Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 335—3.66 GPA, test waiver. Military candidate, 750 GMAT. Booth vs Stern full-ride.

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MBA Wire Taps 335—3.66 GPA, test waiver. Military candidate, 750 GMAT. Booth vs Stern full-ride. · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:15
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA Admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, January 29, 2024. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 0:27
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:28
  Speaker A: So what's the word on round two interview invites? I mean, now we're know we're kind of several weeks out now from those first deadlines, and I guess I would love a prediction from you as to when you think Harvard Business School will issue their round two interview.
• 0:45
  Speaker B: We are, like you say, we are seeing a few invites now rolling out from the schools that trickle them out over a period of time. So that might Stamford for Yale, for Tepa, for several, several other schools. But next week, Duke Fuqua will roll out its round two interview invite. So it's one of the schools that does it at one time. And Harvard possibly next week, Thursday or Friday. They haven't announced yet, but the last two seasons, they've rolled them out February 1 and February 2. And they're usually pretty consistent. Okay, what we'll hear, they'll announce it through a blog post. May have done that already by the time this episode airs, but we're recording a little bit earlier last week, so it hasn't been announced just yet. But, yeah, I would imagine if Harvard doesn't roll out its interview invites towards the end of this week, it's certainly going to be at the beginning of next week.
• 1:49
  Speaker A: Okay, got it. So we'll stay tuned for that. As you know, we talked about this last week that I spent some time in the US. I wanted to mention I had a great time. I went over to NYU Stern because I was in New York, and I caught up with Lindsay Lloyd, who's the director of admissions there, as well as some of her team members. And it was really just nice to see that program in action a little bit, roaming the hallways and had a nice lunch with Lindsay, who, you know, listens to the know. So, yeah, be careful what you know. But actually, she gave some really good feedback, which was that she was talking about how she thinks it's really fascinating to hear real candidates have their candidacies kind of dissected on the show and that even as an admissions officer, she kind of enjoys kind of hearing that stuff. And so, yeah, that was good. So I think the formula we have seems okay for now.
• 2:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, we'd say this episode is sponsored by NYU Stern because we don't have a sponsor for this episode. Right. So we'll just pretend that it's sponsored by and completely coincidentally, we're going to be talking about Stern as a choice on the decision wire post that we covered today.
• 3:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that. You picked that. Yeah, we'll see how that goes. All right, so the other stuff I wanted to mention is we've got the next clear admit plus event, which is basically an ask me anything with you and I, Alex. And so that's February 5 and it's going to be at noon Eastern. We've been having so much fun with these. It's just once a month you can come in, ask Alex and I questions about how your process is going, anything you need to know about business school. So we'll do that. We also have a bunch of events that are going to be rolling out across the month of February, centered mostly on younger candidates who are still in college. So these are deferred enrollment. So we're going to hear from schools like Harvard and Wharton, Columbia, Yale, et cetera. And then we have a set of events on masters in management programs. There'll be two of those events and again, some top schools like Kellogg and Booth. So stay tuned for more there. We'll get you links and everything, but it's still a couple of weeks away, so hang in there. On that front. Over on the website, we did on a related note, run a whole sort of refresh piece on the top deferred enrollment programs. And so we have profiles, sort of short profiles of like eleven different deferred enrollment offerings with a lot of explanation about how it works, who's eligible, and just some tips and things for getting into these programs. So that should be good to check out if you fall into that category of being a current college student or someone who's working on a master's degree that you started immediately out of undergrad and so you would be eligible for deferred enrollment. The other thing, Alex, I keep saying we're done with the real Human students series, but there's still, I think, a couple to go because we did Harvard business school this past week. So we caught up with five students from HBS. They're all first years in the program. And before I share a quote from one of them, which I thought was just really good advice, I wanted to just share some stats with you because when we run these pieces and talk about students in the class, we always share a little bit of background about what the class looks like. Right? So the class profile or so, one of the things that was striking to me is if I asked you what percentage of the current student body this first year class at HBS came from the fields of, let's say, engineering, business, undergrad. So studied engineering, studied business, or, like, what percentage of the class do you think would fall into those three buckets combined?
