The mbaMission Podcast

Ep 78 | The State of MBA Admissions in 2025

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 78

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2025 has been a unique (and at times unpredictable) year when it comes to business school admissions. Questions around the economy, tariffs, AI, international student visas, and more have left many aspiring MBAs wondering: is this the right year to apply to business school? In this week's episode of the mbaMission podcast, Harold Simansky and Jeremy Shinewald are joined by mbaMission Executive Director Jessica Shklar. Harold, Jeremy, and Jessica break down what we've seen throughout the 2025-2026 application cycle, and discuss whether this is a good (or bad) time to apply to business school. If you are working towards Round 2 deadline, or considering applying in the 2026-2027 admissions cycle, you won't want to miss this conversation!

00:00 Welcome to the mbaMission podcast
00:56 The 2025-2026 MBA application season: What's happening?
05:57 Should MBA applicants change strategies this year?
09:47 How business schools are adapting
11:41 The Consortium, Forte Foundation, and DEI concerns
13:36 Using AI for MBA applications
20:40 Will deferred MBA programs become more competitive?
23:58 Is graduate school becoming more or less important?
25:02 How are MBA applications changing?
26:05 Is it a good time to apply to business school? 

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Jessica Shklar:

Even though there is a lot of anxiety and a lot of noise, fundamentally applicants' job is exactly the same as it was.

Harold Simansky:

We always have to think about what are business schools really looking for? At the end of the day, what makes for a successful essay? It's specificity, authenticity. You can never pull that out of ChatGP.

Jeremy Shinewald:

I think deferred programs are going to start becoming more competitive than ever before.

Jessica Shklar:

What I'm seeing a lot more of is people who are planning on applying to deferred applications two or three years from now. And they're doing really long-term planning. And I think maybe it is that.

Harold Simansky:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very wild ride. That's true. Take it back. 2025, running into 2025, 2026 application season was quite the wild ride. Well, yeah.

Jeremy Shinewald:

I mean, like, can I just can I just actually lay it out for everyone? So you have applicants out there, they're worried about their jobs, they're doing all the things that are in their world. Obviously, they're aware of like macro conditions, but we're micro-aware of what's going on here. And so, you know, January, February, March, the the season is humming along. Like, you know, everything is, we're we're getting more consultations than ever. Everything is is roses. And then all of a sudden, you know, the tariffs start. This is even before the attacks on the schools, I think. The tariff conversation starts, which almost sinks the bond market, the stock market drops, and everyone just freezes for like six weeks until we figure that out. Meantime, you have all of the, you know, the the I guess April, because I remember where I was, I was on a family vacation when there was the first major threat of not allowing any students to enter, uh, and uh like not extending any visas. And that again was just like a shockwave. Um, and so yeah, this is like I mean, totally unprofessional.

Harold Simansky:

Right, right. And I just want to layer on one more thing, which was the absolute uncertainty. We ourselves were watching day-to-day to see what was happening, and it was changing day to day.

Jessica Shklar:

And let's add into it that there was also political unrest and protests on campuses, and people didn't know how other certain people would be viewed and where the if they were even safe on campuses, and parents were getting scared about sending their kids to school, and so everything was just uncertain.

Jeremy Shinewald:

And like even with the visa issue, it's like there were there were people who are who are who had finished their first year or were about to finish their first year worried about their second year, even like so. It's like you had you know, micro on a micro basis. You had people who were in the schools talking to people at home, and um, you know, so there's just like so much uncertainty. And even then, since then, you've still seen the president of U UVA resign today. The president of Northwestern resign. Like, you know, yesterday Harvard won an appeal uh with um, you know, to get some of their funding back.

Jessica Shklar:

So like Columbia's been through three presidents this year. That's right.

Jeremy Shinewald:

Two of them interim. These things aren't necessarily directly affecting MBA admissions, but there's just this story and this energy is kind of like up and down. And like, and but I also think that it's like a lot that there's a lot of anxiety for sure. But I think like a lot of things, people are almost like the anxiety is the new normal, and people are starting to just kind of like accept that like in the back of their head, international students matriculated, the schools are opening, the schools are opening, the funding uh, you know, unfortunately affects mostly PhD students, doesn't really affect business school as much. And we definitely start to see like a you know a recovery in the second.

