As political tension rattles the U.S. visa system and high-profile schools like Harvard face international admissions delays, panic is setting in among global MBA applicants. But with 15 years in the field, I see this moment differently: not as a crisis, but as a strategic window. The fear is thinning out competitive applicant pools, creating rare opportunities for those willing to act decisively.
Columbia Business School has revised its 2025 MBA Essay 2 prompt, removing direct references to DEI and inclusive leadership frameworks. While the language is now broader, focusing on collaboration, inclusion, and community, the underlying goal remains the same: Columbia wants applicants who can lead with empathy and build effective teams across differences. Here’s why the change likely happened and how to approach the new essay with strategy and authenticity.
Michigan Ross is second, with Haas in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Yale reported, the SOM is the place to be if you're into energy and want to work for a related firm in the industry.
Stanford GSB is close second, with Yale SOM in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Ross reported, Michigan is the place to be if you're into real estate and want to work for a related firm in the industry.
Basically, this blog post is a data dump of data from 2014/2015 that the career centers from each of the MBA programs we covered. We post links to where you can find those reports at the bottom.
What this blog post is not: a careful analysis of this employment data. In fact, we had to aggregate some data from particular business schools in order to make consistent comparisons across industries. So draw what conclusions you can from what we present.
Rest assured, we are keeping our most up to date career data analysis and employment numbers for our current clients.
In the past, we have chalked this up to its unique end-of-October deadline and equally unique two-round admissions process. We even went as far as to say that we would bet on the application quality at Sloan is far lower than on other top business school programs. Candidates would not even even start on their Sloan apps until after the October 3-16 gauntlet of deadlines and then they race to finish because they fear waiting until the "last" round. Simply put, a lot of applicants have viewed Sloan as an after thought, and we've done our share of walking clients back from making mistakes associated with that mindset. Well, all of that has changed.
And because they are staying in this lane, it means that my three thoughts need to stay in the same lane they have been in for years - because understanding the psychology behind this essay goes a long way to explaining how you might solve it.
Now, on to some thoughts from the new Columbia essays!
Now, please understand that I know you are busy. You are working, applying, and trying to live your life - possibly even still wrestling the GMAT to the ground. It's probably not the ideal time to be picking up books, right? On the contrary! You are at a unique point in your life right now - shifting between what was previous and what is next. You are probably still fully engaged with work (as you should be, as the typical upcoming Round 1 applicant still has a full year of work to go), but there is part of you that is stepping outside the day-to-day rat race and thinking about the big picture. "Now" is one big incubation period. If you are taking your apps seriously and working with a great consultant/coach, you are going to be thinking stuff in a way that might start to become pretty illuminating. I've long felt that applying to graduate school *should* be an arduous process - not just in terms of nuts and bolts, but in terms of personal introspection. It's a golden opportunity to learn something about yourself and to improve as a person.
Obviously, these are all gross estimates and generalizations, but it shakes out to about right and its easier to use 10% than “a percentage that is a LOT less than you think it is.” The bottom line is that most applicants assume a much higher level of importance, they spend far more time thinking and worrying about them, and they get far too involved in their production (the biggest issue of all). Let’s work through all three:
I tell my clients up front that they have to waive their right and that it is not really an option to not do so. Not waiving your right could tell the adcom that you don’t trust your recommenders. It could tell them that you are paranoid or overly anxious.
It could tell them that this applicant is a liability. What happens if he doesn’t get in? Is he going to go after his recommenders for throwing him under the bus? Is he going to create more headaches for all involved? Is the applicant going to create reputational risk for the school?
The adcom would rather just not deal with it.
I give the same note to every single client so now I'm giving it to everybody: the simplest and most important thing you can do to improve your Why School X portion of career goals essay is to personalize any and all content. This is a great way to avoid writing something off-putting, as well as a quick and easy method for making your essays warmer, more personal, and easier to connect with.
I have received the following question a lot lately: "Should my presentation reflect the ideas that Booth espouses when introducing the presentation question?" The short answer is "yes," but the long answer is more complicated than that and is worthy of discussion here in this space. Not just for the way it will help Booth applicants, but because of the way it speaks to the whole idea of "School DNA" and how to assess fit with a program.
I've been around DFS to know that many "MBA types" do really well as players, due to comfort with quantitative analysis, modeling skills, and even the ability to build robust and sophisticated trading algorithms. But even if you are not a finance wizard and/or a sports fanatic, can you learn something from Daily Fantasy Sports as an MBA applicant? Oh let us count the ways:
This in-depth video is approximately 1 hour and 20 mins in duration.
