Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 525: Reapplicant, 715 GMAT. Engineer, 320 GRE

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MBA Wire Taps 525: Reapplicant, 715 GMAT. Engineer, 320 GRE · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:17
  Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, October 5, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how you are? How are things going?
• 0:29
  Speaker A: Good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:30
  Speaker B: So this week we got a lot, as usual, some great interview related tips and tricks. We also are going to hear about the MIT class of 2028 because they've published their class profile and we'll get into some real humans over at Georgetown. McDonough. But first, what's going on in terms of LiveWire admissions deadlines? What's on tap for this week here?
• 0:56
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, we're still in the midst of round one application deadlines or at least school deadlines because there's actually a couple of round two deadlines in the mix this week coming out of side and judge over in my home. My home, the uk. But we've also got Shallow Cox, Darden, Washington Olin have round one deadlines. And you might remember Darden's already had an early action deadline so it's effectively their second deadline. We've got interview invites scheduled to be released next week from London Business School in isa. And also we predict. So we're now getting into the prediction market. So I forget what the name of those firms are that you can gamble on predictions. We haven't gone that far yet, but we're getting into predictions. So we predict if HBS hasn't released its interview invites the back end of last week because obviously we're recording on on Thursday that they will release those round one interview invites next week.
• 2:05
  Speaker B: This week.
• 2:06
  Speaker A: This week, sorry, Wednesday is our target prediction. But it could be Monday, who knows? Tepper, possibly two Goizata, a couple of other schools that may start releasing interview invites. And what we saw last week was Yale and Stern beginning that process of releasing round one interview invites.
• 2:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I was going to plug our events like I normally do, but now I want to talk right away about this interview predictor chart that we've published. This is something we do. We started doing this last year and basically it's our MBA interview timeline, invitations timeline and it's powered by Livewire on our website. And what I mean by that is that we literally look at historic data on when schools typically issue invitations because not every school tells you when the invites are going to come. HBS being a classic one where you apply in round one and they don't normally say until a couple of days before when, when the invites are going to come out. They issue them all at once. But then there are other schools like Yale or Stern where they sort of trickle out. And so we have this really handy invitations timeline that we've put up on the site. And what it does is it tells you, okay, when was the round one, deadline, when around one, final decisions coming, when do we expect invites to come, Is it a date range or is it just a single date that we're predicting? And then historically, you know, was it last year, etc. So really cool stuff. I mean, I, you know, I always wondered why are we gathering all these livewire entries? And now it has a real great kind of use case. So, yeah, a lot of fun.
• 3:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, very good.
• 3:39
  Speaker B: We also, I would be remiss if I didn't say, you know, coming up in October, we're going to do a whole bunch of additional events. And I know we just rolled off of our Inside the Application Process series, but we have a real human series that we're going to be doing October 13th and 14th at 8pm Eastern. So these are in the evening on the east coast of the US which means I will not be emceeing them because I'm hopefully going to be sleeping at that hour. But we've got some amazing students and recent grads lined up from schools like Berkeley and Duke. And what else? Unc, Georgetown, Dartmouth, Michigan, Georgia Tech. There are a handful of additional schools too. So that should be fun. I mean, those are AMAs. So what we do is we just gather together some alums and current students from these top schools and we let our audience kind of have, have Adam. So it should be a lot of fun. Those are coming up. And you, yeah, you can sign up on the website. Other stuff, Alex, because I'm going to stop you.
• 4:35
  Speaker A: I'm going to stop you. You've been running last week again, part of the Inside the MBA Admissions webinar series. So what couple of key nuggets did you learn last week?
• 4:48
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, I learned a few things. I mean, one thing was the gentleman from Rice Rice business down in Houston, the guy named Steve Summers. He had some really great feedback how people need to kind of take it up a level when it comes to zoom interviews or video essays, how he was kind of commenting on people's attire and or lack of like appropriate attire and also like lack of or not. Well, he talks about like distracting backgrounds, you know, so like people are just not, I guess everyone's just so used to like filming everything at this point and putting it up on TikTok or whatever that you know, he's like, look, it doesn't have to be professional grade, Hollywood delivered type stuff, but he was sort of just suggesting that, you know, hey, put, put on a collared shirt. You know, this is, it's important step you're taking and you need to invest in it. So I thought that was good advice, good reminder, get out of the sweatpants and into something a little more appropriate. But yeah, it was fun.
