In Her First Interview, Stanford’s MBA Admissions Chief Unveils A Revamped Application Experience

Every year, thousands of people convince themselves they don’t belong at Stanford Graduate School of Business before they ever fill out an application. Erin Nixon wants to change that.

Nixon has spent nearly two years running admissions at the world’s most selective business school without talking publicly about how she does it. She has, instead, spent her tenure quietly rebuilding her team and, by her own account, listening – to students, to admits, and increasingly to the admissions consulting community that Stanford has long kept at arm’s length.

Now, with her third application cycle approaching, Nixon wants to discuss a pair of changes the GSB is rolling out this week: a redesigned application interface meant to make the famously introspective process feel less daunting, and a new resource hub called Application Essentials that brings together, for the first time in one place, the videos, checklists, and admissions guidance that applicants have until now had to hunt for across a constellation of web pages, forums, and alumni blogs.

NO CONTENT CHANGES, BUT A NEW LOOK & FEEL

“This feels like a grand reveal,” says Nixon, who took over as assistant dean of admissions and financial aid in July 2024. But the application itself, she says, has not changed in substance: same essays, same questions, same information gathered.

What has changed is the experience of filling it out.

“My main focus this year was something that means a lot to me and to my team, which is that we wanted applicants to feel confident and empowered when it comes to approaching the GSB application,” Nixon tells Poets&Quants in an exclusive interview. The school invested in refreshing the look and feel of the application itself, with the goal of making the user experience more approachable and streamlined.

“Most people applying this year won’t know what it was like before,” Nixon says. Re-applicants might notice the difference; everyone else, she hopes, will simply find it easier.

A NEW RESOURCE HUB CONSOLIDATES SCATTERED ADVICE

The bigger change sits outside the application itself. Stanford GSB is launching Application Essentials, a resource hub that walks applicants through every section of the application with short videos, downloadable tools, and expandable guidance the school calls “Notes from Admissions.” The idea grew out of conversations with admits and students over the past two years, Nixon says, many of whom said they spent significant time simply trying to figure out what the school meant by certain prompts. 

The information existed, she says, but it was spread across several different places.

“We’ve brought it all into one,” Nixon says. The hope, she adds, is that applicants spend less time panicking about what a question means and more time reflecting on how to answer it.

Elissa Koppl, director of marketing for admissions at Stanford GSB and the lead behind the new site, says the page is built to mirror the order applicants actually move through the application: education, test scores, activities and interests, professional experience, resume, letters of recommendation, essays, short answer question, and submission. Each section pairs a video under two minutes with downloadable resources and collapsible admissions guidance, so the page stays uncluttered by default while still offering depth for applicants who want it.

Some of the material is new. The application checklist and a resume template, for instance, did not exist in this form before. But much of the underlying detail – the in-depth guidance on testing requirements, joint-degree applications, fee waivers – already lived on individual GSB web pages. What Application Essentials does, Koppl says, is bring the most pressing information to the surface in one place, while still linking out to those deeper pages for applicants who want more.

“They don’t have to kind of run around searching for information,” Koppl says. “It’s all in one place. It’s really designed to give them clarity and confidence.”

A CURRENT STUDENT’S VIEW: ‘THE GREATEST IMPROVEMENT OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS’

David Pantera, a second-year MBA student who worked with the admissions team on the redesign, says the old system left applicants navigating a patchwork of GSB web pages, admissions forums, blogs written by former admissions consultants, and FAQs – often supplementing official guidance with homemade tracking tools.

“You would watch these YouTube videos of incoming GSB students who were like, here’s the Google Sheets tracker I had to do, and here’s the Notion page I made,” Pantera says. Removing the need for that kind of improvisation, he says, is a real advantage of the new approach.

Pantera also frames Application Essentials as an answer to a different, newer problem: the rise of AI chatbots as an informal admissions advisor. “It feels like you no longer need to go to the forums and the websites and all the different blogs and FAQs,” he says. “But there’s always this question of how much can I really trust what I’m reading from these chatbots, and where is it getting its sources.” A single, official hub with videos, tips, and direct guidance from the admissions office, he says, offers a more trustworthy alternative.

Asked whether the new resource fundamentally changes the applicant experience or simply adds a convenience, Pantera is candid that its impact may not be universal. He believes it matters most for applicants who are already intentional and willing to put in real effort – comparing them to GMAT takers who study and retake the exam until they hit their target score, versus those who take it once and apply regardless of the result. For applicants who would otherwise lean entirely on a chatbot for guidance, he says, Application Essentials may make less of a difference.

“I think this site is a great manifestation of the GSB — it’s very modern in the way that technologically it’s given to you, whether you want to watch videos or read text or have these graphics and diagrams,” Pantera says. “It’s all in one place. It’s very easy. It’s very student-first and student-centric.”

A PHILOSOPHY ROOTED IN CONTINUITY, NOT REINVENTION

Nixon is careful to frame the changes as an extension of longstanding GSB values rather than a break from them. Asked whether the timing reflects any response to softening MBA application trends, at Stanford or nationally, she redirects instead to her enthusiasm for the incoming class and for Stanford’s role in conversations around technology, AI, and business.

On her overall philosophy, Nixon – a “triple dipper” who attended Stanford for her undergraduate and MBA degrees before returning to take on the admissions job nearly two years ago – describes GSB as “human first.” She points to applicants who say the process helped them gain clarity about their values and their future, regardless of the outcome.

“We have a lot of people fill out our application,” she says. “They tell us that on the other side, they leave with clarity about their future, and they leave with that groundedness in their values.” She recalls her own application years ago as the first time anyone had asked her what mattered to her, rather than why she should matter to them.

Asked what she would change about how applicants approach the process, Nixon points to a common instinct she hears from prospective students on the road: the desire to figure out the “right” way to present themselves. “We don’t need you to show up in one predefined, prescripted, formulaic way,” she says. “There’s not one right way to be a GSB-er.”

She also emphasizes that the school’s commitment extends to applicants who are not admitted. “We read every application with care and respect, and we are genuinely wishing people well, even if we’re not able to offer them a seat in the class,” she says.

CONSULTANT ENGAGEMENT INFORMED THE PROCESS

In a shift from its historically arms-length posture, Stanford GSB has, in recent years, engaged more directly with the admissions consulting community. Nixon says members of her team spent time with consultants, including hosting a question-and-answer session last spring, and that the feedback fed into the broader thinking behind the redesign – even if not as a direct, item-by-item response.

It’s all part of a broader posture Nixon describes as leading with curiosity — an ethos she says will keep evolving the resource long after launch.

“We lead with curiosity,” Nixon says. “We will continue to listen, refine, and evolve this resource so that it really does fit what people need to put their best foot forward.”

Visit the redesigned Stanford MBA application page here.

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