Jessica Shklar:

And schools also at one point they were saying we have no idea how we're gonna handle this, and then they started coming out with solutions if the visas didn't come through. No, that didn't really happen, but they had backup plans that weren't terrible. I mean, remote is bad, but one Harvard said they were going to have, I think either in Canada or London, a international section.

Jeremy Shinewald:

So a but no a bunch of it was uh like four, I think four or five different Singapore, London, which is actually maybe Toronto.

Jessica Shklar:

You know it's not a it's not the ideal solution, but you still get live classes and with the professors and you get to meet classmates. It's not the worst solution. And things just started to feel like oh, it's kind of like when COVID hit, right? No one knew at first, and then schools figured out how to manage it. That's right.

Harold Simansky:

And I will have to say one thing. It was a very close call. I don't know about you, but I just had a client get his visa right now, and I know Rachel, very similarly, she was talking about it. And what it does to people's lives, it's so crazy. And I think obviously we lose a lot when we're looking at the numbers, but people's lives who left their jobs and things, it's just really so unfortunate. But as we sit right now today, things seem to be to some degree snapping back into place.

Jeremy Shinewald:

Yeah, I mean, we you know, to give a sense of it again, like we had we had, you know, that the our measure is like, you know, of the market is our consultation volumes, and we just had a you know very, very busy June, July. So like, you know, after like maybe a quieter April-May, people sort of got used to the new normal. We're like, okay, I'll proceed with my plans. I just needed to kind of like feel like things were gonna be a little bit maybe not normal, but uh, but close enough to normal that I could I could exist. If you want to be one of our success stories, sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team. Since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades, we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application. That is not a sales call, but rather your first session with one of us for free. We can give you a profile evaluation, answer specific questions about the process, review your resume, talk about your school choices, and so much more. Sign up at nba mission.com/slash consult. We look forward to working with you.

Jessica Shklar:

But what we are seeing is strategies for applications have changed a little bit. The number of people who are adding European schools or Canadian schools is escalating because everybody doesn't want a backup. It's not their ideal. But you know, I think though those schools, which often have been seen as outstanding schools that are a little bit safer for people to apply to, I'm very curious to see what happens with their volume because I don't think those are going to be safer schools this year. I think the application volume is going up. And if everything settles down and someone gets into their top U.S. school, it won't affect those schools. But I bet their application volume is soaring.

Jeremy Shinewald:

At NCA and LBS in particular, I would I would imagine it's it's soaring. Yeah, that's right. I think Oxford, Cambridge probably too, on a relative basis for that.

Harold Simansky:

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Great schools on their own, but you're absolutely right in the sense of now they could be a great fit for folks who potentially look at visa issues or more specifically, those are really not bad options for them, particularly if they come from Southeast Asia, the notion of being in England, there's some real opportunity there. When I talk to clients now, when I do my consults now, and you're right, volume has recently really risen, I say you have to zig where other people zag. Right now, if there's uncertainty in terms of that are that's holding people back from applying, I'm like, perfect. Now is the time, exactly the right time for you.

Jessica Shklar:

What I've been saying to them though is there's a lot of noise. But none of it matters because until you get into school, the noise is irrelevant. So your job as an applicant has not changed. Your job is write the best application you possibly can, the best recommendations, the highest test score, whatever you can do. Maybe you vary your school choice a little bit, maybe you add some European schools or w do a wider level number of schools, but your job is to get into school.

Jeremy Shinewald:

But like exactly what Harold said, that's what I say to people who are still uncertain about going to school in the States, obviously in particular, is you know, hey, you know, you could apply in a year that that has um you know uh reduced uh is you know less competition for you, and and and you could end up at a school potentially where uh you know might have been harder for you in past years. And like, yeah, it's not it's not a fun reality. I I think this is un unrealistic because I think the the the peak of this has passed. But you know, if there are inter if there are international issues, the school will will be on your side. Um and if you just feel like the environment's too hostile, you know, then you choose not to go.

