Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 355—10 years of experience. Online or Executive MBA. Back to India.

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MBA Wire Taps 355—10 years of experience. Online or Executive MBA. Back to India. · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:16
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, June 3, 2024. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
• 0:27
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:28
  Speaker A: So what's cooking? I mean, now we're, you know, I'm hearing schools announcing essay topics for next season, but I'm also seeing on Livewire still activity with waitlist movement and lots of people asking questions on Livewire like, hey, anybody heard anything? So it seems like there's still a lot going on with this year's cycle.
• 0:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're still getting a lot of questions, like you say, about the wait list. I think there's a lot of anxious people on Columbia's waitlist, for example, and not getting real good clarity out of Columbia's office, I think in terms of the next steps, or at least that's the suspect based off the conversations online. But we're also seeing some movement off waitlists. So those that are on waitlist, I think we are seeing more movement this season than in prior seasons for this time of year, which is quite strange given that we've all talked about the fact that application volumes are up this season. So something odds going on in that regard. Upcoming this week, LBS, TEpA, and McCombs will be releasing some decisions. So still some activity. Graham?
• 1:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I think what one person said to me in the industry whose name will remain anonymous is that they wondered aloud if is it that there are more applications but not more applicants or so that would explain more waitlist movement. So if people were just submitting more apps, and we did see there were a bunch of waitlist acceptances, or at least a handful for HBS last week means there's going to be more movement, presumably because some of those people who may be getting off the list at HBS are going to then turn down schools further down the rank. I mean, just yet, it has this sort of trickle down effect. So we'll see. But yeah, it's been an exciting year, and I'll be really curious to see what happens with application volume this coming cycle. Just very hard to predict at this point.
• 2:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's just better if we could get a better sense of applicant volume, not just application volume. Yes, and I'm convinced that that is the case because schools have effectively made it easier to apply to their programs, whether it's through test waivers, shortened essays, application fee waivers, various other sort of tactics that some schools have deployed will increase the number of applications.
• 2:43
  Speaker A: And there are tools out there for candidates that maybe are making it easier for them to apply to multiple schools like chat, GPT, or just AI tools. Right? So yeah, it's a wild west right now. We'll see how it evolves. I will say we've had more people registering on our site over the last year, but I think that's just because we're awesome. I don't think that has to do with the size of the applicant pool. I don't know. We'll see. In any event, we wrapped up our last event in our webinar series last week. That was with Wharton and Lbs inside. Carnegie Mellon and Columbia had a lot of fun on that session, but now I'm sad because we don't have any for a little while. But I'm going to actually sort of sneak premiere here on the show. The fact that in July we're going to do four webinars about essay writing. And what we do is we always have a handful of schools join us for each of our webinars, and we kind of grill the admissions directors about why they ask these essay questions, what they're looking for. So really vital advice if you're applying to these schools. And I'll tell you, Alex, this is not posted yet, but the list of schools is pretty amazing. We have like Duke, insead, lbs, Wharton, Darden, Dartmouth, Berkeley. I can't read the whole, I mean, Yale, Columbia, it's a long list and they're all going to join us this summer. So I'm really excited. In fact, I think it's sold out in terms of schools having slots to join us. So yeah, it's been great and I'm sure we'll get a lot of candidates, so please sign up. When we put that up on the website, it's again, this isn't live yet, so you probably have another week or two before you'll be able to sign up on our website. But stay tuned.
• 4:14
  Speaker B: And I assume you'll be adding the question to each of the schools how they're going to treat AI created or brainstormed essays. Because at the end of the day, candidates will use these tools, depending, I mean, and I think they should, right? It's certainly in the brainstorming stage. Get the AI to read your resume, brainstorm some thoughts and ideas based off of a particular essay topic, etcetera. We should assume that candidates are doing that. It'd be interesting to see if any of these schools have explicit policies in place.
• 4:53
  Speaker A: Yep, we'll ask about that. That is assuming that the schools show up and don't send a bot to answer the questions in these webinars. We'll see. Because I wonder to what extent they're very good using these tools on the admissions side, too. In any event, over on the website, speaking of admissions, we did offer two admissions tips over the last week that are worth reading. One is about volunteer experience and how to present that in your application, and the other is about choosing between schools. So if you've gotten in off a waitlist and now you're faced with a dilemma, or if you just generally got into multiple programs, we have a nice admissions tip about that that we ran. And we've also, Alex, you'll be happy to hear we've restarted a column called Weekly Refresh, where every week we run down the latest deadlines, essay topics, and essay topic analyses that we publish on the site because schools are starting for the 2004 2005 cycle of admissions to release their deadlines and essays. So, you know, haas good.
