.150] – Maria

Well, I have to give credit to Caroline for mentioning it in our pregame chat, but I do think that it’s really important one to note the lower application volumes that a lot of programs are seeing. I do think that business schools know it’s interesting, right? Business schools are a business, and like every business, they are finding themselves being disrupted or having to adapt to changing consumer interests. Right? Journalism has seen it, medicine and every field has seen it. Entertainment has seen it. And now business schools themselves are, I think, having to scramble to adapt to what do people want out of their MBA experience? Are they looking for a residential program? Are they looking for more flexibility? Are they looking for a two year program or a one year program? And so I think the decline in applications to the typical traditional, stalwart two year residential MBA program is a sign that what students are looking for in their MBA experience is differing. And the schools are going to have to. And some of them are indeed issuing or launching new offerings to adapt to those changing student interests.

[00:07:23.730] – John

True. And there are a number of schools that have actually taken down their full time enrollments, including UCLA and USC Marshall, among several other schools, in part because of the application. You know, there’s a lot of handwriting about this. Most people will tell you they think it’s a function of a relatively strong job market in the United States that is keeping people away from graduate school. I think that it’s a confluence of factors that have led to the decline in applications, particularly domestic applications, where there’s a much more serious concern. I think part of this has to do with undergraduate debt and the perceived high price of a full time two year residential MBA, which is very costly, or at least it looks that way because you’re not seeing the discounts that schools provide students either through scholarships, fellowships or outright deals. And they’re quite plentiful. I mean, there are many schools, particularly in the second tier, where you can pretty much get a full ride on their MBA program because their programs are so small. But the perception is the cost is very high. You have undergraduate debt already and that’s a problem. And I think there’s far greater acceptance of the undergraduate business education.

[00:08:56.810] – John

And undergraduate majors have been the beneficiaries of really terrific education. The undergraduate programs have really upped their game in the last decade and provide terrific grounding in the fundamentals and more so in specialties. It’s leading many people to think, okay, I really don’t need an MBA. And then you have the specialty master’s degrees, which is cannibalized part of the MBA market. And of course you have the explosive growth in online options which afford people greater flexibility where they don’t have to quit their jobs. So all of these factors, I think, have come together to result in these declines in application volumes and in some cases smaller intakes at some top schools. What’s going to turn it around? If anything, a downturn in the economy, because that’s what always turns it around. And I’m hopeful we won’t see that over the next year or two, because it would really not be a very good thing in the United States to have an economic downturn right now, that’s for sure. Let me have one. I’m going to say that, to me, the two biggest trends, they’re really three, but two, in terms of subject matter that schools are really marshaling resources toward and changing curricula for are the business of health.

[00:10:24.440] – John

And know I mentioned earlier that we just named the INSEAD MBA program the program of the year. And it’s because they basically made an upheaval on their MBA curriculum and embedded sustainability issues throughout the entire program and did so in a way that was creative, innovative, and something of a forerunner as well, before many other schools jumped on this bandwagon. And almost every school is now talking sustainability. And now I hear almost every school is talking the business of healthcare. Healthcare in the United States is 20% of GDP. It’s an industry that historically has attracted few mbas, but it’s also an industry that’s ripe for disruption and innovation. And so there are a number of business schools, Johns Hopkins Business School, the school at Vanderbilt, that are leaders in this field. But now you’re seeing many other schools basically link up with their med schools and schools of public health to offer some fairly significant and deep innovations in the area of health. And we’re not just talking about working for hospitals and healthcare systems. We’re talking about biotech, med tech. We’re talking about revolutionizing the whole payer system for health care and really rethinking this.

[00:11:53.260] – John

Telehealth is another area. So it’s a broad expanse. And even if you’re not in the 20% of the economy that’s impacting the area of health, the other 80% is concerned about it as well because of the cost of health care in America. I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find a company in America that doesn’t have a chief medical officer to try to manage these expenses and make sense of them and having staff and people needing to help that person manage those expenses. So I think we’re going to see a real big scaling up of the healthcare sector in business education, because it’s already happening, and so is sustainability. Caroline, what’s your other big trend?