Jessica Shklar:

But like you But until you get in, none of that matters.

Harold Simansky:

That's right. And it really is not every school. I hate to say that, but the schools in the U.S. that have been targeted are really the very top. Harvard in particular, that's what you hear most about. Wharton, yes, Columbia, yes. University of Texas, great school. Northwestern. Yeah, Northwestern has been targeted, UCLA now.

Jessica Shklar:

MIT seems to have escaped a lot of they they have, they seem to have escaped Duke.

Harold Simansky:

Who knows how? Right, right.

Jeremy Shinewald:

Who knows how and who knows for how long? Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so so the so the the Visa story is definitely one of the stories. Um I I did hear from one admissions officer that her uh applic and this is a you know within I don't can't give too many identifiers, but top 15 program, let's say, to make it vague enough, um, that their application volume is down fairly considerably.

Jessica Shklar:

Uh say if it was international, right? What about US volume?

Jeremy Shinewald:

Um I don't recall actually top of my head. I I I think she said about flat domestically, but um but down significantly internationally. I think the other piece of the story is is how they have to react to this new environment, right? So gone are a lot of schools' diversity essays. And you know, the like the admin I've heard from admissions directors who I've spoken with who maybe I'm maybe I'm saying this in in too cheeky a way, but are basically like we're making decisions with the Justice Department in the admissions office with us. Like, yes, they're not literally there, but they are some of them are afraid of being sued personally, they're afraid of of showing any bias accidental or otherwise, like you know, like not even intentionally, just accidentally. And a lot of the one or two that are spoken with are sanitizing their data to make sure that they're like, they don't know whether they have a he or a, you know, a he or a she or they, they don't know whether they have, you know, what what ethnicity background anyone is.

Jessica Shklar:

So it it's interesting, because there's actually two competing trends then, which is there's the on one hand, there's the advent of AI, which is you know could make schools veer away from essays because they don't want these written essays and towards videos. But then you have the other trend of diversity and DEI issues, which could make people, admissions offices veer away from doing videos. But audio device. And then you have but audio also has the issues. So it's a really interesting confluence. We haven't seen a ton of change yet in the applications. Maybe I think there's one or two schools that's dropped the video, the essays in favor of videos, maybe a couple of schools have more videos, but we haven't seen a major change, which I think we were expecting to say more of because of AI, because this is competing.

Harold Simansky:

Jessica, I'm gonna feed back something to you, which I think is very relevant here, which is but a candidate's job has not changed. At the end of the day, you have to be authentic, you have to really be specific about what your goals are, you have to be very specific about who you are.

Jessica Shklar:

About your fit with the school, about your accomplishments, everything we talk about in all of these podcasts, your job hasn't changed.

Jeremy Shinewald:

But but we're hearing from applicants, you know, Forte used to be a real force in the consortium space, the consortium. You have schools leaving the consortium because they they they don't want to be seen to be trying to be diverse, like because of the Justice Department, right? So you have four or five schools leaving the consortium. Uh, for those who don't know, it's uh you know the CGSM, the consortium for graduate school and management, um uh, you know, a group that has has led the charge to bring more diverse applicants, particularly African-American, Hispanic applicants, although also champions of diversity of and of any background, ethnicity, race, nationality, whatever it might be, um, into the into the MBA world. Probably about 20 partner schools, several of them left. Same thing with Forte, which brings women into the environment and into the business environment. Several schools left Forte. And they're not leaving because they don't believe in Forte's mission or have lost confidence in Forte's management. They're leaving because they don't want to be in the crosshairs of the Justice Department. But now we're getting applicants. I'm at least getting some consultations that I should note that the people in this room do work with clients. We've talked about this before. Sometimes people are like, oh, I'd like to work with a Harold, but he does the podcast. Like, no, you you also work with clients. Jessica's uh a legend who works with clients as well. They're asking us, like, is it a disadvantage to apply through the consortium or the forte? If I if I identify a, you know, as a woman, if I as I identify with uh, you know, a as a uh a champion of diversity, is that is that actually problematic?

