It used to be – back in the days – in my generation, that unless you have 5+ years of work experience comfortably under your belt, you should not even think about applying to business schools. For a professional degree in business administration and general management, it makes sense that schools would covet those individuals with the requisite personal and professional development and readily available knowledge and experience to make an impact in the world of business. Those of us who have worked in the real world for more than just one or two years all know that professional maturity does not usually (and I emphasize the word “usually”) occur until one passes the first two years of career freshmen-dom. Furthermore, it is perfectly understandable that business schools would wish to build on the wealth of experiences embraced by their potential incoming students and mold future professionals through intriguing exchange of intellectual ideas, global exposures, cultural clashes and insights, as well as other intermix of expertise across disciplines, industries, functions, sectors, and countries. Naturally, it was believed that none of these things can be easily extracted from younger and less experienced applicants/minds. Therefore, this has been the trend in MBA admissions for almost as long as one can remember.

I am not one to opine on its validity or legitimacy. I do agree that it has certain merits that warrant its longstanding status in the MBA admissions world. It always amazes me how naïve and blissfully ignorant those fresh-out-of-college youngins are, although it does not preclude the potential of them picking things up quickly later on in their career. But so long as business schools have a choice, they would obviously opt for applicants with more experience in the business world for all the above reasons already stated.  However, in recent years, this trend has taken a noticeable turn. The “official” rationale amongst top business schools for undertaking this drastic change in admissions criteria is that they no longer feel justified in deciding when is the absolutely “best” or “right” time for someone to apply to business school. The admissions committees at major business schools have come to the conclusion that certain young minds attain leadership qualities and professional poise sooner than some of their older counterparts.  They thus want to be more open to and flexible with their admissions policy in hopes for “finding true talent”.  And if that means lowering the age requirement/work experience in order to catch those occasional young exceptions managing to stay on the fast lanes of the career highway traffic, then be it.  According to the University of Chicago and other top business schools, including Stanford, they need to experiment with younger minds and less experienced candidates to balance out the prior trend of accepting only those with a certain seniority in career.

This may be good news for those applicants who have had only 1 or 2 years of work experience but nevertheless blurred the criteria for business school admission. For those of us in the industry, there is one less concrete “reference point” against which we measure prospective applicants’ likelihood of success of getting admitted into top business schools.  But such is life. The admissions journey is ultimately one paved with arbitrary roadblocks juxtaposed against otherwise helpful signposts.

– by Frances,  June 2013