Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 498: 330 GRE, from South Asia. No test score, should they waive? Sloan vs Columbia and Booth

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MBA Wire Taps 498: 330 GRE, from South Asia. No test score, should they waive? Sloan vs Columbia and Booth · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hi, my name is Amber Walsh. I'm a senior associate director at the Yale School of Management. And welcome to the Clear Admit Podcast. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, June 29, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:38
  Speaker B: You're good. Thank you, Graham.
• 0:40
  Speaker A: So we've got a busy, busy show this week. Some leadership changes over at USC Marshall and Uva Darden, some more ADCOM Q&As as that series really gets rolling as we head into summer. Real Humans alumni who are working at places like LEK and bcg, and of course, the candidates that you've picked out to discuss. But first, Alex, I want to ask our listeners if they would to leave us reviews and ratings. It's been a little while. I feel like since we've gotten reviews and Apple is the best platform to review us on, I don't think Spotify really even allows for that. But definitely rate and review this show. It just helps other people discover the show. And I think at this kind of critical time of year when new candidates are coming into the pipeline, the more people know about this resource, the better. So whatever you need to do, if you want to put up a LinkedIn post about how much you enjoy listening to the show, do it. But we need some help in spreading the word and we rely on our listeners for that. Alex, sorry I'm going on here, but I wanted to also ask you, like, what's going on with you? How are, what do we need to know about this coming week? And yeah, and if you have any ideas about how to get people to
• 1:44
  Speaker B: submit reviews, just keep doing what we're doing. Hopefully some people enjoy it. But yeah, the things are quiet on Livewire. We are at that time of year, sort of transitioning out of last season's hectic, sort of finalizing classes and so on and so forth moving into this upcoming season, which is terrific. But we Wharton is going to release its deferred admissions this upcoming week. And we've seen that's the sort of activity we've seen more recently on Livewire is deferred admission, admissions decisions rolling out and so on and so forth at a variety of the top schools. A little bit of weightless movement, but I haven't seen as much as I'd anticipated, quite honestly. But I would still presume there's folks on summer wait lists waiting to hear and schools still not absolutely comfortable to release everybody and so on and so forth. So a little bit of that will be continuing. Other than that, Graham, just trying to stay cool. Stay cool.
• 2:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's been a horrific heat wave here in Paris. I'm surviving. But one thing I wanted to mention, while we're talking about the show and people listening, I had the occasion to run into one of our listeners when I was in Philadelphia moderating that Best Business Schools kind of panel of the 10 top MBA programs in the US and it's a guy who's a comedian by trade and also runs a comedy club. And really wonderful guy. I just wanted to give him a shout out. It was so great to connect with him. And he came up and he had a lot of nice things to say about the show, Alex. And was, you know, was curious about your background in comedy, too. So there you go.
• 3:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks to Wharton.
• 3:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:33
  Speaker B: Yes. Wharton's comedy club. And they allowed me to.
• 3:37
  Speaker A: That's right.
• 3:38
  Speaker B: Do it. You know, perform. It was absolutely brilliant. Yeah. And huge thanks to Kofi and Ben. I won't use their last names, but they were running the comedy club. Oh, and they let you in and they. Yeah, and. But not just that. They then schooled me on how to do it. They gave me feedback on my content, etc. Etc. They were absolutely fantastic. And a real. Yeah, a real. Yeah. Really, really good.
• 4:05
  Speaker A: I wish There was some YouTube footage of this stuff that we could tune into.
• 4:09
  Speaker B: Well, quite ironically, Ben's one of the big leaders. Well, he was a big leader at YouTube. Now he's LinkedIn.
• 4:16
  Speaker A: Oh, that's funny. Got it.
• 4:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 4:17
  Speaker A: Cool.
• 4:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, he had a Comedy channel on YouTube. Yes.
