Attention Laid-Off Tech Workers: A Top-5 B-School Wants You To Consider An MBA

Elon Musk began his ownership of Twitter last month by firing thousands of the social media giant’s employees (before asking many of them to come back). Then he fired some more, and then some more.

Meta — the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram — fired 13% of its workforce this month, around 11,000 employees, after the launch of a very expensive “Metaverse” that was greeted by universal derision.

But while Musk’s chaotic reign and Mark Zuckerberg’s $15-billion misstep have gotten most of the press, those aren’t the only blows suffered this year by the workforce that powers the tech industry. According to True Up, a website that tracks hundreds of thousands of jobs at top startups, unicorns, and Big Tech, the tech world as a whole has had a layoff-heavy year going back to December 2021, with more than 180,000 tech workers losing their jobs in a wave of more than 1,100 layoffs. Around 58,000 layoffs occurred in October and November this year alone.

What do smart young people do when they are suddenly unemployed? One elite business school is betting that many casualties of the tech bloodbath will be looking to go back to school and get an MBA.

 KELLOGG LOST 20% OF APP VOLUME 2 CYCLES AGO

Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, one of the top five B-schools in the United States, is offering to waive its test score requirement for those applying to the part- or full-time MBA programs who have been recently laid off from their jobs in the technology field. The waiver of either the Graduate Record Exam or the Graduate Management Admission Test is applicable to Kellogg’s Round 2 applications for full-time and part-time programs. Round 2 applications are due January 4 for Kellogg’s Evening & Weekend program, and January 10 for its full-time programs.

Kellogg is urging the high-performing talent of the tech industry to consider studying on the shores of Lake Michigan, where the school has cultivated a rich reputation from its storied history of innovation, creativity, and empathy. Casualties of recent mass layoffs and others “can apply to Kellogg by providing their transcripts, resume and application which will also include a brief essay on their work experience and most recent role as well as what they hope their transformation will be and how it will advance them,” writes Greg Hanifee, Kellogg’s associate dean of degree programs and operations, in a blog post on November 14.

But the offer to apply to either Kellogg’s part- or full-time MBA without taking a big, expensive, and time-consuming exam is not charity: Though it did not publish application data this year, Kellogg is believed to have joined most of the leading business schools in the 2021-2022 cycle in suffering a major app decline, which would mark the second year in a row for the elite B-school after it bucked positive trends in the 2020-2021 cycle by losing 20% of its app volume from the previous year. Boosting the numbers this cycle is certainly a priority for Kellogg.

MORE GUARDRAILS THAN THE LAST TIME KELLOGG WAIVED TESTS

“Kellogg has always been about leading with compassion and learning to channel analytical skills with personal skills in business,” Hanifee writes. “Our focus on the intersection of business and science uniquely positions future leaders to excel in careers across many sectors and companies. We hope this offer will allow some people to speed up their career transformation process.”

Beth Tidmarsh, former director of MBA admissions at Kellogg and current consultant at Stacy Blackman Consulting, says Kellogg’s move shows the school learned some things from its last experiment with test waivers at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

“It reads to me that they have several guardrails in place versus spring 2020 when they let anyone apply with no score,” Tidmarsh says. “This time they are certainly more targeted on competitive employers, and reaching out to former employees who may be scrambling.”

KELLOGG ‘HOPING TO BOOST ITS POOL OF QUALIFIED APPLICANTS’

Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted MBA consultancy, says laid-off tech talent would do well to consider Kellogg’s offer, a rare moment when the gates of a highly selective B-school open a little wider. In 2021, Kellogg’s acceptance rate was 26%, among the lowest of any B-school. Moreover, Kellogg is home to many techies already: Seventeen percent of its newest MBA class are students who came from tech, and one-fifth of its 2022 graduating class went into the sector.

“Kellogg experienced a sharp drop in applications last year, like many of its competitors,” Abraham notes. “For these recently laid-off workers, who until the last few weeks had positions that were demanding and whose skills when combined with an MBA will probably be in demand, Kelllogg is comfortable relying on their transcript as evidence of academic ability (or lack thereof). They don’t need the test score. Getting these kinds of jobs is in and of itself a test.

“At the same time, these recently laid off workers may not have the time to prepare for and take the test and then apply. If Kellogg waives the test, it will both attract applicants who don’t want to take the test and enable those who otherwise wouldn’t have the time to take the test to actually apply.

“In other words, Kellogg with this move is hoping to boost its pool of qualified applicants and stop the decline in application volume.” Might some other B-schools follow suit, given the state of MBA applications these days? Stay tuned!

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