MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 2457
Given Kudos: 2
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Re: Less "Calling All" thread activity -> fewer apps this year?
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11 Oct 2011, 11:04
There has already been talk amongst adcoms that they are expecting fewer apps this year.
The only thing that has grown is the sheer number of admissions consultants haha (it seems like every month a new one sprouts up).
I wouldn't be surprised if there were fewer apps. It would be similar to what happened in 2004 and 2005, which was the "hangover" years from the dot-com crash that bottomed out in 2002. This time, the 2011 apps is a hangover from the late 2008 crash.
It goes through cycles. Right now, on the margins I think there are more people who would rather stay put in a job than risk going back to school, especially when they hear of b-school grads having trouble finding work (even those at the top schools).
Another thing is perhaps a more longer-term trend that may alarm the b-schools: lack of interest from certain demographics. It seems like Indian applicants continue to drive the numbers (but again it's likely hit a plateau), the numbers of mainland Chinese have plateaued, and the rest of the world seems to be stagnating if not shrinking -- seems like b-schools still have trouble attracting Western European applicants and American applicants who aren't Asian-American. With Europeans, the MBA doesn't have the same kind of cachet or ubiquity like it does in North America, so of the potential Euros that apply, the European schools probably capture a big enough segment (and therefore there won't be much more beyond that that are interested in going to the US). So it could be demographics coupled with the period in the economic cycle that can cause applications to drop. Basically, less white people (Americans and Euros) applying which is driving down the decline and not enough others (US underrepresented minorities, Latin Americans, Africans, Middle Easterners, etc.) to make up for that decline.