• 4:22
  Speaker A: Wow. So speaking of stuff that's not funny, we're gonna do an event about immigration and what to get a visa to go to the U.S. we're going to do that on July 16th. And actually, I think it's going to be a good time because we're going to have our friend Travis, who's an immigration lawyer who actually serves many of the top business schools, admitted students with kind of assistance in getting their visas and going through that process. So he's going to join us. And I think we're also trying to recruit some international students who've gone through the process. So, July 16th at 10:00am Central European Time. So this is not for the U.S. listener, because if you're in the U.S. chances are you already have a visa to be there. But in any event, this is for the international crowd. So we're going to do that on July 16, and that kind of opens up our summer event. Series because we're going to be really busy. We've just added a fifth event to our Essay Insights workshop series that's going to run on the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 28th and 29th of July. All of those are at noon Eastern US Eastern Time. And you know, each time we're going to sit down with like five schools, talk about their essay questions and their video essays as well, because that's increasingly a part of the process. And yeah, I love those events. I'm actually working to prepare the agendas for those because I, in order to do so, got to comb through every school's essays, work with Mike on our team to kind of get together the right sort of questions to ask these admissions directors about their essay topics. So that'll be a lot of fun. You can sign up for any ClearAdmit event by just going to clearadmit.com events. Alex. Yeah, those will be fun. I think I'm going to do all of them. We'll see. I think my schedule permits. I'm going to be on vacation a little bit in August, but I'm going to try to do all these July events for us.
• 6:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, they'll be absolutely fantastic. And then obviously we'll get the transcripts from those events. It'll help us build out some really good essay topic sort of content for the site, keep everything very current. And obviously for our admissions bot, which we're going to reframe. Right. So we're going through a bit of a marketing lesson. You'd think, you know, having taught marketing for 30 years, I wouldn't need a lesson. But there we go. We're going to re pitch what it does because I, I do think our admissions bot is, is, is, is a super useful tool for a lot of reasons. For folks starting to think about applying to top tier business programs and then preparing their applications and then making decisions, et cetera, et cetera. So, so I, I forget how I went on this tangent, but yeah, getting the transcripts from these essay webinar events and from, from the, from the immigration lawyer will be super, super helpful.
• 7:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, because we always feed those things right into the AI tool. But yeah, we're working on potentially a new name I think. Right. But it's, it's obviously the AI tool has been doing quite well because it's got, you know, tens of thousands of queries and we've learned. I was able to mine all that data to think about Personas and what types of applicants are out there. It's really fascinating stuff. But we'll keep. Yeah, keep adding a couple of news and notes. Alex, before we get into the. There's just a ton of stuff to cover this week, but a couple of news and notes. USC Marshal Dean Jeffrey Garrett is going to assume a new role. So he's stepping down. Let's see, it'll be this summer. So he is going to step into a new university wide role focused on global strategy and engagement. So not with the business school, but with USC at large. And USC has named Andrew Call as current dean and I guess he's going to be interim dean. And that'll start August 1st. Andrew Call is the current dean of the USC Leventhal School of Accounting. So an adjacent, very related kind of school that he's coming from within USC to lead Marshall on an interim basis. So changes there. And some of you may recall Dean Jeffrey Garrett not only is the dean at USC Marshall, but used to be the dean at Wharton prior to that. So he's a big figure in this space and he's moving into a different role.
• 8:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, he was dean at Wharton when I was there. I think he preceded Patrick Harker. Is that right?
• 8:26
  Speaker A: No, I think he's. You know what, I actually think he might have been right after Harker.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: Okay. Anyway, yeah, I think because, you know, Harker followed me to Wharton.
• 8:36
  Speaker A: Did you know that he came from Delaware?
• 8:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, he came from Delaware after me. So I always joke, well, he followed me over.
• 8:42
  Speaker A: Right. You like to bring your people. You like to bring your people with you. Other dean news is that UVA Darden has appointed a new dean. And this is actually interesting, first woman to fill the role. So they've named Yale Grushka Cocaine as the next dean. She is, she's been, you know, at Darden for years. She teaches in the MBA and executive MBA programs covering subjects such as decision analysis, project management, and emerging topics like coding and generative AI. And Alex, I thought this was kind of interesting. Her research actually focuses on forecasting, project planning, decision making under uncertainty, and the application of machine learning in complex organizations. So probably a good person to take the helm and exciting. First woman in that role.
• 9:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. No, very good.
