P&Q’s Must Reads: Acceptance Rates, Yield & More At The Top 50 U.S. MBA Programs

Hello everyone  — Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1:  Acceptance Rates, Yield & More At The Top 50 U.S. MBA Programs

Last spring, Poets&Quants reported that the window of opportunity to get into a “reach” business school in the United States had narrowed dramatically. Applications were up, acceptance rates were down, and yield — the percentage of admits who actually enroll — was on the rise across the board. That assessment appears to be premature.

2022 data is showing a different story. At the elite B-schools of the top 50 U.S. MBA programs acceptance rates have climbed meaning more applicants are gaining admission even as class sizes have shrunk (in some cases severely). These elite schools (including all of the M7 schools), where applications plummeted in the 2021-2022 cycle, responded by admitting significantly more applicants, watching their yield slip as more of those applicants enjoyed the luxury of choosing other schools.

Many lower-ranked schools, however, saw the opposite in 2022: They decreased their acceptance rates in 2022, in some cases dramatically. 

You can find all the acceptance rate, yield, and other important data points in our full analysis, now in our news tab.

No. 2: The New Shorter GRE: Less Than Two Hours Long

If the makers of standardized tests for business school admissions played poker, the GRE just said “I see you and raise you!”

The Educational Testing Service, the administrator of the Graduate Record Exam, announced this week that it is nearly cutting the time to take its test in half to less than two hours and will make the revamped exam available to test takers by Sept. 28th.

The move to a shorter exam follows the decision by the Graduate Management Admission Council to shorten the GMAT exam by nearly an hour, eliminating its essay requirement and making all questions multiple choice. GMAC made its announcement nearly three months earlier in March but the new GMAT Focus Edition test won’t be available to test takers until the fourth quarter of this year and prospective students can’t register for a test date until August 29th.

Details about the GRE changes can be found on our homepage.

No. 3 A B-School With A Sustainability Mindset: The P&Q Interview of Cornell’s business school deans 

If you’re looking for a headline for business education at Cornell University post-pandemic, perhaps it’s this: “SC Johnson College of Business Is A Growth Play.”

In the last two years, the student body has grown just shy of 20% across the college’s three schools: the undergraduate Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, The Nolan School of Hotel Administration, and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. It’s also added 23 faculty members.

Poets&Quants recently sat down with Andrew Karolyi, dean of Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, and Vishal Gaur, the newly named dean of SC Johnson Graduate School of Management. We talked about the impressive growth in Cornell’s business education as well as the school’s pervasive sustainability mindset. You can find the full interview in our news tab. 

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: How NOT To Bomb Your Harvard MBA Interview

This story, for anyone with HBS on their short list, outlines what you need to know before you sit for an HBS interview, from the most likely questions to how to answer them. You’ll find it on our homepage.

Next: Two-Year vs. One-Year MBA Programs: Which One Is Right For You? If you’re still in the program exploration stage, this story offers the pros and cons of each. Read it on our homepage. 

Finally: MBA Application Deadlines For The 2023-2024 Admissions Cycle. This story, on our homepage, lists all the MBA application deadlines for the world’s top business schools, and will be updated as more are announced.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert school seekers to CentreCourt’s’ upcoming MBA Festival admission event. In these virtual panels, you’ll hear from admission gurus and career experts from leading business schools around the world. Our next event is June 6-7, and you can register now for free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening and, as always, stay informed!