Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 464: 339 GRE, DC focused. Gaming career, 715 GMAT. Test waiver, three offers

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MBA Wire Taps 464: 339 GRE, DC focused. Gaming career, 715 GMAT. Test waiver, three offers · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: This is eric askins from the haas.
• 0:02
  Speaker B: School of business at university of california.
• 0:04
  Speaker A: Berkeley, and you're listening to the clear admit mba podcast. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, December 22, 2025. Looking for an MBA experience where you're truly seen, supported and inspired to grow at Vanderbilt Business. You'll discover a personalized learning environment that elevates your potential and turns ambition into action. Whether you're switching careers or accelerating your current path, the Vanderbilt MBA offers a customizable curriculum, exceptional outcomes, and a community committed to your success. Propel your future with a program invested in who you are and who you're becoming. Vanderbilt is waiving their $200 application fee for MBA Wiretaps listeners. To learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, visit business.vanderbilt.edu clearadmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things, Alex?
• 1:19
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:20
  Speaker A: So this is Christmas week, so obviously anyone tuning in who celebrates hope everything's coming together with preparations and we have a great though, Alex, We've got, we're going to hear from Bruce Delmonaco at Yale SOM as part of our admissions Director Q and A series. We connected with students at Tuck as part of the real humans work we do. We also have employment reports. They're coming fast and furious. Now we've got MIT and Tuck this week that we'll talk about some admissions tips and you picked out a few candidates, as always. But first, what's going on, Alex? Where are things with the wires? Yeah. What's on people's minds this week?
• 1:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, last week was probably, well, it was the final week of decision weeks for round one, and we saw a lot of activity out of Columbia and a couple of other schools, if memory serves. So, yeah, quite a lot of activity last week. We're going to see a real shift in gears over the next few weeks now because all those round one decisions from the top programs have been released. So the focus now moves Forward to round two for submitting applications. And that doesn't begin until January 5th or the 1st Monday in January, whatever date that is. That's great. But for that week, we'll have 29 application deadlines, so. Yeah, but that's in a couple of weeks time, so be a quiet couple of weeks on the wires directly. Graeme. Other than I should point out, actually, this is one of the times of year that decision wire becomes really active.
• 3:04
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 3:04
  Speaker B: Because One of the things that candidates can do with Decision Wire is if they've got multiple offers, they can share those offers and get feedback and guidance from our team and from other candidates in terms of where they might want to attend based on these multiple offers. And oftentimes there are no clear cut answers. So it's a really interesting sort of discussion board to follow actually this time of year. The Decision Wire and I did see.
• 3:39
  Speaker A: Last week a bunch of entries coming in. So it's off to the races. And yeah, it's great when people share that information and I love seeing the.
• 3:48
  Speaker B: Discussion and debate and correspondingly each week now for the next few weeks anyway, we'll include a Decision Wire entry and have that conversation directly on this podcast.
• 3:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, so we'll get into that today. We've got one there. I will. I'm happy to say there are no events coming up. So I know every week I've been plugging away on our events. We have some events in like late January, February, but I'm not going to talk about them this week because everyone's focused on the holidays and we'll have time to tackle that in early. Jan, you are right though, 29 deadlines the first week of January. I mean, man, if these schools would just kind of come together and maybe spread them out over a few weeks instead of all in the same few days, people would have nicer holidays. But as we always say, the admissions officers want to return from holiday break with a stack of applications to read. And if they give people until mid January, it sets back their timeline. So it is what it is, I guess.
• 4:39
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 4:41
  Speaker A: A couple of admissions tips for this week. The first is we break down GMAC's common letter of recommendation, which most top programs do use. There are a number of programs using it and it's great because you can send it along to your recommenders and they just fill out sort of one type of letter. It's a lot easier for them. And we go through every component of this common letter of recommendation, including the grid and all the different things they ask. So read that if you're in the process of prepping recommenders. We also did a guide to test waivers, which is essentially answering the question like should you request a waiver when you're submitting your application or prior, etc. We take a deep dive into why, when and who. And it's really important stuff. And we're going to talk about this maybe a little bit later in the show because we have a candidate that we're going to feature who did get a waiver, and we think there might be some ramifications there, so we'll talk through it. But, Alex, that was your initiative to build that little kind of guide to test waiver, so thanks for getting us going on that.
