P&Q’s Must Reads: Sarah Soule Becomes The First Woman To Be Named Dean Of Stanford GSB

Hello everyone  — Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

Stanford Graduate School of Business on Wednesday (January 15) announced that Sarah Soule, a long-time OB professor and member of the school’s leadership team, will be the B-school’s next dean — the first woman appointed to the job. An outspoken champion for DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion), she officially begins office as Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean on June 16, more than 14 months after her predecessor Jonathan Levin left to become Stanford’s president.

Read more about the appointment and Soule’s background now, from our homepage.

When the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management announced in November that it’s launching a one-year master of business administration program next summer, it joined a growing number of business schools responding to prospective students’ worries about the return on investment of a traditional two-year MBA.

While the two-year MBA has long been considered the gold standard of graduate business education, data suggests that may be changing.

Learn more about the reasons behind the one-year MBA’s ascension in this story, in our trending tab.

When Trump was last President, U.S. schools  experienced a drop in international students, largely attributed to the widespread perception that the U.S. had become less welcoming to students from abroad. Some international MBA students even declined to go on global immersions for fear that they would not be allowed back into the U.S. And more international students faced prolonged wait times for their F-1 student visas. Already, a growing number of U.S. colleges and universities. including Harvard and MIT, have advised their current international students to return to campus before Trump’s inauguration office over concerns that he might impose travel bans.

Now, there’s fear that a second Trump presidency will also depress international student numbers. 

Read about what admissions officials and consultants think about this issue in this story, now on our homepage.

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: MBA Admissions Trends And Predictions For 2025. Former admissions directors & industry insiders from the world’s top B-schools offer insights to help MBA candidates navigate the year ahead. Find their predictions in this story, in our news tab.

Next: 2024 MBA Admission Advice. This collection features all our MBA admission articles from throughout the year, so you don’t have to click around to find them. You can find it our admission hub. 

Finally: Applying In Round 3: What Are Your Chances? This story, Matt Symonds of Fortuna Admissions, is in our admissions hub.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert school seekers to our events tab from our main menu. There, you’ll find all the upcoming admissions events for a range of degrees and programs including full-time and online MBAs, specialized masters, entrepreneurship and more. Registration is free.

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening.