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MBA Wire Taps 533: Wharton’s Team-Based Discussion · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, November 2, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 0:29
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:30
  Speaker A: So this week we've got a lot of stuff. A class profile from Michigan, Ross, we've got real humans at Duke, some spooky admissions advice in keeping with the Halloween holiday that's just passed, and a prominent dean's response to the New York Times op ed. And also, Alex, in keeping with, I guess what's becoming a long standing tradition, we're going to devote time in this episode to discussing Wharton's unusual interview process, also known as the team based discussion or TBD for short. So yeah, that's, we got a lot to cover today, but I did want to mention before we get started that we're doing a survey right now. It's a really important survey that we're conducting with leading MBA programs and it explores the various decision points that applicants take on that journey to business school. So if you go to Bit ly Decision mba, you can take the survey. It really is important for us. I mean, I think, you know, it can help shape the future of MBA admissions because schools will be tuning in to the data that we report on this and it just obviously supports everything we do here at ClearAdmit. So please head over and take the survey if you have a moment. Alex, what's going on in the MBA admissions world right now? I mean, this is a busy, busy time, right?
• 1:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean obviously last week was very busy with interview invites. So Wharton, which is obviously a big subject of our episode today with the TBD discussion a little bit later, did release their interview invites for that TBD last week. And Sloan, who's also sort of notoriously sort of late with this sort of interview invite releases rolled out interview invites last week too. So I would say, well, I know now, I think that all top MBA programs have at least begun their interview invites. There are still plenty left to be rolled out at some the schools that trickle them out over several weeks. So lots of activity from that basis on Livewire. And then upcoming this week we've actually got deadlines for round two and for said it's actually stage three. So it's their third application round at Oxford and round two deadline from insy out.
• 2:47
  Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, okay. So lots, lots going on and I did see all those interviews flowing out. I actually, you know, last week I was in the US and I was on Penn's campus just having a walk around and I popped by admissions and caught up with a couple of folks in the office there, and they were kind of breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief because they'd gotten all their invites out. So, yeah, this is a busy time and we've got, we'll get into the Wharton TBD in a moment. But speaking of Wharton, we have an event.
• 3:12
  Speaker B: There were no hiccups without release, were there?
• 3:16
  Speaker A: There was a small hiccup, which, yeah, you could read about that on Reddit, I guess. But yeah, there was some kind of a small hiccup
• 3:22
  Speaker B: and on Livewire, I would say.
• 3:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think people mentioned it there, too. Yeah. So
• 3:27
  Speaker B: I know they mentioned it there.
• 3:29
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, and I think. Well, while we're on that, you know, I think what happened was, right, you got people were getting like a, a link that showed them what the prompt was for the tbd, but then, then they weren't necessarily invited to the TVD or there's something along those lines going on. So. So in any event. Yeah, one of the many, many hiccups in the history.
• 3:49
  Speaker B: No, not quite as big a problem that Binance currently has. I guess we could put it that way.
