Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 358—Reapplicant, entrepreneur. Military, retaking GMAT. Navy to Renewable Energy

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MBA Wire Taps 358—Reapplicant, entrepreneur. Military, retaking GMAT. Navy to Renewable Energy · 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 17, 2024. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
• 0:28
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:29
  Speaker A: So give me the latest. I'm still seeing some movement on the live people post in a livewire about wait lists and just lots of questions. People just seem like they're really wanting to know, but what's your take? Are we finally nearing the end of the season or is there still stuff happening?
• 0:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think we're still seeing some activity on the wait list side. I don't think that's finalized. Well, I know it's not finalized. And folks that are on the summer waitlist, they just got to know that schools will still be tweaking their class right up until when folks arrive on campus and the schools then definitively know their class. So, yeah, there will be some movement throughout the summer. It'll be small, but there will be some movement throughout the summer. We also saw a bit of a hiccup, added UT Austin McCombs. They did something a little unusual last week, but just shows we're not all, we're infallible or whatever that right term is. Graham, infallible. I always get confused, but, yeah, these systems sometimes tweak out a message that probably isn't right.
• 1:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely so. And, you know, I think, actually it's nice that there's the livewire community for people to kind of, you know, be on the waitlist together and chat about what they're hearing. And so, yeah, we'll see. It's probably still a little bit more movement to come, as you correctly point out. The other thing that's been going on is Harvard a couple weeks ago released their application deadlines. This is actually a few weeks later than usual. I'm not reading a lot into that. They have a new admissions director who's taken the helm in the last quarter, I think. And so, you know, their deadlines are out. They have not released their essay topic. And in fact, normally those come out at the same time. But their admissions blog posted saying, hey, deadlines are out now. You'll get the essay topic by the end of June. So that's forthcoming again. Some people are really up in arms about how, oh, you know, the essay won't come out until four or five weeks later than it normally does. I don't. I'm not reading too much into that again. I think they're making a change and they're probably needing to sit down as a team and figure out what direction they want to go in. For those of you who don't know, I mean, Harvard for the last several years has had this kind of open ended essay question, which is just, you know, tell us something else about yourself. We've read your resume. We've got, you know, your application data form, all that kind of thing. Just tell us what, what you want us to know. So this very kind of open ended thing, and it was originally had no word count. Then they moved to like a 900 word count. And now I think it's going to be, we'll see. Maybe there'll be more than one essay. I have no idea. But I would guess if I had to that it might be a little bit more of a targeted question. But we shall see. Again, some people very up in arms about this and wondering like, oh, we're not gonna have enough time to apply. The first deadline, September 4. And I would say, hey, chill out. You got at least a couple of months to work on it, if not more. So everyone should be fine. But I don't know what your take is, Alex.
• 3:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's so much to do about nothing or whatever that term is. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're planning to apply to Harvard and you know that, then, and you're doing it in round one, then just look at their current essay, draft it up, and if they do make substantial changes, that'll serve as some good source material anyway for whatever the changes are going to be. Alternatively, you're probably applying to Stanford too. Maybe you are. Do the draft up their essay. I always think Stanford's essay is just great source material for any of the school business school essays. So it is much ado about nothing and seven weeks or whatever, they'll have to draft their essays once the topic is out. Is such a long time.
• 4:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine. And yeah, for those of you who don't know, the Stanford essay question that Alex is referring to is the what matters most to you and why? So again, very big kind of broad brush sort of topic that is a good exercise when you start to think about why you're going to go off to business school. So in any event, we'll keep you posted. We've been running this article on the site every week called the Weekly Refresh, where we rattle off all the new deadlines that have been posted. And there have been a bunch in Kellogg, Stern. A lot of schools have been recently announcing deadlines and essay questions, and we keep track of that, and we put it up on the site. It also comes in our weekly newsletter. So trying to just keep everyone abreast of all that stuff. The other thing that I wanted to remind our listeners of is that we have our summer essay workshops coming up starting in July. The first one is on July 10, which is a Wednesday. And we'll do four Wednesdays in a row at noon Eastern. And again, these are just, you know, virtual webinars, where I sit down with admissions directors from leading MBA programs and pepper them with questions about their essay topics, why they ask the questions, how they read them, what they're looking for. These are great. It's one of the most popular things that we do as a company. Every year, hundreds and hundreds of people sign up and join us. We've got schools like Wharton and Duke and Insead and lbs and Berkeley. The list goes on. Chicago, Columbia, Yale. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to go through them all. There are a lot of schools taking part because we usually have four or five schools each week joining. So sign up for those that, do.