• 9:32
  Speaker A: We ran a piece on the site about. We've been kind of connecting with alums to ask them about the value of the mba. And we're doing this by industry because we thought that would be a really good way to kind of slice this. So we did one a couple of weeks ago about people working in finance. And then this past week we ran one on consulting and so we connected with consultants at a number of different firms. Bain, bcg, Accenture. There may have been others as well. And there are a lot of quotes from these grads. And I thought Carlos Gomez, who's a Johnson MBA working at Bain, had a really interesting quote. He said management consulting is ultimately a human business. Learning in such a diverse environment made me more aware of how differently people approach the same problem and more thoughtful in how I build alignment around a solution. The MBA also strengthened my ability to structure ambiguity. So again, the context here is we're asking them these questions about what was the value of the degree beyond the fact that you have a job, you're making money, what else? And I thought that was an interesting take this idea that being in a kind of diverse MBA classroom really changed the way he thinks.
• 10:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. Fantastic.
• 10:40
  Speaker A: So you can check out that article if you're curious about consulting jobs. We also ran an admissions tip on the site about defining your post MBA career goals. This is a classic step that everyone must take when applying to business school. We talk in the article a lot about specificity, context, why a given school might be appropriate for your goals and what you might bring to that school. But there's a lot more in that article. I encourage people to read it. And there's a video from the Admissions Academy that you and I recorded, Alex, that people can watch if you're more into the sort of video side of things. And then we also did we're continuing to do now these Admissions Director Q. And as I know, last week we caught up with Melissa Rapp and I mentioned that on the show this week there are three more. We've got Steve Thompson from Northwestern, Kellogg, and I'm just going to give a quick snippet from each of these. So we asked Steve about the video component of their application and here's what he said. The video essay is an impromptu on camera opportunity for applicants to bring their application to life. By the time we get to this step, we've read your resume and written essays. Now we want to get to know the person behind the words. You'll answer five spontaneous questions designed to highlight your personality and share more about the experiences that shaped your journey. It's a chance to be authentic, not scripted. So that's Steve Thompson, director of admissions at Kellogg on Video. Any thoughts? Alex?
• 12:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think more and more schools are going down this route, right, because they're concerned about the lack of authenticity if, you know, AI is writing essays. If admissions consultants are doing what they do, which in A lot of respects is really good work, but at the end of the day, schools want that direct interaction and to be able to assess that, get that authenticity. So very, very good. Now, it doesn't stop me saying, well, I won't call it Admissions Bot anymore because we're going to change its name. But using tools like that to prepare is really important. But then, you know, showing the authenticity through video is fantastic.
• 12:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, agreed. We also caught up with JR McGrath at Carnegie Mellon Tepper as part of this admissions director Q and A series, and we asked him for some thoughts on their essays. And he said the common mistakes to avoid are not trying to recycle your responses to other programs. We know most candidates are applying to multiple programs and it is a lot of work to complete applications. My advice is that you can recycle the points you want to highlight about yourself. For example, write out bullet points about yourself and your goals. Use those to answer each question rather than taking a previous response and just trying to edit it to fit a new question. So I think that's really good advice from jr. He's a, I mean, industry veteran and a great guy, but I thought that's just really important. And we talk about that a lot in the admissions book that you wrote, Alex, that people can download on our site. But yeah, it's just such a key thing that know what are the things you need to highlight? And then don't. Don't just take one essay from one school and drop it into another. I mean, that's not how this works.
• 13:52
  Speaker B: But I mean, we talk about the idea of developing a personal inventory. Right. So before you approach the essays, really do a deep dive, sort of reflection on all your successes, all your challenges, all your experiences, etc. Etc. Just draft it out and do a brain dump, etc. Etc. And that can then form the basis of those bullet points you refer to, and then that can form the basis of drafting out essays much more on an individual level.
• 14:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, agreed. And then the last admissions director we caught up with this past week was Charlotte Russell Green over at Cambridge Judge. She as well, has been in this space for ages and is a terrific person. We asked her a question. There's a new question in the ADCOM Q&As this year about going beyond ROI. Like, what is the value of the degree aside from the fact that you can get a job and earn a great salary? And so she had this to say about that. She said, while jobs, salaries and ROI are important outcomes, some of the most valuable benefits of An MBA are harder to measure. Students receive constant feedback from a diverse and highly accomplished peer group, giving them unique insight into their personal impact, leadership style and how they are perceived by others. This increased self awareness allows them to adapt their approach, strengthen their interpersonal effectiveness, and develop leadership capabilities that serve them through their careers. The MBA becomes a laboratory for personal growth, helping students build the confidence, agility and influence needed to lead effectively across different organizations, cultures and stages of seniority. I think that is a brilliant quote and it kind of echoes what our friend Carlos said about the consulting job and what he learned by being in a diverse classroom. Right. It just kind of of really important stuff that's a little harder to measure, I guess.
