Who Might Be Sitting Next To You In The M7 MBA Classroom?

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Wayne Gretzky’s famous words could also apply to candidates applying to the world’s top B-schools: If you don’t take your shot, you will never be admitted.

The M7 schools – HBS, Stanford GSB, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, and Northwestern Kellogg – received over 48,000 applications in the 2023/24 MBA admissions cycle. That is a 22% increase on the previous year, with talented applicants from all over the world competing for 4,781 places in the M7 MBA classrooms.

Of the 524 students in the incoming class at Kellogg, there were 50% women, 40% international, 11% LGBTQ+, 10% first generation. How many of them were former professional hockey players?

Among our guests at the Poets & Quants CentreCourt MBA Festival on Feb 11 & 12 is Hampus Gustaffson, Kellogg MBA ’24. Originally from Sweden, he studied business at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and then played professional hockey for various teams in the US, Sweden, and Denmark.

In a fascinating interview, he confides, “You’ve got to aspire to get into the top schools, even though my background isn’t a traditional fit for for any of the the best business schools in the US.”

Hampus is now applying the learning at Kellogg in a Senior Product Manager role at Medline Industries, the largest provider of medical-surgical products. He describes the incredible support he received from his peers, faculty, the Career Management Center, and the vast network of alumni. “If you reach out to them you will always get a response. Everyone always wants to help you.”

For Shelley Mihm, the MBA at Columbia Business School shifted her worldview. “I think it all goes to the connections you make and the things that you learn from other people. The perspectives that people are bringing into the into the classroom broadens your view.”

Shelley herself no doubt brought her own artistic creativity to discussions in the MBA classroom.  She studied Music at the University of Minnesota and then a Masters in Vocal Performance and Opera at UNC Greensboro, enjoying a successful opera career with a growing number of lead roles. Then COVID hit, the main stage contracts went away, and she took the decision to swap musical scores for balance sheets.

“Don’t let yourself have regrets if you want to do an MBA,” she shares with CentreCourt. Now a Senior Consultant with Deloitte in New York, Shelley is adamant that investment is worth it. “You want to get to the end of your life and be like, I’m so glad that I gave myself those two years to really explore and understand myself. There’s nothing like that time to explore and learn about yourself and meet people and see the whole world.”

One of the many impactful workshops that Melissa Zhang remembers from her MBA at Stanford GSB looked at group life goals. With her classmates they were invited to list life ambitions, A, B, C and D. Option D was the safety net, while option A was your wildest dreams.

The UC Berkeley graduate with dual degrees in Environment and Business & Economics, who had enjoyed a fast track during her five years with Blackrock before joining the Stanford MBA and Kennedy School MPA remembers that her option A was to host a talk show with her favourite role models.

In a wide-ranging interview for the CentreCourt MBA Festival you realise that Melissa is herself an inspiring role model for the next generation of MBA hopefuls. She is grateful to the Stanford GSB for ‘Helping me uncover my limiting beliefs and moving beyond them. “there’s this constant trade off of, do I double down on my strengths or fix my weaknesses? Use your time in grad school to do both, so you build confidence, but also know that you’re changing.

When reflecting on the ROI of her MBA at The Wharton School, Rochelle Dubrovsky describes both immediate benefits during the program and things that will serve her well further down the line.

“I had always considered going to business school,” says the former Vice President, Wealth Management Strategic Initiatives at JPMorgan Chase, “but I felt like I needed to go when it was the right kind of point in my career. I felt like business school gave me an opportunity to really reassess what the next phase of my career looked like. I had a very clear career trajectory, a strong network. And so it definitely felt like a risk. It’s something that I spent a lot of time thinking about.

For many of the participants at the CentreCourt Festival, her reflection about the opportunity cost of business school will sounds familiar. “The MBA has given me an opportunity to really pressure test things that I’m good at and things that I’m not good at. I’ve had a lot of incredible experiences traveling with classmates and opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

From Wharton alumni that Rochelle has spoken with, the really tangible benefits come over time. “It’s really the network of people that you know. I now know so many people that are going to be successful in their various career journeys, and if I need something down the line I know I have a huge network to fall back on.”

And what about the classmates you might be sitting next to at Harvard Business School? Until last year, the MBA Admissions Committee asked candidates, What more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?

Admittedly open-ended, the essay prompt nevertheless gave applicants the chance to share their very personal and distinct story. And with over 9800 applicants for 930 places in last year’s admissions cycle there are many personal and distinct stories to share.

Marcus Ringer is a perfect example. He studied English Literature at Durham University in the UK, and spent six years with Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service working on Foreign Policy and Security. He held posts in Niger, Chad, and Liberia, won a tennis championship in Dhaka, and was even a heavyweight boxing champion.

Our interview for CentreCourt testifies to a disarming modesty about his background and accomplishments, and not taking anything for granted when applying to HBS.

“We speak a lot about imposter syndrome here. But I don’t think there’s anyone on campus that doesn’t fit, and it’s just about working through that. If you look at the stats it feels like an unassailable task, but you focus on your personal story and HBS is thinking through what is the unique value this person is going to bring to the classroom.”

Speaking with CentreCourt three months before graduation, I asked Marcus to reflect on what he had learned about himself during his two years of the Harvard MBA.

“I thought about this quite a bit about this over the last few weeks, I think that it’s really the confidence that HBS instills in you. You come into this program thinking, Why me? And you leave it thinking, why not me? And I think that’s that’s really powerful.”

To enjoy the full power and insight of the fascinating M7 interviews you can register for the CentreCourt Festival with Poets & Quants that takes place on February 11 & 12.

And who knows, maybe in a couple of years we’ll be sitting down with you to share your own MBA experience.