> what part of getting an MBA filters for "possessing soft skills, being personable, ready to meet with clients or manage people and probably well-connected"?

MBAs at the top schools demand intense team work. Without it, you won't pass.

My MBA experience was INSEAD, in France. For the first 3 terms (of 5), all work was done in teams of 5. The school chose the teams explicitly to maximise the chance of conflict (by maximising differences in background, nationality, prior education, work experience, age and gender). The professors then threw tons of work on us. A well-functioning team could just about cope. Totally impossible if working individually.

So we had no option but figure out how to work together, maximise the combined value of each person's skills, and rely fully on each other.

A few teams exploded spectacularly. But most of us learned how to work as a team and succeed under intense pressure.

HBS still does this, as far as I know for first years ("learning teams"). Although you may be evaluated individually, success or failure is a team effort when everybody brings something to the table.

So if diversity makes things so hard why everybody insists on creating diversity in your teams? I understand you might need to face it but why not keep team homogenous to get the best out of them without too much trouble?

>what part of getting an MBA filters for "possessing soft skills, being personable, ready to meet with clients or manage people and probably well-connected"?

An MBA is extremely team-driven. Classes are heavily discussion focused rather than having a lecturer simply teach a subject. There are lots of presentations and routine working with others.

I know all degrees have this to an extent but the MBA experience is exceptional in the level of collaboration needed. Because most of the people taking an MBA class have several years of real-world company experience, you end up learning heavily from the cohort as a whole rather than simple the "expert" professor.

I have a CS degree and an MBA and the difference in the amount of interpersonal effort between the two degrees is enormous.

There are multiple in-person interviews, your resume has to be pretty balanced (you can't just be a math wiz), you need to show a track record of performing well on the job for 3-5 years prior to your MBA, usually in the form of multiple promotions, which signals you're not terrible to work with. Also helps to have a broad range of interests (including things you like doing for fun) because admission committees don't want to exclusively admit kids who just like to golf and play poker (though many of those do get admitted).

TL;DR Admissions for top MBAs are very holistic, and schools will try their best to create diverse classes made up of well-rounded individuals. Some schools do this better than others, but then again each school is trying to solve for a different outcome and just like hiring, admitting students isn't an exact science.

Honest question: Do you think this disadvantages people who have basically followed a traditional path? By that I mean, if you are a finance major from Harvard, Yale, etc who goes to work at a large firm (say Goldman).

Is there a chance they might get looked down upon because of the emphasis on the "whole person" or finding "interesting" candidates.

Poets & Quants MBA odds doesn't talk about those kids, yet they will freely admit many of them end up at a top program for their MBA.

(For the record, this is not me personally, but still I wonder how these kinds of candidates get evaluated, given the current environment)

>Is there a chance they might get looked down upon because of the emphasis on the "whole person" or finding "interesting" candidates.

There is a deliberate admissions emphasis on ensuring the class is as diverse (in terms of viewpoint and experience) as possible. An MBA class full of only people with finance degrees would be a poor experience for everyone.

No question that people who are in that situation need to have some other defining traits that an admissions committee might find attractive, but I'm not sure if that sends a broad signal to people like, 'Don't pursue finance, we have enough of those people already'.

Do any of these articles track what effect this kind of messaging has had on the number of MBA's choosing specific concentrations?