• 5:42
  Speaker A: And I, we discussed before we came on air, that's why I asked you. But, but it's sort of respect the process. Right, so. So you're interviewing at a top business school and, you know, your appearance certainly sends signals to that business school. Right, yeah. So, so I, and I think in our admissions tips, when we talk about video essays and so forth, we, we hone in on these issues, like, you've got to make a great impression.
• 6:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. You know, and the other thing he talked about was, he said, look, he said, we're not only looking at your candidacy and your video and trying to figure out whether you would do well here and fit in. He's like, we've got to imagine rolling you out in front of McKinsey or Amazon or any of these big companies that come to recruit our students. And so we need to know that you can dust up and clean up or whatever and, you know, look smart. Right. So anyway, so that was, I thought that was really helpful. There were some other great moments and we, you know, the woman from Janine from SMU who did one of the events last week, she gave Clear Admit a big shout out. We were talking about some kind of admissions advice and she said she thinks it's so amazing that Clear Admit publishes all these admissions tips and advice and that it's all free and available to the candidate pool. And so I thought that was kind of cool. Unprompted, she gave us a little plug. So that was great. Yeah. And then just listening to David Simpson from LBS and Jennifer over at Insead, you know, one of the events had those two schools on it and. Yeah, just, just fascinating stuff. Like INSEAD does two interviews with all candidates, as we know. But what I didn't know is that usually it's one male, one female interviewer, one interviewer who's young, like a recent grad, and one who's a bit more seasoned, you know, different industries. So they really think about this as an opportunity for the candidate to get to know their institution and have these two opportunities. And so I think it was just interesting to hear all that. So we have videos of these things, they're up on our YouTube channel. If you didn't attend the events, you can go listen to them.
• 7:38
  Speaker A: Very good.
• 7:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. So other than that, because it's the beginning of the month, we published our top in person events to check out. And I just wanted to call attention. I always love just kind of, kind of quickly breezing through it. And I saw that day with Darden down in Charlottesville, Virginia at UVA is October 25th and 26th. And so that's basically you can go, it's kind of a weekend, I believe. And you can learn all about the school, go to admissions information sessions, et cetera. So that's the kind of stuff you can find in this calendar that we publish every month on our website. So really useful tool. And so I just wanted to call that out. Alex. I guess we have this theme running with interviews now. So our admissions tips on the website this past week have all been about interviewing. We have this classic tip called resume versus application based MBA admissions interviews. So, you know, someone just got your resume or have they read your entire application? Super important. And then I wanted to put you on the spot and give you a little quiz here. We have a piece that we run every year that's called the five MBA interview questions you need to ace and how to do so. So I'm wondering, do you know what the five questions are that one needs to ace?
• 8:50
  Speaker A: Well, I would imagine that some of the questions are related to your MBA goals. Yeah, there's a question, so why? Why mba? Why now? Why my school? And. And really understanding your short and long term goals. So how many questions does that cover?
• 9:06
  Speaker B: So there is, of the five. Yeah, there is a goals question and there is a why school X? So there are two. That's two of the five that you've nailed down? Yeah, there's still three more.
• 9:17
  Speaker A: Well, I'll let you take over.
• 9:19
  Speaker B: Oh, so the first one is the. Just the classic walk me through your resume or tell me about your background. Okay. Then we have the what are your goals? Why our school? And then the other two are kind of a pair and they're more examples of things. So it's sort of tell me about a time you, you know, kind of stuff. Does that ring a bell for you?
• 9:36
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, for sure.