[00:12:42.780] – Caroline

Well, there were various reports this year of the job market being down. So many schools reported downturns in placement. So, for example, the percentage of graduates who had positions within three months of graduation was down at a lot of schools, including, for example, Harvard Business School. So tech recruiting was down. What also happened was that some employers were deferring job offers. So they may have made job offers to graduating students and then said, actually, don’t join us in the summer, join us six months later. I think partly it was a factor of some of those firms having recruited extremely heavily over the past years and maybe finding that they have sufficient resources and didn’t need to recruit, continue to recruit at such a tremendous pace. And so there was a slowdown in recruiting. But nevertheless, I mean, for example, HBS consulting salaries were up. Management consultants typically do well whether the economy is growing or the economy is in decline, right? Because if the economy is doing well, then they’re getting jobs, lots of projects, doing innovation and strategy and building new businesses. And then if the economy is in decline, then they get lots of cost cutting projects.

[00:14:04.660] – Caroline

So the management consultants tend to do well in both scenarios. And they have recruited more heavily at some of the top schools. And I think also, for example, at HBS and GSB and those top schools, sometimes the management consultants struggle to recruit in those groups because those graduates are enticed to other opportunities that may seem more exciting than going to work for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, et cetera. But with other opportunities being in decline, those firms have benefited and been able to soak up more graduates from those top schools.

[00:14:43.730] – John

Yeah, good point. And then the median salary for a consulting job is now 190,000. That is really high. And that does not include a signing bonus. Median is 30 to 35,000, depending on the school and who’s recruiting and consulting. And you look at some of the schools and my goodness, the numbers of students going into consulting is breathtaking. At Dartmouth, Tuck, it’s 46% this past year. So, Caroline, there are some bright spots, even though employment may be down at the three month mark.

[00:15:22.550] – Caroline

Yeah, for sure. And something that I found very interesting in some of the statistics that you published, John, in relation to your previous point about sustainability and healthcare and so on. At Harvard, more than half of the startups coming out of HBS are social impact related, which I thought was a very impressive number. And goes to show that this generation really do want to have a positive impact, not just make vast sums of money, but it’s definitely something that we’ve seen grow tremendously over the past few years, is candidates and students, their interest in sustainability, in having a positive impact and combining that in their careers. And so it’s wonderful to see that startups are coming out and that’s going to drive wonderful innovations. That gives me great hope for the future.

[00:16:16.920] – John

Another interesting data point related to our discussion here is business week surveys a lot of graduates. And if you look at the latest survey by Businessweek, the fourth largest sector of employment is healthcare, now exceeding consumer products, manufacturing, real estate and media and entertainment in other fields, which is something of a surprise because consumer products used to always be number four after consulting, finance and technology, and now healthcare is already number four and gaining. So that’s another sign of interest in those jobs and the opportunities in that industry. And again, that’s a social impact thing because, boy, do we need a lot of professional attention in that field, and it is so massive and really, like I said before, ripe for disruption. So, Maria, do you have another one?

[00:17:18.190] – Maria

Yeah. Well, we mentioned earlier how AI is shifting the trend in admissions itself towards perhaps more video essays or things that can’t be changed as much. Another sea change was the Supreme Court ruling in affirmative action. And again, Caroline, for reminding me, as we talked about this topic in one of our earlier podcasts earlier this year when we covered that Supreme Court ruling, one of the things that came out of that, in a pragmatic sense for applicants, and I think this will continue into the next year for applications, is an emphasis on showing within the application that you are someone who is open to either diverse points of view or someone who is cognizant of creating an inclusive environment. Now, obviously, diversity and inclusion, those are terms that can be used in a very broad way.

[00:18:07.760] – Caroline

Right?

[00:18:08.010] – Maria

I think sometimes we immediately jump to things like gender or ethnicity, but it can really be shown and demonstrated in many ways. And I think a lot of business schools are increasingly and explicitly asking for candidates to talk about times that they have maybe thought about someone who is a little bit different from themselves or different from the rest of the group and found ways to include that person or to bring that person in to the fold and incorporate their ideas, let’s say, into perhaps an environment that was initially not open to them. So that is a trend that I noticed very strongly this year in application topics, and I suspect it will probably continue into the next year.

