MBA Advisor: Acceptance Rates At The P&Q Top 50 MBA Programs

An MBA program’s acceptance rate is one of the first things prospective business school students look at when deciding where to apply. And that makes it a hugely important number, even if its importance is sometimes overstated. The percentage of applicants who successfully gain admission to a school gives others some notion of their chances of getting in, and for the schools, the aura of exclusivity — or lack of it — is an important signal of their culture and the level of talent they attract. The more selective a school, the more highly talented students it draws in, which allows it to be more selective — and the virtuous cycle continues.

For years now, acceptance rates for the most elite programs have been falling, and — surprise surprise — that didn’t change in 2017, according to a Poets&Quants analysis of class profile data at the Top 50 U.S. schools. Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, and MIT Sloan School of Management are still the three hardest schools to get into, in that order — and if anything they are harder nuts to crack than a year (or five years) ago. In fact, acceptance rates fell or remained the same at 13 of the top 20 MBA programs, and where they rose, they rose only by an average of 1.1%. It’s hard to get into a top business school, says Betsy Massar, Harvard MBA and founder of Master Admissions, and that isn’t likely to ever change. “That’s the reality, and the students who are applying are almost all qualified,” Massar tells Poets&Quants. “Stanford GSB admissions officers always say that they can fill an equally qualified and fascinating class of 450 people from the people that they reject.”

As you get lower in the rankings, patterns and trends become much harder to discern, though there are occasional dramatic shifts — and there’s some evidence of a thaw, manifested as a falling number of admits and enrollees or rising acceptance rates at individual schools.

OVERALL A SLIGHT RISE IN THE NUMBERS, BUT INDIVIDUAL SCHOOLS TELL THE STORY

If one thing jumps out from the cumulative data of top 50 schools’ acceptance rates, application and admit numbers, enrollees, and yield percentages, it’s what appears to be a leveling-off in the size of the applicant pool. Poets&Quants compiled data from 49 of the 50 schools — only No. 48 Temple University’s Fox School of Business refused to provide data, no surprise in the wake of the data scandal in their online MBA program and subsequent withdrawal from all U.S. News & World Report rankings — and found that altogether, applications, admits, and enrollment are all up — but only barely. There were 104,704 total applications to the top 49 business schools in 2017, only a .82% rise from the year before (we omitted Temple’s 2016 numbers to make a fair comparison), while admits were also up slightly (22,686, a 1.4% increase) and enrollment ticked slightly upward as well (11,666, up 1.8%).

The first step in the B-school journey is the application, and some schools saw big increases in apps. At USC Marshall, the numbers jumped by nearly a quarter, from 1,600 in 2016 to 1,998 in 2017. Why? According to Evan Bouffides, assistant dean and director of graduate and MBA admissions at the Marshall School, some of this progress stems from investments in the school’s admissions and recruitment process — among them, implementation of a CRM system. “As you might imagine,” Bouffides told Poets&Quants last fall, “Marshall has not altered its mission nor its philosophy from one year to the next. The trick is that we now communicate our stories — of Marshall, of USC, and of L.A. — to more candidates than in the past.”

Then there’s the other side of the coin. There were big drops in applications, too, most notably at Arizona State University’s Carey School of Business, which saw a 45.3% drop one year after being the talk of the B-school world by offering full-ride scholarships to all Carey School admits — and reaping the benefit with a 161% jump in apps. The 2017 numbers can therefore be seen as a kind of natural correction. Elsewhere, a handful of Midwestern schools — Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, Washington University’s Olin Business School, Wisconsin School of Business, and Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business — all saw greater than 20% decline in applications. In related news, Washington Olin saw the biggest jump of any school in its acceptance rate, a 10.3% leap to 40%. (Arizona State Carey was second with a 9.7% rise to 24%.)

Wisconsin, for its part, says the decline in apps is not worrisome because the school is being more discerning. The drop-off, they say, was in numbers only, not quality.

“Wisconsin generated a class with higher-quality work experience and metrics, including a nine-point increase in GMAT scores, despite a drop in completed applications,” says Blair Sanford, assistant dean of the Wisconsin Full-Time MBA. “In addition, we had more students visit campus, leading directly to an increase in yield.” Indeed, Wisconsin’s yield jumped nearly 10 points, from 51.6% in 2016 to 61.5% last year.

HARVARD KNOCKED OFF ITS YIELD PEDESTAL

It’s one thing, from a school’s perspective, to get more applications. It’s another to actually admit more students and bring them into the fold. That wasn’t the case at some of the top schools, where apps were up but enrollment fell, and yield suffered. This occurred most notably at Harvard, where enrollment dropped from 934 to 928 and HBS’ famously high yield fell from 89.6% — best of any school — to 81.5%, despite HBS admitting nearly 100 more students. Now Stanford — which shaved an inconsequential .02% off its acceptance rate because of a slight increase in apps, thereby effectively remaining static at 6.0% acceptance rate — is now the king of yield, registering a remarkable 85.3%.

