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MBA Wire Taps 468: CPA to Consulting. Mitigating low GPA. Columbia vs Johnson · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:17
  Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, January 19, 2026. 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 to learn. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 1:08
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:10
  Speaker A: So, on the show this week, we've got some critical tips for people approaching the MBA interview process. We hear from a student at HEC Paris, as well as part of our Real Human series. And I think we have a really interesting piece I want to talk about regarding the value of the mba. But first, what's going on? Like, are there any deadlines left? Are we now fully into people who've applied in round two, kind of waiting on interview invites and stuff?
• 1:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's a few deadlines this upcoming week. Insead and Carol, Boston College. Carol had round three application deadlines, actually, and ISC is scheduled to release round two interviews. But we are starting to see interview invites coming out on the wires on Livewire, specifically Kellogg, which is notorious for sort of rolling out some early interview invites as. As Yale for the same reasons. Yale will trickle them out early, have a bit of a lull, and then later in the cycle again. And we talked about that on several occasions.
• 2:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. So we're off to the races with the interview invitations. And yeah, I think this is always a tense time of year. If you've applied in round two, you're kind of waiting to hear. And some schools, as we say, trickle them out. Some schools have a date, like essay where they all come out. So just know the rules of the school that you've applied to and stay tuned. Speaking of interviews, though, love to get your interview reports. So as you interview with schools, go onto the site and leave an interview report. You just kind of fill out a form on the site where you indicate what questions you were asked and that goes into the interview archive. And we give out gift certificates to Amazon for people who do that. So please pay it forward and leave information about what your interview was like. Alex, we have events coming up. They're getting closer now. So we have an event on January 28th. So that's like next week, I believe. And it's a really interesting event that we're doing about the mba and it's a. Does an MBA still open doors for you? The Truth about Growth, Leadership and what comes next. I've seen we've got a good number of people signed up for that. It's at 10am Eastern on January 28th. And we also have a bunch of deferred enrollment events that we're gonna do in February on the 4th and 11th at noon Eastern. You can sign up for all of our events@clearadmit.com events. And I think later in February we're also gonna connect with a bunch of Masters in Management programs. So we're off to the races with our events. Seems like we had a little bit of a break over the holiday. Now we're back in the thick of it. Alex, you saw this article that we wrote that I wrote with Elliot on our team about the mba and it's an article that we put up on the site. It's called why the MBA Remains one of the Most Powerful Career Investments. And it's a pretty interesting piece. I felt like in the maelstrom of immigration stuff and AI and the economy and everyone's in a panic, I thought it would be a good idea for Elliot and I to sit down and think about what do these things really mean for the value of the degree. So we published this article. It's very top of mind for me because I'm currently out at the GMAC Leadership Conference, which is kind of for the very top level industry professionals at top business schools who kind of one rung below the deans basically at these MBA programs. So I'm here in California at this conference and just thinking about the value of the MBA and business education in general. And so I put this article together with Elliot. You read it? What do you think?
