B-School becoming easier to get into, but harder to get a job after.

FOR THE FIRST two years of the current downturn that pattern largely held. But this year, business school is suddenly less of a draw. Applications for the B-school Class of ’05 — the students who will hit the books this fall — have fallen by as much as 30 percent at some top schools compared with last year. The University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, for example, has received 27 percent fewer applications for the autumn term than it did in 2002.