• 9:38
  Speaker B: So it's, you know, one is like a leadership example and the other would be a failure. Yes. So anyway, those are popular. We have and we go into really good detail in this tip about how to answer those questions. And we also have our videos in the admissions Academy that you can watch to learn about that. I think what's amazing now here in 2026 is that, you know, you can use our interview archive, our admissions tips. You can then use the Clear Admit AI Bot to help you prep. Like, you can show it your resume, get feedback on your resume. You can ask it, what are the kinds of questions I might want to prepare if I've got an interview at Yale or whatever school you're. You're interviewing for. And then you can go, once you feel ready, into our MBA Interview Simulator, which is another AI tool which will interview you. And, yeah, I think I talked about this last week, but I get scared whenever I test it because I'm like, I feel like I'm on the hot seat again. But it's really good and it'll interview
• 10:34
  Speaker A: you and give you great feedback. Right. So, so.
• 10:37
  Speaker B: Or not great feedback if you do a terrible job.
• 10:39
  Speaker A: The feedback itself is great.
• 10:41
  Speaker B: But.
• 10:42
  Speaker A: Yes, yeah, it could be critical too. But I mean, I think this is really important. Right. As you're prepping for interviews, we have some really good resources now. So preparation is use the AI Bot.
• 10:56
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 10:57
  Speaker A: And then practice is use the simulator. And soon enough we're going to start calling the AI Bot something different. Graham.
• 11:06
  Speaker B: Yes. I feel like it's imminent here. We'll have to keep the lid on
• 11:09
  Speaker A: it because I'm sick of calling it AI Bot.
• 11:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, I know. Yeah, we have that. So that's forthcoming. Yeah. And I will say the admissions directors who joined us last week did talk a lot about, you know, the need to practice. Like, they want you to be authentic and they don't want you to be reading from a script. But they talked about the importance of, like, just practice with a friend. Like, you know, it just. You might as well get used to asking, answering these questions. So let's move along though, because we got still a lot to cover. I wanted to talk about MIT Sloan because they have published their class of 2028 profile. And so I'll give you what I. What I love to do. And you know, this. I'm going to give you their numbers, but I'm going to also share with. They compare to the same numbers from last year. Right. So this year's class size at MIT is 450 students. It is identical to the number that they took in last year. So 450 students, no change there. 43% of the class is female, and 47% was that number last year. So they lost about 4%. When it comes to women. International students, 45% of the class this year, that was 42% last year. So slightly more international student body and a slightly less last female student body. Their GMAT median on the focus edition was a 675. This for this class that just started last year, that was also 675. So unchanged, the median undergraduate GPA went up to 3.74. It was 3.69 last year. So a slight uptick there. They do not report the GRE total. This is so interesting for them, but all they report is the quantitative result on the GRE and they give you the middle 80%, which I know you love, Alex. So they gave a middle 80% of 160 to 170 on the GRE quant. And by comparison, last year that same figure was 159 to 170. So slightly better this year, but really very similar. But yeah, for some reason they do not give you the GRE verbal or the total GRE score. And they also did not report for the first time the old GMAT score that they used to have a very high old GMAT score average. But I presume that's just because there's not enough volume of people with those old scores at this point, now that we're a couple of years into the new version. So what's your takeaways on these numbers?
• 13:30
  Speaker A: Kudos to Sloan for maintaining their class size as well as sort of holding those metrics that they do report consistent given the sort of wider context. We've seen other schools reducing their class size so that they could keep the quality of their class consistent and so forth. That seems to be the general trend. Let's keep everything consistent in terms of the quality that the students were bringing in. It's quite interesting that their female makeup sort of dropped a little bit whilst internationals students increased. And that's not unsurprising. Right. So correlation, I think international students, you tend to to see a slightly less percentage of women applying from the international student body. But what is obviously interesting is we are assuming that we're going to see a drop in international students in the class this last season, given the geopolitical uncertainties and et cetera, et cetera. And that's obviously not the case for Sloan and actually not the case for a couple of other schools that we've covered. So. So, yeah, I think, yeah, just on this, on the face of it, on the surface, these look like very good numbers. Graham.