• 4:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I have opinions about this topic. It's not always aligned with everybody else, I suppose, but yeah, I mean, obviously the points you were making and everything were really well taken. I think historically looking at career development and the opportunities the MBA provides and the ability to sort of transform your career and pivot and so on and so forth were really well made and I think make a lot of sense. Someone would look at the other side and say, well, that data was based on last year and is it holding true over the next year or two, given the havoc that AI is going to wreak on business and so on and so forth. So I think there is that potential counterpoint to consider. But that said, I spent quite a lot of time on LinkedIn sort of following thought leaders and stuff. And Ethan Mollick out of the Wharton School is someone I follow and he just started, I think he called it a four day entrepreneurship boot camp for MBA students and basically made the point that with all these tools, and I think I made it clear this is for their MBA students, but all these AI tools, anyone can now become an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, etc. Etc. And he's running this boot camp class and it's apparently it looks absolutely fantastic. I guess my broader point is one of the reasons you are going to do your MBA now at some of these very elite programs that we cover is that their thought leaders, their faculty are really innovating how we should use AI in the workplace and so forth. So I would be very, very sort of critical when I'm selecting schools to, to really analyze what are they doing in this space that can assure me that I am AI literate as I come out of the MBA experience. The point, the other point that I wanted to make that I don't think was made as much in the article is the MBA is a generalist degree and I think that's its power. You can specialize in whatever area you want, but you've still got to take finance, operations, marketing, human resources, etc. So you've got to know the spectrum of business. And I do believe AI tools are a bigger threat to specialists.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker B: And I think generalists can sort of play that more of that management and orchestration role that is going to become more and more important in this transformation to sort of AI first business, whatever, whatever the right terms are. So. So yeah, I do think the MBA still has a lot of value, a lot of forward looking and yeah, no, I think it's a great piece but I would have had a couple of different angles to thread in there, I think.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the things I wanted to share is that I think it's maybe the last line of the piece, but we talk about the value of the degree and we have this line where we wrote that the MBA is valuable because its core strengths, which are career mobility, leadership development, trusted networks and global perspective, are even more valuable in periods of disruption than in times of stability. And I really believe that. And we do go through, in the article, we go through the numbers. There's a whole thing about ROI for those, you know, those of our listeners who are very, you know, just focused on what's it going to cost and what am I going to make after that's in there. But there's a lot of other stuff in there too. And you know, as the point you're making, I did see your post on LinkedIn. You shared the post from professor at Wharton and yeah, that looks really interesting. So, yeah, there are good things happening in business school for sure.
• 8:38
  Speaker B: I guess the cynic in me though, Graham says that ROI was based on a pre AI world. Right. So. So I think we need to articulate the strengths of the MBA in, in a post AI world, which I do think, you know, a lot of the article did focus on for sure. But when you're looking at career numbers, that was more of a pre AI world, those career decisions were made in, you know, January, February, whatever, in 2025. So a year later.
• 9:09
  Speaker A: Right.
• 9:10
  Speaker B: Are those numbers still valid? Given that we've, you know, lots of firms have been laying off lots of people. We can't get away from that. That's happened. Where does the MBA recruiting sit and is it sheltered from all of that? And to some extent it is because it's more at the management level, not at the intro level. And I do think it's the intro level that's getting really slaughtered at this point.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: Yeah, and we'll know soon because even though we have to wait, we have to wait a while for career reports to come out, we'll know before that in terms of like, are those second year students who've just come back you now they would know if they have offers to return post mba. So if you're a second year student, you already would probably know because you would have gotten an offer by the holidays about whether or not you're going to return to your summer internship spot for a full time job. So yeah, we'll find out. And actually this is not yet, it's not yet finalized, but I'm in the works with a couple of schools that we really enjoy connecting with to put together a kind of webinar about career placement, immigration policy and a whole bunch of things that I think are on the mind of current candidates. So stay tuned. Well, there'll be news about that coming up, but stay tuned for that would be very good. Yeah. So other stuff that we should get to before we talk about this week's candidates. We did run a few admissions tips that are quite relevant for this time of year. We did a whole piece on open versus invitation only interviews. We also did a piece about resume versus application based interviews. So these just different ways that interviews are conducted or invites are granted that you need to know about. And we also did a piece on letters of support, which are kind of like informal recommendation letters. Schools have varying policies on these, so beware, but read the article for that sort of some good tidbits there in terms of advice about how to just, you know, maximize your chances as you head into this next phase of the application process. And then Alex, as I mentioned earlier, we connected with a bunch of students at Heck Paris, one of the top business schools in Europe, located out in the suburbs of Paris. And we talked. In particular, the one that I wanted to share was we connected with Shriya, who's class of 27, 29 years old, hails from Calcutta, India. And she had studied, I guess a bachelor's degree in biotechnology in India and then went to the US where she earned a master's in biotech from Penn State. And then prior to business school she had worked as a senior scientist in biopharma, I guess with a company affiliated to GlaxoSmithKline. She did that for six years and now she's embarked on her MBA and we ask her, why did you make the decision to attend business school? Because here's someone who's on this sort of biotech path of kind of a science path. And she says, I used to be a research scientist working in HIV drug discovery and I was fortunate to work on a molecule that went into clinical trials and has the potential to improve the lives of millions of people living with hiv. Through this experience, I realized how deeply I care about creating impact in healthcare. But also the next steps in the scientific career ladder did not align with my career progression to be able to influence strategy and bring innovations to patients faster. That realization led me to pursue an MBA to bridge science and business and prepare for more strategic, high impact roles in the biopharma biotech ecosystem. So I thought that was interesting and very well said in terms of why you would pivot. And it makes a ton of sense to me.
