Stanford is a synonym for the world’s most selective business school. As “Fortune” reports, last year, Stanford received more than 19 applications for every one of its 390 seats for this fall’s incoming class. All told, only 6.5 percent of the 7,536 applicants for the Class of 2011 were accepted.
Derrick Bolton, director of admissions, believes the low numbers are partly due to the blame that business schools received for the global economic crisis, along with the slow job market for MBAs, which has led to lower starting salaries and fewer job offers. But the key issue, he reckons, is a backlash against business. "If you look at Meg Whitman's campaign for governor of California or Carly Fiorina's campaign for the Senate, all the negative ads about them are anti-business," he says. "It's all about how they outsourced jobs, took big pay packages, and then laid off a lot of staff. People are getting vilified for that."
So how is the situation at Stanford? Currently, 10 per cent of the school's incoming class were applicants whose admission had been deferred a couple of years ago. He disputes estimates, though, that as many as half of Stanford's applicants are using consultants. "If I believed that estimate, I would just start charging 2000 dollar per application and give them consulting services myself," he says.
As many as one in four MBA students are now pursuing joint degrees with other university schools, and more Stanford business school students are opting for joint degree programs in law, medicine, bioengineering, and public policy. "We went from two joint programs to six and nearly 20 per cent of our students are in them," says Bolton, who expects the numbers to rise further. "They believe that an MBA or another graduate degree is not enough."
Bolton thinks there is a lot of information in the marketplace that misleads candidates. As an example, he notes that he recently downloaded an application from one GMAT test preparation company that claims to help candidates narrow down their selection of schools based on criteria like grades, GMAT score, work and leadership experience.
Bolton plugged in his own grades, his two years at McKinsey, his GMAT score, and other requested data. The program told him - as he puts it - the best he could do was Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. His conclusion: If there were an iPhone and apps available when he wanted to go to business school in 1995, he might never have studied at Stanford.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/06/pf/college/business_school_declines.fortune/index.htm
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Stanford Graduate School of Business
Full-Time MBA