• 14:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, I got to agree. I think they, they did a terrific job and I, I feel like, like you say, yeah, when you make your class more international, you almost always are going to make it a little less female, at least for now, because the, the volume out of the international market is typically, as you say, more male. But, yeah, great job from mit. We'll keep these coming. They've been slow to trickle out this year. I don't know if it's because schools are wa. So we'll see as more of these details come out at the other peer schools. I did want to turn our attention to our Real Human series where we're continuing to connect with current students who have just started their MBA programs. We caught up with, I want to say, six different students at Georgetown McDonough and I love these profiles. Anyone who's read them knows. But we, you know, we ask all the students the same exact questions. It's almost like a baseball card, like each person gets a page and where we learn about their background and then they ask, they answer a set of similar questions. And so I'm going to focus on a fellow named Salvador Perez, who is a current member of the class of 28 at Georgetown. McDonough. He's 26 and he actually grew up in Arlington, Virginia, which for those of you who don't know, is literally right across the Potomac from Georgetown. But he points out that he spent his summers in Puerto Rico and that he recently lived in a small coastal community on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, which has become, he claims, a second or third home to him. He went to Virginia Tech for undergrad, studied economics and a minor in organizational leadership. And then before business school, he had worked as initially an analyst, then a senior analyst in consulting with Accenture for a couple of years, and then he became a community economic development volunteer for Peace Corps. And that's why he lived in the Dominican Republic. So he did that for also two years before starting business school. So really interesting kind of background in terms of, you know, traditional strategy consulting and then Peace Corps. We asked him, why did you choose Georgetown? Mcdonough and he says, there were three factors that most influenced my choice. One, the school's investment and commitment to foster diversity and community through their core values of CURA Personalis and being a member school with the Consortium for Graduate Study and Management through which he applied. He then says it is also located in close proximity to a major international development institutions to major, sorry, international development institutions like the World bank, the idb, the imf, et cetera, and their career services have dedicated support and a strong network within the social impact international development space. Third he says is the strength of their dual degree program with the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. In my application, I applied to their master's in foreign service separately and will graduate in the class of 29 with both the MBA and the MSFs under my belt. So that's what Salvador had to say. I think he makes a lot of really good points about why Georgetown is a terrific destination for candidates.
• 17:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, simply put, Georgetown is the the most high profile MBA program in Washington D.C. and Washington, D.C. attracts a lot of the types of institutions that is very attractive to this type of profile. Right. So. So if you're into international development and various other things, and obviously if you've got experience in Peace Corps and so forth, you illustrating and showing that, then you've got to look at Georgetown. I'm glad that they did mention it. Well, I don't think they put in their top three that it's just across the river. I think that should have been part of it too.
• 18:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, you could kayak over if you need to, but yeah, no. So I think, and I will say their School of Foreign Service is really world renowned too. So there's a nice pairing there with those two degrees and makes sense for someone who's really interested in development and the type of work he was doing. So, yeah. Anyway, there are five other candidates, all of whom were doing wildly different things before business school, which is what I love about business school. So you can go read about them if you're interested in Georgetown. McDonough, before we get to our candidates, the last thing I wanted to mention is we aired a podcast this past week with J.R. mcGrath, who's from Carnegie Mellon Tepper, and that's now live in the feed. Wherever you're hearing this episode, you can find it as well. He is a terrific guy. He studied physics before somehow finding himself in the admissions world. And yeah, we just had a great conversation and he's kind of a real straight shooter and he's been in the space for quite some time. So lots of good advice. Like I think even if you're not, you know, necessarily focused on Carnegie Mellon Tepper as a destination, it's a good listen. He just has a lot of interesting things to say about admissions and how candidates can put their best foot forward and then also a lot of really interesting stuff. We talked at length about AI and as you might imagine, there's a lot of AI stuff happening at Carnegie Mellon and in Pittsburgh around the university, there's a whole kind of AI incubator kind of space and so yeah, good, listen. So go listen to that if you get a chance.
• 20:02
  Speaker A: What about that gift that Carney email just got?
• 20:05
  Speaker B: I know. Was it $2 billion? Is that what I saw?
• 20:08
  Speaker A: I've never seen a number like that for gifts. So I've obviously not look into detail in terms of the, you know, the intent of the gift, etc. Etc. But that, that's just a huge number.
