Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 378—Tech PM to MBA. Climate finance to MBA.

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MBA Wire Taps 378—Tech PM to MBA. Climate finance to MBA. · 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, August 19, 2024. For more than 100 years, Emory University's Goisueta Business school has been a training ground for principal leaders and a laboratory for powerful insights. Whether you're looking to accelerate your career or make a career pivot, Emory's one year and two year full time MBA programs prepare you for a lifetime of career confidence. Learn more about Emory's top 20 MBA with top five career outcomes offering world class academics and small by design classes delivered in a dynamic global city. More at Emory Bizdez slash clearadmit, I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 1:04
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: So today we're gonna do something a little different. Instead of the news and notes section of the show, we're gonna give listeners a bit of an origin story for the two of us. And I'm gonna try to interview you a little bit, and maybe you can interview me a bit. And we'll talk about how we know each other and what we built over the years for clear admit. And most importantly, we'll also get into sort of how applicants can use some of the things that you and I have worked on as they journey down their admissions path. We'll still, of course, break down three candidate profiles. As usual, Alex, I know you've picked out three really interesting candidates to go through this week. Before we get to all of that, though, I wanted to mention that our next event series is now on the horizon. It begins in September. We've got three weeks in a row of events in September on consecutive Wednesdays, September 11, 18th and 25th at noon Eastern. And we're going to do each event is going to have five schools. We've got insead, Wharton, lBS, Yale, Berkeley. There's a long list here of 15 schools. And you can sign up for these events by going to bit ly insidemba. And what we'll do in the event is we have a whole bunch of questions for schools about the differences between applying in round one and round two, because these are events are going to be more geared for candidates who are getting started a bit later, thinking about round two and what they need to do. Because of that, we'll also get into. We'll probably talk a little bit about interviewing that would be relevant, relevant to round one people. So a lot of good questions for admissions officers who are going to be joining us from these schools. So sign up in advance while you can. These events always get really, really full, so it should be fun.
• 2:46
  Speaker B: Oh, it'll be great series.
• 2:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. So. All right. So, Alex, I've been saying this to you for a while, but I thought it'd be kind of fun to do, like, an origin story on the podcast. And I just thought, let's start with a really simple question, because I'm not sure that all of our listeners know kind of your personal journey. And so I wondered, like, where are you from originally? If you could share that with. With the audience? And, like, what did you study in undergrad and what were you thinking you wanted to do when you graduated from school? Yeah, just take me through that bit.
• 3:16
  Speaker B: Sure. I'm not really the best case study for MBA admissions myself, but I am from the UK and I went to Leeds for my undergraduate degree, which was in business administration. I then right after graduating, went over to the United States. States. I actually worked in the horse racing industry for a number of years, maybe two or three years full time. And then I transitioned to the University of Delaware's MBA program. I actually was fortunate to get a good GMAT score, which I didn't realize at the time was quite a useful thing. And I got a full scholarship as a full time student, the University of Dallas. I worked in MBA admissions during that time as a graduate assistant and stayed in MBA admissions at the University of Delaware after my MBA.
• 4:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you became director. That was my first. I mean, I don't think you knew who I was, but I knew of you because you were the director of admissions at Delaware and I think you called. Well, we'll get into that in a moment. But we had one interaction you wouldn't let us on.
• 4:21
  Speaker B: Multi app brain, let's be clear.
• 4:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, I remember this. We'll have to get into that. So. But tell me, how do you go from. So you're running, you end up doing the MBA at Delaware, and you were a grad assistant, so, reading files. But you then found yourself as director, like head of that program's admissions office. Right?