• 3:54
  Speaker A: No, speaking of Wharton, though, that we've got, you know, an event actually on November 9th with Wharton's Lauder program. So we're doing a webinar for that. Then on the 10th, we're doing an event about how to get a consulting job post MBA with someone in career services at Vanderbilt helping out with that webinar. And then on the 12th of November, we're catching up with HBS to do an inside the HBS ADM Admissions webinar that'll include alumni and a senior admissions rep from hbs. So lots of events coming up over the course of this month. As always, just go to clearadmit.com events. Alex, another big thing that's been happening, you remember our discussion last week about Chris Marcus's New York Times op ed, which just in case people weren't tuned in, the headline of the op ed was, I teach at a Business school. It's time to Shut them down. So you might imagine that created several ripples and there's been a lot of ongoing response, including Elliot on our team, that we discussed last week. But one thing that happened in the interim is Dean Erica James at Wharton responded. And actually the two of them were both on an NPR episode or podcast that I listened to called the Indicator. So they weren't on together. It would have been Great if they'd been having, like, a live debate. But they were both kind of. There were audio clips from both the dean at Wharton and this professor at Cambridge who is telling everyone to shut business schools down. And so Dean James at Wharton posted an interesting piece up on LinkedIn as well to kind of call attention to this. But she wrote some things that I wanted to share because I thought she did a great job of talking about the article. And she said business schools have a long history of creating a profound positive impact on society. They've elevated people across socioeconomic classes. They've created opportunities for people to explore careers they otherwise wouldn't have considered. They've equipped people with the knowledge necessary to run or be part of an enterprise during a normal week. I don't feel the need to state these things, especially as the dean of the world's first collegiate business school, which dates back nearly 150 years. But last week was not a normal week. With a trending New York Times op ed positing for business schools to be abolished, I felt compelled to respond. And she says beneath the salacious headline was an argument for how business schools should be reformed. And the truth is, given the pace of change, the best business schools have already actively been in the reformation process in order to keep up with and lead advances in industry and society. But the myth I see too often perpetuated is that business schools and their students are narrowly focused on profits. Of course, profit generation is a significant part of business, but I've seen during my time at the Wharton School that young people, our students care about so much more. They arrive on campus with the expectation that they'll also learn how businesses operate with greater impact. And many of our faculty are aligned with that thinking. So. She goes on from there, Alex. But I just thought, just a very good kind of concrete response to this guy's op ed.
• 6:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I think also she pulled out the distinction between the headline of Marquis's story and the actual essence of the story. Right. And yeah, there's no doubt that business schools, especially schools like Wharton, which we're very familiar, have been on this sort of transformation process, evolutionary process, I guess, over time, making sure that they adapt and keep up to date and the sort of the ambitions of students coming in and so so forth, are very laudable. So, so, yeah, no, I, I do actually think, I know the. The original article has, has created a lot of anxiety, et cetera, et cetera, but I think it's also because of the strength of that title, create a lot of really Constructive conversation?
• 7:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, there's been a ton of conversation and, and, and yeah, I think that's a really fair point to make. So moving right along, we've got a lot of other stuff tip on the website about admissions. It's called Spooky Admissions Mistakes and this was for Halloween. But within this kind of fun post are a bunch of really good tips and they're, they're done in a way that's kind of a little bit whimsical. But you know, one of them is like don't wear an Icarus costume. And it's about, you know, people who are kind of way too self entitled and what the things that they do that signal that in the admissions process. But there's also a really good one that I think you'll appreciate as we're going to talk about interviewing today. It's called don't get caught in Zombieland. And that's when you, you know, you've prepared so much for an interview that you're kind of reciting your lines and you're not you. So there's a little bit about that and obviously relevant to the Wharton TBD that we're going to talk about later. There's another one about avoiding a tech poltergeist. So Wharton TVD's are all conducted virtually. So you want to make sure that your technology is up to par before you get online for an interview. So there's a lot in there. You can read that on the site. We also did a class profile Alex on Michigan Ross. So they've published all their stats. I want to give you some of these stats and then just get your take on them. And what I'm going to do is I'll compare to you know, last year's class. So in terms of the class size, they have 357 students in the current class that's just started this fall. That's off about almost 6%. They were at 379 students last year. They have 38% women. That's virtually unchanged from 39% last year. They have 31% international students. That's actually down. It was 40% in last year's class. A 9% drop on international students. In the current class. The average GMAT score was a. Well so this is a little complicated because they've switched now to reporting the focus edition. So they report a 687 average on the Fooocus which is roughly a 740. And last year they were at 731 on the old edition. So different scales, but if you compare them, it looks like the GMAT score is up. I would argue that's probably because there are fewer GMAT test takers. On the GRE side, they're virtually unchanged with a. They have a verbal average of 160 and a math average of 162. The math was 163 last year, but otherwise it's all unchanged. Then we've got GPA 3.5 this year, 3.4 last. So they moved up a little bit there. And then work experience was 5.8 years on average and that's unchanged. So countries and states represented are virtually unchanged in terms of the number of states and countries, but again, fewer international students. So any thoughts, Alex?