• 5:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, obviously, as the admissions landscape shifts, we've got to shift some of our admissions tips to focus on some of the new areas. And test waivers is a legacy of the COVID pandemic.
• 5:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Speaker B: And prior to the COVID pandemic, there were no test waivers at any of the top schools. Now, I'd say at least half of the top 30 anyway schools offer test waivers, maybe even two thirds, actually.
• 6:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:13
  Speaker B: But there are potentially consequences. And, yeah, we could get into a little bit more of that later in the show, if you like.
• 6:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:21
  Speaker B: Or we could talk about it now. But, yeah, there are definitely consequences, and a lot of it depends on what test score you've got, if you've taken the test, because you can waive the test if you got a bad score. Right. So I just think there's a lot of gaming going on about this, this particular, particular topic.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I want to circle back to it when we talk about our final candidate this week, which is a decision wire candidate who has some offers but has not taken a test. So we'll get into that. In the meantime, I did want to pivot. We're going to. We heard from Bruce Delmonico over at Yale. He's the Director of Admissions there, and we did an admissions director Q and A. And so there's an extensive interview with him up on the site right now. So if you're interested in Yale, you should go read this, especially if you're putting together an application for round two right now. But I did want to share one little tidbit. So we asked him, what is one aspect of your program that you wish applicants knew more about? And he had an interesting response that I wanted to share. He said, one thing I think people don't appreciate as much as they could is our deep connection to and integration with the broader Yale community. In addition to having joint degree programs with just about every other professional school at Yale, our most recent one is with the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Every student at Yale SOM is able to take as many of their electives as they like outside of the School of Management without limit. So the entire university is open to you as a Yale SOM student, which is really powerful in tailoring your MBA to suit your specific interests. I would add that outside the Classroom SOM students can engage their peers at other schools and Yale College through various university wide centers and programs, as well as socially at Griffin's Pub, the graduate and professional student bar, and elsewhere throughout the campus, such as at the Schwarzman center, which I think is like a student center for, for grad students. So there you have it, some thoughts from Bruce and it is true. And I want to underline this because not every school allows this. Most schools, in fact many schools will say, oh, you can take some electives, but it's limited to like one or two outside of the business school when you're doing your course.
• 8:26
  Speaker B: He is a smart guy, Bruce, isn't he?
• 8:29
  Speaker A: He is a smart guy, yes.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean I point this out simply because if you think about Yale as their MBA program, you know, what's the one thing that really distinguishes Yale over all other business schools? I guess their MBA programs or whatever is going to be the Yale brand. Right? I mean it's a huge brand and especially for international students, I think Yale becomes particularly attractive. So to use this interview to highlight the fact that folks, when they come to Yale som have access to the, the whole of the Yale infrastructure and so on and so forth, I think is a really smart thing to highlight. I mean, basically, I guess what Bruce is saying is you come to Yale, get your MBA and you're a Yale alum rather than just focusing on your Yale SOM alum or whatever. And you know, some might then ask, well, why isn't Yale in that sort of M7 group. Right. That we talk about often on this show, but as part of the NBA landscape and you know, they're sort of, we would argue they sit just outside of that with Hassan Tock I suppose as part of the top 10. But the reason is quite simple and straightforward. They're the very new MBA program. It wasn't until maybe 20, maybe 25 years ago now, I forget the actual timeline that they, they have been offering an mba. They, I think it was a non profit masters prior to that.
• 10:05
  Speaker A: Non profit management or something.
• 10:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, nonprofit management. Yeah. So they still have that legacy. You know, they're very good for sort of nonprofit sustainability, etc. Etc. But that's the reason why they're not really in that M7. Well, they're not in that M7 group. They're sitting just outside despite the fact that they have such a strong institutional pull. There's no doubt about that. So smart Bruce's side for really highlighting that.