• 20:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think it's unprecedented at 3 billion. It was 3 billion. And basically it's to support Carnegie Mellon University and also to build Carnegie Mellon. I guess they have a campus that they're building in Miami. So they're going to have another campus. And, and yeah, I mean it. Yeah, that is a massive gift. I have never heard of a gift that large. So yeah, don't spend it all in one place. I guess we should tell in any event. So that's the main news notes. Let's get into our candidates. Obviously if you want to write to Alex and I just write to info@clearadmit.com use the subject line wiretaps. But anything else? Alex, you ready to talk about our people that you've selected?
• 21:00
  Speaker A: Let's kick off.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: All right, this is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week is applying to Chicago Booth, Harvard, mit, Kellogg and Stanford. This comes from an apply wire entry that you selected, Alex. And this is a female candidate. She wants to start next fall. She's looking at tech related work, maybe entrepreneurship. Her background prior to business school was in project management in the gaming sector. She has a gmat score of 715. That translates to about 750 or 760 on the old scale. So very good score. She has a 3.59 GPA. She graduated from a top 20 undergrad with a double major in bio and statistics. Again mentioned that she is female, Asian, lives in Seattle and is hoping to land on the west coast after business school. She's been working for five years and has a really impressive professional background in the gaming space. I mean she currently works at a top gaming company, mid level project manager, does a ton of operational work revolving around team morale, engagement, onboarding. She the real wrinkle in this candidacy, which I guess I should mention at the top here, is that she's a reapplicant. So she applied last year in round two and we'll get into what happened but since she applied and obviously has not gone off to business school, she spent a ton of time working with AI and she's basically a real AI champion. Within her company and is now like leading workshops, helping the whole company kind of integrate AI into sort of the tasks and processes that they work on. She does a number of extracurriculars. She's very passionate about the gaming industry and also about breaking in to the industry as a female. It's known to be kind of a male dominated industry and even as you said before we came on air, a pretty misogynistic kind of space. At least that's the rumor on the street and there's a lot of documentation on that. So she does a lot of work on that. She also does some mentoring and coaching. You know, the thing that I guess I should tell you is that she's reapplying to Kellogg, Stanford and mit and then it'll be first time applications to Booth and Wharton. What's interesting is that last year, you know, she got into Kellogg and they actually gave her a 30k scholarship, but she did not make the cut at Stanford, Harvard, and I think she was waitlisted at MIT without an interview. So, you know, this is kind of an interesting case and that she's a re applicant for most of these schools. And the last detail I have to say is that she mentioned that she posted on applywire last year and that she was featured on the podcast and you know, that, that we apparently helped her, but I don't know, she didn't get the results she wanted. But so she's actually was the candidate we featured back on episode 464, which aired I guess in December of last, last year. So Alex, what do you make of her?
• 24:04
  Speaker A: I mean I, I, as we talked about before we came on air, you know, she, she obviously got an admit last year at Kellogg and their MMM program with a bit of a scholarship, but perhaps she didn't get exactly what she was looking for. And you know, that's a little bit surprising in terms of her overall profile as, as you mentioned, I think looks really strong. She's in a really interesting industry which, which you know, she's sort of swimming upstream a little bit, you know, in terms of, you know, you know, making the ability to make an impact and so on and so forth. So, so presumably she's done well at work. She seems a super interesting candidate. She's got a, a GMAT out of the wazoo. Right, so 715 GMAT. So that's really, really good. I'm, I'm sort of sensing and certainly more from her profile on ApplyWire this year that perhaps she only applied last year because she did get that great gmat. And she had it in the back of her mind actually that this was the season she was going to apply. So I think there was that little bit of a thread that might have sort of resonated or sort of come across a little bit in their applications. That all being said, one thing I really like about her profile this season is her sort of little bit of a change in focus. Right. So she's now wanting to sort of follow a much more entrepreneurial path.
• 25:42
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 25:43
  Speaker A: So she said last year I wanted to pivot into product within gaming, yada, yada yada, sort of made sense or whatever. This year I realized my actual passion is going straight into entrepreneurship, etc. So I think she can make a really strong case in the reapplication that she's done a lot, you know, over the years. She's done a significant level of introspection and realize that her passion really lies in entrepreneurship and she can tie together some of the things that she's done over that last year that really reinforces that. And as an entrepreneur, obviously we think about starting and running an own business, but you can show entrepreneurship within your current companies.