• 5:49
  Speaker B: Graham. It's 2024. 2025. You referenced 20 years ago.
• 5:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know what? It's your fault. Cause you sent me down this rabbit hole this morning of going into watch this, like, AI generated video with all these people from the past. So I guess I'm just living in the past this morning, in any event. Yeah, so we're running those down. And actually, Berkeley, LBS, I think, Wharton, Columbia, they all have their essay topics out or have promised that they're staying the same for the coming cycle. So if you're an early bird candidate, you can already start thinking about essays, believe it or not. So, yeah, other than that, Alex, we did have some more real humans on the website. We caught up with Timothy, who is an essay grad from 2012, and he's actually originally from Manila in the Philippines, and he is an entrepreneur. He started a company called Build it, which is a construction startup venture. Little unclear to me exactly what they're doing, but I think they're probably facilitating the way that contractors and folks connect and things. So, in any event, we did ask Timothy, what piece of advice do you wish you had been given during your MBA? And he said, the two years at Essay really flew by so fast, especially once you're in the daily grind of MBA life. What I've come to learn is that the most limited resource during any MBA program is time. And there are so many opportunities in and out of the classroom competing for it. If there's anything I would tell current prospective students, it is that they need to decide earlier on the things that they want or need to focus on to get the most out of their MBA experience because admittedly there won't be enough time to do everything. Speaking with current students and alumni will definitely go a long way into helping shape that. So speak to them and come into the MBA in the right frame of mind. So there you go, Alex. Another kind of grad from a top program talking about, yeah, just the premium on time when you're in a program.
• 7:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it just gets again back to this notion of why schools really want to know your goals, why you're here, etcetera, even through the admissions essays. Because at the end of the day, those that really understand why they're doing what they're doing will make the most of that time. That is a scarce resource, as they point out. So, yeah, really good advice.
• 8:10
  Speaker A: And then we also caught up with Carmen. She's a Kellogg grad from this past year, class of 23, who works at BCG as a management consultant, hails from Queens, New York and had been in nonprofit as a program coordinator prior to business school. And again, we asked the same question, like, what piece of advice do you wish you'd been given during your MBA? And she said, before you start your first day of class, spend time getting clear on your goals. What do you want to be able to say you accomplished when you walk across the graduation stage? Think big. Do you want to shape campus culture, dive deep into entrepreneurship, or become an expert in a field or skill? Do you want to focus on building relationships with people from different backgrounds and experiences? Do you want to experiment with work life harmony? Do you want to find the love of your life or build lifelong friendships? Think about what will make you proud of yourself and use that as your guide as you're making decisions about where to spend your time. There are so many amazing opportunities and things happening in the business school environment, and it's easy to just aimlessly say yes to things and fill your place. It's okay to be choosy and prioritize what is good for you. So, Carmen, definitely echoing what Timothy had to say, right? I mean, there's a lot of sort of symmetry there.
• 9:20
  Speaker B: Absolutely. It's like going to chat, GPT, putting in the same question and then hitting reload on the answer.
• 9:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's interesting.
• 9:28
  Speaker B: I mean, brilliant. And these are both great, great advice, for sure.
• 9:31
  Speaker A: And these are folks who graduated, you know, more than ten years apart. Right. So it's definitely something that still rings true, apparently. Other than that, we did run a couple of other things on the website I wanted to mention. We had a piece from the coach chairs of the Kellogg climate conference. So if you're interested in sustainability or climate change and its sort of intersection with the business world, definitely go and read that. There's a whole rundown of everything that happened at the Kellogg climate conference. And again, it was the chairs to Kellogg students who reported in on that. We also caught up with Chris from Tuck, who talked about founding a startup. So this is Tuck student who just graduated and started a startup called team up therapy that basically helps provide kind of counseling services to people in rural locations. So very interesting story from Chris and just how he kind of used his time in business school to build a business. And then last but not least, we caught up with six current students at UCLA Anderson as part of our real human student series. I think that's the last one in the books now. We were kind of waiting on that one, and it finally came across. So, very good insights there. You can go and check out those profiles if you're interested. Alex, I guess we got to get moving. We got some candidates to talk about this week. And so, as always, if you want to reach out to Alex and I just write to infocleeradmit.com, comma, use the subject line wiretaps. But, Alex, anything else from you before we talk about this week's candidates?