• 5:31
  Speaker B: Are you putting me on the spot?
• 5:33
  Speaker A: I know. I'm just curious. What, so people were engineering majors, business majors, or econ majors?
• 5:38
  Speaker B: You could have prepped me and given me the answer before we came on air. I know, but maybe look really smart.
• 5:43
  Speaker A: Well, I'm just curious because this number was not what I thought it would be.
• 5:46
  Speaker B: I mean, I would say 40 or 50%, but I don't know.
• 5:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, so that's exactly what I would have said. Okay, this number for HBS is 68%. Okay, so 68% were either engineering, business, or econ majors and undergrad. And get this. Another 17% studied hard sciences. So kind of bio or whatever else falls into that category. And then 12% social sciences and just 4% arts and humanities. I don't know why I thought that it would be a bit more balanced, but that's what it is. So there you have it.
• 6:22
  Speaker B: You were in that 4%, Gray.
• 6:23
  Speaker A: I was in that 4%. Yeah. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is we caught up with one of the students. We talked to, this guy named George. He's a first year. He's moved around quite a bit, but he considers Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to be kind of his home base. And we asked him what would be one thing that you would change or do differently about applying to business school? And he said, quote, one piece of advice I got from mentors who went through the MBA process before me would be to only have a select handful of people provide essay reviews. The issue with having too many reviewers is that sometimes the feedback is conflicting and your voice becomes diluted. I would say oftentimes the sweet spot is three, maybe four essay reviewers. Less is often more in this process. So, what do you make of that, Alex?
• 7:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, really good. Really good. Yeah, we see that a lot. But back to Bethlehem. That's quite interesting. I remember when I was first studying business studies in the UK, that was a case study we used to look at on time management. Right.
• 7:29
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 7:30
  Speaker B: Do you remember?
• 7:32
  Speaker A: I mean, Bethlehem is famous for the kind of collapse of the. What is it? Steel and coal mine. It's a big mining area. In fact, there is a. I'm not particularly a big fan, but there's a Billy Joel song about it called Allentown, because Allentown is the neighboring village or city that also went through this really tough time. So, anyway, yeah, that was what I first thought of as that song when I saw he was from Bethlehem. But yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker B: I'm pretty sure it was a tailor time management. It was a big deal. Anyway, I'm talking about when these teach business studies back in, I don't know, 50 years ago when I was doing it. Not quite that long ago, but yeah. No, really cool. So I went to visit Bethlehem because of that.
• 8:18
  Speaker A: Oh wow.
• 8:18
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 8:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. In any event, I really think that that is good advice. I would argue. Actually you probably only want a few at most people looking at your stuff because you're going to get too many cooks, spoil the recipe and get GPT.
• 8:34
  Speaker B: To help you out.
• 8:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So let's see. The only other stuff I had before we move into our candidates this week is we had two schools publish employment reports for the class of 23. The first school is NCID. And actually it's a bit more complicated with them because for them they have two classes each year graduating, right. Because they have folks starting in January and then they have folks starting in September as well. So this is like a combined career report for those two classes. I guess what they're calling 22 December and 23 July classes, I guess that's when they're graduating, right. So in any event, they had 875 students. Across those two groups, 88% of these students had a job within three months of graduation. That number is off a tick. It was 94% last year. The median salary for these graduates is 109,000 euro or $118,000. The signing bonus was on average $27,000. I won't give you the euros, I'll just keep it all in dollars to make things simple here. In terms of where they went to work, sector wise. Management consulting, 61%. Corporate sector, which is a category keep in mind, insead doesn't. I don't think they follow the same exact rules as the US schools, so they have slightly different categorizations. But corporate sector, which I presume is jobs at big companies like GE or American Express or I guess it depends on how they're categorizing this. But that sector got 16% of graduates, financial services, 14%. So actually maybe that's where Amex would fall, but probably more banking and things like that. And then technology, media and telecommunications, 9%. What's interesting about these numbers, Alex, is that the consulting number, I said 61%. It was 53% last year. Corporate sector, up from 13% to 16. And then financial services, more or less the same as 14 this year. Twelve last year the tech number, tech media and telecom was 22% last year. And as I just said, it's 9% this year. So a big drop in kind of tech placements. In terms of the geography, we see 35% going to western Europe. That's off a little bit from 38% last year. Asia Pacific, 20%, that's down as well from 24% in the prior year. 18% went into Africa or the Middle east, that's up from twelve. Southern Europe, 9%, that's flat. North America, 8% also unchanged. So, Alex, what do you make of these numbers out of insead?