• 26:26
  Speaker B: Right.
• 26:27
  Speaker A: So she's done a lot of work to really bring AI to the fore at her company. She's probably had to show a lot of entrepreneurship and innovation in order order to do that. Right. So I think she, she can lean on that. And you know, her Stanford what means most to you essay could be very interesting because again, she can now center it on this idea that she wants to be a builder, an entrepreneur or whatever it is. Right. And, and sort of apply that narrative. So I would hope, fingers crossed that she gets the, the results she's seeking this season. And the only question I'll turn back to you, Graham, is, I mean, obviously we talk on this show about the notion of being a re applicant. Generally the admit rates are a little bit higher and there's good reasons for that. But what about her approach to reapplying to Kellogg where she did get admitted and did have a little bit of a scholarship?
• 27:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. So this is a really interesting case and apparently she's communicated with them and told them that it was purely like financial decision, that she really likes the program because she had applied to Kellogg. Mmm, yeah. Which is the design and innovation kind of joint. It's a special kind of flavor of an MBA that they offer. But it wasn't enough scholarship for her. I think she's hoping. And she mentioned she saved more money now and is kind of ready to Come back at it. So I had like two big thoughts. One is, I think it's okay. Like, I think she's conveyed to them that this is about, you know, then. So hopefully they'll, if she does make the cut, maybe she'll get a larger scholarship this time around. As you said, like, her numbers and profile are pret. Fantastic. The only other thing that's kind of bothering me a little bit about this candidacy is that I'm surprised that she didn't get an interview at Stanford and that she was waitlisted without interview at Sloan last year. Because when you look on paper, you say, wow, female gaming sector, great work experience, great numbers, clear goals. They're even more interesting this year. I'm just kind of wondering maybe there needs to be a gut check on the application strategy and the essays and just to make sure that things are buttoned up because I was a little puzzled by the results. So again, I'm hoping that, you know, as you say, people get better as they work on this and apply as a reapplicant. You just become used to this process. And she's casting a slightly wider net this year. So I'm confident she'll get into some schools. And we know application volumes down a bit. So, you know, the odds are really good that she'll get into schools, she'll get some dollars and hopefully get snatched up by at least one of these top programs. But yeah, so I just want to wish her the best of luck as she sort of works on all this. And I also, I want to give her a book recommendation because as I was reading about her background, I was reminded of a book that I'm actually in the middle of reading that's called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and it's by Gabriel Zevin. And it's about a woman who creates a video game and with a. With a partner. And it's sort of about, you know, while a student and it's a sort of journey to fame and fortune. But it's a really well written, great novel that I'm reading that I think she would like because it sort of probably covers some of the ground that she's seen close up. So anyway, sidebar. Totally total tangent, but I just wanted to mention that.
• 29:51
  Speaker A: Oh, fantastic, we were about book recommendations now.