• 4:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I worked with my sort of mentor, Bob Barker, as a graduate assistant, and then I was basically his assistant director, running the marketing side of the program shortly thereafter. And from there, I kept doing that. And it was a time when the Internet was starting to take hold. So the early to mid 1990s mosaic web browser had come out, various other things, and I was really fascinated by the idea that I could actually host a chat on the University of Delaware's website and had a lot of folks from China actually on these chats. I also helped set up the gopher site for the University of Delaware's MBA program. So this was even a little bit earlier, was doing some reasonably creative things and giving talks at GMAC conferences, which was quite good coming from the University of Delaware. And at those GMAT conferences, networked effectively my way into working at the Wharton school.
• 5:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. So then you went to Wharton, and you're now reminding me of all these, like, you know, my browser of choice when the Internet was in its nascent phases was Netscape. I'm just kind of remembering all this. Okay, so you ended up getting a job at Wharton, and you worked there for several years and continued to kind of innovate and explore Internet related and tech related initiatives, right?
• 6:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. It was the time, sort of the late 1990s to the mid two thousands. So it was a seven or eight year period. So at that time, we were moving from a paper based admissions process to an Internet based admissions process. So we had to launch the online application we had to launch. We launched the interview scheduling system. We launched a discussion forum, student to student. That was really quite a creative sort of endeavor that worked really well. We were the first to really use blogs, not only MBA admissions blogs, but got students blogging about their experience. Student diary project. So we introduced a lot of really interesting implementations of technology at that time to make the admissions process more transparent, more efficient, more effective. And again, during all that time, I'd go be at GMAT conferences, giving talks, networking, engaging, etcetera. It was a brilliant time. Absolutely brilliant. And that's obviously where I met you, Graeme.
• 7:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So I grew up in the Philadelphia area and went to undergrad at Swarthmore College. And as you often point out on these shows, I studied art history, which meant I had very limited quantitative background. But when I graduated from school, I was thinking about working in the art world, ideally at a major museum like MoMA in New York, where I'd done an internship. But things kind of morphed as I went on, and I basically graduated from college and couldn't find that job in the art world and ended up at a company called Multiapp, which is where you and I first interacted, as you alluded to earlier. And Multiapp was, as you said, schools were trying to get away from paper, or certainly applicants wanted to be able to word process their applications and not like, handwrite stuff. And I know that sounds just so ridiculous now, but back then, this was a big deal. And so I worked at this software company that basically took the top 50 MBA programs in the world and sort of digitized their application and created a software package where you could fill out your applications in the software, and then it would print out copies that you would still mail to the schools. But Wharton was a client, and there were many other schools using it. And you called me up from Udelaware and said, hey, how do we get on this software? And I don't actually remember the details of the discussion, but apparently we said no.
• 8:37
  Speaker B: You gave a short answer, and it was no.
• 8:40
  Speaker A: I think we have very limited. Like, we were, you know, limited resources and kind of focused on the schools that had the highest application volume. But in any event, yeah. So that was our first. Now, luckily, I then realized at some point that I should go to business school and get an MBA, because I was fascinated by the software company I was working at and kind of. I was actually working with the founder, who had an MBA from Harvard Business School. And I realized, wow, if this is the kind of stuff you can do when you have an MBA, this seems like fun. So I applied to business school, and I guess either you had forgotten our interaction or you didn't read my file. So I got into Wharton somehow, but despite.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: You got into Harvard, too. Graham, let's not be modest here.
• 9:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I got into Harvard, Wharton, a bunch of other schools, and I ended up at Wharton. I actually, given that art history background, I wanted an MBA program that I thought quantitatively would kick my butt. And so I gravitated towards Wharton and also was from the Philly area, knew Philadelphia really well, and was excited to kind of be in Philly. So that was kind of my background. And then I graduated. Well, actually, while I was at Wharton, I started working like you did at Delaware, as a graduate assistant, reading files and taking part in the admissions process at Wharton. And then when I graduated from Wharton, Rose Martinelli, who was the director of admissions, asked me if I wanted to. I think there was someone had left on maternity leave, and they asked me if I wanted to just step in and take on that. I think it was Carol, if I remember correctly, Alex. So I ended up working in admissions with you, and that's when we got to do a bunch of cool projects. Projects. Although some of them sound kind of silly at this point. Like, remember we put the Wharton viewbook on a CD ROm? Does anyone even know what a CD Rom is today? I don't even know, but, yeah, so lots of fun projects. But do you remember anything from that time that you wanted to highlight? I mean, I just remember the innovations you were bringing with respect to kind of making it so that applicants could talk to admissions officers online, the discussion forums, and do a lot of things that, quite frankly, other schools were kind of bristling at. They didn't want that kind of direct contact.