• 11:02
  Speaker B: So I don't know if you can do the math, but is there domestic pool in, in terms of enrollees at par from last year? So International is down 9%. The class size is down 6%. So it sounds like domestic held steady. Does that sound right?
• 11:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't have the. See this is the thing, like they didn't, they didn't give me the numbers, but it's got to be.
• 11:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, do some back of the envelope math, we could probably figure that out. But anyway, it looks like they held steady with domestic. That's quite interesting. So overall, their class profile, again, they're all very good class profiles of these, these top programs, there's no doubt about that. But, but again, this sort of test taking is, is quite interesting. Right. I know we saw some data at one of the schools and it wasn't ross, where the percent of GMAT test takers in the incoming class, 30 or 25% or something, which is really low relative to. If you talk 10 years ago, it was 100%. So GMAPs really lost the way there in that regard. But having an average of the focus at 687, that's significantly higher than the average of that GRE if you make, if you try to compare them apples to apples. So we're seeing that trend across business schools. GRE is an easier test on the whole and I would probably suggest that a higher population of incoming candidates are taking the GRE for that reason. And yeah, other than that, I don't really have a lot to say. I mean, it is a shame to drop in international. We're probably going to see that across a lot more schools, although we didn't see it in some of the earlier class profiles we looked at. So I think I do find that a little bit interesting.
• 13:01
  Speaker A: Yeah,
• 13:02
  Speaker B: but yeah, the geopolitical climate is very anti international MBA students at this point.
• 13:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. So that was kind of to be expected in terms of that decline. Yeah. To your point about the testing, I mean, I think you have two factors, right. You have the one, one factor is that this average GRE of like 322 as you say, doesn't map to a average GMAT of 687. You'd probably need to be above 330 on the GRE to be in that same territory. So not only do you have this perception in the market that the GRE might be a bit easier, but the schools then accept a lower average. So it's like compounds it. Right. So it's like the back door and everyone's figured that out.
• 13:42
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think what's happening too with the GMAT is the smart people that know that they're going to test really well are the ones that are taking the gmat. Right. But that pool is dwindling. Whereas they would take the GMAT as well as everybody else. So the average would drop. Right. The median, etc would drop. But now it's only those gut folks taking the test. So. So the average will go up. Right. So
• 14:10
  Speaker A: yeah,
• 14:11
  Speaker B: you know, if, if, I mean any rational candidate, when they look at their options for test taking is going to look, look. Yeah. If they really understand the implications and that they're going to take the gre.
• 14:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That's where we sit right now. And unless the school is kind of, you know, wholesale, kind of do something about it, so.
• 14:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 14:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. In any.
• 14:31
  Speaker B: Which I do think they should because I still believe the GMAT's the better predictor of success.
• 14:38
  Speaker A: Oh yeah.
• 14:39
  Speaker B: And there is a test that's designed specifically for business school admissions, MBA admissions and you know, for any other, any other reasons, I think the GMAT is the test. But we've opened the door to the gre. We've opened the door to test waivers, we've opened the door to other tests like the ea and that that door's wide open now.
