The following is an English adaptation of an article published in Hebrew by Globes. To access it, click here.
Elite U.S. universities — such as Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, and Berkeley — became the largest and most violent strongholds of the BDS movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, and other anti-Israel movements in the hours following the October 7 massacre. At several of them, including MIT, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania, changes even took place at the top of the universities following the support their administrations gave to violent protests and discrimination against Israelis on campus.
A new study reveals that despite the anti-Israel atmosphere, business schools at these institutions actually admitted more Israelis to MBA programs than in the years preceding the “Swords of Iron” war.
Thus, after Columbia Business School had 2–3 Israeli MBA students each year, in 2023 it had 10 Israelis, and the following year the number jumped to 16. MIT admitted a single-digit number of students to its business school each year, but in 2023, 11 students were admitted to the prestigious degree, and in 2024 the number rose to 22 students. Since then, the number fell to 13 last year. Similar data were also found at Harvard and at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, though since then the numbers have begun to decline again.
Another surprise on the list is the University of Chicago, a prominent pro-Palestinian stronghold, which tripled the number of Israeli students studying for an MBA at its Booth School of Business, from 5 students in 2023 to 15 in the past year.
What is driving the rise in Israeli students at prestigious MBA programs in the U.S.? Ron Aviv, Founder and CEO of Spring MBA Consulting, a company that advises candidates applying for graduate business studies abroad and conducted the study, explains:
“In 2024, we saw a kind of mild affirmative action on the part of admissions committees that wanted to change the atmosphere on campus, which had been anti-Israel. And not only toward Israelis: in 2024, several universities, such as Kellogg and MIT, waived the GMAT requirement — the main admissions test for MBA programs — for applicants from conflict zones. The leniency affected applicants from places such as Ukraine and Israel, for example. A year later, in 2025, we already saw a return to the norm, but the numbers still remained relatively high.”
Overall, in the seven leading business schools in the U.S. — Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, and Northwestern’s Kellogg — as well as the two leading universities in Europe, London Business School in the U.K. and INSEAD in France, 85 Israeli students studied for an MBA last year. That was down from 106 in 2024, but still higher than in any year before then. These students represent 74% of all Israeli MBA students worldwide, while the rest study at lower-ranked institutions such as Yale, Berkeley, Cornell, Duke, New York University, UCLA in Los Angeles, IESE in Spain, and HEC in Paris.
The “Swords of Iron” war also had a considerable impact on the number of candidates who initially applied to study. Aviv, who advises candidates on choosing study programs, says:
“Reserve duty and combat sharpened the motivation of many soldiers to study, and perhaps even to study abroad — not out of pessimism, but from a sense of motivation not to give up on themselves. These are not necessarily people who are relocating, but the experience sharpened a sense of urgency: ‘This is something I need to do now, and this is the time for a move that will be harder for me to make in the future.’”
Antisemitism on New England campuses might have been expected to deter Israelis from competing for places there, and instead lead them to choose friendlier academic institutions such as the University of Texas, the University of Florida, or Dartmouth — an Ivy League university, but one that adopted a friendlier approach toward Jews and Israelis. Yet Aviv argues that demand for elite universities has held up, despite the difficulty.
“These are candidates who come to fulfill the dream of studying at a place where they can build a network and earn a high salary in the future. It may cost a lot — average tuition is $170,000 for two years, and together with living expenses the total cost comes close to $300,000 — but when you invest that kind of time and money, you prefer a university that is a recognized and prestigious brand. Therefore, even if there were fewer protests at the University of Austin in Texas, demand for studies at Chicago or MIT was not hurt.”
The average starting salary among the roughly 15 top schools is around $170,000 per year, with deviations of up to about 10% between institutions. At the entry stage into the labor market, the gaps among the relatively outstanding schools are narrow. However, about three years after graduation, a separation begins to emerge between a small group of elite schools — led by Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and Columbia — and the rest.
“Thus, while the average salary of Harvard and Stanford graduates three years after the degree is around $250,000, the salaries of graduates of universities such as Cornell and Yale — both Ivy League institutions — are around $200,000.”
“These gaps reflect consistent access to especially lucrative opportunities: founding startups that raise capital from venture capital funds, early senior management roles in technology companies, and rapid advancement in private equity and investment banking,” says Aviv. “It is also important to remember that salary is strongly affected by geography and industry — a graduate working in San Francisco or New York will appear differently in the statistics than someone who chooses a career in London or Singapore.”
Among the prestigious institutions, MIT was ranked first this year in the Financial Times ranking of business schools, for the first time in its history, while Harvard was only ranked tenth.
“This win rests on particularly strong performance in salary metrics, alumni network, and research output, alongside stability in the other parameters examined,” says Aviv. “The main message for candidates is that American schools still lead by a consistent margin in salary metrics, mainly thanks to their strength in recruitment for technology, finance, and consulting. On the other hand, candidates aiming for an international career or fields such as sustainability and climate will prefer leading schools in Europe — especially in France, Spain, and the U.K.”
That said, Aviv says, the Financial Times methodology creates sharp movements between years, and sometimes reflects changes in the weighting of metrics more than any substantive change in academic quality.
“The absence of schools such as Stanford for the second consecutive year, and Columbia this year, illustrates the extent to which the ranking is not a complete snapshot of the global MBA market.”
What characterizes Israeli MBA graduates? As one might expect, most come from the tech industry and hold degrees in engineering or the sciences. Thirty-eight percent of graduates come from the tech industry, only 16% from finance, and 15% are public-sector employees.
“Tech is an internationally oriented industry, so from the outset more of its employees are interested in the international exposure offered by the degree, especially in the U.S.,” says Aviv. “In addition, the relative focus of Israel’s tech industry is on research and development. We see quite a few engineers who want to remain in tech but upgrade into a business role abroad at giants such as Amazon or Google, and they use the MBA to make that leap.”