• 10:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I will say it's a school that's kind of come roaring up the charts over those 25 years and firmly ensconced in the top 10 now. And I expect continued kind of growth from them. We'll see. But yeah, they're in a good spot. Moving right along. We also caught up with students at Tuck over the last week, and we've shared a real humans piece. I think there are six students that we profiled, and one of them, this is just a lot of fun. We caught up with this woman named Grace who is in the class of 27 at Tuck. She's 29 years old, originally from Kansas City, Missouri. She went to Notre Dame for undergrad where she studied political science and film, television and theater. And then she left undergrad and went out west to make it in Los Angeles. So she was a talent assistant at an agency. She was an assistant in a comedy, touring, I guess, agency. She was then chief of staff to Whitney Cummings, producer and staff writer on a show. All this kind of Hollywood stuff that's a little bit above my pay grade. Producer and content strategist at Go Digital. So she had a lot of experience out in Hollywood. And we asked her, what made you decide to go to business school and why are you doing this now? And she said, I moved to Los Angeles with the dream of becoming a writer, but once I was actually in the role, it wasn't much of a fit for me as I'd hoped. I craved something more strategic and concrete and by. When I say writer, by the way, just context. I'm meaning a writer for shows and film and stuff. She then says, the writers strike of 23 provided me with the perfect moment to pivot out of entertainment. And when I got a taste of the operational challenges and opportunities of working at a startup, I knew I wanted to move fully into the the business world. So that's kind of her journey to Tuck. And then we just asked her, and this is what I thought was kind of fun. We asked her, like, what are you doing at Tuck? Like, what organizations have you joined? What are you hoping to join, et cetera. And she says, I'm in the Tuck 27 band, which is called the Grateful Debt. I'm on the bass guitar and sing. It's so nice to have a creative outlet in the midst of the madness. And I'm constantly blown away by how talented my classmates are. Are. I've also joined the wildly helpful and amazingly supportive consulting club and have been diving into learning about all things tech with the center for Digital Strategies. And in classic Tuck fashion, I am of course, playing tripod hockey.001 record so far. I have no idea what tripod hockey is. But in any event, that's Grace. She's at Tuck having a good time from moving from LA up to Hanover.
• 13:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, super, super interesting. I have no clue what tripod hockey is either. Probably good, Good time to get out of LA in terms of being a writer, because obviously AI can is going to take those jobs or at least reduce the number of writers necessary to come up with a very good script. But, yeah, it sounds like she's got a really fascinating background overall. And obviously you like it because she's also a musician in a band.
• 13:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why I picked her a little bit. But also, I quickly looked it up. Tripod hockey is just the term they give to people who need to use their stick as kind of a third leg because they're not very good at skating. So the stick helps. Yeah, there you go. So that's what's going on. Let's stay at Tuck right now because I also have the employment report hot off the presses from Tuck for the class of 25. And so, Alex, I'll just give you the numbers. I'm curious to hear your take. And I'll compare the class of 25 to the class of 24, as I always do, just so you can have those two as context. This class of 25 had 292 students in it. It's actually a little bit bigger. They had nine more students than they did last year. 92% of these students were listed as seeking employment. That's up from 87%. And 90% of them had offers within three months of graduation, and 87% of them had accepted offers within three months of graduation. Compensation, $175,000 was the median base salary, median signing bonus, 30 grand. Those numbers are both unchanged from the class prior. In terms of the industries that people went into. We saw 41% of tuck grads heading into consulting. That's down three points. It was 44% last year. 27% went into financial services. That's up three points. 13% went into technology. That is also up from 10% last year. And then the last bit of information I'll give you is where people landed geographically. So in the Northeast, 55% of top grads went into the Northeast. That's actually down 11 percentage points. It was 66% last year. Some of them this year. It's been spread in terms of, like, where are those. You know, those 11% ended up differently. So we see 15% going to the West coast, that's up from 12%. We see 8% to the Midwest, that's up 1%. 6% to the Southwest, up 2%, 8% to the Mid Atlantic, that doubled from 4% and then 5% headed south, that's actually up from 3%. So Alex, what do you think of Tuck's report here?