• 5:37
  Speaker B: You not have Harvard taking part? You could ask them what, what their new essay is going to be.
• 5:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know what? I don't think. Well, so, full disclosure, the list is not finalized yet. I think that Mike on our team is still there. I mean, it's. We're almost sold out on the school side. I think there's still a couple slots left or something. So. Yeah, I don't. I don't think they're on the list yet. And they typically do. They typically do the fall one, not the summer. So I don't know. We'll see.
• 6:01
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 6:01
  Speaker A: But to sign up, you can go to bit ly summeressays and. Yeah, I would recommend signing up in advance. You can't really join. You're going to get, you know, that's the only way to get the link and stuff. So do that ASAP. The other thing that I wanted to mention is that if you're listening on any of the popular platforms, whether it's Apple or Spotify, you probably saw. We did a bonus episode of the podcast. Speaking of Harvard, we actually had audio from our, from a panel that we did out at the Chicago NBA fair we organized last month. And we had Harvard, Michigan, Cornell, and NYU admissions directors taking part in a session which we called the who, what, why, where, when type stuff. And that was really like a panel about like, who gets an MBA? Why should you get an MBA? When's the optimal time? Where should you apply? All that good stuff. And so I really enjoyed it. That's why we actually kept the audio and reworked it into a podcast episode. And there's more to come. In fact, next week, we're going to issue another bonus episode, which will be me interviewing the head of recruiting from Bain and company Chicago office. His name is Noble Stafford. He's actually a Wharton MBA, and he gave a ton of good advice about how to get a job at Bain or really how to get into strategy consulting, which is a very popular field for MBA grads. So definitely tune in next week when that one comes out. I even asked him the dreaded question about whether or not consulting firms look at GMAT or GRE scores. So you can tune in to find.
• 7:32
  Speaker B: Out what's the answer? Graham, come on now. Build a beam.
• 7:38
  Speaker A: So the answer is. What he said is, he said, if you have a good score on the test, put it on your resume, we will definitely look at it. So there you have it.
• 7:45
  Speaker B: Love it.
• 7:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. So tune into that stuff. Otherwise, over on the website, we did an admissions tip about. It's called considering the campus. And this is all about some of the stuff that I think people lose sight of if their rankings obsessed or just looking at career outcomes. This is like, what kind of facilities does the school have? What's the campus environment like? You know, you're going to spend at least a year, if not two, in an MBA program. And so you need to sort of understand the surroundings. Urban, rural, big, small, leafy campus, concrete. I mean, you got to understand what you're getting into. So that's a good admissions tip to read if you're interested in that stuff.
• 8:25
  Speaker B: So I'll put you on the spot. Graeme, how did the Wharton campus impact your MBA experience?
• 8:33
  Speaker A: So, I mean, I grew up in Philadelphia, and I knew about the University of Pennsylvania and had been on the campus a number of times. So I kind of knew what I was getting into. The thing that struck me was that of urban kind of campuses. I thought Penn's was kind of, you know, light years ahead of most of the others because it's, you're in the middle of a city, but they have so much land that you don't even realize, you know, when you're walking down locust, walk in the middle of Penn's campus. I mean, you could be in Princeton. You know, on Princeton. Like, it's really a kind of, you know, it doesn't feel like you're in the middle of the city, and yet Penn is kind of smack dab in the middle of Philadelphia. So it's a really lucky thing that they have so much land, but, yeah. And the only thing I'll say is that the hardest part for me was I noticed that they had dug a giant hole on Penn's campus to build a new business school for a building for Wharton called Huntsman hall. And so while I was getting my MBA, I had to watch them building this amazing building while we were kind of in the old buildings. And you probably recall that because you were working in, like, Vance hall in the old building, but you did. You worked in the new building, too, right after it came up?
• 9:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we moved from Vance hall to the new building. And, yeah, it's a great facility. But then I think they moved him out after I left.
• 9:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. They moved you back to be on the ground floor of a Vance hall or something. But, yeah, in any event, I think they ran out of space in the new building and, you know, faculty always takes priority or something, I guess, but. So, yeah. So, in any event, read that admissions tip. The other thing we did is we've restarted our admissions director Q and a series. We're going to have about, I don't know, anywhere from 30 to 50 of these over the next couple of months. And the first one we connected with Holly Hinton, who works at the Ohio State University Fisher School. And she. I wanted to share two things. One is her background. So you're going to like this, Alex. It says, hinton is currently studying for a master of consumer science at Ohio State. Already holds a graduate certificate in women's studies as well as a bachelor of arts in anthropology. She's trilingual and has extensive experience traveling and living abroad. So Holly's like a, you know, definitely talented and interesting person reading your, you know, reading applications over at OSU.