• 10:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it was, like you say at the time, early, sort of mid to mid 1990s. What we were doing and proposing to do was very sort of out there or innovative. I mean, like you say, hindsight's 2020. It looks really, you know, an obvious thing to do now. Let candidates have conversations with each other and have them on your domain, rather than have them on, let's say, a subreddit or wherever it might be, so that you can listen and you can engage and you can participate, etcetera. That's what we were doing in the early nineties. It was absolutely fantastic. You referred to the Wharton Innovate CD that we created. That was another really interesting project. But we knew when we ran that project that this is a temporary thing, as it were, temporary medium, as it were, for a couple of years. CD roms would be cool. We could create a lot of content and do some really cool things. But the trajectory of the Internet and the web would be such that all that content ultimately will live on the web. So there's no doubt CD roms only had a short shelf life. But again, that was a really interesting project. The nice thing about Wharton, I would argue, is we were in admissions effectively allowed to innovate, and we were given quite a lot of room to do some interesting things, make some errors. But, yeah, at the end of the day, I think we did pretty good stuff.
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I loved the fact that we were allowing candidates on the Wharton kind of student to student and discussion forums to talk about other schools or to do the sort of stuff that was taboo in the past. Like, you wouldn't want any conversation. We were much more about embracing that, whereas there were other schools at the time, and many of them have changed since, but there were other schools at the time who kind of admissions was like a black box. It was like they put out their application, you filled it out, and it was like, don't call us, we'll call you. You know, very much different approach and no information.
• 12:57
  Speaker B: We led the shift away from that sort of process. And actually, it was pretty cool knowledge at Wharton, wrote a little story about what we were doing, but also interviewed a bunch of other faculty about this sort of process of providing transparency and letting folks talk to each other and using blogs and stuff. So it's the only article that I've been quoted in that. Peter Feder was also quoted in. So I still have a copy at that article.
• 13:28
  Speaker A: Oh yeah, Peter Feder being a very famous marketing professor at Wharton. Yes. So, yeah, so I think, I mean, one of the things that then happened is I was kind of, after working at that software company and then working with you at Wharton and doing all these innovative things, I was really had been bitten by the bug to do things entrepreneurial, like to just explore tech and other things. And so I actually left my role at Wharton to start clear admit. And we started clear admit as just an admissions consulting company. And that was the sort of way to make some money and get things going. But all from the very beginning, my idea was to build an online community. And you actually were super helpful in giving me advice on that. I mean, we had built some of this stuff together at Wharton. And so I was thinking, hey, what if a non school were to build an online community? And there were other discussion forums out there, but I was thinking of creating an advice hub and some ways for candidates to interact. And so, yeah, over the years, eventually cleared mid exited admissions consulting. We still get questions like, can you read my file? And do you guys do hourly admissions consulting and editing? We don't do that at all anymore. But eventually the community that we built was so large and so strong, they were able to pivot the company and really become just an entirely free sort of space for candidates. And schools obviously help support us and things now. So it's very different than it was when we started.
• 14:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, I vividly remember actually, for some odd reason, having a conversation with you and Elliot might have been there. I forget, but we were having a conversation in the, our office suite and I said, you've got to start a blog. You've got to do it off of a blog, do a blog, etc. Etc. Not that that's the reason why you did a blog, but yeah, I just remember that conversation. And then again when we started, you allowed me and, well, not just me, but we're all effectively together doing a load of innovation. And I thought the one project that really stood out at that time was the interview archives. Still today is probably, well, it has to be the largest archive of MBA interviews from top MBA programs. But it started as a wiki. And I was fascinated at the time of this notion of wiki Wikipedia and how wikis worked and how you could get sort of crowdsourced content, etcetera. So, yeah, that was absolutely brilliant, I think.