Jessica Shklar:

Right. And we heard Harold and I heard today an anecdote from someone who said that um the women in business club at a particular business school, the head of it, was called into the business school's office and said, you might have to change your mission because we can't be women focused, which seems like the whole purpose of the club. And I don't think anything.

Jeremy Shinewald:

And this is this is not an applicant group. This is someone who's this is a student. That's right, that's right. Right? That's right. Like someone who's there. They couldn't even at a business school promote women in business. Like, we're already there.

Jessica Shklar:

Yeah.

Harold Simansky:

Oh, so so let's talk a little bit more about AI for a few different reasons. First of all, that's what we get a huge number of questions about. But also now, some of those questions actually live in applications. Harvard Business School is acting as asking very directly how have you used AI? Warden has something not quite as direct, but they're certainly getting at that point. And other school, even if they don't ask that question, are certainly thinking about it.

Jessica Shklar:

Just to point it out, Harvard's question is, did you use AI? And if so, how? We advise you to answer honestly, but honest should include that you wrote the essays yourself because you did, presumably. And if you use AI, your essays are not going to be as strong. Um, Wharton, I actually like a lot of what Wharton says, which is AI is a tool, just like spellcheck is a tool, and we assume that you're using it, but we also are assuming that AI isn't writing your essays. And since you have to sign an integrity statement, you're agreeing with that. So I think that's you know, the AI is obviously a much bigger issue that we've talked about in many contexts. But um I think the reality is AI will make your essays worse, not better.

Jeremy Shinewald:

But I I think, I think so that yes, there's the practical component, which is if you are starting with a crowdsourced foundation, that you know, you're you're it's gonna be hard to get to a level of like really authentic creativity, or if you get there, then you may as well have skipped the found the crowdsource foundation because you had it in you in the first place. But forgetting the practical side, the ethical side of them asking and and your response and what it means to say to them, like, okay, so if Harvard's asking you, they're not spelling out any particular punishment. They are not, they are not saying you're inadmissible. And so it it this is something might be a little bit of a, you know, not the type of thing you expect three experts, or I'll speak for myself, one expert to say on a podcast. But the answer is we don't know how they're gonna treat you. They're not sharing that. And so they're like disclosure, it's like, are they gonna punish the innocent? The innocent person who says, you know, theoretically, like, yeah, I used um I used AI to sharpen some of the bullet points in my resume, to reduce, to reduce word count um in my essays to get me a little closer. You know, it's like, is that worse than saying I didn't use it when you did? Uh so we just don't know what they're doing with this information at this point. Now, we believe anyone who's working with us, we are gonna say to them, listen, we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there with a lot of authenticity. If you do the hard work, we're gonna get a great output. And so we'd encourage you not to have to be in a position where you have to answer that question. But also, I'm not naive in saying, like, I have one client who I love who's so authentic and sincere and it writes so thoughtfully and beautifully, but I did have to ask this question with him to discuss this with him because I knew he had to answer it. And uh, and so I said, you know, I've got to ask you, have you used it? And he said, Yeah, you know, here and there I'd be like, I'd I would put a sentence in, just like kind of punch it up, or I couldn't quite get what I wanted to do, but like I'm not worried about saying that I own this.

Jessica Shklar:

Okay, great. You know, you reminded me of an analogy. Um, the schools all have a question that says, Did you um ever have an honor code violation or did you have an uh a DUI or anything? And I remember talking to a client once, especially a consult, who ended up working with me, and he said, I have to answer yes to the to the honor code violation because it's on my transcript, but should I even bother applying? And I said, Let's look at the application. What does it say after you know you select yes for that? What happens next? And he said, Well, it says please explain. I said, Okay, and then what's the next thing? He said, you know, work experience, activity list. I said, Oh, wait, so it doesn't say stop here and do not submit. He's like, no. I'm like, then they're not cutting you off. So it's the same thing. Obviously, a DUI is very different from using AI, even though, you know, I'm using it as an analogy, but they're not saying if you do this, you're wrong. They're saying give us information and context.