• 12:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And, and the sorts of roles that they'll be seeking post mba, I do think are roles that are somewhat protected from this sort of AI transformation because, you know, they'll be leading and orchestrating. Right, yeah, in, in, in, in the science space and, and we're going to need that type of work to obviously continue to innovate moving forward in science.
• 13:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 13:06
  Speaker B: Which is obviously really super important. And accelerating at a high rate right now because of AI.
• 13:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:11
  Speaker B: And I've.
• 13:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I've heard at this conference that I've been at all week, you know, from a number of deans talking about, you know, what they call, you know, durable skills, so these kind of soft skills we used to call them, but durable skills and the ability, as you say, to orchestrate, connect things, critical thinking, all this stuff. And speaking of all that, we also asked Shreya, we asked her what's one thing you've learned about HEC that surprised you? And she said for her it's been the shift in her thinking. She said it's an intangible outcome that I only recently realized. I was at a biotech event the other day and after the panel discussion I went to one of the speakers and was asking them follow up questions regarding the feasibility of expanding the technology to developing lower middle income countries, the challenges to innovation, especially in Europe, and the shift I see from the US where I spent several years before this, et cetera. Later that night, a master's student came up to me and said she was amazed by the questions I was asking and that she would never have thought of that angle. And I thought to myself, neither would I have just three months ago. Being in class with participants from all around the world with diverse professional backgrounds and having conversations with them really expands your horizons in ways that you could not have anticipated. So I thought that was just interesting as a point that she's making about how her own way of thinking has changed because of the conversations and interactions she's having day in and day out with her classmates.
• 14:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely brilliant. And I think we all, hopefully we all have the opportunity to experience that shift in thinking. That is, we're all, all growing and developing and learning and adding context, layers of context to our experiences and so forth. So yeah, I thought, I actually really like that, quite honestly.
• 14:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, she sounds really interesting. So other than that, I don't have anything. So we should probably talk about this week's candidates. Obviously, if you want to write to Alex and me, you can just write to infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps and we'll drop you a line back. Yeah, anything on your side, Alex, before we talk about the candidates that you've.
• 15:06
  Speaker B: Picked, let's kick on.
• 15:08
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week has six schools on the target list and is looking to start school in the fall of 26. So the schools are Berkeley, Wharton, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Marshall and Yale. This candidate has been working in accounting, I believe at a big four firm and they are, I believe they also have a cpa. They want to shift from accounting into sort of management consulting. The GRE score is a 323 and the GPA is a 3.17. This person has 6 years of work experience, is located in Los Angeles and would love to stay in LA post mba. They also note that they're first generation and come from a low income background. These apps were all submitted in round two, so this person's currently awaiting word. And they do mention that the GPA was due to personal family circumstances and the fact that they worked throughout college. They also shared the fact that the GPA is split between university and community college. And they're wondering how to sort of share this because they said 3.17 is I guess their GPA just from the university. But they did mention that their community college courses they had a 3.55 before they shifted over to the four year institution. They also mentioned that in terms of extracurriculars, they're on the board of two nonprofits in their local community and they do some leadership work for a pro bono consulting initiative at their firm and founded a social impact organization during undergrad. So Alex, you had some back and forth with this candidate, but what do you make of their candidacy?