• 15:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely brilliant.
• 15:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We have a couple of real humans and that's our last barrier before we can talk candidates. Alex. So there was Sam, who is a graduate of Vanderbilt, Owen. And a consultant at LEK Consulting. He graduated a couple years ago. He's 30 years old, originally from Massachusetts, and he went to undergrad at Wake Forest. He obviously went to Vanderbilt where he focused on strategy. And he's been. Prior to business school, he had worked. You're going to love this. 4 years self employed as a professional actor. And then in brackets he said, and as a membership sales associate at Orange Theory Fitness. So he had a job to pay the bills as he was an actor. And then obviously he's been at LEK now for a couple years and we asked him, why did you choose to attend business school? And here's what he said. He said, coming off my career as a professional actor, I was positive of two things. One, I was capable of succeeding in business and two, nobody was going to hire me. Business school helped solve that problem. And I think he's right. And then he said. And then we asked him for a piece of advice that he wished he'd been given during his mba. And he said, for career switchers, you are not as far behind as you think. There are technical concepts and terminology to learn, but the underlying math and frameworks are manageable. The true differentiators are judgment, leadership, communication and resilience. Those are capabilities that you have likely been building long before business school. So anyway, really smart guy, his interview is really funny. I mean, he's a former actor and I don't know if he was a comedian, but he had a lot of really funny things to say. So I encourage people to read that. Especially if you're a career switcher.
• 17:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that is some career switch.
• 17:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And then we caught up with Apeshka, who is a Dartmouth grad and a consultant now at BCG. She's 29 years old, originally from both Portland, Oregon and Bengaluru, India. And she studied undergrad in bio and English, a dual kind of major at Carnegie Mellon. And prior to business school, she actually was a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Thailand for several years. And also, I guess did some work with something called member founders office. I think that's in the. I want to say, is that in. Looks like it's an HR related role. Strategic advisor to the CEO. In any event, she had a number of different jobs that she sort of pieced together before business school, and then now she's been at bcg. We asked her, is there anything she would change or do differently as part of her job search, and she says, I would have focused more on running my own race. When you're surrounded by peers recruiting for consulting, it's easy for every conversation to turn into a comparison, be it about coffee, chats, cases completed, or anything else. While it's not hard to get sucked into the numbers game, it's important to remember that understanding where you are in your journey is way more productive. Think about what skills you need to build, your learning style, when you need a break, et cetera. And I think I misspoke there. But she said, well, it's hard not to get sucked into the numbers game. So she's just. It's something we hear a lot about this kind of the sort of lemmings, you know, everyone's like, running for the same types of jobs and you can really get swept up in that.
• 19:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. And she got swept up in it. She ended up at bcg.
• 19:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, it worked out for her, I guess, but I think I understand that. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:19
  Speaker B: I totally get why. Because we all come from different starting points. Right. So we all have a different sort of, you know, challenges to overcome to get the goal that we're seeking. Even though there's a huge cohort seeking that same goal. You're not all starting from the same point. I think that's the point that she was making, and I think it's a really good point. Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. So I think that's all I've got. And now we can talk about our candidates. Obviously, if you want to write to Alex and I, you can just send an email to infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps. Alex, anything else before we talk about the folks you picked out?