Harold Simansky:

Yeah. Let me just put in parentheses here. We as a firm, Jessica, myself, obviously some of the other consultants, any one of which you can give us a call or sign up for a free 30-minute consultation or work with us directly. Um, we sometimes try out some of those uh ChatGPT or AI detectors. And I have to be honest with you, I never use AI. I go back to some essays that I that I helped folks write two, three years ago when AI didn't even exist. I'll throw send them through some of those detectors and it believes it was written by AI.

unknown:

Right.

Harold Simansky:

Right.

Jessica Shklar:

The detectors are so unreliable and it's scary. I asked my clients to run theirs through a detector just to see if there are red flags at the end. But we don't really know, since my clients generally are not using AI, because and I can tell that, um, it's it's um it's a it's an information thing, but we know that those AI detectors are so unreliable, especially schools that are using proprietary ones.

Jeremy Shinewald:

So what's funny about your examples, I actually sort of have the inverse of that. So I do a fair amount of pro bono work. I worked with an amazing HBS applicant who wrote one of her essays largely about mentoring this young woman. And when this individual got into HBS, I said to her, please let me help this woman with her Common App application. And so a couple years later, she came, uh she came to me. We we wrote something. This woman was this young woman is so amazing. And um I'm very proud of what she did. And I thought to myself, okay, well, let's see what I can do with some of these prompts and like with some of these facts. If I if I feed some of these facts into Chat GPT, what would it produce? So I started to share non, I created something sort of parallel to her. I didn't share her details, but you know, change her gender and change some of the locations, whatever, but fed in all sorts of of details that would be good analogs. And I was like, okay, this actually isn't that bad a starting point. And then I realized I gave it a ton of very specific information. That's right.

Harold Simansky:

That's right.

Jeremy Shinewald:

I was like, I was like, of course, of course it's not a bad starting point because I took the endpoint. If I would have taken the the starting point, we wouldn't have gotten there. But I took, I took all of these. So basically, I took something that I was like, whoa, that gave other people shivers and turned it into something that was like an okay starting point.

Jessica Shklar:

Right. But you didn't need it because you had already done all that pre-work. Exactly. Do you remember when AI first really started making waves, maybe a year ago, you presented at one of our staff meetings a sample essay, as if it that was written by AI. And we all could identify instantly how generic it was, how cliched. Um it's just it's and so if you are investing so much of your energy and time, you as applicants, into getting into a school, why would you lead with something generic? Why would you use a tool that takes away what makes you special? Right.

Harold Simansky:

That's right. And we always have to think about what are business schools really looking for? At the end of the day, what makes for a successful essay? It's specificity, authenticity. You can never pull that out of ChatGPT.

Jessica Shklar:

We wouldn't have jobs. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Jeremy Shinewald:

So we we beat the drum on not using AI enough here, I think, or or especially when worked with us to rely on expertise. But I think one aspect of AI that, you know, sort of a more macroeconomic aspect of it, is I I think it's gonna, it's creating uncertainty because a lot of there are a whole bunch of studies that have come out that said, you know, entry-level jobs are beginning to disappear. And I think what this is gonna do is it's gonna create a lot of anxiety with college applicants and uh with college students and with their parents who are gonna encourage them to apply for deferred programs. So I think deferred programs are gonna start being becoming more competitive than ever before. I think we're gonna see deferred numbers surge. People are applying to the HBS 2 plus 2 program. Virtually every one of the top 15 programs has a deferred application because that way people can say, okay, I'm a like you need to have a job to, or by and large, you need to have a job to um, you know, to be successful in the deferred world. So it doesn't mean you don't need a job, you just have a business school waiting for you. But it's it's certainly in a world where you're like, oh, I don't know what's gonna happen with my entry-level job. There might be fewer of them, like it maybe it doesn't, maybe it goes doesn't go away, but there might be fewer of them. I don't know what's gonna happen in the next couple of years. You're like, it's good to have MIT waiting in the wings. Absolutely. Um, and so I think that's gonna become a much more competitive process.