• 11:08
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, obviously the big numbers that really stand out is the average salary and that 61% going into consulting because obviously in all the US reports, the higher that consulting number has typically correlated with a higher average starting salary because that's where the cream of the crop goes. Or at least that's the high paying industry. But yeah, in Europe, I guess the top schools, their average starting salaries are significantly lower, which I kind of knew. But there is a large gap.
• 11:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is. Because we're seeing, I mean, obviously at the very top, we're seeing like $175,000 at a lot of these kind of m seven schools. But.
• 11:56
  Speaker B: Well, you say m seven schools. We're going to talk about UT Austin, that's 175,000 and they're in that top 20 tier.
• 12:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. So these numbers are lower. So we said 118,000 at Insead in dollars. So it's lower. Again, I think the salaries are, if you look at where people are going to work, whether it's western Europe, APAC, Africa, Middle east, the salaries are lower than they are in the US. So that probably is skewing things a bit. But I don't think I've ever seen a number like 61% going into consulting. That's super high. And NCAA is known for that. I mean, they are known for being a consulting powerhouse, but it's a big number.
• 12:35
  Speaker B: Now, I'm a bit ignorant of this, Graham. You might know better, but do they pay a different rate for consultants in different geographies, I assume.
• 12:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. So get this. We digress a little, but I had a classmate when I was at Wharton. This is many years ago, but it's very relevant to this story. So I had a classmate who was a french guy, okay. And his goal was to. He was thinking, come to Wharton and then go back to Paris where he was from, and just work for. He really wanted to work for Bain or BCG or McKinsey. And he ended up getting an offer. They said you could work in Paris and they showed him the salary, and at the time it was not what he was expecting. I think it was like 80 grand or something like that. And this is going back then. So he kind of kept himself out in the pool and he ended up getting an offer from another one of the MBB firms to work in New York. I think it was like BCG in Paris for 80 grand, and then it was New York for like 100 and some. And he was like, he's like, I'm going to stay in New York. I'll work there for a while and then I'll eventually make my way back to France. So there was already a big gap. It was at least like 20k, maybe even more at the time. And I remember being sort of surprised by that.
• 13:47
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:47
  Speaker A: So it's definitely out there. All right, so you were mentioning Ut Austin. One other thing I'll say is, I think know the tech jobs, we're definitely seeing this across the board. Tech jobs are kind of a little bit harder to come by. So we see that decline for insead there. As you know, they're sending people around the world, and that makes sense with an emphasis in the two markets where they have campuses.
• 14:10
  Speaker B: It's interesting how they split out. Europe. What did it say? Western Europe and southern Europe.
• 14:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, I know. I don't know. Really? What? Guess. Yeah. Italy and Spain must be southern Europe, right?
• 14:21
  Speaker B: Portugal. Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:22
  Speaker A: I don't know why there's that distinction.
• 14:24
  Speaker B: But in any event, and no one to eastern Europe.
• 14:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that's. Yeah, actually, where does that fall? Well, maybe that's another category that it's not one of the biggest ones, so they don't list it. I don't know. Yeah, I have to look more into that. So, UT Austin, 271 students, so much smaller student body, obviously, each year. Of those 271, about 88% were looking for work because the rest were sponsored or starting up their own companies. And so of that group that was looking, 90.4% had jobs within three months of graduation. So pretty similar to INSEAD. With that said last year, that number was 95%. So we are seeing a little bit of that softness in the job market coming into play. Median salary, $175,000, which you mentioned. That's way up. I mean, it was 140 last year. So they had a nice boost there. $30,000, median signing bonus. And we'll get into the kind of industry placements here. Consulting, 43%. That's up from 30%, which probably explains the big jump in the average starting salary. Financial services, 16%. That's off a little bit from 18%. Technology, 15%. That's off from 32% last year. 6% went into consumer goods, 5% went into energy and utilities. Not really big changes in either of those categories. And then I'll just give you the regional placements and then get your take, Alex. We had 68% going into the southwest. That's down a little bit from 71 in the year prior. 13.4% went to the northeast. That's actually up. It's almost doubled from like 6% and change last year to the west coast. They sent 6.7%. That's down almost by half. It was 12.2% the year prior. Midwest, 5.3%, that's up a little bit south, 4.3%, pretty much unchanged. So there you have it for UT Austin. What's your take, Alex?