• 10:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. She's studying marketing. She can call it whatever she wants. Consumer science, anthropology. But it's all about studying consumer behavior, which is fundamental if you're going to be a marketing person. So, yeah, no, really good.
• 11:03
  Speaker A: And the way that these Q and A's work is that we not only share background about the admissions director, but we ask them pointed questions, and, you know, there are a whole bunch of them I won't get into. But one of the questions that I wanted to share her response on is about the interview process. And so she said, when we asked about interviews at Ohio State Fisher, she said, interviews may be conducted by a single admissions officer or an admissions officer with a representative of our career management team. We reach out to applicants to notify them that they've been selected for an interview via email and the applicant can then choose a time. The interviews can be conducted in person, but are typically held virtually and they last about 30 to 40 minutes. We will ask a series of questions relative to your overall submission package and video interview, and then also offer candidates the opportunity to ask questions of us. So I just, this struck me, Alex, because it's not so common that you might sit down for an interview that a is nonblind, so they've read your file front to back, but b has not only an admissions rep, but sometimes a career services rep. So that's really fascinating to me.
• 12:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It makes perfect sense, though, Graham, in my book, because I think these, on the one hand, these sorts of interviews that are non blind, as we would call them, I think that's the best, the most effective type of interview, most productive. So the interview is very familiar with your candidacy. Harvard does it, Stern does it, Sloan, I think, and a couple of others. But it's quite hard to do if you've got huge applicant pools. And that's why many other schools do the blind interview, right?
• 12:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:47
  Speaker B: So I'm a big. My preference would be for this style of interview. And then having the two, having career management sort of in the assessment piece, I think also makes a lot of sense, especially for school like Ohio State, where making sure that the candidates they bring in realistically through the resources of Fisher can get that first job out of. Out of the MBA, I think makes up so much, so much sense. So again, again, my point is with these smaller applicant pools, they can afford, I think, to really drill down and make sure that fit is correct. And it makes perfect sense.
• 13:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, spot on. I think, you know, it's just fascinating. And I love that we do these Q and A's because we get at this, you know, this is something that if you're going to apply to Ohio State, like, you need to know this, right? So it's good information, good intel. And I would recommend reading these even if you're not applying to the school, because sometimes these admissions officers offer great advice on just approaching the application process that's broadly applicable. So the only other thing I wanted to mention, Alex, before we talk about our candidates this week, is that by the time this episode airs, I'm going to be in New Orleans, Louisiana for the annual GMAC conference. And I've been exchanging emails with a number of admissions directors. This is for those who don't know, this is the annual conference for people who work in the MBA and the kind of graduate management education admissions world. And so it's like literally six to 800 professionals from all the schools, all the leading schools around the world gathering together to talk shop. And I'm going to try to do like I did last year, some little kind of reporter on the scene, whatever sound bites that we can share on the podcast. And I've already heard back from a handful of schools who are willing to kind of sit down with me and do that. So that'll be fun. So stay tuned for, for that audio when it's ready.
• 14:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely brilliant. Yeah. And enjoyed that. GMAT conferences were always my favorite events through the season when I worked at Wharton. Absolutely fantastic. Always great to hang out with colleagues, learn more about the industry, quite frankly. Just have a few beers and stuff like that.
• 14:59
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. I mean, we'll see if there are any beers to be had. I'll work on that part.
• 15:04
  Speaker B: I'm sure there will be.
• 15:06
  Speaker A: In any event, if you want to reach out to Alex or me, just write to infoclearadmit.com. use the subject line wiretaps. We love getting your emails. We don't get enough of them. So just take a moment, send us a note, even if it's just to say, keep up the good work, guys, or you really need to change the show and do this, like, whatever you want to tell us, send us a note. We love to get those and we'll write back. Alex, other than that, I don't have anything. So I guess we should talk about this week's candidates.