Glossing over the data from the top 10 schools, you might get the idea that it’s getting easier to get past the gatekeepers. The average acceptance rate rose 1.5% in 2017 to 16%, and overall admits increased by 7.5% while enrollment rose 4.9%. But if you think there’s been any general loosening of standards, think again. For one thing, the five-year acceptance rate for the top 10 still shows a (slight) decline, and the increase in admits can probably be mostly attributed to a 4.8% jump in applications at those schools. Meanwhile, since 2013 the enrollment has actually dropped, though not by a statistically significant number, while admits are barely up.

If you’re applying to No. 1 Wharton (19.2% acceptance rate) or No. 2 Harvard (11%) or No. 3 Stanford (6%) or No. 6 MIT Sloan (11.5%) or any of the most elite schools, Betsy Massar says, just assume that nine out of 10 applicants — basically everyone else — is super qualified and impressive.

“I actually don’t think there are any secrets behind the numbers,” Massar says. “True fact: it is really hard to get into business school, and that is a function of many students being very qualified to take a seat in the room. Stanford’s room is small as is MIT’s, so they both are relatively small. Harvard’s is a lot larger, and its reach has always been broader in terms of its ability to get into the hearts and minds of applicants all over the globe.”

MORE ON THE ELITE OF THE ELITE

What other schools became harder to get into in 2017? The biggest drop in acceptance rate of any school was at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, which cut its rate 14% to 31.2%. Last year, No. 31 Carlson saw a jump in applications to 665 from 606, but admitted far fewer students — 208 compared to 274 in 2016 — and enrolled fewer, too: 88, compared to 104. In so doing, however, the school saw its yield rise more than five points, to 42.3%. No. 49 Rutgers Business School of Newark and New Brunswick also shaved some points off its acceptance percentage, dropping 8.5% to 36.6%. But Rutgers enrolled only 49 students last year after having 76 in 2016, despite a jump in applications (from 377 to 443), and its yield fell 14.5% to a paltry 30.2%, lowest of any school in the top 50.

Back at the top, seven of the 10 most elite MBA programs accept fewer than 20% of applicants. Applications are up year-over-year at all but one, No. 7 Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, which saw a slight drop to 2,610 to 2,623. Only at the Wharton School did the number of admits drop (from 1,306 to 1,285), and only at three is enrollment down, at HBS, No. 4 University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and MIT Sloan — and then only by small amounts — six students at Harvard and Chicago and five at MIT.

The most sizable shifts in the top 10 occurred at No. 8 Columbia Business School, which saw an 11.8% jump in applications, an astonishing 41.6% leap in admits, and a 34.9% increase, to 753, in enrollment. All those new admits and students made it a mixed bag for Columbia, which saw its acceptance rate tick upward from 14.1% to 16.5% and its yield tick downward from 71.3% to 67.9%.

BEST ADVICE: DON’T PANIC

So if nine out of 10 applicants to the top schools is super awesome, it’s easy to get discouraged. How does one stand out?

“Applicants are being measured against an incredibly high-performing pool. So that means they have to really show their three-dimensionality,” Massar says. “They can’t be just excellent on one dimension (grades and scores) plus good work experience, they have to show personality traits that make them the kind of people that an admissions committee wants to bet on. That requires a LOT of self-awareness, and in the most competitive schools, talent.

“There is a certain element of randomness in the process. Because of that, I suggest creating a portfolio of target schools, just as you would create a portfolio of securities. I’ve seen people day in and day out get into one school and not another when mathematically it may not make sense in terms of the odds. I’ve seen someone get into Stanford who got rejected from six other schools. I’ve seen people who get into Harvard who did not get into a school that’s a ranked number 11 on the list of top 10 — people who don’t know anyone in particular but just happened to be what the admissions board was looking for at that moment. We cannot control what the rest of the applicants are going to look like or if you happen to be the one thing that they care about when they’re making the decision of how to fill the class.

“The other reason to diversify the portfolio is that in life — and maybe I’m being an old lady here — but in life, the world will not stop if you do not get into Harvard or Stanford. End of story.”

(See the next pages for all the acceptance rate, application, admission, enrollment, and other data for the P&Q Top 50.)

Wharton may be Poets&Quants’ top school in 2017 but in terms of its acceptance rate it is not the most exclusive school in the top 10. In fact, at 19.2%, it’s seventh