• 15:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, again, this is all about transparency. So we thought, let's let candidates share their interview experiences at all the top schools. And we got some pushback with schools from time to time with the way that we've created this amount of transparency for candidates, but now it's sort of just part of the deal. Yeah. The other thing that I think was really funny is that when we first started blogging and sharing advice about the application process, we even got some pushback from some admissions consultants who were saying things like, you can't do this. You're giving away all the secrets of what we charge for. But that was just part of our ethos, was to make it easy for candidates to go down this path. And over the years, Alex, you wrote a book, which I helped edit. We've continued, as you say, that wiki about interview reports has turned into the clear admit interview archive. We built Livewire and all these other tools.
• 16:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, I will add one or two more things, and maybe we'll just cover two candidates today instead of three. So it's not just a ridiculously long episode. But I think the business's decision to pivot away from admissions consulting was one, in hindsight, a terrific decision. But at the time, it was a very courageous decision because, you know, at the end of the day, I assume you guys are making plenty of revenue. We had lots of clients, etcetera, but there was quite a big overhead to the business at the time, I guess, with lots of folks sort of supporting the editing process, etc. Etcetera. And to pivot to what? To being basically community first MBA admissions sort of website with the wires. At the time, I think Livewire Washington was kicking off, but now, obviously, we have apply wire, we have decision wire, etcetera. At the time, it was a very courageous decision. And probably the first couple of years post that decision, you and Elliot were really sort of getting a little sweaty in terms of how good that decision was. But I think over the last two or three or four years, we've hit a rhythm that's really, really good. And it makes you feel really good about the type of work we do. I mean, I really enjoy it, frankly. We continue to innovate, but the ethos of the company in terms of staying transparent and trying to provide the best guidance that we can, whether it's through this podcast. Now, the admissions book you just mentioned, advice on apply wire, advice on Livewire decision, why, et cetera, et cetera, whether it's through the content that Lauren produces, I mean, produced a terrific piece of content this week, obviously, you know, dovetailing on the trend of Taylor Swift, but a terrific piece of content. Yeah, but, you know, I think, you know, we are a small team of really quality individuals, great to work together, and the direction of the company is. It just makes you feel good about it.
• 19:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree. And I love the fact that people might say that you and I are a bit older than, obviously, people applying to business school, but a bit.
• 19:13
  Speaker B: I'm 60 this year.
• 19:15
  Speaker A: I know. But I will say that you have an innovative spirit, and I've always, even. We're at Wharton, I remember we would walk over on lunch. Sometimes we'd walk over, I don't know why, we would find ourselves in the Penn bookstore, and you would be picking out all these books, talking to me about all these books you were reading about, know, the development of the Internet, and just. And you continue to just always be curious and open minded to new technology. I mean, you and I are doing a lot of work right now on AI. It just. Yeah, that's what keeps me going. And as you said, just feeling really good about the work we do. I got a note the other day on LinkedIn from someone who is just looking for, you know, links to the videos of the webinars that we've done and things like that. And I sent him the links, whatever, and the guy writes back and just says, you guys should feel really good about how much you do to uplift the applicant community. And I do feel good about that. And I think that that's what gets us out of bed in the morning, is just to help people as they go down this journey and thank the.
• 20:12
  Speaker B: Schools for supporting clear admit through advertising, whatever it is that they do. You can host these events, etcetera, etcetera.