• 16:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, very surprised by this average starting salary. I know we talked about it in the context of INSEAD, but their average starting salary is comparable to sort of top 16 programs. Sort of almost nodding onto the m seven. So well done to them. And as you mentioned, it is a bit of a jump from last season, their consulting. Yeah, that looks strong, 43%. And I think you're probably right. That nudges up that average starting salary. And, yeah, from a geography standpoint, I assume 68% going to the southwest is pretty much Texas.
• 17:00
  Speaker A: Texas, yeah.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: And yeah, if you want to work in Texas, UT Austin has to be one of your target schools no matter where you fit in terms of what tiers you're looking at. They've got to have a really strong alumni base there. They definitely skew really strongly to very regionally focused. The. Very well done to them.
• 17:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. The only other thing that jumped out at me, and again, this is something that we saw with INSEAD as well, is this drop from 32% going into tech down to 15%. Especially when you think about they're in Austin where there's a big tech hub. And so clearly things are slowing down on the tech hiring front, as we've seen in the press. But no, otherwise really amazing numbers. I think the other big hub that would probably comprise the southwest would be like a place like Phoenix. So they probably, Arizona placements probably are some of the number. But I think you're right. It's got to be most if not the lion's share, is going to be Texas. Yeah. Anyway, so, yeah, congrats to both these schools. Still amazing numbers, and we like to point out the little nuances and differences from one year to the next. But at the end of the day, coming out of these programs and making the kind of money that they're offering these graduates is super impressive. So there you have don't, there's no reviews came in Alex, this week. But that's, know, we got some nice feedback from Lindsay when I had lunch with her and then we had that review last week. But obviously, if you're thinking about the show and want to send us a note, you can write to info@clearadmit.com use the subject line wiretaps, or you can go on Spotify or Apple and rate the show. Leave a review if you can on Apple. We're always looking for more to sort of help spread the word. Otherwise, Alex, I'm ready to talk about the candidates if you are.
• 18:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, let's kick on.
• 18:48
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week is applying to twelve schools, and they've actually already submitted these applications via the consortium, which is a special organization that really helps minority candidates with this sort of application process. It's like a way to apply to almost like a common application. So twelve schools on the list. Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Emory, Georgetown, Indiana, Michigan, Rice, Washington, Foster, UCLA, Anderson, USC, UT, Austin and UVA. So that's the list they're looking to start next fall. They've been working in marketing before business school, and they're looking to pivot over to tech and work for companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google or Microsoft. Their GPA is a very strong 3.66. They've got eight years of work experience and they're located in Los Angeles and they're thinking about staying there in the long term after business school. They did share that they applied to these programs via the consortium. You'll note that I didn't offer up a test score and that's because they applied using a test waiver. And they said due to their experience. So I don't know, maybe something to do with the type of experience they have. But they got a waiver and they mentioned one other tidbit and then I'm going to turn this over to you, Alex. They say scholarships will play a major role in my decision. This is one of the reasons that I'm applying to several schools. So, yeah. Alex, what do you make of this person's sort of chances at this group of schools? And then specifically, what do you think about the scholarship?