• 15:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. So. But back to Ross, I would just say, yeah, I mean obviously some very impressive stats in the class overall, despite them being down a bit on international volume and presumably application volume too, probably. What, what led to that. Yeah. In other news, we did connect with current first year students at Duke Fuqua as part of our ongoing Real Humans series. And I wanted to highlight one of them. If you're interested in Duke Fuqua, I strongly encourage you to go read these profiles. Makes for great, you know, essay fodder. And. And just get you up to speed on the school. So we caught up with Ava. She's part of the class of 28 at Duke, and she is 29 years old. She is originally from Russia and Dallas. So I think she moved as a young person to Dallas, Texas, but grew up in Tagil, Russia, and then headed to Texas. She went to University of Nebraska at Lincoln and earned her Bachelor's of music with a focus on violin. And then she worked before business school as a development manager at the Dallas Opera, doing kind of fundraising. And then also she actually took that fundraising experience in some other domains, too. So she ended up working for three plus years, it looks like, in fundraising alone. And then in parallel, has been a violinist for six years working kind of freelance. So we asked her, what's one thing you would absolutely do again as part of your application process? And she said, I would absolutely start the essay process early and break the work into smaller, consistent chunks. Beginning a few months in advance gave my stories time to develop, helped me avoid writer's block, and made the process feel much more manageable and less rushed. And then we also asked her, why did you choose Duke? What factors, you know, really figured into your decision? And she said that Fuqua stood out to me from the beginning. Writing the 25 random things about yourself essay made me feel that the admissions team genuinely wanted to understand who I was beyond my academic and professional accomplishments. When I was deciding where to enroll, I attended a Fuqua around the World event in Dallas without a clear decision in mind. But by the time I left, I knew Fuqua was where I wanted to be. It simply felt like home. Of course, Fuqua's academic rigor and career outcomes mattered, but the deciding factor was the people. Throughout the admissions process, current students and alumni were remarkably generous with their time, advice, and encouragement. And that sense of genuine community is what ultimately made Fuqua the right choice for me. So she's definitely, you know, a part of Team Fuqua now. Drinking the Kool Aid and seems really enthusiastic and, you know, kind of an interesting background, too. You know, me, I love musicians. But yeah, it was just kind of interesting.
• 17:47
  Speaker B: No, really, really good. What is her plan? Why did she decide to pursue an mba?
• 17:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, so she says that in the. In the piece. And she says basically that. She says that business school had been a goal of hers for some time, that her work in nonprofit fundraising. She says, I saw firsthand how structural inefficiencies can limit an organization's impact from unsustainable financial models and slow communication to Weak donor retention practices. So I guess she's just hoping to bring some of her business smarts into kind of of the this world of, you know, helping because I assume she, it seems like she wants to stay in this domain. Right. Of helping nonprofits and things. But you know, and I get exactly what she's talking about because I, I did work at a few non profits myself back many years ago and you know, you would look around and say, wow, you know, you need business smarts in these roles, you know, even though they're in the arts or whatever, you've got to have people who understand business. So
• 18:49
  Speaker B: I've worked at a few no profits, but that wasn't deliberate on their part and I think they have a lot of the same problems. But yeah, I mean the reason why I asked is, you know, this is an example of the type of student that, you know, MBA programs can attract in order to then provide a really good sort of knowledge basis or whatever in terms of what we teach and so on and so forth, as well as networks for them to be really successful in the nonprofit domain, which is I'd say really aspirational because managing non profit to me is actually much more complicated than managing for profit because for profit you've got customer and you know exactly who you got to please. When it's non profit, you've got so many different constituents to balance and so forth. So yeah, no, anyway, super interesting.
• 19:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, so. And there are five more folks on the Duke profile, so go check those out if you have time. In other news, we've got a podcast that we aired last week with Melissa Rapp from Emricuesta. She's so terrific. I had a great conversation with her. She's another one of these industry veterans who prior to her time at Emory had worked as the dean of admissions over at Kellogg Northwestern for many years. So she, you know, she just brings a wealth of admissions background. So it was a good conversation with her. You can listen to that wherever you're listening to this episode and obviously if you want to reach out, just write alexandinefoeeradmit.com use the subject line wiretaps. Alex, I know this is normally the point in the show where we start talking about candidates, but this week we're going to do something a little different. We're going to talk about Wharton's team based discussion. So I guess I'll kick us off. I want to get your take on this and give our listeners who are preparing or applying to Wharton in round two and thinking about Wharton's very unusual interview process. Some tips. Right. So the first thing that I was as I was kind of doing some research to get ready for this episode, I was surprised to learn that the team based discussion is now 15 years old. So they've been doing this for 15 years. I think Wharton would argue, and I tend to agree, that it's an increasingly relevant exercise in a world where people are using AI. And we'll get into why that might be. But one of the things that's interesting is they published an article, this is Wharton, on their website where they talked about looking back on the 15 years of having this interview practice in place. The Dean of admissions, Blair Manik, she said, we're still looking at many of the same qualities we were looking for 15 years ago. How someone communicates, engages with others, approaches decisions and contributes to a team. You know, I, I think we'll get into it, but it's just, I could not believe that it's been 15 years because I know you and I have been talking about it year in and year out and we often gripe a little bit about it because it's such an unusual exercise for applicants. But now it's sort of part of the landscape, you know, it's been around long enough.