• 15:31
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 15:32
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretap candidate number one. Our first candidate this week is looking to start school in the fall of 25 and has three schools on the target list. Those schools are MIT, Sloan, NYU, Stern, and Stanford GSB. They've been working as a tech product leader in the sustainability space in their kind of pre MBA career after business school, they're thinking about technology in the short term and maybe entrepreneurship in the long term. Companies that they're going to target when they graduate are Amazon, Google, and Tesla. They have a whopping 750 on the GMAT and a slightly less impressive 6.5 out of ten on their undergraduate GPA. They have four and a half years of work experience, and they're located in New Delhi, India, and they want to land in the US. They mentioned in the notes that they left us that they are an entrepreneur three times over. So they've started three different companies. They've already raised nearly a million dollars cumulatively, and they did their first round of fundraising for one of their businesses when they were only 19 years old. They have, as I said, four and a half years of work experience, lots of accolades they mention in the workplace and even some publications in leading journals. They also seem to be pretty active extracurricularly. They ran a food donation drive for over $75,000 people during the first COVID pandemic and they have since helped a couple of NGO's raise some funds on a pro bono basis. And meanwhile, they're also, I guess, while they're working, they're pursuing a part time master's degree in artificial intelligence with a climate specialization and they're doing that at one of India's iits, which are the most prestigious kind of engineering and technology schools across India. So one last tidbit, Alex, before I let you weigh in, this candidate actually applied to business school this past season. They mentioned they were accepted to Carnegie Mellon and to USC, but they've walked away from those offers and have this sort of new strategy of applying this cycle. And as I said to Sloan, Stern and Stanford. So what do you make of this strategy and their candidacy?
• 17:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, like you say, they're effectively a re applicant and they had decent offers last season, but they're obviously taking a bit of a punt to see if they can get a spot at perhaps m seven top 16 or whatever it might be. And I do think their work experience, their professional experience looks very good. It's a blend of sort of entrepreneurship with some success along the way, I take it, as well as sort of tech type work, big tech or whatever it might be. And they, they profess to have, you know, lots of sort of benchmarks along the way that suggest they've performed very, very well. They also are active outside of work. They've run a food donation drive and had good impact and so on and so forth. You know, their goals, I mean, it's all very sort of on, on trend, what they want to do and so on and so forth. So I think there's a lot of positives there. They're probably going to need to do a good job of expressing their story and their narrative so that it all makes sense. So this balance of being an entrepreneur, as well as mixing it up with their other professional experiences is probably going to be a bit of a challenge. I think the bigger the issue that I worry about a little bit is their undergraduate GPA. It's low relatively to top tier candidates, and I'm not saying they're being dismissive over it, but I get the sense that they're trying to build up everything else in their profile without really mitigating any issues around this lower GPA. And as you mentioned, they. I think their first entrepreneurship was when they were 19. So obviously. Well, it seems to me they were so busy during undergrad and distracted that they probably didn't pay a lot of attention to their academics. And I think, you know, whether that's a mistake or not, you can't do anything about that. But you have to recognize that this is a weak point in your overall profile that doesn't need mitigating. Now, getting a 750 GMAT is great, so that tells me that they're smart, but the combination of a low GPA and a high GMAT tells me that this is someone that's really smart when they choose to be, when they want to apply themselves to the academic. So they will have to overcome that little bit of a hurdle. I also would be curious, when they applied last season, did they apply in round one, two, or three? Certainly get into round one this upcoming season. That will maximize their opportunities. So that makes me wonder if they should spread their target schools a little bit further. They've gone m seven with Stern added to it. Maybe add another m seven, but add one or two more top 16 and get them all into that round one to maximise their opportunity.
• 21:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think you said it well. I mean, those are my concerns as well. It's like the GPA is a bit low. They probably didn't go to one of the iits for undergrad. I mean, it's possible they did, but the fact that they're touting that their current part time masters is from one of the iits makes me think that maybe they didn't go for undergrad. So that is a liability. They've done well on the GMAT to counter that, which is great. But I just worry. Indian, perhaps male tech kind of background, so overrepresented. And so I also worry that the pendulum is kind of swinging too far. So they got into a set of schools, and now it's sort of like. They're like, okay, I got into these schools that are in the top 20, and now I'm just only going to apply to top ten. And there's a little danger there, like you were pointing out. So I think, yeah, adding a couple more schools that are maybe a bit more top 16 ish and getting everything in in round one will help. But again, best of luck to them. I mean, it is an interesting profile. I would want to know a little bit more about the type of experiences they've had in detail and whether they've stuck in any one post long enough to have these kind of growth opportunities. But it seems like they have. We just don't have all the details. So, in any event, I want to wish them the best of luck. A really interesting profile and I think, why not go for it? Apply in the first round? Just maybe spread the risk a bit with the school selection.