• 20:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, unfortunately, we don't know a lot about this candidate. Right. We do know that they got it well, they self reported a three six six GPA, which is obviously a very nice academic record over a four year period. So that's very good. As you mentioned, they waived the GMAT. They've got eight years of work experience, but unfortunately we don't know the quality of that experience. So a lot of the success that they're going to have in the admissions process will stem from the quality of that particular work experience, the impact that they've been able to have over time, their growth and so on and so forth. As we always talk about in terms of work experience as well as then what are their interests outside of work, what other things have they done? Again, that's not been articulated. A lot will depend on those two areas. If they're both comparable, let's say to a three six six, I e. Very decent, then I might suggest that they weren't overly ambitious in their target schools. Right. They've applied to twelve, which is a lot, obviously, but they were able to accomplish that through, through the convenience of the consortium applications and so forth. But it's a smattering of a few top 16, sort of top 20 sort of in that target area. I did notice, for example, stern is not on the list. Right. So I know the show isn't explicitly sponsored by Stern, but I'm making this the stern show and they're not one of these twelve schools. Yeah, but yeah, I don't think they're being overly ambitious. If they do have a good track record at work and they have sort of a good goal focus and so on and so forth. So that's fine. I am a little worried about this idea of the GMAt waiver. I don't like it for any candidate and it certainly doesn't add to the profile. When you don't take the test, it removes a data point that is very useful for admissions officers. So if this candidate, for example, had a 720 on the GMAT, something comparable to that three six six GPA, for example, then they'd look like they'd have a very strong sort of academic side of their profile anyway, and where this might backfire a little bit for them. I think out of the twelve schools that they've targeted, as long as their work experience is decent and they come across as being a likable person and so on and so forth. Some of the other stuff that ADCOM might look at, they're probably going to get some offers. But where that test score might really help them is in the scholarships. And if they're really needing scholarships, they might be smart now to prep for the GMAT or GRE and even take it at this time past the deadline because it could come up if they end up on a waitlist or it could come up with scholarship negotiations and so on and so forth. So I'd encourage them to look at that. Graham.
• 23:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. You're making some really important points here. And I think the first is we don't know enough about this candidate. Right. It'd be good to know more about, like you say, the work experience or even the outside activities. But holding that aside, I'm presuming they're an underrepresented minority, so that puts a little bit of a feather in their cap and that they're going to be underrepresented in the pool and therefore more sought after. GPA is excellent. Let's assume the work is great and stuff. And so then we come back to these two points you're making, which is that, number one, they might be under aiming. Right. The problem is, I suspect that a lot of the higher ranked schools maybe wouldn't take the waiver. Right. So that's an issue we see. Right. And when you get into the very top ranked schools, some of them require the test, period. So that's potentially some of it. But the other thing is. Yeah. If scholarship dollars are important to this person, then take the test. I mean, I hate to say it because I recognize there are all kinds of issues with testing, and I get that, but it's a data point, as you say, and it's one that schools often use when they're thinking about scholarship dollars, too. So that's the problem here, is that they're going to get into some of these schools. They might get into many of these schools, but it's unclear to me that they're going to be maxing out their dollar potential with scholarships, not having taken the test. So that's the main issue. So then the question is, as you said, should they go out and take it and send in a score? Yeah. If they think that they could pull it off, I would do that. It can't hurt, right. I mean, obviously if they don't do well on it, they don't have to send it in. Right. But hopefully they could pull something together and get a score that's on par with where they need to be. So, yeah, it's interesting.
• 25:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good to me.
• 25:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, so let's thank them for that post and move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week is actually an early bird. So they're going to be putting together their applications and looking to start in the fall of 2025. They've got six schools currently on their target list, and those schools are Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Wharton, and Yale. This person's been in the military, pre MBA, and after business school, they're thinking about venture capital or private equity. They have a 750 on the GMAT and a three, six, five gpa. They've got about five years of experience in the military. They're located, they say, in the USA. They didn't specify, and they want to land in New York. After business school. They mentioned that they are a service academy graduate, traditional combat arms. They have overseas experience in high visibility, politically sensitive regions. Extracurriculars are real estate. They're both an investor and a broker, and they're a longtime habitat for Humanity volunteer post MBA. They're thinking about sort of transitioning into real estate, private equity or venture capital with a specific focus on proptech or property tech, which know kind of tools and software and things that help in that domain. And they talk about trying to solve the affordable housing crisis as being part of their goal. So, yeah. Alex, what do you make of this candidate? Because I think some really great numbers and service academy grad. So going to be somewhat underrepresented as a military candidate in the pool. So there's a lot to like here, but what's your take?