• 19:54
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 19:55
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. Our first candidate this week has 11 schools on the target list and wants to start in the fall of 27. The schools they're looking at are Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Insead, Michigan, Kellogg, unc, uva, Vanderbilt and Yale. This person has been working in entrepreneurial and operations roles prior to applying to business school and they would love to work at a place like Vane, BCG, Deloitte, Ernst and Young McKinsey. After business school they have a 330 on the GRE and a 2.96 undergraduate GPA, five years of work experience. They would like to land in the northeast after business school in the United States. And they mentioned that they're 20, 27, male, South Asian but non Indian. They I think I read this as they attended a top national undergrad. We were debating that if they were at the top of their class or if they attended a top national undergrad. They say GPA just under 3. As I said GRE330. They mentioned they're the founder of a cross border consumer electronics venture and they've led that venture through a successful B2B pivot. They operate on over three continents or sorry, they operate over three continents and they also have a job. That's where they're not the founder, where they are director of operations and supply chain at a regional distribution company and I believe that's in a similar domain to the company they've launched. So they have a lot of kind of experience in what sounds like consumer electronics, you know, in their market and across different continents. They also were elected in a civic role with thousands of constituents and they founded an award winning Covid relief effort. Short term they want to do consulting. In the long term they're hoping to build an advisory firm for emerging market small and medium enterprises. So Alex, what do you make of this candidate?
• 21:52
  Speaker B: I really like the profile quite honestly in terms of their professional and extracurricular endeavors, it looks like they've got a lot of leadership, a lot of sort of implementation that you know, they've done stuff and it looks like they've gone through some wars too in terms of, you know, pivoting, etc. Etc. So I would imagine that's the core strength of this overall profile is their professional experience and their outside of work activities because they were an elected in a civic role, founded an award winning Covid relief effort, etc. Etc. So lots to like there. Really strong, well certainly very decent GRE score. The GPA doesn't look outstanding. I misread when they said they were Top national undergrad. I thought they meant they were the top undergrad. Great GRE, etc. Etc. So if there is any question about the GPA, you know, they might use the optional essay to sort of explain and contextualize the a little bit. But there's certainly the GRE will help, but probably we just need to know a little bit more about the GPA and so forth in the discipline, you know, the undergraduate discipline and etc. But yeah, I think overall this is a really interesting profile. I would encourage them to target the first round. Why not? They've already got the GRE taken care of. They look like they've got a really well developed goal. I like their long term goal. Right. It really sort of fits, sits nicely with the experiences that they've had and so forth. Sort of building an advisory firm for essentially the sorts of businesses they've been directly involved in to date. I imagine so, yeah. To me, Graham, there's a lot to like here. Target the first round, contextualize the GPA a little bit if necessary and you know, think about some of the, the target programs. I don't think they're being overly ambitious. They do have Kellogg in there as an M7, but I might even target one or two more M7 and if I do that, I would put those into the first round too.
• 24:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that for me the big kind of wild card is the gpa as you pointed out. Right. Normally if this was an American candidate from an American institution with a 2.96, we'd say, oh, that's a sub 3.0 GPA. But what I'm guessing is that because they're from somewhere in South Asia, the grading system might be different. Maybe it was even out of 10 and they've converted it or something. And so it'd be good to know where were they in their class, if they have a class rank or just even ballpark. And yeah, they could use an optional essay to sort of explain, hey, we don't know what they majored in. Maybe they were like an electrical engineer or something. That's complicated. And they did quite well. It's just that there's not any great inflation. So they would need to contextualize that, as you say. But otherwise, yeah, strong candidate. I would still apply in the first round even though they're not from India. I think there's this risk of them being somewhat overrepresented. So I think, yeah, makes sense to apply in the first round and I agree they might aim a bit higher. It just I'd love to have that context on the gpa, but the GRE is really solid so it's good news.
• 25:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:20
  Speaker A: All right. I want to, yeah, I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week is applying to start school in the fall of 27, just like our last one. And this candidate is looking at Cambridge, Chicago, Duke, ESA in Barcelona, Michigan, Kellogg, Oxford, Vanderbilt and Yale. This person's pre MBA career is rather non traditional. They are a public policy and government consultant and they're thinking about pivoting into more traditional consulting. They mentioned Bain, bcg, Ernst Young, Carney, the list goes on. They have an undergraduate GPA that is on a scale of 10 and it is an 8.54. They are from India, that's a pretty strong GPA from an Indian university. Four and a half years of work experience. They indicate that they would like to land in the Middle east or Europe. And they said that they have a very strong academic, academic background. I believe that they have studied, you know, econ, technology, policy, social impact. They did indicate that. It's funny they indicated that they scored really well in their high school. Although I just want to point out that that's not usually something that, you know, the business schools will take into account. But they went to a tier one college within the University of Delhi and again had that 8.54 out of 10. They also pursued a one year full time postgraduate diploma from the Indian Statistical Institute where they graduated at the top of their class. So that's another feather in their cap academically and again, four and a half years of experience across tech policy and social impact consulting.