Harold Simansky:

Right. Or even a bigger picture here, MBAs have just become more important. Yeah. At the end of the day, AI, again, AI artificial intelligence, there still needs to be natural spots. And that's what MBAs are.

Jessica Shklar:

And I have this is obviously anecdotal, but I when I think about my consultations in the last couple of months, I would say that I am seeing slightly more deferred, but what I'm seeing a lot more of is people who are planning on applying to deferred applications two or three years from now. And they're doing really long-term planning. And I think maybe it is that they're starting college, they're in their second or third year of college, they're suddenly realizing the real world is coming, and they're like, oh, things have been pretty uncertain. A lot of stuff we talked about at the beginning. How do I hedge my bets? How do I give a little more um certainty in an uncertain world?

Jeremy Shinewald:

Right. And and by the way, I think this is true not just of deferred applicants. I think this is gonna be true of med school, like med school seeing uh a dramatic surge in interest. I think possibly even people who are just being litigators, you know, like there's not gonna be a world where AI can make the infrared, or it can well, I mean, maybe elementary contracts, but certainly not something sophisticated or important. Um maybe you can you know get it to write like some basic NDA or something like that. But like um I think anything important is you're gonna want a human being doing, but like i if if you're on if Harold, you're not a murderer, but if you were on trial for murder, you know, would you want would you want AI representing? You can't prove anything. Yeah, exactly. Would you want AI representing you, or do you want a uh uh a uh a specific human being? Yeah, being a human being for the reason.

Jessica Shklar:

Well and it's it's similar, I mean, not to that this is not a plug, but when you think about us working with us, you know that when you work with us, you have a full-time consultant who is hands-on getting to know you, getting to know your story. Whereas there are firms out there where you just tell them your story and they plug and play into a generic essay, or they do, I call them the cookie cutter ones, the checklist ones. They're going through a checklist and saying, yes, you're good here, you're not good here. It's not delving into your story.

Jeremy Shinewald:

I just want to stick with the with the with the macro instead of the micro. But I I think that like generally speaking, I agree with what you're saying about grad school probably actually increasing in importance. Like, there's there are two narratives. Like maybe college is less important and some colleges go away. I I kind of actually believe that too. I believe that like for some for some people, the I think I think the trades are gonna see a surge in North America and a new a new respect. And I think that college is not gonna be an article of faith. But I think if you were in the college pipeline, I think you are probably also more likely to be in the graduate school pipeline going forward.

Jessica Shklar:

Well, Harold and I both have kids in college age dealing with exactly this topic now, and yes, it's a big issue.

Harold Simansky:

Well, well, listen, I'm gonna look at it slightly differently, which is in the world of AI, how colleges teach has to be fundamentally different. With this notion here, it has to be much more of a human process. This idea here of, you know, a 200, 300-per um person lecture hall, that doesn't work anymore. That doesn't make any sense because AI can do it. Similarly, though, and then we're starting to see this, the applications reflect that fact. In actual fact, applications today, there's more video than there's ever before. There's more short answers, there's more questions that are actually far more nuanced and far more personal. And we're we are already seeing that now. I mean, Jessica, three years ago, did we see as many videos as there are now? What school doesn't have a video?

Jeremy Shinewald:

Or also like Harvard had a big amorphous, a big amorphous Harvard Business School and a big amorphous prompt. Yeah. It was just like it was just too, it was, it could go on as long as you want for a period, and then finally they moved it to 900 words, but it's they were just probably just like we're getting junk, we can't deal with this.

Jessica Shklar:

And AI would do a nightmare with that. But now we're also seeing, I think, a trend in multi-part questions. You think about Kellogg's essays or even Harvard's essays, like they're multiple. Compact, like and we always have to check with our clients like, are you answering every single part? These schools put a lot of thought. I mean, if you look at Harvard's essays this year versus last year, they're essentially the same, but they're not exactly the same. They made some very specific word choices. And so our clients have to respect that. And if you just toss it into AI, they may not be as specific about answering every single part of those questions.

