Fun with Class Profiles

Question

Business majors are dramatically underrepresented in the ultra elite cluster relative to the GMAT taker population. MIT and Stanford had particularly low representation of business majors. In the case of Stanford, this might be related to the relative scarcity of top tier undergrad business programs on the West coast. 

The Humanities and Social Sciences were highly overrepresented relative to the GMAT taker population. While Humanities and Social Science majors represent only 20% or so of GMAT takers they made up over 40% of the class at Stanford. 

Natural Sciences and Engineering- Natural Sciences and Engineering were also overrepresented in the ultra elites (although not to the same extent as the Humanities and Social Sciences). Not surprisingly, the Natural Sciences and Engineering were highly overrpresented at MIT.

venky1979 · Answer

Does this mean that people with Humanities have an edge in admissions? Why do Engineers inspite of being brighter on an average as compared to the humanities counterpart always take a beating? :cry:

Hjort · Answer

I'm not sure that I would consider one group brighter than the other. The engineering students tend to have stronger "hard" skills and the humanities students stronger "soft" skills. People trained in the humanities can provide a useful additional perspective in team projects (the marginal contribution of the humanities student is probably greater than that of another engineering student).

venky1979 · Answer

Does this mean an Engineer
with a profile of say 5 to 6 years in Say IT
is at a disadvantge as compared to his humaities counter part
who is working in say a non-profit organisation??

other things like GMAT, number of years in leadership, career progress remaining the same

Hjort · Answer

I would consider both the nature of the MBA program and the supply of applicants. 

Programs that focus on developing people into general managers tend to place less stress on one's previous technical training and more on their leadership potential. Thus, the technical advantage of (say) IT applicants is effectively neutralized. 

Likewise, there is a much smaller pool of humanities students so these students can distingish themselves to some extent from the disciplines that send much larger numbers of students to MBA programs.

ap663 · Answer

I'd say that humanities number is more of a function of elitism among b-schools. A huge percentage of successful applicants come from either top IBs or top MCs, which only recruit at elite schools, and most of the students at those elite schools major in the social sciences because most elite schools in the US don't have an undergrad business major, so it's like a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

Hjort · Answer

You bring up a good point with respect to the social sciences as the social sciences are often viewed as a reasonable substitute for a major in business (after all, economics is one of the primary social sciences). However, it is unlikely that most applicants view the humanities such as art history or English literature as a viable substitutes for a major in business. I agree that the humanities students who do apply to MBA programs represent a small subset of humanities undergrads and probably come from the right tail of their distribution, especially with repsect to their quant skills. The right tail of humanities undergrads would in turn tend to be composed of graduates the Ivy, Tycoon U, Public Elite, Little Ivy, and similar groups.

Hjort · Answer

Another important point to keep in mind is the business undergrads tend to have the lowest GMAT average of the three macrodiscipline groups. 

Business/Commerce c. 500 (roughly the 39th percentile) 
Humanities and Social Sciences c. 545 (roughly the 53rd percentile)
Natural Sciences and Engineering c. 575 (roughly the 63rd percentile)

If we include a broader five discipline taxonomy, the ranking by average GMAT score is as follows: 

Business/Commerce (lowest) 
Humanities 
Social Sciences 
Natural Sciences 
Engineering (highest) 

It should be noted that there is considerable overlap in the averages when one considers individual majors. For example, Economics and Government within the social sciences have averages that are similar to the average for Computer Science from the engineering and applied sciences discipline and Chemistry and Biological Sciences from the natrural sciences . Likewise Finance from the Business/Commerce group has an average near 530 each year which is in line with the average for the humanities discipline but below the average for individual humanities majors such as English.

Hjort · Answer

Continuing our meandering journey, it is interesting to observe how case study schools tend to have a relatively small representation of engineering and the natural sciences majors relative to similarly ranked schools. The technical sciences have representation ratio (% of technical students at this school: % of technical students in GMAT taker population) of just 1.2:1 at Harvard while at MIT they have a representation ratio of 2.4:1. Darden at a representation ration of just 1.1:1 while UCLA/Anderson, a moderate user of the case method has a representation ratio of 2.2:1.

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