[00:18:48.560] – John

True. And Maria, I wonder if you think, and Caroline too, if the Supreme Court decision kind of diminished the forward momentum of DEI programs at the business schools. Almost all the business schools now have a DEI officer, and I wonder if Supreme Court decision kind of hinders those DEI officers from taking certain actions that they would have otherwise taken. What do you think?

[00:19:17.990] – Maria

I think the schools are still going to be really committed to DEI because it’s not just sort of a rainbow and unicorns type of thing like it. Actually, research has shown that having differing points of view and differing backgrounds in any team tends to be very beneficial for the outcomes of that team. So I don’t think the schools are going to back away from it. However, I do think that the tools available at some of these officers, DEI officers disposal now the schools are going to have to get a little bit more creative in terms of really digging into what someone’s experiences have been. But I do think that the good side of this is that if the essay questions do start asking about, well, when have you been inclusive? When have you tried to create a positive environment? Even people who are, quote unquote, in the majority, the sort of standard white males, can now have an opportunity to really show that, look, even though I’m not a member of one of these groups, I have actually taken steps in using perhaps some of my privilege to try to make things better for other people.

[00:20:15.620] – Maria

So in that sense, I like it in the way that it gives a lot of people an opportunity to talk about, look, I might not be from this group, but I’ve still tried to help people who aren’t like me.

[00:20:27.480] – John

Right.

[00:20:29.210] – Maria

But obviously, if you can no longer explicitly state on your application form in an easy to filter checkbox, that then if I have a software tool in the back that helps me slice and dice my applicants by different things, they entered into their application form and I now no longer have that data point to use to slice and dice. Yeah, of course, it makes my job as a diversity officer a little know or someone in admissions a little bit, a little bit harder, for sure.

[00:20:55.240] – John

Yeah, that’s true. Now, let me dare mention Maria and Caroline’s favorite topic, rankings. This year we’ve seen really a shake up in the rankings game, largely because both Forbes and The Economist are no longer ranking business schools, MBA programs and whatnot. Their withdrawal has created a little bit more of a vacuum. LinkedIn came out with a new ranking based on LinkedIn profiles of people who say they have an MBA degree from a top 50 school. So they essentially ranked for the very first time the top 50 US MBA programs by virtue of the career advancement of their graduates and their ability to network. Because obviously the more network connections you have on LinkedIn, the presumption is the better networked you are. And if you are networked and connected to people who have influence and authority, I. E. Directors, vps and up, you could argue that your network is stronger than someone else. And LinkedIn took all of that into account in doing their ranking. But I think the absence of The Economist and Forbes does leave a bit of a hole. And I wonder if it’s more indicative of something else, that the business school is no longer the IT school on the university campus, that the business school has been replaced by the school of Computer Science, given the fact that everything we do, no matter when we do it or where we do it, is influenced by technology.

[00:22:42.130] – John

And now their donors are throwing lots of money at computer science schools, are building new schools of computer science and putting up new buildings, and it could very well be that the heyday of the business school, it’s not over, but it’s not what it was. And I think that The Economist and Forbes walking away from these rankings may be a symbol of that. It’s not to say that business education isn’t valuable. It’s not to say that it’s not dominant, because the MBA remains the most popular graduate degree in America and the business major is the most popular undergraduate major in America. But it’s a sign of the times it’s change. Caroline, what do you think about that?

[00:23:32.280] – Caroline

Well, I also think that no one’s going to mourn the passing, for example, of The Economist ranking.

[00:23:37.670] – John

Sure. Especially me, Maria and Caroline. I’m a little more ambivalent about, because we do get to cover it and get clicks out of it, right?

[00:23:48.380] – Caroline

Yes, but it was an appalling ranking, and I think reflected very badly on The Economist.

[00:23:54.020] – John

That’s true.

[00:23:54.840] – Caroline

Which is otherwise a very admirable institution, which produces some wonderful journalism, and the ranking was a very bad example of that.

[00:24:05.090] – John

Very good point. It’s something I made over and over again. I may have just chased them out.

[00:24:14.210] – Maria

We hurt their feelings too much by eviscerating them time and time again. They packed up their toys and went home.