• 27:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, so much to like here. I think obviously as an early bird candidate, they can get all their docs in a row, get their applications in in the first round, a three, six five from the service academy. I assume that's very good, less grade inflation type stuff. And 750 GMAT is absolutely outstanding. Right. So let's assume their military experience sort of matches up to that. I imagine it does in terms of being really impactful and leadership and growth and so on and so forth. And their outside of work experience dovetails nicely with their goals in terms of they're already sort of investing in real estate, and even the habitat volunteer stuff is very consistent, somewhat related. Right. Especially as they're looking at solving affordable housing crisis, et cetera, et cetera. So lots and lots of stuff here really lines up well. The only sort of thing that I hesitated a little bit and sort of queried a little bit is their goals. Right. So their goals are in real estate, which makes perfect sense, but I'm not sure that stepping straight into private equity venture capital is as accessible. That's just difficult. Right now, they're targeting the very best programs. So Stanford, Harvard, Wharton and so on and so forth, which will increase their option for making that kind of transition. But I wonder, Graham, if doing some investment banking as an interim step or something like that might be more palatable for the very top programs in terms of making sure that their goals are fully realistic as well as perhaps investment banking for a period of time will really help them set them up for what they want to do. And I assume in investment banking you can do a focus on real estate.
• 29:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think you're right. I think it would be a little more palatable to hear this person saying, I want to do some work in finance. And the most common well worn path into that industry would be investment banking. And they could try to get specialized in that domain of kind of real estate or prop tech and see that kind of, could be an area that they focused on doing deals in. That would be a really reasonable and feasible kind of short term plan for them, and then they could make the move into pure pe for that domain. So, yeah, I like that idea. I think that'll just because otherwise they're making a pretty big leap. Right. I know that they've been doing kind of, as you say, extracurricular, kind of part time stuff with real estate in parallel to kind of their military career. But that's a whole other, I mean, this is kind of a big difference. It's kind of a hobby versus, it's like saying, well, I've been investing in the stock market a little bit and then wanting to actually work on. So I think it would be smart for them to do that. Otherwise, there is a lot to like, as we often say, gosh, service academy, great numbers. They should be able to get into any number of these programs. They do want to be in New York afterwards. So I was kind of noticing it's like they have the m seven type schools on here, but they don't have Chicago, they don't have Kellogg, and instead they throw in Yale. And I presume that's because they're trying to keep their geography clustered in the northeast with the exception of Stanford. Right. Yeah. It's just an interesting, I guess they've thought this all through and that is a great, great list of schools can't go wrong. But, yeah, I would work on the goals and they have time because they're not going to apply until probably next fall, to start the following fall. So they have a lot of time to figure out the.
• 30:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 30:55
  Speaker A: All right. So I want to thank them for their service and for sharing their story on the site. Let's move on, though, and talk about wiretaps candidate number three. So our final candidate this week comes from a decision wire entry that was posted. This applicant applied to Chicago, Booth, Columbia, Kellogg, NYU and Yale, and they ended up getting into Booth, Columbia and NYU Stern. They actually got $160,000 scholarship at NYU Stern, which is a free ride. So free ride there, no dollars from Booth or Columbia. They're going to be starting school this fall. They want to work in consulting or maybe venture capital. They have a bunch of. Their list was like consulting, VC, consumer goods, family business, entrepreneurship. So they have a lot of potential possibilities. They had a Gre score of 333 and a GPA of 3.6. They're located in New Jersey and they mentioned that they are an entrepreneur, kind of a consumer background, and that they want to use the MBA to explore other industries. They're very interested in VC, and they mentioned that they think that because they're interested in VC, Booth has an edge. But they're debating between Booth at full sticker and stern with a full ride. In this economy, while current students are having difficulty securing internships, should I pay for Booth at sticker price? That's their question. So, yeah. Alex, what do you make of this? It's kind of an interesting dilemma. I mean, they have these three offers, Booth and Columbia with no money and stern with a free ride.