Jeremy Shinewald:

I think I think one other thing that we should talk about, it's it's it's you know, it's it's the pair to the to the initial conversation, whereas if international applicants are lower this year and this is your year, generally speaking, these things even out. And so, you know, next year might be you know a bit of a recovery for international applicants, and the year after might be a bit of a surge, or next year it might recover already. And so you're probably moving into a more competitive uh you're definitely moving into a more competitive environment. The shock this year was so close to the application season. But I think next year, this is a 2025-2026 uh topic right now for this for this video. I'm moving into 26, 27 now. I think, I think a more competitive year for international applicants. I can't speculate at this point on I could speculate. I'm not going to speculate on where the economy is going. Generally speaking, when the economy um wavers, people go back to school. There are some signs of unemployment rising. There are some signs of you know bubble mentality in the market right now. I I don't know, maybe it hasn't reached quite a like a fever pitch yet. This could be a year like no other. And that's to the case. Yeah, I mean, listen, that's what I'm telling you. That's what I'm telling everyone I speak to.

Harold Simansky:

Yeah, that's what I'm telling to everyone that I speak to. It's like, at this point, apply. You know, grant gain that option. Why not?

Jeremy Shinewald:

Like if we look at, if we look at I always use Harvard Business Schools of Bellwether for 20 years of me doing this, uh uh, you know, until COVID, it basically Harvard had between 9,310,000 applicants for 950 students, you know, give or take. And for two years after COVID, when the job market was really secure for young people, people were working from home and loving it, maybe that work from home story is another thing because a lot of people are being called back to the office. Now it seems like every day there's another, and people don't want to be called back to the office. So I think some people are like, I'd rather go to school and have more freedom than be called back to the office. But for two years post-COVID, when young people had a lot, had all the power shifted towards young people, uh, you know, application volumes at Harvard felt, I think 8,700 and then 8,200, like unprecedented lows in in my 20-year career, never dipping below 9,000 ever. Um, I think the lowest might have been 9,200. And so, you know, they they then quickly rebounded last year, um, and the year by the year after they were like, you know, back in the 9000s. Um, it's funny. There are a lot of articles written about how uh how applications are booming. I'm like, applications are not booming, they're returning to the mean. Uh anyone who anyone saying they're booming is is is is trying to you know fear monger and get you to buy their services, they were returning to the mean. And I think they'll probably revert to the mean again next year or you know, the higher end of the mean, like as silly as that is, because that's definitionally doesn't work. But um Yeah, I think that's fair.

Harold Simansky:

Right, right. And that listen, that also reflects in the main hirers or the key hirers here. It's like right now, consulting investment banking, they're notorious for overhiring and then over firing. So at the end of the day, now if they are hiring much fewer than are anticipated, there is a return to the mean a couple of years out. And at the end of the day, this could be the perfect time to apply because maybe your chance is up a little bit, but then also when it comes time to find a job, maybe your chances are up as well.

Jessica Shklar:

But the bottom line is if you don't apply.

Harold Simansky:

That's right. That's right. Listen, I'm all about optionality. When somebody calls me for one of our free 30-minute consults, I say to them, it's all about optionality. If you want to go to business school, then apply. And then at that point, you can decide what you want to do. Deciding to apply, deciding to go, two fundamentally different decisions.

Jeremy Shinewald:

Let's leave it at that.

Harold Simansky:

Uh thanks so much for joining me. Okay, perfect. Jeremy, thank you very much for being my co host today.

Jeremy Shinewald:

Yes, thank you for having me as your permanent guest co host, semi permanent, semi permanent guest host. Uh yeah, great. It's fun to hang with you guys just. Always a priority. Always a pleasure. Exciting news! You can now access OnTrack by MBA Mission for free. Take our two-minute onboarding questionnaire to personalize your learning path. Choose the free plan, and you'll have unlimited access to our complete modules on MBA application timelines, standardized testing, your professional background, community leadership, school selection, and more. You'll also get access to select lessons from our brainstorming, personal statement, essay, resume, and recommendation modules. It's a great introduction to the on track platform and will help you jumpstart the MBA application process. Get started today at ontrack.mba mission.com.