• 15:58
  Speaker B: It seems very decent overall. That sort of like you pointed out, what was it, 92% seeking is a much higher number than we've seen from a couple of the other programs that we've looked at. And it looks like they've got good offers, etc. Etc. The average median salary is on the mark, similar to last year and right around where sort of that M7 top 10 programs tend to to sit with the same signing bonus. Slightly down consulting, that doesn't surprise me. I think that trend we'll see more of over the next year or two. I actually read an article yesterday about McKinsey again looking to shed more employees, which didn't sound too well, although they weren't focused on the front facing consultants. It's more back office support staff. Yeah, that's where these consulting firms are really able with AI Gen AI to trim their employment count. But that's a bit off topic. Yeah, slightly down on the Northeast, but nice spread out. California, Mid Atlantic and so on and so forth. So overall I'd say this is a really good report. Graham.
• 17:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm impressed. And actually I will say now I've seen enough of these reports where I'm starting to see some trends out of these top schools. And the trends overall are that these numbers are pretty good. I mean I'm not seeing, you know, we talked about, oh, is the job market fragile. There's all this panic always on Reddit. No one has jobs. But that's not what we're seeing. And I do think these numbers are valid. Like I'm not. I don't think schools are, you know, monkeying around too much. At least it's hard to monkey with some of the stuff here. Right. So. And I also think the other thing that's been surprising to me is this is not the first school where we've seen a slight uptick in placements and things to tech. And so I wonder if the kind of AI boom, et cetera, as we've been saying, is actually fueling some management level job creation. And we'll see. But in any event, so good numbers from them. I also have the employment report here from MIT, Sloan so an M7 program. And I'll give you those numbers. Curious to hear your thoughts there. They had a graduating class of 396 students. It is a slightly smaller class than the year prior, which had 418, but I believe some of that was purposeful. If I remember correctly, I had a conversation with their dean at some point about how they had a few more people coming through. Maybe some of that was deferrals because of COVID I can't remember what the reason was. But in any event, they're right around 400 students. Here we see only 64.6% seeking employment. So a full like 30% fewer seeking than you saw at Tuck. That number is fairly consistent though, with last year. Last year they were at 69%. So it's still a little lower. About 4.5% lower this year. Offers received within three months after graduation. 91% of those seeking received an offer and 87% had accepted an offer. Those numbers are actually running favorable to last year. So last year only 85% had an offer within three months and only 77% had had accepted an offer. So they're moving upward there. Median base salary, $175,000. That's up from 169. The signing bonus is 30 grand. That's, I believe, unchanged in terms of the industries that folks went into. We see 32% heading into consulting. That's basically unchanged. 23% going into tech. That's up 4.3%. 20% going into financial services. That's down 4%. And change 8% into healthcare. That's up from 6.8%. And then the last category is retail consumer, 3.6%. That's off a point from last year in terms of where people landed geographically. Again, we see 52% of MIT Sloan grads landing in the Northeast. That's actually up 4.8% from last year. 21.8% went to the West Coast. That's also up 2.8% from last year. Other regions of the U.S. 5.9% to the South, 5% Mid Atlantic, 5% Southwest and 2.3% in the Midwest. No major changes there. A little bit of an increase. Where was I looking? No, sorry. A little bit of a decrease in the Mid Atlantic region. That was actually 8% last year. It's 5% this year, but otherwise things are pretty stable. What do you think of Sloan's numbers?
• 20:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, they're good. They're not outstanding. I don't think for an M7, 175k median is the same as TOC or at least what TOK reported. And I would see some of the other M7s perhaps edging up to that 180 mark, but, you know, time will tell. And that 64% seeking that number again, we've seen that from some of the other top M7 programs where they're perhaps, look, you know, got a few more that are either entrepreneurs or, you know, sponsored students and so on and so forth. So I'm not entirely sure what to make of that number when it increased or decreases to the extent that it might have done, but it's certainly worth noting. And yeah, their consulting numbers stays flat, an uptick in tech, just like Tock reported. And, you know, everything else seems pretty normal. I'm just not blown away by these numbers, I should say. Graham.