• 20:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing. The schools. Yeah, the schools like us. So, yeah. And I say that because when we're doing admissions consulting, there's always this kind of cat and mouse stuff happening where the schools are like, oh, you know, are you helping too much with candidates to polish their materials? And, you know, obviously, we were always above board and tried to be very ethical about that, but it's still, you know, the schools, I think they feel more comfortable with the work we do now, which is just providing a community and resources for candidates. So. Yeah, so, anyway, I just thought it'd be fun to do that, Alex, because a lot of people tune in and I don't know how much they know about our backgrounds or how we met, or there's sort of the history of clear admit, and I don't know what episode of the show this is going to be, but we're away above 300 episodes at this point, heading towards 400 total. And it's been amazing to do this podcast and, yeah, week in and week out, so it's a lot of fun.
• 21:10
  Speaker B: And we never skip a week.
• 21:12
  Speaker A: Yes. So, as always, if people want to write to us, they can write to infocereadmit.com. and Alex, or I will get back to you using the subject line wiretaps, please, so we can flag it. Other than that, Alex, I know you picked out some candidates. I know our time might be a little limited, but let's. I guess we should get going and try and talk about a couple of them at least.
• 21:30
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 21:31
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps, candidate number one. So this week's first candidate is applying to school. They're going to start in the fall of 25, or that's the goal at least. They have Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, Kellogg, Chicago and Uva Dardenhouse on their list of targets. They have been working as head of products at a tech startup, and after business school, they're thinking about consulting and then maybe tech after that. They do mention a bunch of companies, including Amazon, Apple and Google on the tech side. And I guess some of the usual suspects for consulting are on their list. They have a whopping 750 on the GMAT, whereas their GPA is bit low, 2.99. So just under that magical three mark, they have seven years of work experience located in the Middle east, and they've worked for three companies in different countries. And they mentioned Europe as, I guess, where those. Where these roles have been taking place, they're in a product role. They've been leadership roles for the last four years. They have both a B's and an MS in engineering from one of the top universities in their country. And they did share with us that. That MS. I believe their GPA in the MS was a bit better. I think it was a 3.25, if memory serves. So, Alex, what do you make of this candidacy? And, yeah, I mean, that GPA is obviously a red flag. Right. But what would you say about this candidate?
• 23:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this candidate looks to be a candidate who's super smart. I mean, they've got a 750 on the GMAT, so they've got. Got to be super smart. Their gpas, both undergrad and graduate, aren't outstanding at all. Right? So there's a bit of a miss there. So they're going to have to sort of deal with that academic record stuff sensitively. So there will be, you know, schools will say well you're smart so why do you get a 299? Right. So that's going to be a bit of a problem. So addressing that, I mean a three two five at a grad level. Again, grad degrees you're typically seeing much close to 40. Right. So. And I think that they're both engineering degrees so. So that they'll get a little bit of credit for that. I'm just a bit worried maybe they're doing a direct conversion and that can sometimes be create some issues in terms of converting from whatever their GPA was to the US 4.0 where in the US there's a load of grade inflation so ADCom are assuming grade of inflation. So if there isn't where they're from they need to be quite clear about that too. I think their work experience probably is outstanding. So I think they're coming to the admissions process with a really strong professional background. They've probably done really well as a product manager and so forth. Obviously they've got to back that up with good wrecks and showing that impact and growth. I'm not totally convinced that they're outside of work activities or anything to help them further stand out. So the strengths of their application are probably going to be in their professional experience and in that really super GMAT score. So I'm not sure that's absolutely enough for the very very best programs. Certainly it's going to be good enough for some of the very good programs. Maybe in, you know, the tail end of the m seven top 16 sort of stuff. But. But yeah, I'm a little nervous about the GPA Gramden, and I'm not totally convinced of their sort of. What else do they bring to the table other than really strong work experience which for many top programs will be certainly good enough.