• 16:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, I like this candidate in as much as they seem to be someone that's come quite far. Right. So you know, their lived experience I think they've managed to obviously get from a low income background. First generation, started off at community college, transferred to a four year degree, has navigated obviously the career ladder and has ended up being. Well, they're a CPA and now a manager at a big four firm and it seems like they're doing really well at the big four firm. I think they expressed that. And also they do significant amount of community work. They're on two boards, so in my mind in their local community. But they're giving back. Right? So they've seen how far that they've been able to navigate this lived experience and they're also now giving back and I think ADCOM really appreciate that. So quite honestly, Graham, I think there's quite a lot to like about this candidate. The numbers though don't jump off the page by a long stretch and that's going to be their challenge. So a323 GRE is going to be below the medians of the very best programs on their list. Maybe all the programs on their list. And the 317GPA is also going to present challenges. Now, as you said, if they factored in their community college grades, their overall GPA would be a 355. So that signals to me that they were a 4.0 at community college or close to.
• 18:32
  Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yes, you're right.
• 18:34
  Speaker B: And that would bulk, bulk things up. So, you know, I presume and get your opinion on this, Graham, that they would present both transcripts and include an optional essay that obviously also expresses that they had to work during their undergrad because, you know, obviously they're first generation, low income and so on and so forth. But also, you know, they're starting off, they did well. Maybe some things happened. Family circumstance, I think they expressed whilst they were in their four year degree. But the proof is in the pudding, Graham. They do seem to be doing really well at work.
• 19:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting because, yeah, the work stuff seems great. They're a cpa, they're working at a big four, and as you say, they've traveled a long way in terms of lived experience. So that all seems to check the boxes, as do the extracurriculars. They're active in their local community, they're doing some nonprofit work. But yeah, the numbers on the academic side are worrisome, although I agree with your approach. So one of the issues that happens if you go to community college and then you shift to a four year institution, often what happens is that your transcript at the four year institution shows the credits coming in, but they don't leave the grades that showed it just listed as a credit. And so I think you're right, they would have an incentive to dig out the transcript, get it from the community college that shows those grades, and to just indicate that, yes, I have a 3.17 because my university is only counting the courses that I took once I shifted. But I just want the committee to be aware that I had a 4.0 in community college for two years before making the leap and I had to work. And again, this doesn't need to be a long list of excuses or something, but just adding that context I think would be really helpful because suddenly the 317 feels more like a 3, 5 5. And you just get a sense that, yeah, this person, I mean, I could see how it would happen. You go from community college to a four year institution and it's like you're moving up a rung in the level of difficulty. And so there would be a setback. And if you're working you know, to pay for the tuition. I mean, it's all understandable. So that helps their case, I think, if they explain it.
• 20:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 20:41
  Speaker A: Otherwise I don't. You know, the GRE is more or less in the ballpark. You're right. It's below at some of the schools they're targeting. But I think it's less of a kind of outlier than that.317 would be on the GPA side. So hopefully, you know, we'll see what happens. They've applied. I want to wish them the best of luck. And I think what's nice is they have a range of admissions difficulty across the schools on their list. So I would hope that they'll land somewhere across this list.
• 21:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. And again, I think it's their lived experience, their success at work, as well as their extracurriculars that are really going to help them shine through. So if they can use the optional essay to help. If they use the optional essay, I should say, to help overcome the lower numbers, then hopefully, at least they get interview invites and then they can use the interviews to really express exactly where they're at now and their progress going forward.