• 21:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think they're strong. Like you point out, they're quite similar to Tuck, I will say the seeking employment number, we've seen this with Stanford and Harvard too, and I think some of that's related to more sponsored students, more students starting their own business, more students trying to raise search funds. And I guess there also is usually in that number, there's some people who are maybe just continuing with further education, joint degrees, et cetera. But yeah, it is curious and I think, I guess if we're buying it, it's because more and more students are, you know, going to start a company or raise a search fund or something.
• 22:27
  Speaker B: So it would be nice if they broke those. That number out. So we.
• 22:30
  Speaker A: And I think they, they probably do in the full report. I just, Yeah, I tend to try to summarize here, but yeah, some of. I don't know for a fact if MIT does it, but most schools do say, oh, of the people not seeking, you know, there was this percent who were sponsored, et cetera. And I do think some of these very top schools, they do get a lot of sponsored candidates. And there might be a little bit of, you know, a kind of gravitation towards those sponsored candidates because they're really safe bets in a kind of, you know, sort of tumultuous economy. But I don't know, we'd have to.
• 22:59
  Speaker B: Look and it makes sense. Sponsored candidates are top candidates, right?
• 23:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, usually they are. And I think Elliot on our team is going to go through all of this and he's supposed to put together some different articles and things to look at some of these trends. Obviously, it's easiest for him when we have a critical mass of the top schools all reporting and I think we're going to have that as we head into January with any luck here, so should have a bunch of them soon. That's all I had in terms of news and notes for this week. We can get into the candidates. I did want to mention though that in the feed here there's an extra edition of the podcast that came out last week from Tina Mabley. She's over at UT Austin. I'm going to butcher her title, but she's sort of an associate dean level person who oversees admissions, careers, curriculum development programs, et cetera. And we had a great conversation about how they teach leadership in UT Austin's McCombs School of Business. So tune in for that. She's an amazing person. I just love hanging out with her, chatting. So that's a fun listen. But otherwise. Alex, I do want to remind people what we would like for Christmas would be reviews of the show on Apple where you can put in reviews, you can rate the show on other platforms, but written reviews are always great. So to the extent that you can write a review, please do so. You can also just write to us@infoearadmit.com and use the subject line wiretaps. We love getting your emails and I got one the other day that I shared with the team from someone who's heading off to HBS and thanked us for our guidance and resources and yeah, just always a great time of year when people are getting their decisions and reaching out to us to let us know.
• 24:34
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 24:35
  Speaker A: All right, so shall we talk candidates?
• 24:36
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 24:37
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. Our first candidate has just three schools on the target list. You pulled this entry from Apply Wire. So they're looking to start school in the fall of 26. They've been working at Accenture and the schools they're targeting are Georgetown, Wharton and Darden. So kind of a Mid Atlantic focus. They want to stay in consulting, also think about entrepreneurship or non profit, but in the short term it looks like consulting is the goal. Post MBA. And they list Bain, BCG and McKinsey as targets. They have a GRE score of 339, a GPA of 3.93 and five years of work experience. And they did mention, you know, they're going to be applying here in January. So round two. They said that they work on a significant product at work so they're confident that they'll be able to show impact. They also expect to have strong recommendations and they do indicate that outside of work they are involved in providing free college admissions, counseling. They also want to stay, they say, in education and work in education consulting or ed tech prior to launching their own nonprofit. And they really want to be in D.C. so I'm guessing that the work they're doing now for Accenture is somehow tied to. To the education world, because they seem to be implying that. Alex, what do you think of this candidacy?