• 29:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. So anyway, so wishing her the best of luck. I'm thrilled that she posted twice to apply Wire and she's been featured twice on the podcast. So that. That's probably a first for us. But anyway, so best of luck to Her. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate today is also looking to start school in the fall of 27. This candidate comes from an apply wire entry that you picked, Alex. And they have 11 schools on the target list. Those schools include Arizona State, Ese, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Kellogg, Notre Dame, Rice, Rochester, Bocconi in Milan and UNC Keeney Flagler. This person's been working in automotive manufacturing and product validation. They are hoping to get into maybe management consulting, manufacturing or engineering after business school. They have a GRE score of 320, GPA is a 3.3. They've got four years of work experience. They are currently located in Pakistan. They'd love to land in either the US or the eu, which you can sort of see is reflected in their school selection. Their Bachelor of science was completed in mechanical engineering with a minor in leadership from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities back in 2022. So they did study in the States for undergrad. They mentioned that, you know, they've been working at a kind of big time global leader in commercial vehicle proposal systems and they're kind of a test engineer. They've, they kind of have progressed into different roles but then they relocated. This was a job that I'm guessing may have been in the US and then they relocated to a Pakistani company or a company in Pakistan that's again in the kind of manufacturing it looks like again auto related stuff. Right. So very consistent. They also just mentioned they have a little bit of an entrepreneurial background. They've done some, had some sort of side hustles with, you know, they mentioned they co founded an online export quality apparel resale business and within a year they'd scaled to 1.5 million in revenue. Now I believe that's in rupees I want to say. But still, you know, they said they managed a remote team, 10 to 15 people experience, etc. So in any event they give a lot of detail here. But I'm kind of curious how competitive Alex is their profile not just to get in to some of these schools on their list of 11, but to get some scholarship. They seem focused on getting a decent scholarship and they're wondering how schools feel about people coming from a real kind of engineering background.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think the combination of engineering and MBA is fantastic. So. And, and it looks like they've had some really interesting experience. I'd like to really understand that. And when I say I, I think ADCOM would like to really understand the, the, the relocation decision and the move to Pakistan, why they chose to do that, because that's quite recent. So. So it's sort of you've relocated to Pakistan and now you're applying to MBA to get out of Pakistan. So. So understanding that part of the narrative I think will be quite important. But it does look like they've got some interesting experience. They've got some like, like you say, some entrepreneurial experience. The school will like that too. But their numbers probably let them down a little bit. Right. So 320 GRE and a 3.3 GPA despite it being an engineering GPA. I get that. But the 320, I would really encourage them to retake the GRE. I know they've already applied to some of these programs and one thing I like about the programs that they've applied, they've got a nice range. So there are certainly some schools within that range that, that probably would admit a profile like this with the 320. But if they want scholarship too, then the higher that GRE the better. And if there's any scope to improve that gre, I would do that. Even for the schools that they applied in round one, as they continue through that sort of admissions process, whether they get an interview invite or whatever it is, is if they can take the GRE in this month and they haven't been denied, the schools will. The most schools will accept a new GRE score and then add it to their profile. Right. And then that will elevate their opportunity for admission and then potentially for scholarship. So I think if this candidate had a 328, 330 GRE, I think think the, combined with that quite interesting work experience, etc. Etc. That they'd make for a pretty decent overall candidate. Graham?
• 34:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, I tend to agree. Like, I think, you know, they're in this sort of no man's land where the, the GRE score is a little low. Well, it's good enough to get into the many of the schools on their list. Right. So they have a bunch of schools on their list that I would characterize this sort of top 30. And so a 320 GRE is perfectly fine and you know, it sounds like a rigorous undergraduate experience and engineering. So. But it's that key, like you say that, that key little piece where they're like, I want scholarship. Yeah. And that's where you need to outperform on, on these test scores and things like that, the counting stats. If you know that that can be very helpful at least when it comes to scholarship dollars. So, you know, and then of course, if they go and retake the test and even provide it, like you say, to the schools where they've already submitted, which is fine, you know, then you start to wonder, well, maybe there's, you know, they could aim higher or maybe they get, you know, get into some of the schools on their list that are at the top, like a Kellogg or, you know, they've Michigan on here, some, some kind of top ranked schools. Right. So I, yeah, it's, it's an interesting dilemma because my guess is if they do get into those schools, it will be without many dollars. So that's the key trade off. Like what would you do if you're, let's say you get into Notre Dame with a big scholarship and then you get into Kellogg or something and you don't have any scholarship dollars. I mean, that's the big dilemma, you
• 36:10
  Speaker A: know, depends on your own personal resources. Right. And in this candidate's case, they might end up going to Notre Dame because they need the financial support in order to, to, to move forward. So. And, but another candidate will have different financial constraints and would, would go to Kellogg in that situation.
• 36:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. So things to think about, obviously. Yeah. I do recommend if they have the bandwidth to retake that test and let the schools know that that would be helpful to them. So I do want to thank them for submitting their profile. Alex, thanks as always for picking these out. You can tell I'm kind of losing my voice here. I somehow ended up with a cold after doing all these events, so hopefully I'll be on the mend by next week, but let's do it all again if you're around.
• 36:51
  Speaker A: Very good. Take care, everyone stay safe.
• 37:01
  Speaker B: Sam,