• 10:58
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 10:59
  Speaker A: All right, off we go. So this is wiretaps candidate number one. Our first candidate this week has nine schools on the target list, and those schools are Berkeley, Harvard, INSEAd, MIT, Kellogg, Stanford, Chicago, Wharton, and Yale. And they have been working as a software engineer and also in sales. They've got ten years of experience. They want to start business school in the fall of 25. So they're just beginning the application process now. They think they want to do consulting, but they also mention tech as possible kind of landing place after business school. And they include all the usual suspects, from Bain and BCG and McKinsey to Accenture, Ernst and Young, Deloitte, etcetera. And then they mention a bunch of tech companies like Apple and Facebook. They have a 675 on the GMAT Focus edition, which, if you're trying to figure out what that means, it's about a 730 on the old scale of the old test. Sorry. They had a 66% GPA, which they earned at one of the top engineering schools in India. And so we know that that's on a kind of hundred percent scale and that seeing anyone around 80% is kind of rare. So 66 maybe not as bad as it might sound to the american audience's. Ears. They spent three years working as a software engineer, then moved into business management for another three years and then they left India, where they're from and where they had studied and moved to Canada and they've been working in sales again. I think it's for maybe for the same company, it's unclear, but they have been doing that for like three and a half years now and they're a canadian citizen. They earned that citizenship I guess, by living there for a handful of years. And you know, they mentioned they did a lot of kind of extracurriculars when they were in school. A little bit lighter now. And Alex, I'll let you get into this, but I did want to call out one thing. They mentioned that they had a hundredth percentile in the GMAT quantitative section, a 90th percentile in the decision analysis. I can't remember what it's called, but the kind of decision making section. And then they had a 51st percentile in the verbal. So I just want to give that info to you. What do you make of this candidacy? And I guess the last thing I should mention is they seem like they want to focus on one year type programs. And so for the programs they listed, some of them, you know, MIT, Kellogg, Stanford, they know are, you know, they're looking at the one year versions of those programs. So anyway, just would love your kind of input on this.
• 13:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean this candidate sort of covers both ends of the spectrum in terms of, you know, their numbers I think are probably very good. Right. Like you say, the 675 GMAT is about a 730 on the old test and yeah it's heavily quant focused and they're a software engineer, or at least they trained as an engineer, I guess as an undergrad. So there might be a little bit of communication issue. Just making sure that that's dealt with, I guess through the application process. The 66% GPA is probably pretty decent. They'd want to try to articulate class rank and so forth if that's available. But you know, their career, I'm assuming they've done well. They started off as a software engineer, as you said, and then transitioned into business management. So I like to see that sort of elevation, that movement from pure coding sort of idea to actually managing etcetera or look or focusing on the business side. And now they're in sales in Canada and I assume it's probably b, two b sales. So maybe there's a heavy dose of business development in there and so forth. So you could argue that they've and they begin to, well, I call it football, you all call it soccer or whatever, but they're big into football as an athlete, I assume as a fan, too. So they're not only a worker be, they've got some sort of outside activities that help sort of broaden, broaden out a little bit about who they are. But I think this whole notion of they have worked for ten years, right? So this makes them, makes them an outlier in terms of years of work experience for traditional full time MBA programs. So if they, they do ultimately target traditional MBA programs, they're going to really need to emphasize why now? Why does now make sense given where they've come, what they plan to do, why now, why this school, etc. Etc. So someone with three or four years of experience, or four or five years of experience right on the median has to spend less time in effort articulating that notion. So to overcome that, they're like, well, actually I'm kind of targeting one year programs, which does make sense for someone with longer years of experience. They want to get in and out of the MBA so they can get back on their career trajectory. So I can understand it from that standpoint. But whether that really applies to this candidate or not, I'm not so sure. And some of the one year programs that they're targeting, I think are probably, you know, the sort of Sloan programs or whatever, they are probably looking for a little bit more leadership. And then the Kellogg program we talked about before, I don't know if they qualify for that, given when they graduated undergrad in an engineering degree. So, yeah, it's going to be a bit challenging. They're going to have to target the first round. Right. So even though that they're working now in Canada, they are, you know, originally from India, lots of their life and everything built up in India, their first parts, their works range. So they've been in Canada for two or three years. So that helps differentiate them a little bit. But nevertheless, they're going to have to target the first rounds. I think that overall, Graham, they've got a decent profile. I just worry that they don't truly stand out and this, this longer work experience is going to be something that they're going to have to, I'm not saying overcome because hopefully having a longer experience means they've got more stories to tell and more sort of experiences to draw from. But it's still, they're a bit of an outlier there.
