It’s not just prospective students who are giving up on business schools—so are the professionals who admit them. In the past two years, at least eight admissions directors have left their jobs at schools ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek, including Stanford, Harvard and Columbia. Several have taken posts at other universities, while at least two have become student admissions consultants; most were industry veterans. The timing of these departures struck several current and former admissions officers and observers as coincidental. Still, all of these sources acknowledge that the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath intensified pressures on admissions teams.

“For anyone working at an academic institution during Covid, it was a lot,” says Shelly Heinrich, an associate dean for admissions at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business. “Testing centers were closing, you could no longer take tests. The borders were closed. One of the reasons I love my job is we travel all around the world—and Covid put a stop to it.”