• 22:26
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 22:27
  Speaker A: Alright, so let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week is applying to seven schools and also wants to start in the fall of 25. The schools they're looking at are Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Michigan, UNC, UT, Austin, Uva and Vanderbilt. This candidate is a military candidate. Right. So they've been working in the military or serving in the military for the last seven years. They are thinking of transitioning. They mentioned manufacturing, auto, aerospace as some potential target fields. They have a 700 on the GMAT and they have a 3.15 gpA. They're located in the United States and they mentioned that they graduated from an average state school with a b's in mechanical engineering. They were heavily involved in extracurricular activities and community service while they were in school, but they've had little to no involvement since starting their career in the military. So, Alex, you had a little bit of back and forth with this person, during which they revealed they're hoping to sit the GMAT again and get another score, maybe a better score. They also mentioned they're going to take like an MBA, math or a business fundamentals course to sort of bolster their academic profile. But what do you make of this? I mean, they have a. A kind of range of schools. I would say that you've got Michigan and Duke and Darden, which are clearly sort of top 16 programs, and then you also have a school like Vanderbilt, which is maybe more top 2025 or something. Right. So, yeah. What do you make of their strategy? And. Yeah, anything they can do, because right now the numbers are a bit lower. Right?
• 24:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I like their overall strategy because, like you say, they've got a good spread of schools. They got top 16, top 20, top 25 in the mix. They reckon the top 16 currently is their reach. So the likes of Ross, Darden and Duke and Fuqua. So I like that. Their potential weakness is this combination of 700 gmap, 315 GPA, which 700 GMAT for many schools is a really good score. It's just when you're targeting some of these very top programs, it's going to be below the median. It's certainly going to make them admitable, but it's going to be below the median. So if they can nudge their GMAT up just even a little bit, that'll be helpful if they do MBA math. It seems like during their undergrad, they were heavily involved in lots of extracurriculars, so maybe it's a little bit of an issue, like our first candidate, whether they were really committed to their academics. So by doing MBA math, and I will acknowledge our first candidate is doing that sort of part time master's degree, and that could be part of that narrative to overall sort of mitigate that commitment to academics now. Right. But for this candidate, maybe doing MBA math as well as retaking GMAT this summer can sort of nudge that piece of the profile up a little bit. And if they make some strides there, that might make those top 16 more realistic. Maybe even look at an m seven like Kellogg. And the nice thing about this candidate is they don't have to get everything done in the first round, right? They're not necessarily over represented, as far as we're aware. So they can have a strategy that involves two rounds. So why not think of one m seven? Like I say, if they're able to nudge their numbers up a little bit, be good also to get a bit more clarity on their goals. I noticed that just as you were talking about them, and for many military candidates, goals typically look like consulting directly out of the NBA and then transition into a particular industry of specific interest, oftentimes on the operation side, but not necessarily always. But really, they should make sure there's good clarity about their post MBA ambitions.
• 26:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, I think this candidate, you know, they have a good list of target schools, as I mentioned, it's a widespread. So. And, you know, yeah, they might aim a bit higher if the test score comes in higher when they retake. The only thing I would say is, I'm kind of curious to know what makes this person tick. What's their, you know, they mentioned they did a lot when they were in undergrad. They're doing nothing now. That's fine. Military candidate, etcetera, you know, as we've discussed. But I would like to know, what are they passionate about? Are they a runner? Are they a music fan? Are they a cook? What do they do in their spare time? And what did they do in undergrad? And how can they, at minimum, demonstrate to the committee that some of these things are still interests, even if they're not actively involved in a club or community service. They're going to need to do that just to demonstrate to the committee that they're well rounded. So I just want to make sure that their personality comes out. But otherwise they seem to have a really good strategy, school selection, and a plan to try to address some of these weaknesses. So, yeah, best of luck to them. I want to thank them for their service. Let's move on though, and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our third candidate this week is also in the military. Alex, I don't know if that was on purpose, but this person has seven schools on the target list. They also want to start in the fall of 25. And the schools are colonial, Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, and Yale. In case you're kind of wondering, that's sort of the m seven, but they've swapped out MIT and put in Yale. So it's a really fancy list of schools. This candidate has been a US Navy nuclear engineer and they want to pivot out of the military and into consulting. Alex, you just talked about this. They want to work at Bain, BCG or maybe Pwc, a GMAT score of 740. Their undergraduate GPA is a 3.24. And they, just like our last military candidate, have seven years of experience in the military. They're located in sunny San Diego. They want to land either in Chicago or New York City after business school. And they mention in the note that they're a US Navy officer and a certified nuclear engineer transitioning out of the military, looking at full time MBA programs. They also cite the fact that they were a division one baseball player at George Washington University during their undergrad. And they mentioned short term consulting, as I said, and in the long term, they're kind of interested in potentially getting into renewable energy as a sector. And I will say, alex, this like jumped right off the page of me. You left them a comment in which you said baseball in college is also a positive. And I just noted that because like the first time I've ever heard you have the word baseball and positive in the same sentence. So, yeah, what do you make of this candidacy?