• 17:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's an interesting candidacy because on the one hand you say, well, they went to a great, maybe one of the IIts in India. And, you know, their GPA is maybe not great, but as you say, the class rank might be very high, even with that GPA. And test score is fine. I mean, it's in line with the averages at top schools. But, yeah, I do worry about, like, do they fit the bill for, as you say, the Sloan fellows type programs that are on offer at Stanford and MIT? I think London business School also offers that. It's like this one year kind of masters in management for kind of mid career folks. And I just. Yeah, I wonder if they would be considered mid career. I guess. I mean, they could be, but, yeah, it's like they're neither@the.net or the baseline in tennis. They're kind of like in that sort of mid range, and it's hard to know which is the right fit. But I think that it does make a lot of sense for them to transition into consulting. I mean, they would probably be quite strong at that. It's a logical kind of move. I just feel like, yeah, they probably need to cast a slightly wider net and they probably need to apply in the first round because the level of competition at these top schools is going to be really high. And I think you had an exchange with them where they mentioned that. Didn't they mention. Yeah, they had applied, I guess, to Michigan, Ross in round three, and they were put on the waitlist. So they were like, oh, I'm pretty competitive. I'm going to aim for the stars. But I would encourage them to look kind of top 16, not just the very top of the heap, but again, there could be something here. They seem like you say, pretty active and was this the candidate that also is into like bird watching and nature? Right? Yeah. So, yeah. So that's another kind of feather in their cap. Sorry, couldn't resist.
• 19:28
  Speaker B: But, yeah, your analogies and puns are very good, Graham, for this candidate.
• 19:33
  Speaker A: So in any event. Yeah, so I think. But one question for you is, do you think they should retake the test? Like, we debated with them and I think you said yes, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:43
  Speaker B: I mean, the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what the score is if you think you can get a better score, even though the score, I would think, is very good and certainly a lot better than I would be able to get. But if a candidate thinks they can get a better score and they've got the time and the wherewithal to do it, just do it. It's something that the candidate still has some control over. So from that regard, absolutely do it. I certainly think they need to, to be as a reapplicant at Ross Round one. Fantastic. So they should definitely throw their hat in there. Again, I think Ross, for whatever reason, in the back of my mind I think Ross is a good fit for this candidate.
• 20:28
  Speaker A: One last thing on this candidate I would say is that verbal percentile concerns me because it risks stereotyping them. As you said earlier, the engineer good with tech, not necessarily with people showing that they can get a better score there. And also that would just boost their overall score dramatically. They added a few points on the verbal side. They would end up in the stratosphere on their overall results. So yeah, something to think about as they head into ideally round one applications. Anyway, I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's move on though and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate for this week has eleven schools on the target list and those schools include Tepper, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Indiana, Michigan, MIT, NYU, Rice, UCLA and Wharton. This person's an entrepreneur. They've been working, running their own company and that's what they want to do after business school as well. They have a 3.2 gpa. They have a GRE score of 323, but it taken quite some time ago so they may need to retake. They've got seven years of work experience. They have two Stem bachelor's degrees. I guess they did that concurrently. And they also have a PhD in a stem field. They are the founder, as I said, of a VC backed startup and have been doing that for like seven years now and they've won many awards. They're actually looking though this is, and I presume this is why you picked them. They're looking for an online or executive MBA program as they learn while leading their startup. So they don't want to take a two year break. They want to do this concurrently. And there's a broad range of schools on their list. As I said, there are eleven schools. But Alex, what do you make of this? This is not something we talk about a lot, but there are a number of really good online, hybrid, part time type programs out there and they have a lot of them on the list here.