[00:24:23.830] – John

Caroline, anything else you want to mention?

[00:24:27.750] – Caroline

Well, of course, there were the new tests that launched this it, and we hadn’t seen any change in the test for many years. And so the GMAT launched a new version, a shorter version, with some elements taken out, including, as you mentioned, the analytical writing. The essay, which perhaps in retrospect, given the appearance of AI on everybody’s computers, was possibly a mistake. But nevertheless, it’s a shorter test, and I think that will be welcomed by candidates. The GRE has also shortened their test. So whereas the GMAT is actually a revamped test, the GRE is, from what I understand, the same test, but just shorter, fewer questions. And so I think that these companies are looking to make it more approachable, a less intimidating prospect for candidates. They’re looking to encourage people to give it a go and to apply. So it will be interesting to see how that plays out in admission statistics, whether that actually does encourage more people to take these tests or not. And, of course, it’s a big change for the schools. They have to monitor whether these tests are indeed a good predictor of academic performance on the program, which they typically have been.

[00:25:48.000] – Caroline

I would imagine that that will continue to be the case. Hopefully, these organizations have tested these new versions of the test very well before they went live, and I’m sure that they’ve had to communicate a lot with the schools on those changes and how to evaluate the new tests in order to have the credibility with the schools.

[00:26:08.240] – John

True.

[00:26:09.060] – Caroline

But it’ll be interesting to follow that next year and see how that evolves and what the schools make of the new tests and the students and stepping.

[00:26:18.820] – John

Back from the change, I think it’s reflective of two things. Number one, trying to reduce the friction to apply to business school because of these declining applications. But also it’s an indication of the competitive battle between GRE, which has been gaining market share on GMAT for a number of years, and GMAT’s attempt to try to end the decline in market share. Because it was GMAC that actually initially announced the much shorter test. And then GRE came right back and followed suit, and not only followed suit, but then was able to get to market slightly earlier than GMAT with their shorter tests. So it’s a function of two things, I think the declining apps and trying to reduce friction at a time when many schools are going test optional and waiving the test, and for new programs not requiring it at all. So it’s an attempt to try to stop that, and it’s a competitive effort between GMAT and GRE, both of whom have been waging a war against each other for the last ten years that has resulted in substantial declines in market share for the GMAT. But really interesting to watch and see. Now, Maria, you had some interesting stuff go on at your alma mater this past year, the dean has been under fire by largely female faculty for his handling of a disciplinary proceeding against one of the superstar professors there.

[00:27:56.590] – John

Francesca Gino, would you elevate that to one of the big stories of the year?

[00:28:02.830] – Maria

I mean, I feel like there have always been stories of professors behaving badly, or in some cases, deans behaving badly. I think a few years ago at some of the schools there have even been know either involving personal lives or involving questioning of professional ethics. I don’t know that I would make it one of the. I mean, it was certainly a fascinating story in that it seems that HBS may have created its own brand new disciplinary method for just this one professor. But I guess we’ll never know to the extent that a lot of these things happen behind closed doors. So I don’t know that I would call. It was certainly one of the more salacious stories of the year.

[00:28:45.000] – John

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[00:28:46.120] – Maria

I don’t know that it would be one of the top trends, I think, not a trend.

[00:28:53.070] – John

But it’s not every day when a Harvard business School professor of some note sues the school for $25 million for breach of contract and defamation. And it’s not every day that the dean of the Harvard Business School tries to revoke tenure from a professor. In fact, in the entire history of Harvard University, no single professor has ever forcefully lost tenure. If he’s successful in doing this, he would be the first. So that’s quite a big shock. And the other shock of this, it’s gotten a fair bit of publicity in places like the New York Times and New Yorker, and, of course, a lot of stories that we’ve written about. This is the whole question of behavioral research in business schools and how solid it is, because like it or not, the Francesco Gino case has also cast a shadow over academic research at business schools, which is really unfortunate and negative consequence of all the publicity. And I have deans telling me they have donors that are demanding new governance procedures before they donate to support academic research because of the headlines that they’ve read. And that’s really sad that it’s come to that. And then, of course, who knows what else is going to come out when these lawsuits proceed through the courts.

