Stanford MBA Class Profile: Successful Efforts in Diversity

Stanford Graduate School of Business has released its profile of the MBA Class of 2022. This year, 436 students make up the largest class in the school’s history.

Despite the difficulties over the course of the admissions season, Stanford GSB managed to make significant progress in its efforts to diversify the program. Wil Torres, Assistant Director of Outreach and Diversity at Stanford since 2018, has been at the forefront of programs and initiatives designed to improve representation among students of more diverse backgrounds, including the recent launch of the school’s Action Plan for Racial Equity. Regarding the school’s outreach, he says, “It’s been both a top-down and a bottom-up grassroots effort. For us in the MBA admissions office, it’s been a question of, ‘how do we harness that energy?’ At Stanford, we joke about the ‘gift of feedback’—that’s something that we’ve actively practiced at the MBA admissions office. How do we take that candid honest feedback and use it as an opportunity to grow? And then what made it special was in addition to that feedback, folks were rolling their sleeves up and asking how to help.”

Kirsten Moss, Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, shared with Clear Admit, “I would say this is the class that I am most proud of. The entire team worked so hard to make the many strategic decisions that took place. For us to deliver a class that we feel is so strong, and the care and compassion it took to actually transition and enroll them and all of that along the way, it’s just been phenomenally difficult…but also at the end of it you look back and say wow, we really delivered a class that we are so, so proud of.”

Here are some key elements of the profile:

Diverse Representation: Women, Minorities, International Students, and More

For the first time, Stanford GSB is tracking first-generation students, which make up 9 percent of the incoming class.

U.S. students of color, which includes U.S. citizens, dual citizens, and permanent residents, make up 37 percent of the total class. Students of color are recognized as those who identify as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Asian American, African American, Hispanic, or multiethnic. This year the school is also reporting a more in-depth profile of racial and ethnic demographics that reflects more intersectionality. The profile uses multi-identity reporting in addition to reporting according to federal guidelines, allowing students who identify as multiple races and ethnicities to do so.

Thirty-five percent are international students representing 66 countries. Together the class speaks 70 languages.

Women make up 47 percent of the class, up from the low forties in previous years. Moss credits “organic, grassroots” efforts with improving the representation of women in the program. “The key issue with women was really about seeing themselves at an MBA program, it’s a very different buy-in process.” Female students at Stanford GSB held over 100 coffee chats around the world with other women interested in pursuing their MBA.

Academic and Professional Achievement

Despite the complications 2020 presented, the Class of 2022 came in with the highest average GPA in the school’s history. Fourteen percent already hold an advanced degree. Thirty-seven percent of students hold an undergraduate degree in STEM, 44 percent in humanities & social science, and 18 percent in business.

The professional backgrounds of the incoming class vary widely.  The top three industries represented are investment management/private equity/venture capital with 20 percent of students,  consulting with 17 percent, and technology with 14 percent. The next largest sectors represented are government, education, and non-profit work, followed by the arts, media, and entertainment.