• 22:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's no doubt in my mind that this is a candidate that top business schools would want. So obviously this person's goals are very different in terms of how they want to get the NBA, stay at their startup and continue along, which I completely understand. So I'm not trying to sway them away from how they've articulated their goals and what they want to do. But I just want to illustrate that, you know, some of the very best candidates for top tier programs are actually probably going to end up in some of these sort of more online and hybrid type offerings or even executive mbas simply because of their own particular situations, goals and needs. So this is a PhD stem founded as VC backed startups and has been running it for seven years. We obviously don't know much about that particular situation, but I mean, it's VC back that's pretty impressive in of itself. They took the GRE in the past well, if they were applying for full time, I'd tell them to hurry up and take it again, prepare this time and get a 330 whatever, right? Because they got a 323 without any prep. Which is again, back to our conversation a little bit earlier. If you think you can squeeze more points out of a test score, go and do it because you need to present your best profile. But that again, for this candidate, it might be that they reach out to the schools that they're targeting, whether it's Ross's hybrid program or TEPA or whatever it might be, and see whether they're offering test waivers. And especially, I mean, if you've got a PhD stem, that is probably the gold standard excuse, for want of a better word, for requesting a waiver. As people know that follow this show, we don't recommend that route at all, if ever, for full time applications to top programs. But in this case, is the admissions rigor as sensitive with these hybrid programs with the executive mbas? Probably not. But if I was this candidate, I would follow up directly with a couple of these schools and ask them what their policy would be. But yeah, the other reason why I love this candidate, Graham is they put the word learn in terms of their goals. They literally want to get the MBA to learn the toolkit offered by business schools so that they can run their business more effectively and do some more effective things with what they're doing. So I really love that. But yeah, I think this person really potentially a superstar, but because of their circumstances, the online hybrid program or even the executive MBA would make better sense.
• 25:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, I loved the fact that they pointed out that there's so much that they're looking forward to learn about and it was just refreshing because sometimes you get the feel that there's a subset of the MBA applicant pool who are kind of like, oh, I'm going to get the MBA to get my resume stamped basically. And so yeah, it was really refreshing to read that I will say I think they should take a test, whether it's the executive assessment, the GMAT, whatever test they want to take, but I think they should take it because I mean, it'd be good to know what their GPA was if they in the masters leading to the PhD or something. But they had a three two undergrad GPA. And so if they had a really high test score that maybe it just might help. But I'm saying that if they're really focusing on the very, very best schools on their list, like they obviously have Wharton's executive MBA listed here and the criteria for that program are quite steep. Right. So it depends on where they're aiming. The other school that I just wanted to mention that wasn't on the list is Georgetown. They have a hybrid flex MBA that might suit this person's needs as well. They have a lot of schools on the list, so they're going to need to narrow it down. And the other thing that I would suggest to them is that they need to really focus on the sort of challenges and business issues that are going to be most relevant to an entrepreneur. And so they might want to explore these programs and just see how much of the coursework might be geared towards that angle. Because you don't want to end up in an executive MBA program where everyone around you is a corporate senior vp looking to become president or something. You want to make sure that you're still in a fairly entrepreneurial environment and that the people you're studying with are facing some of the challenges that you might face in your business and things are similar. So I would encourage them to do their homework. That might help them to narrow the list a bit from eleven to say four to six schools that they may want to look at. But yeah, really interesting. I'm glad you picked this because we don't get to talk about these kind of candidates very often.
• 27:30
  Speaker B: No, very good. Very good. Would you suggest that they look at Babson?