• 26:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I like this candidacy. I mean, clearly their numbers are outstanding.339 GRE. And I just love the GPA, 3.93. So, you know, that's consistent over a long period of time. But clearly super smart with that.339 GRE. You know, presumably they have strong experience at Accenture, and it seems in terms of what they've described, they're going to get strong recommendations to support that. They can show that impact and growth and so on and so forth, doing a little bit of outside work, college counseling for free and so forth. If that's a. You know, they're doing that because they're passionate about this area. And obviously, as you mentioned, whilst they didn't explicitly state they currently work in education, we can infer that from their goals. Returning to education, I suppose.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:57
  Speaker B: So I like that. Assuming it is driven by passion. I think as we talked before we came on out, it'd be nice to know a little bit about what makes this person tick when they're not working and they're not thinking about education and tech and so on and so forth. So if they have something else about them that sort of is. Is also interesting, maybe a basketball player or a guitar player or something like that, that would also just help, just sort of differentiate them a little bit further. The other interesting thing about this candidate is their singular focus on wanting to be on in D.C. post NBA. Right. So they're targeting the best school in Washington, you know, in Washington, D.C. arguably. Right. So McDonough, they're targeting Darden, which presumably sends a lot of alums into DC due to proximity, uva and so forth. And I think Wharton's a good pick, too, because Wharton, Philadelphia is just above Washington, D.C. and I would imagine Wharton has a pretty good alumni network down in dc. But, Graham, do you think that they might want to target one or two other programs? Because I think they might if they don't quite hit the market war. Now, I'm not saying they won't. They might well hit the mark at Wharton, but shouldn't they think of one or two other M7s just to sort of give them a little bit More of a chance at that higher tier of schools.
• 28:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's an interesting question here because on the one hand, you look at these numbers and you say, Holy smokes. 339, 393. They're going to be competitive, and frankly, the work experience, five years at Accenture doing interesting work, and they have interesting goals in ed tech and education. So there's like, a lot of really good stuff here. But you're right, if they put all their eggs into the Wharton basket and for one reason or another don't get in, then, you know, they're. Yeah, they might miss out. And so I do wonder if you think about if they want to stay close, obviously Columbia comes to mind. Not so bad of a train ride down from New York to D.C. on Amtrak. So, I don't know. I mean, I. I would definitely consider. I would even consider an hbs. I feel like there's a good tradition of kind of ed tech things coming out of hbs. So, yeah, it would be smart to cast a slightly wider net. I don't think that when you're dealing with an M7 school, you would say, oh, I can't work in D.C. if I go to Harvard or Columbia. That's not the case at all.
• 29:23
  Speaker B: Or Sloan. Right.
• 29:24
  Speaker A: Yes. And I will say the one piece here that's not filled in for me is the outside activities. I know they mentioned they do a little bit of, you know, free college guidance counseling, but I want to know more about this candidate. Like, you know, they have stellar numbers, they have great work experience. I need to see that there's maybe more than just a little bit of college essay reading and advising. Like, I. Is it formal? Is it with a program that helps, you know, inner city high school kids get off to college? Is it. Is it just helping, you know, friends of friends? Like, what is that? And then is there anything else? Like, are they a chef? Are they a runner? You know, what else do they do? Because that, to me, is the difference sometimes between like, an M7 candidate and a candidate who falls down a little bit further in the rankings here.
• 30:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, no doubt.
• 30:11
  Speaker A: So I do want to wish them the best of luck. They have a very busy holiday season working on their applications ahead of them. But I think you're right. It would be smart to add a school, at least in that M7 group, in case they, you know, don't. In case they fall short at Wharton and need some other options. So best of luck to them, though, and I thank them for sharing. Let's move on. And Talk about WireTaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week has four schools on the target list. And again, this is an apply wire entry. They've got Harvard, MIT, Kellogg and Stanford on the list. So four M7 programs this person's looking to start in the fall. They're going to be applying in round two. They have a pre MBA career in what they describe as product project management in gaming. And post mba they're thinking about staying in the tech domain, but in the longer term maybe doing something entrepreneurial in the gaming sector. They look in the short term they've listed Amazon, Apple, Meta Alphabet, Microsoft, etc. As places they may go. They have a 715 on the GMAT, which in case you're, you know, trying to remember what that is on the old scale, that's like a 750, 760. So a very strong GMAT score. They have a 3.59 undergraduate GPA, four and a half years of work experience, located in Seattle. They would love to stay in Seattle or on the west coast in the long term. So even if they go to a Kellogg or Harvard or mit, which are all on their list, they want to return to the west coast ultimately. They mentioned they're an Asian female, went to a top 20 undergrad with a double major in biology and statistics. But they decided in college to pivot into the game industry and have interned and worked at top gaming brands. They've been trying to pivot into product in gaming or start their own company or I guess, sorry, they're thinking about this post mba, trying to pivot into production for gaming or maybe starting their own company in the game industry. They have a bunch of extracurriculars, many of which relate to kind of gaming. So they were the president of the gaming club in college. They continue to speak at numerous universities and conventions about careers in video games. They mentored students who wanted careers in that domain, especially women and underrepresented folks in the kind of LGBTQ plus community. They also served as a judge and advisor for one of the mentorship programs. They created a grassroots gaming community during COVID that grew to like 3,000 members. And then last but not least, they volunteer at their local aquarium, educating the public about ocean conservation and local wildlife. So they're applying to all these schools in round two. They did mention that Kellogg gets that MMM program, which I believe is a one year program for people with an undergraduate business background. So Alex, what do you make of this candidate?