• 27:02
  Speaker B: I think they're telling us all this stuff, Graham, because they want us not take the GMAT or the gre.
• 27:07
  Speaker A: You think so?
• 27:08
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker A: I wonder. Yeah. So that is the thing that you're noticing that's missing is they haven't taken a test. Yeah. So let's get into talking about them because we don't have that much else about them. They give us a ton on their academics and work but we don't really know much else. And yeah, I don't see a test here. So what's your thinking?
• 27:23
  Speaker B: I mean, I'm thinking yeah, they've probably got all the criteria in place to get a test waiver because they've really done well, you know, in high school, in college, in graduate school or whatever. But I would really encourage them to take the test and get a great score. Right. They're clearly very smart. So spend the time. And hopefully they can do this prior to round one, because I think they want to be in round one, spend the time, get an equivalent test score that reflects their absolute strong academic profile. So, like our first candidate at 330 on the GRE would be very nice. Thank you. So something like that, rather than potentially pitch for the waiver and get the waiver. Because if they get the waiver, that might limit some of their actions, access to top programs, it might limit some access to scholarship opportunity or whatever it might be. So that would be my first piece of advice. The second, and we talked about this before we came on air, is if your goal is to be in the Middle east or in Europe, then target those geographies with, you know, target the top MBA programs in those geographies. That'll make life a lot more straightforward. So Insead and London Business schools should be on the list. They have campuses both in the Middle east and obviously in Europe. And there's a couple of schools on that list, U.S. based, that really don't make a lot of sense to me. They're very good schools, but would have a much lower alumni base in the regions that they're targeting. And I think having being surrounded by a strong alumni base, et cetera and networking post MBA is a real value of getting a top mba. So those will be my two pieces of advice. Look at the schools that they're targeting and if they can take a test.
• 29:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now I do see some of the schools on the list, like Chicago Booth, they require a test. There's no waiver. Right. So I wonder if maybe they just haven't taken it yet. But it's odd that they didn't mention it. So I think you're right. Maybe there is some tendency on their part to want to get a waiver, but in any event, they should take a test. It'll open up doors for them and as you say, potentially scholarship. The thing I think a lot about as well when it comes to, you know, going to a school in the region that you're hoping to work or, you know, that has a strong network, at least in that region, is there's also this issue of like, visas. Right. So if you go, for example, if this candidate goes to school at Cambridge or LBS or Oxford, they can stay and work in the United Kingdom for 18 months after they graduate automatically. Right. So that's a huge benefit. They're from India. They obviously don't come with the right to work in the uk. So going to business school there would allow them to work in the uk. Europe is a little more challenging. The EU has some slightly different rules, but you can, you know, if you're going to school there, you can kind of pivot to a looking for work type visa for a short period of time. But you've got to get a sponsor basically. And same thing with the US right? If you go to the US you could stay for, if it's a STEM program which most of the MBAs are, you can stay for up to three years and work. So I'm just trying to figure out, you know, if they know they want to be in the Middle east or Europe like you said, LBs, INSEAD, ESA, Oxford, Cambridge, these are all great schools that have kind of, you know, net networks in there. I mean one US school with a campus in, I think it's Abu Dhabi, nyu, Stern, I think that's where they are. That comes to mind as well, potentially. But in any event, yeah, I just want to make sure they're aligned here. And I'm not sure what's driving this current list of target schools. So any event, they have some work to do there. But I want to thank them for sharing their profile. I would love to know a little bit more about their outside activities as well. So yeah, get a test, tell us about your activities and hopefully everything can come together for them. I think that's it for that one. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate, Alex, is a decision wire entry that you've picked out and this person is a deferred enrollment candidate. So they've applied to Chicago, Columbia and MIT all for their deferred enrollment programs. And they already got into Sloan. I think they sense they're going to get into the other two. And so they did this post to ask us for some advice. Now they had a 331 on the GRE and they have a 3.9 undergraduate GPA. So this is the kind of candidate that gets into these deferred enrollment programs and they're asking for us to help them decide. They're not going to matriculate until 2029 and they're going to work in consulting prior. They also think their consulting firm that they've got a job with out of undergrad is going to sponsor potentially their mba. So they're just wondering. Now they do say they're really interested in energy, whether that's entrepreneurship, investing or operations, but they're interested in the energy sector. So they're wondering like, are any of these schools sort of standouts for that? I guess, but what's your take, Alex?