• 29:22
  Speaker B: I figured you might pick up on that. And, yeah, as listeners may know, I'm not a huge fan of the old rounders or baseball or whatever you call it in America, but what I do have a lot of respect for division one athletes, athletes in general, the dedication, the perseverance, the resilience to be the very best you can be at your sport or whatever it is. I think AdCom really appreciates that in terms of, again, like that discipline and focus as well as talent. Right. Shouldn't. Shouldn't neglect that. And I think overall this profile looks really, really strong. I'm a little bit, you know, the GPA is probably not outstanding. It's certainly a little bit better than prior to Canada, but 3.24 is still going to be below the medians. I assume that this is in a pretty rigorous engineering program, perhaps a little less grade inflation and so forth, but nevertheless, that will be the slightly weaker point. Super GMAT, I assume a nuclear engineer, certified nuclear engineer. I assume this is really good military experience. They'll be able to articulate that. I do wonder what's wrong with Sloan, the only m seven not listed and McKinsey the own, the only MBB not listed in their desires. Because, I mean, this person looks like they'd fit at Sloan, right. With an engineering bent, probably. Sloan probably does some good things on the renewable energy side and so on and so forth, so. But, yeah, Graham. I mean, quite honestly, I think there is a lot, a lot to like here. And again, like our previous candidate, obviously both military, but again, they don't have to worry about completing their overall strategy in round one. So go high in round one, knowing that they've got round two to, you know, deal with, you know, to be similarly successful. Our first candidate doesn't quite have that luxury because they are potentially overrepresented. So our first candidate clearly get that round one strategy right, whereas the second and third candidates have the luxury of round two to really back up their strategy. So I would go high round one here, and if they've got to drop down a notch, which I would be a little bit surprised if they do a good job executing on their applications, if they've got to, they can do that simply in round two.
• 32:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I would say there's no harm. I mean, they have a really stellar list of schools for the round one here, and so, yeah, they can execute that and then see what happens if it doesn't, you know, work out. I think, you know, you're right. They've probably had some really interesting, you know, seven years, and they're a nuclear engineer, so I'm assuming lots of, you know, like, just exposure to different aspects of the military, et cetera. Right. So I. Yeah, there's a lot to, like here. I probably shouldn't have used the word exposure while talking about nuclear engineering, but in any event, I think that they. This is a great candidate. I agree the GPA is a bit low, but the GMAT is really high. And yeah, they're going to be sought after. One thing I will say for both our last two candidates is that they should be out there talking to other veterans in business school and also checking with an entity like service to school, which helps. It's kind of a pro bono entity that helps people in the military to transition into business school and other graduates paths. So, in any event, yeah, this is a solid candidate. And, I mean, I think all three of our candidates this week have a lot of promise, and I think there was some interesting parallels. So thanks for picking these out, as always, Alex. We're going to have to record the next episode from somewhere in Nola. I've never actually been, so we'll see. Maybe I'll be recording from a French cafe.
• 33:22
  Speaker B: You've never been to New Orleans?
• 33:24
  Speaker A: No. So maybe I'll have to hit the French Quarter to feel like I'm back in Paris or something. And we'll record an episode. But I'll touch base with you. We'll make it happen. As always, since we never miss a.
• 33:35
  Speaker B: Week, you will absolutely love it. The food, too is absolutely outstanding. Make sure you take in some jazz, too. Absolutely brilliant.
• 33:45
  Speaker A: Yep, I will try. So, yeah, we'll see how it goes. I got a lot of meetings lined up too, but. All right, so we'll do that next week. Alex, thanks so much, as always, for picking out candidates, etcetera.
• 33:54
  Speaker B: Brilliant. Best of luck, everyone. Stay safe. It.