• 25:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, I share your concerns. I worry about the GPA. The GMAT is fantastic. This kind of is located in the Middle east and the companies they've been working for, it sounds like are european companies. I don't know that they've actually lived in Europe. It's sort of unclear from what they're saying here, but I do think it's interesting. They've had some, as you say, probably good work experience. Would you expand the list? I mean right now you look at they have some m seven schools in Booth, MIT, Kellogg and Columbia. And then they have some schools that are just on the cusp like a Dartmouth or a darden. Are you suggesting that maybe they need to cast a little bit of a wider net.
• 26:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, school like Ross would probably be a good target. I think a couple of others. I mean, at the end of the day, they, you know, they might well be sort of m seven, top 16, but if they apply to three or four in that sort of ladder group, top 16, they're more likely to get an admissions, maybe even a scholarship offer, than if they only applied to one or two from that group. Right. So as we know, admissions is part art, part science. So. And it is a bit of a numbers game. So if you've got a. Got two or three apps at a certain level, you've got a higher chance of getting admissions if you only got one or two. So I just think, yeah, one or two more in that top 16 bucket might be smart.
• 27:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. And the only last thing I'll say is you made a really good point, which is that we don't know. I mean, if they went to university in the Middle east, like, maybe it's on the 40 scale, maybe it's not. I don't know. But, yeah, if they're converting, that could also create challenges. And sometimes schools, most schools at the top will just say, hey, just give us your transcripts. You don't need to convert. We will figure that out. Whereas other schools ask you to do a conversion. But, yeah, so that could be a factor. I mean, it could be that. That three, two and their masters was like, top 10% of their class. I have no idea. Right. So, in any event, they're going to need to demonstrate, you know, kind of explain this issue. And ideally, with the work experience, strong racks and, you know, really good GMAT score. Get above and beyond it. So we'll see how it goes. I do want to thank them for both posting and for answering some of the questions that we had asked them on the site. So that was great. Let's. Yeah.
• 27:51
  Speaker B: I will say just one last word on this. That 750, which is outstanding, will have more impact on a top 16 program than it will on an m seven program.
• 28:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's an excellent point. Yeah, that's fair.
• 28:05
  Speaker B: I could go on and explain that, but for want of time, just keep that in mind.
• 28:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. All right, well, I want to thank them for sharing. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So this week's second candidate has just three schools on the target list, and those schools are Harvard, Stanford, and Yale. They also want to start in the fall of 25. This person's been working in nonprofit climate change. That's the industry they're in and they're thinking about getting into consulting after business school, at least in the near term. And, you know, they list all the usual suspects from accenture to Deloitte to Bain, BCGA, etcetera. And so they're now, they did share with us that in the longer term, I think they want to get back into kind of nonprofit and climate change related work. But I think the idea is to maybe do some consulting that domain first, and then, you know, just sort of hone their skills that they build in business school. They have a 760 on the GMAT, which is another big GMAT score. But like our first candidate, their GPA is a bit low. They have a 2.81 gpA. They've got six years of work experience. They're located in western Europe, and they want to land in the US after business school. They do share with us that they've actually had work experience in two continents, both Asia and Europe. They've actually also had experience working with a lot of african governments to raise finance for climate change projects. And they want to pivot to consulting and use that kind of generalist exposure to pivot back to work in the climate, finance and private sector sector overlaps. So they're looking for network and exposure to a broader interpersonal skillset to make impact at a global level. That's what they said. That sounds like they're ready to write an essay about why they want an MBA. Alex, what do you make of this candidate?