• 21:38
  Speaker A: And if they didn't, like, if they haven't done this when they applied in round two, then you might wonder. I think it would be something to add if they're interviewed. I also, I think if a school's willing, they might want to just submit a supplemental statement to add to their file. Now, it depends on the school. They'll need to read the fine print because some schools are open to you kind of adding something if you need to. You send a very polite email with an attachment with just a short paragraph or two explaining what happened. That might be smart if they didn't address it the way that we've suggested they address it when they applied.
• 22:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, that sounds very good. All right.
• 22:14
  Speaker A: I want to wish them the best of luck and thank them for sharing their profile on the site. Alex, let's turn to wiretaps. Candidates number two. So this second candidate has five schools on the target list and is looking to start in the fall of 2026 as well. They've got, let's see, Kellogg, Stern, UCLA, UT, Austin, and Washington Foster. This person's been working in consulting but is looking to pivot into marketing. They have a 323 on the GRE as well, and a 2.84 undergraduate GPA, five years of work experience located in Chicago. Alex, you had some back and forth with this candidate. Would you willing to just share that and take us through any of the other details here.
• 22:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So, in this case, again, the profile is quite similar in terms of their numbers. Obviously their GPA is lower than our first candidate, so that's going to raise a red flag. It's under 3.0 and the GRE is the same. 323 is our first candidate. They look like they've done well at work, so it's quite a similar profile in that regard. So the challenge is what they can do about the. Now, they dealt with a lot of personal life matters, as they've expressed, and they were later diagnosed with adhd. So again, hopefully they've used the optional essays in order to sort of add the context and frame their numbers more eloquently. But I think, quite honestly, Graham, this person really needs to get into some. Do some coursework now to sort of. They need to show two things, right? They need to show that they're academically prepared to start what is quite a rigorous first semester or two first quarter, as you know of the MBA experience. And they need to show commitment to their academics, right? So they can say that they, you know, dealt with some particular issues and they were later diagnosed with adhd and that can very well be true. But there's no evidence still to suggest they're committed to their academics. Right? If they didn't have ADHD and they didn't have those problems, would they have had a higher gpa? We don't know that. That's an unknown. Unknown or whatever. Right? So by taking some coursework, they can overcome that. So. So you've got things like MBA Math, hbs, Core, gmax, Business Fundamentals. Those are some of the more common courses. Graeme, do you think those courses fit for this person or are there other courses they should be looking at?
• 25:00
  Speaker A: I think these probably would fit. I mean, I tend to, yeah. I mean, I know there are different price points on some of these. HBS score is very expensive, but MBA math and GMACs business fundamentals are pretty affordable and fast. Could they take just. They could take online courses at any university, one by one. Just take a stats course or an accounting course or whatever might be most appropriate. It'd be good to know what their undergraduate transcript really looked like in terms of courses that they've had exposure to in the past. But, yeah, they need to do something, I would think. And I know if they applied in round two, it might be a little late, but it will. I think it would be smart because imagine a scenario where they get an interview, they can add this information at that time. And so, yeah, it is a red flag. I mean, it jumps out and it's unfortunate that they don't have a 330 on the GRE to counter that low GPA.
• 25:58
  Speaker B: So, yeah, that was my other question. What's the balance of the gre? So is it balanced in favor of the verbal or the quant? That could reveal some things, too. But I would suggest, Graham, that they not only need to enroll in one of these courses, but don't wait for any interview invites to reveal. Again, I would get some supplemental information and say, on reflection, now I've got my application in, I realized that perhaps I need to provide more evidence of my commitment to the academic rigor of the program. So because of that, I've already now enrolled in and started whatever it is, mba, math, or a course at my local university or whatever it is. I would preempt that by quickly making that adjustment.
• 26:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree and I do. Yeah, it's, you know, again, like our first candidate. One of the good news pieces of good news here is that they have a nice range of programs on their target list. Right. So I think, you know, but still this, any kind of a sub 3 GPA is always a little worrisome. And so I would. Yeah, I advise. I agree with you 100%, they should take action. You know, I would say if they thought they could, like, somehow get a higher score on the GRE2, that, you know, that's not a bad idea. Right. I mean, if they. Yeah, but I think taking the coursework and showing the school that you're doing it and getting ready would be pretty important. Again, it'd be good to know, like, did they say anything in their file? You know, like, did they submit an optional essay to that effect?