• 32:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, the energy sector is very topical. Yeah, right now. So, so that, that's very good. I mean, a candidate like this is really blessed with the, the opportun, obviously get a place in a program, go off and work for a couple of years and then sort of attend or potentially throw a couple of flyers into Harvard, Stanford or Wharton if they haven't already. Well, even if they've already applied and not got admitted to those programs, they could still have another go at the top program. So they've got a lot of opportunity here and yeah, so they've gotten admitted. Sloan and Sloan and Columbia and Booth are all in the same tier. Right. So if you pick 10 MBA candidates that had offers at all three of these schools, I would say three or four of them will be attending each of the three schools. Schools. I don't think it would be automatic that the majority would go to Booth over Sloan or Columbia over Sloan or Sloan over Columbia. Right. So it does boil down to this idea of what are your long term goals and which of these three programs, if they do ultimately get admitted to all three, better provides access to energy. So they should be able to do their research there to really identify that nuance. My immediate thought would be probably Sloan is a good spot, but I don't know that I'm basing that on anything but just a hunch. Graham?
• 34:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, it really is challenging. I mean, they're so far away from that post MBA kind of career at this stage, it's like sort of hard to predict. And so, but I think, you know, it'd be good for them to think carefully about, like, I don't know where they're from and where they might want to ultimately land, but I would argue that, you know, each of these schools has some strengths in the region in which they're located. I mean, obviously these are global brands and they have networks everywhere. But if you were to draw a circle of density of alumni around the different campuses, like, obviously there would be a lot of Chicago Booth people in Chicago and probably a lot of Columbia people in New York, and it's a good number of Sloan folks up in the kind of New England, northeast Boston. Right. So that's just something to think about. I know that these schools send people everywhere, but you know, and the other thing like you're pointing out, if they want to be involved in energy and entrepreneurship, investment, you know, they're. Yeah, I mean, are you can make arguments for all three of these schools. But it depends what piece, you know, are they focused on? Sort of. Maybe they want to be at a school with a really robust engineering program where there's a lot of happening on the sort of tech side of energy. Right. And their MIT might be really interesting to them, or maybe they're really focused on investments, in which case, you know, Columbia and Chicago are like finance powerhouses. Right. So, I don't know, there's just a lot of ways you could look at this, and that's not. I mean, you know, even MIT has a really good finance department, too.
• 35:32
  Speaker B: I was going to say.
• 35:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, it's hard to, you know, just hard to give them really concrete advice here without knowing a little bit more. Now, these programs are different. Like, it'd be good for them to know. I mean, they're not the same size. You know, Sloan is a little bit smaller. So there are things to take into account, and they're not using exactly the same teaching methods. You know, Booth is really famous for having a very flexible curriculum, et cetera. So, yeah, there's things they need to probably do some digging on to figure out. But obviously they're in a good spot. I hope they get offers from all of these programs and have to make this tough decision. But, yeah, I mean, they're not going to go wrong. As you say, these are all in the same tier, so they're not going to go wrong.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: So, yeah.
• 36:10
  Speaker A: In any event, I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's see, Alex. I think that's about it for this episode. I was going to say, I did not even turn on a fan in the room that I'm recording this episode, because I know Dennis, our producer, doesn't like any background noise. So I've sweated through and, like, it's probably going to be 40 degrees here in Paris today, so it's been a crazy heat wave. I'm hoping by the time we record next week, it's going to be nice and cool. We'll see how it goes.
• 36:35
  Speaker B: You. You suffered to make this show.
• 36:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, you've got to suffer for art. I mean, you know, that's what this is. Anyway, appreciate it, Alex, and let. Yeah, let's connect next week and do it all again.
• 36:45
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.