[00:30:26.150] – John

Harvard has asked for summary judgment in the case. We’ll see if that’s granted, probably in the first quarter of the new year. But meanwhile, you know, there are a lot of angry people about this, and not only at Harvard, but throughout the, you know, professors work across borders with lots of different professors in different business schools, and many of them had worked with Francesca and had very positive experience with. Then, you know, there’s an open call by data colada to basically ask people to go and examine everything she’s ever done to try to dig up dirt on her, which is also pretty is this is something that’s not going away and it’s not a trend for sure, but it’s definitely noteworthy.

[00:31:20.370] – Maria

But even Amy Cuddy’s power posing research was discredited a few years. A lot of the behavioral things are often discredited because they can’t be replicated. Yes. So it’s not the first time it’s happened. I will say one thing that is notable about the Francesca Gino case is that I believe Dan Arielli, who is a superstar, perhaps an even more of a quote unquote household name, so to speak, was her co author on some of these papers. And it’s not clear to me that he has. I think some of his work has also been retracted due to perhaps questions around the data integrity. But it’s not clear that he has faced the same calls.

[00:31:55.650] – John

Definitely has not. He has not faced fame at all. And then with know, Amy gave back her tenure and left as a tenured professor at Harvard over this. So she also had suffered some consequence over it. But that was her decision to leave, and there was no investigation in the committee and really tough decisions taken on her.

[00:32:20.530] – Maria

If she wouldn’t have left, though, there may have been. So perhaps she was trying to sidestep that.

[00:32:25.390] – John

That’s possible. And we know the president of Harvard University who’s been called know accusations of plagiarism, and she has since basically changed two of her research studies, adding quotation marks and citations, where there were few, if any, to address the claims that she plagiarized other scholars in her work. This seems to be, all of this is a piece of something bigger that also shows, I think, it just doesn’t reflect well on universities, which we know in this country, sadly, are under attack. Some of this attack has occurred over just statements that presidents made or didn’t make over the Hamas attack in Israel. But it’s much deeper than that, because you have a lot of republicans calling into question the whole idea of college and higher education and claiming that colleges and universities basically train young people to be liberals. It’s sad that something that is so essential to a person’s development and essential to living a more fulfilled and meaningful life should even be questioned. In a way, the legitimacy of it should be questioned, which is really troublesome to me.

[00:33:50.490] – Maria

Maybe one of the benefits of AI, like AI, seems to be, I think, unearthing a lot of potential things like plagiarism or data shadiness. And so perhaps we’re going to see more and more of, you know, as AI can quickly say, wait a minute, this is plagiarized, or wait a minute, this data doesn’t make.

[00:34:11.410] – John

True. So true. I’m thinking that the IRS is going to use generative AI to audit everybody. We have that to look forward to.

[00:34:27.110] – Caroline

I was just going to add that I think that what you mentioned, John, is really an interesting example of how culture wars are spreading in the US. And that is really huge issue on american campuses. And it’s not necessarily the same situation in other countries to the same extent. But I think as we go into an election year, next year, things may become more polarized and these culture wars on campuses may become an ongoing issue as these issues are used as a sort of battleground to try to mobilize people on one side or the other. So it’s unfortunate, but I think there will be many difficult issues for schools to manage. And education is. Leading an educational institution in the US is a pretty hot seat right now.

[00:35:23.270] – John

Yeah, definitely. So lots of change, lots of really interesting developments that occurred in the past. You know, I think this is what makes business education, higher education in general, fascinating and challenging. And it makes us have endless things to talk about every week. And if you’ve been tuning into our podcast every week, you know, we’re not afraid to tackle all of these subjects and we kind of enjoy doing it. We hope you enjoy listening, and we really want to thank you for hanging in with us this year. We hope that the new year is one of great health and prosperity for you and your family. And if in fact, you are applying to go and improve yourself by getting a business degree of any kind, be it an undergraduate degree or a graduate degree, we wish you the best success possible. Hey, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Thanks for listening.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Year In Review: The Big Trends & Stories In Business Education
Maria |
December 21, 2023

[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

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