• 27:34
  Speaker A: Oh, I hadn't thought about Babson and honestly, I don't even know if Babson. I presume they have an executive ma, but I don't know for sure. So it's possible. I think they can benefit from a program that's not like sort of pure entrepreneurship, but that has an entrepreneurial spirit. So I think obviously the Sloans and Wharton's on their list are looking quite attractive if they can get a decent score and present well. But yeah, it depends. They need to do some research, but this is a big list and they're never going to apply to eleven. So they need to narrow it. I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Very cool stuff. Glad that they're reading our site and hanging out and sharing this because I think it's good for people to know, but let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three, our third candidate has a whopping 14 schools on the list. I'm not even going to read them all because it's really a who's who of the US kind of top 16. So you can imagine who's on the list. And this is something we see a lot at this time of year with someone filling out an apply wire entry on our site. You know, you usually have a very large list of targets. That narrows as you move forward. This candidate won't to start in the fall of 25. They have been working in investment banking first and then they went to join a startup as an assistant to the CEO. They are looking to now pivot out into consulting. They've got Bain, BCG and McKinsey on the target list. They've taken the GRE and they got a 330. They have a GPA of 3.79, which was earned at Notre Dame while studying business. I actually studied finance at Notre Dame. Four years of work experience to date. I think it's evenly split. Like a couple years as an investment banking analyst doing tech coverage for a well known investment bank, and then a couple years working as the chief of staff to the CEO of an early stage fintech company. Now the one wrinkle that I should mention is that this candidate is from Mumbai, India, came to the US to do their Notre Dame undergrad, where they earned that 379. And then they did banking out on the west coast of the US. And then they did something quite unusual that I want you to talk about, Alex. They kind of went back to India, to Mumbai, where they're in this kind of fintech company as the sort of chief of staff to the CEO. The GRE score, I actually misspoke. They said it was a 331, not a 300 3330. So very, very strong GRE score. And, you know, as I said, they mentioned they want to work in consulting, but they want to kind of combine their valuation experience from investment banking with their on the ground experience in the startup to basically add value to tech clients. And then in the long term they would love to source and manage tech investments as a venture capitalist or angel investor. There you have it. Alex, what do you make of this candidate? It.
• 30:26
  Speaker B: What's wrong with Darden and Anderson, the two schools in the top 16?
• 30:31
  Speaker A: I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know why they're not on there.
• 30:34
  Speaker B: It took me five minutes to stare at that list to figure that out.
• 30:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's what you've been doing while I was talking. Yeah. All right. So. But.
• 30:41
  Speaker B: Exactly. So what did you ask me? I have no idea. I'm kidding. Quite honestly, Graham, I love this candidate because I tend to tell you why I love the candidate. Obviously, they've got super numbers and, you know, they graduated undergraduate here, they did their banking stuff. So that's probably a pretty typical route out of undergrad for the top graduate, you know, top tier of the graduating class. But then they went back to India in this startup fintech situation. I don't know we've ever featured a candidate from India that's done that or done something similar, because typically our candidates, once they've done an undergraduate here, they would have worked here and then, well, I say here, I'm in Cornwall. They haven't worked in Cornwall, they've worked in the US and so on and so forth, and then they're doing their MBA. So this person's done something I would qualify as unorthodox. So it'd be really interesting in their admissions essays when they articulate why they chose to do that. This would be a great opportunity for them to sort of share some of their decision making there because I think they could really position this as a real standout point of their profile because they're still going to be overrepresented in the pool. So they're typical. They've got to apply in the first rounds, do all that stuff. But the fact that they had the wherewithal and, and so on and so forth to make this transition back to India, I think is super interesting. Graham. And I think they should be able to exploit that to some extent. And I think top schools are really going to like that. So I'm quite impressed with what they've done here in that regard.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a really interesting profile. I mean, they fall in the kind of general range of the years of experience you would expect to see. They're going to be right around the average. The numbers really jump out. 331 on the GRE, 379 at a decent undergrad studying finance. So they have the kind of building blocks here. And I agree that that move to the US for undergrad and some work experience in banking and then back to India for this chief of staff role at a fintech, I mean, it's unusual. And I just think it's going to play well, I do think, like you say, they should play in the first round, but yeah, I mean, the only thing that is missing here and that I was kind of curious about is what sort of outside activities they have, kind of what makes them interesting. Now, I'm sure they're pretty busy. It sounds like they've had a very challenging career to date, but hopefully there's enough to fill in the third leg of the stool, or whatever you want to call it. Right? Because they have the academics, they have interesting work experience. They sound like they've probably had some interesting cultural experiences moving back and forth between the two markets. But I'd like to know, I just would want, if they're aiming top 15 us, which is what they claim in their notes here, I'd love to know what else makes this person tick. What are they doing with their spare time, what are their hobbies, interests, volunteer work, et cetera. But assuming that that checks out, I think no reason not to be very optimistic about their chances at a top program.
• 34:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 34:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. So with that, I really appreciate, Alex, you picking these out. It just seems like, I know we've been doing this for years and years now, but I just feel like each week we get to talk about some little nuance of the application process that kind of comes to the fore and hopefully that's what keeps us cinching for everyone tuning in. But Alex, let's do this all again next week if you're willing.
• 34:24
  Speaker B: Very good. Take care everyone. Stay safe.