• 27:33
  Speaker B: I don't think they did.
• 27:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. So.
• 27:37
  Speaker B: I don't know that.
• 27:38
  Speaker A: No, they say, I just found. Found it. I did fill out the optional essay. Taking ownership for. So they've told them what happened, which is good. That's the first step. But I think we need them to take that next step, which is to demonstrate what they're doing about it.
• 27:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, they've done step one, but the step two involved. And that's what. What are you doing about it? So. Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. In any event, I do want to wish them the best of luck and I always thank them for, you know, sharing the profile.
• 28:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. And their work experience. Again, they've probably done very well. They say they got two really strong. Strong wreck. So it seems like, again, like our first candidate, the. The Work experience is going to help them stand out. Yes, but there's still. They're doing an academic degree.
• 28:17
  Speaker A: Right.
• 28:18
  Speaker B: And they're going to classrooms when they're doing their mba. So the ADCOM will. They, they're going to, you know, they, this candidate might get, you know, 10 out of 10 for work experience and all the other stuff, but if they get 2 out of 10 for the academic preparedness. I'm not saying this is how school explicitly do it, but my point is a bit broader. The academics is a separate type of evaluation than work experience. So one does not compensate for the other.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, and you're right. I mean, because they've had a bunch of promotions, they've done a lot of good things at work and consulting and they seem to, I mean, I don't know what the details are of their marketing plans post, you know, post mba, but they're interested in marketing. So they. Assuming that all that lines up. Yeah, you're right. It's just that they haven't ticked the box on the academic readiness. So in any event, hopefully they'll get started on that and get word to the schools that they're taking these classes and are on their way to being able to demonstrate that. But yeah, I want to wish them the best of luck. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final entry this week comes from a decision wire entry and it's from a candidate who can't decide where to go. Okay, so this person applied to Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Michigan, Rice, Stanford and Yale. So a ton of schools and they got some pretty impressive results. So they got into Carnegie mellon with an $80,000 scholarship. They got into Columbia with no money. Cornell gave them an $80,000 scholarship as well. So they were admitted there. They got into both Dartmouth and Duke. Dartmouth gave them no more money. Duke gave them $100,000. They also got into Emory, Georgetown, McDonough with a full ride, Michigan, Ross with $40,000 in scholarship, and finally Rice Jones with 90,000. So a lot of good results. You know, I'm just looking through the, the data here and it looks like they didn't get into Stanford or Yale, but I believe they may have run the table otherwise. So they did very well. That's a lot of apps to submit. In case you're curious. They, you know, obviously they want to start school this fall. They had a 320 on the GRE and a 3.14 GPA. So numbers that don't jump off the page and are actually a bit lower than like our first candidate that we talked about today. So pretty impressive results for, you know, for these numbers. I would say they're located in the South. They want to work in finance, possibly investment banking after business school. And they mentioned in the note that they're struggling to decide which school to attend. The top contenders, they say, are Cornell, Tuck, Columbia and Fuqua. And in case you've forgotten, Cornell's $80,000 scholarship, Fuqua is 100, Tuck and CBS, no money. They're saying they don't know if they can justify the sticker price for Columbia or Tuck. So, Alex, what do you think of this and maybe make a comment on all the conversation that that ensued on this post because there was quite a bit of commenting back and forth.