• 33:12
  Speaker B: Are you sure that's the MMM program? I Thought it was more of a tech program.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: I think that's the mbai. Right. I don't know, I can look it up. Let me see.
• 33:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, the mmm I think is actually a bit more of a commitment than just the general two year program. But anyway, the point is.
• 33:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, you're probably right. I think it's the one that, is that the one that's the Ms. In Design Innovation.
• 33:30
  Speaker B: I mean I think it's a more robust. But the point is what is not to like about this candidate? Right. Again, fantastic numbers. The GPA.359. Perhaps you would say that's not outstanding but they double majored in biology and statistics.
• 33:51
  Speaker A: Not a top 20.
• 33:52
  Speaker B: So. Yeah, yeah, come on now this is thing and then going into the gaming industry and obviously that's been a big part of her professional profile but obviously during college she was engaged in that industry and so on and so forth, doing loads, lots of extracurriculars in that industry. I mean that, that's, that's, I think that's super impressive. And as a woman in the gaming industry, not to sort of come up with stereotypes and stuff but they're, they're swimming, you know, against, against the tide. I mean that's just the reality of that industry. So yeah, major props to this individual I think. And I think school really enjoy reviewing this candidacy and yet there's not much that I can add other than she should be applying to all the top programs and she is applying to all the top programs. The only other one I would recommend is Hass simply because she wants to be in that sort of west coast area post mba and she mentioned she doesn't want to overburden her recommenders. But if Hass is part of the gmac, you know, core letter of recommendation system that we featured as an admissions tip this week, maybe it's not such a big burden. Yeah, but, but yeah, I don't think there's any point in spending too much time on this candidate Graham. Outstanding in my book.
• 35:19
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think she's terrific. And you're right, I don't think it's stereotyping. I mean women are swimming upstream in the, in the video gaming kind of, you know, industry in terms of these jobs. So I.
• 35:28
  Speaker B: Have you heard, have you heard of Gamergate?
• 35:30
  Speaker A: No. Oh yes, yes I have. Yeah. That was a little. Yeah. So it's definitely. Yeah, this is a really impressive candidate. I like the school target list because you know, the stats are impeccable, the work experience and I love the aquarium volunteer work because I Will say I said it to you before we came on air, that, you know, she could risk being stereotyped as, like, all gaming all the time. You know, all of her outside activities are gaming. Her work is gaming. Her goals are gaming. But it's nice to see that she's doing something else as well.
• 35:56
  Speaker B: And that's a game she should be designing.
• 35:59
  Speaker A: Yeah. Something that helps people to better understand ocean conservation and wildlife. Yeah, why not? Yeah. So in any event, yeah, I think this is a great candidate and she should just buckle down, get the apps in and see where her chips. You know, where the chips fall. But I. I wish her the best of luck and. And think she's going to have an excellent chance.
• 36:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good.