• 32:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's a classic case, isn't it? Really? Getting a really good offer from Stern, which we would consider in a tier lower than Columbia and Booth. I mean, obviously still an outstanding program, but when you're getting a full ride and you're in New York with all the opportunities to do in semester sort of networking and various other things in New York City, I think that's a really compelling offer. I think it's mudded a little bit by the fact that one of their interests is sort of venture capital, and for that reason, they're thinking that booth might actually be the better offer. But I think the rate of folks going from Booth to venture capital is still quite low versus, let's say, Harvard, Stanford and so forth. So it's still a bit of a long shot. So I don't think I'd make my decision fully based on which program most likely will get me into venture capital. I think I would hedge a little bit more, maybe make consulting my principal short term goal and so forth, because that's then accessible out of all three of these programs. And I think Columbia and Booth would be comparable. And Stern, obviously, with its great offer, elevates stern into the same group. And so then it becomes, do you want to be in New York City post MBA, or do you want a bit more flexibility? And obviously, both can get you to New York City, but being in New York City at Stern or Columbia might be a better choice. There's not an easy answer to this, Graham, despite the fact that I've qualified Stern as the sponsor of this program episode today. But this is quite a common dilemma for top tier candidates, right? A great offer at Stern and then offers programs that you would consider part of the AmsaB, one tier higher.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is. It's an interesting dilemma. I will say this is a free ride at Stern, which is more than. So sometimes you'll see like, oh, I've got like 60 grand from Yale and no money at Columbia or something. You say, okay, but it's a big dollar amount, I guess. I would love to know more about this candidate and to get them to work really hard to figure out their career plan, because right now they literally say, oh, consulting, venture capital, consumer goods, family business, entrepreneurs. This looks like sort of anything, really. And so if they could hone in on what it is they want to do and where, that might help, too. But I will say, yeah, the market's a little, going a little sideways now in terms of, you see some softness in hiring, and so that, does these schools that are offering you a free ride become all the more compelling? It's challenging, I will say, and I'm influenced because I was just on campus. But being at. There's. There is a lot going on in New York. There's a lot on offer. I was learning, as I was talking to some of the admissions staff about some of the, like you say, in semester opportunities to do know it's a good place to be. You were saying before we came on air, you were kind of curious about why they just decided between it's either booth or stern. Like, they didn't put Columbia into that mix. And I think that was actually an interesting question.
• 36:14
  Speaker B: I mean, that's my point, though, is how attractive is New York to this person and how valuable is being in New York for their MBA versus being in Chicago? Because, like you say, in semester opportunities, I think, is something that the New York based programs can offer that's not comparable at any other sort of type of top.
• 36:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't think we have a great answer here, but I will say that I think you said it best when stern, with those dollars, to me, becomes into the same group. And so you have to really, I think they need to go to the welcome events and talk to current students, think about their goals and their geography, sort of preferences, and then go from there. But, yeah, not an easy dilemma.
• 36:57
  Speaker B: And you sometimes call this out, too, Graham. The value of having a scholarship. Right.
• 37:03
  Speaker A: Right.
• 37:03
  Speaker B: So putting that on your resume, I mean, it means a couple of different things. One is you can put it on your resume. Two, it signals from the school that you're one of its top candidates. So in that regard, the opportunities coming out of the school, you should be at the top of the heap in terms of getting access to those opportunities. So there is value in the school signaling to you that you're a full ride. Right?
• 37:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you can imagine in your interviews for jobs, how did you wind up at Stern? I was drawn to the program, but also I was offered a free, full scholarship. It's like a pretty clear signal of how the school values you. Right? Yeah. Very good food for thought here. I appreciate you picking this one out. And it was just coincidental, it wasn't actually planned in this. But anyway, appreciate it. And obviously, some good conversations today about these three different candidates and the dilemmas they all face in terms of presenting their candidacy or making a choice. So, thanks, Alex. And, yeah, we'll do it all again next week. Yeah. So appreciate you doing this, Alex.
• 38:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good. Good luck, everyone. Stay safe.