• 31:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, fortunately, each year we have a contributor on the Decision Wire who comes back and shares some really good insight in terms of how to make these selections. So this was actually a candidate maybe now from half a dozen years ago who's obviously had their MBA experience, navigated everything, and does provide some really good, good insight. So, you know, basically looking at their insight and you know, what we know about these top programs, I mean, this candidate has done extremely well. What they're trying to do is now pivot from tech to investment banking. So to me that means they've got, you know, the better the program that admitted them is going to give them the best opportunity, opportunity, best access to investment banking careers. So that would be Colombia in that case. So depending on their appetite for taking on debt, you could have make a strong argument that going to Colombia makes sense in this case versus a couple of their top 16 choices that are offering scholarship. So it's either Colombia or is was it Johnson or Fuqua in that case? So those would be the three that I would look closely at. I mean, obviously Tuck also a really good offer, but not currently offering any money. So maybe they could negotiate at Tuck with, you know, based off of, you know, their Fuqua and Johnson offers to see if Tuck would come to the table with, with a bit of scholarship. But I do think that if they're wanting to pivot into investment banking, currently, right now it's Columbia versus Johnson and Fuqua and. Yeah. Which is the right answer, Graham. It is a difficult question because if they have the resources and wherewithal to take on the debt, then Columbia probably gives them the greatest access. And with the investment banking paychecks coming in a couple of years time, they would be able to pay off the Differential or whatever the scholarship money was, I would think.
• 33:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, this is a really interesting scenario and I love your idea of potentially going to Tuck and saying, hey, Look, I have $100,000 from Fuqua, but I have a real fit with Tuck. I want to be in the Northeast. I'm hoping to land in New York. I remember we did an article not too long ago that sort of just showcasing a whole bunch of people working in finance from Tuck in New York City. And so there's a pipeline there. So that might be a pivot point where they could get some money into the mix if they felt that Tuck is kind of a better fit and maybe slightly higher rank than the others that they've got offers from, aside from Columbia at the same time. We talked about this last week, Cornell has this amazing track record with investment banking. And so if this candidate is maybe they're already in debt from undergrad or they're risk averse in some way, the scholarship at cornel of 80 grand is pretty darn good. And Cornell is arguably the school alongside CBS that's best positioned for these banking jobs. So it depends on their risk appetite. And I will say, you look around what's happening in America right now, and not just with AI, but just everything that's going on, the economy, politics, et cetera, and you could see how someone might be a little less risk seeking and how the nice scholarship from Cornell and that pipeline into the banking jobs in New York, pretty effective. So this is going to come down to their personal preference. I will also add that when you look at Tuck, Fuqua and Cornell, you have these kind of smaller, close knit, non urban MBA experiences and they're different than the experience that you would have at a Columbia or a Stern or a Wharton or schools that are in a large city. So they need to think that through as well. But I mean, gosh, I'm pretty impressed with the number of offers and the amount of scholarship across the board. Should be really patting themselves on the back. That's no small feat to apply to that many schools and merge with that many offers and that many dollars.
• 35:42
  Speaker B: So, yeah, it makes you wonder why they didn't apply to Wharton. Did they apply to Wharton?
• 35:47
  Speaker A: No. It doesn't seem like it was on the initial list. No.
• 35:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. So maybe they needed to toss in an app to Wharton in round two and see what happened. But anyway, the point is they've got lots of great offers and got lots to think about, whether it's Toggle or Columbia or Johnson or Fuqua. Maybe in that order. Who knows?
• 36:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's tricky. Yeah. So anyway, I want to thank them for sharing their conundrum and hopefully we. Well, not us really, but our special guest who always posts a decision wire, as you point out, provided a lot of really interesting insights into the recruiting process. So best of luck to them as they make this decision. Alex, I think we've wrapped up here. We'll do it again next week. I will probably be terribly jet lagged by the time I get back to Paris from California, but it's been a pretty gloomy, glorious week out here with sunshine and the views of the Pacific Ocean, so I can't complain.
• 36:37
  Speaker B: No, very good. Good luck when you get back to this side of the world. It's one storm after another and. Yeah. But anyway, everyone stay safe. Take care. We'll do it again next week. Sam.