• 36:18
  Speaker A: All right, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week, you've taken from a Decision Wire entry. This person is undecided. So they shared the results on Decision Wire and they're looking for people to weigh in. So they applied to Tuck, Emory, Stern and uva and they got in to Tuck, Emory and Darden, and actually Emory gave them a $65,000 scholarship. They did not get any money from the other two schools. They didn't share a result with Stern. I'm actually guessing that they just maybe don't know yet because Stern is typically a little bit slower in terms of getting results out. I don't know that for sure, but we don't see a result here yet from Stern. So they want to work in consulting after business school. And they would love to go to Bain, BCG or McKinsey. Their GPA is a 3.6. They are located in the United Kingdom. I believe they might be a UK national. They are still undecided. They say they really enjoyed the process. They love all these schools, but they're unique. Kind of bummed that they didn't get too much scholarship and they're wondering about advice with respect to, like, upping scholarships post admit. And you hit the nail on the head, Alex, because your first question to them when you answered on Decision Wire was, where's your test score? And also you asked about geographic preferences and things. But, yeah, so take me through this because this is a really fast, fascinating candidate. And we actually talked with this person, I believe, a bit on our live stream. Yeah, but what do you think of this?
• 37:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, quite honestly, the. You know, again, one of our admissions tips is about test waivers this week. And I think this is a case where getting a test waiver isn't necessarily Playing in your favor, because let's assume this is a smart candidate and they could have sat knuckled down, prepped hard, gotten the test, got a median score for these top programs like 328, 330 or something like that, then I would speculate that the Darden and Tuck would have offered them some scholarship based off of that and potentially Emory might have offered them more scholarship. So there is a bit of a limiting factor because. And also if they want to do MBB consulting, the rule of thumb is go to the best, most high profile program that you get admissions to. So no disrespect to amri, it's a fantastic program, especially for that region and in Atlanta. But TOC and Darden would provide a notch above in terms of access to mbb. So the recommendation would be to go to TOC or Darden. And you can make arguments for either, I think quite clearly. But not having a test score is a bit of a limiting factor. So our guidance to this candidate now is, you know, go take the test, knuckle down, get your best score, and if it's above the medians of the programs that you've targeted, like, you know, Tock and Darden, then maybe you can use that score to see if they would, you know, post, you know, after the fact, offer some scholarship. It might even be useful for Emory to up their scholarship offer as well as targeting some programs in round two with a strong gre. They. I just got to imagine that everything else in their profile is stronger to get these kind of offers without a test score.
• 40:13
  Speaker A: Yeah, I have to agree. And I think this is tricky because I think, you know, ideally they go, take the jury, get a very high score, send it off to talk and Darden and say, hey, is there anything more you can do? Because, you know, I could really use some scholarship. And this is a, you know, it's a big decision for me to come to the US etc. I will say though, I think they're going to have better luck. They apply in round two to some additional schools that are good at consulting placements. Maybe that's, you know, a Kellogg or a Wharton or a Booth or, you know, an mit because it's like harder to go backwards and negotiate a scholarship than it is to kind of go forwards. Right? So. But I think they made a potential, I mean, potentially a strategic error if you're just talking about scholarship money when it comes to not taking a test. And this is something that we talk about, you know, it's like, geez, I think a lot of schools look at someone who didn't take a test and say, look, we're going to take them, but we're not going to give them a lot of money or something because they're already getting in a little bit under the wire without having to take a test. So that's the downside here. I do hear you, though. I think if they want to work at mbb, just look at the numbers. And the numbers probably take them towards Tuck, Darden and then Emory, in that order of the three that have admitted them. And it's pretty stark. You look at these numbers, obviously Emory's really good at consulting placements. They actually send a super high percentage of their grads into consulting. But if we start to look at actual numbers about like, well, how many are going to McKinsey, Bain or BCG, and that's what this person wants, then, you know, the. The arrow points a little bit more towards a Tucker, a Darden. So, yeah, anyway, I encourage them to, yeah, take the test. I think they're doing that and hopefully they get a great score and can use that to negotiate or worst case, maybe drop an app or two in round two and see where that lands.
• 41:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. I encourage you to wrap this show up, Grant.
• 41:55
  Speaker A: I know we're running long today. All right, well, happiest of Chris Christmases to anyone who's celebrating. Alex. We're going to be back, though, in the middle of the holidays to record an episode for next week, so everyone stay tuned. And, yeah, just Happy holidays to all.
• 42:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good. Merry Christmas, everyone. Stay safe. Take care.
• 42:25
  Speaker A: It.