• 29:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, quite honestly, and this is very coincidental, but these candidates, both these candidates look very similar, right? They look like they both have really interesting work experience, they both have outstanding GMAT scores. And yeah, they both have pretty dismal gpas in terms of how we would interpret the GPA. Now, this candidate, they have some mental health issues when they undertook their undergrad, which then resolved, and I think there was an upward trend as a result of that. Maybe. Or maybe I'm misremembering that, but anyway, so there is some context there. So they then decided to do an MBA directly after their undergrad, which at the time was probably a good decision, because that probably then allowed them to sort of level set and start their career probably in a better situation than they would have done trying to do it straight out of undergrad. So I completely understand why they did that. They were the top students coming out of their program at the time. So that was very good. But that then raises the second issue. They're going to need to absolutely articulate why getting this second MBA makes perfect sense. And there are good reasons why it does make perfect sense, I'm sure, but they will. They can't dismiss that there's an issue. They're going to need to tackle it straight up front, whether it's in the optional essay, whatever it might be, in conjunction with explaining the lower GPA, they can say, well, I did an MBA to try to mitigate the lower GPA, etcetera, but now I realize three, four years, well, six years down the line, that getting an MBA with sort of more scope and with the experience I have will be a much richer experience, etc. Etc. So they can absolutely make the case, but they need to do that. Also, I also, my final point here, Graeme, is both these candidates, I think are really good poster, Charles, for why an MBA is such a terrific opportunity, a terrific degree. You've got someone that's an engineer in product management doing really well, recognising probably that they lack the keen business skills that can really ratchet up their career going forward. That's our first candidate. And now we've got a candidate who is really focused on climate and climate science and various other things, etcetera. And again, really looking for a top MBa program to then leverage, first going into consulting, but then coming back to climate finance. So I think some really interesting case studies today, but both reasonably similar.
• 32:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I would just add on this one that it's not so uncommon. It's actually, I mean, in a couple of different emerging economies to do the MBA right after undergrad. And so this person did their MBA in South Asia, they mentioned. And so, yeah, that happens. It is a bit of a, like you said, you got to explain, well, why on earth get an MBA if you already have an MBA? But there's, you know, you can make a great argument about not having worked before the first one and now that you've been in the workforce, you recognize that you still need to build some skills and things that you'll get at a top flight NBA in the US, etcetera. So I think they can make that case. I am a little unhappy about the GPA. I think that it's going to be a bit of a red flag and something they need to mitigate. And the GMAT helps. We always say if you have a low GPA, get a really high GMAt. And they did that with a 760. So that'll help. But yeah, the only other thing I wanted to address is they mentioned, oh, we sort of said maybe cast a wider net and they just mentioned that, that, oh, I'm kind of questioning about, do I really need to do the MBA? The ROI might be lower given that you don't need an MBA to work in climate finance and stuff. We had some back and forth with them on the website, and I would argue that if they want to go into consulting is a great way to hone their skillset. Well, the MBA is a great path to that. The ROI pays off quite quickly if you go work at Bain or something. That's a no brainer. I would think that they're going to be able to leap that much higher into the climate finance domain with the MBA and the network and just the education they will have. So I think there is a good ROI on it, especially if they're going to do short term consulting.
• 34:31
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. I completely agree. And like you say, they probably should be casting a slightly wider net because of that one particular issue that they have have with their undergrad degree.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. Last question for you, and then we can wrap. Would you recommend that either of our candidates take, like, business fundamentals or MBA math to show that they're, you know, they can get A's in a course they're taking, or do you think that the GMAT is sort of setting that aside?
• 35:00
  Speaker B: The first candidate? Possibly, but I do think the GMAT sort of sets that aside, given both GMATs are absolutely outstanding. The reason why I pick on the first candidate is the second candidate does have an MBA degree.
• 35:13
  Speaker A: Right. So they can.
• 35:14
  Speaker B: It might be a little bit redundant in that case, but, yeah, they're possibilities.
• 35:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. And they also had a great result in that MBA. Right? They were first in their class.
• 35:26
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 35:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, so, Alex, I appreciate you taking some time today to talk about your background and how we kind of started working together and just to give listeners a little bit of insight into the origin story. And again, let's connect next week. We don't ever miss a week. So let's connect next week and do another episode of wiretaps.
• 35:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, it sounds like we've been working together for about 20 years, Graham. That's pretty impressive.
• 35:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 35:49
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Speaker A: All right, so I'll see you next week.
• 35:52
  Speaker B: Very good. Best luck, everyone. Take care. Stay safe.