• 21:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, they've been very persistent on, on using this style of interview. Not that, I mean I, I do find it to be, I mean obviously it's quite different to the more typical traditional interview processes. We see it all the other top MBA programs. I mean Ross actually went down this path. We talked about Ross in their class profile. They went down this path maybe for a couple of years.
• 22:18
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 22:19
  Speaker B: To experiment with it, but they abandoned that pathway. But yeah, I mean they might have a good point in terms, and we talked about this before coming on air, that in this sort of world of AI first, etc. Etc. The, the may, maybe, maybe some of the interaction and dynamic of a team based discussion is less easy to overly prepare for using AI tools. Yeah. So
• 22:47
  Speaker A: I think that's fair. Yeah,
• 22:49
  Speaker B: yeah. I mean we'll see. But yeah, yeah, it's, it's a different dynamic, let's put it that way.
• 22:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess for our listeners who don't know anything about this, let's take a step back and I'll just kind of briefly outline what this is. So if you are fortunate enough to make it to the interview phase at Wharton, because not everyone does, you'll get an invitation to a virtual interview. And the virtual interview is you and five of your fellow applicants who are Going to be kind of moderated by a second year student or sometimes an admissions officer for a 30 minute long discussion. And each candidate is given a prompt before the discussion. So when you get your invitation to interview at Wharton, you're given the prompt and everyone gets the same prompt. Your goal is to read the prompt, prepare accordingly and come to the discussion ready to kind of share your view. So this year the prompt is about developing a track to a city that you can go with. Wharton does all these different types of business tracks. And so this year the prompt revolves around designing a track and you know, for you and 40 of your classmates to go on and with various goals and we'll get into that. But basically everyone comes together, shares their thoughts on the prompt and then has to kind of engage in a sort of debate and a kind of, you know, working towards a single idea as a group and then summarizing that idea to the moderator when your time is running out. So it's a very unique process. But Alex, do you want to talk a little bit about what Wharton says that this is sort of based on like what they're trying to simulate here?
• 24:31
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean obviously the learning team model at Wharton is, is I'm quite famous or at least when I worked there lots of years ago, we talk about, I mean, Wharton brings in a large class size. Right. And then that's divided into cohorts. And within the cohorts you're then placed on a learning team. And as you know, Graham, you do experience this for a couple of years. You're with that learning team for that first year in all the core classes and hopefully you build a really strong relationship with those folks as you navigate that first year curriculum. And the team based discussion sort of helps simulate to some extent that type of environment.
• 25:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And I, and I will say that
• 25:17
  Speaker B: except you're not competing.
• 25:19
  Speaker A: Right, right,
• 25:20
  Speaker B: right. When you're in a learning team, you're actually cooperating. And when you get, get to the team based discussion, maybe you're looking across at some of the folk, the other folks in the video thinking I gotta beat this person because otherwise I'm not going to get admitted. So there is a big dynamic. Yeah,
• 25:35
  Speaker A: that is the key like difference here. And I would argue, you know, at Wharton, you know, with things like when I was there, there was grade non disclosure, you know, so no pressure, you've already made it to Wharton and your goal is to journey through that first year curriculum with these folks. And my team, I loved my team and in fact even relied on My team a little bit in the second year when you don't have to, but just we would kind of continue kind of hanging out and, and talking about projects or if we were in the same classes together. So it is. And I think I get what Wharton's trying to do here. They want to see how you interact in a group, as you know, as the quote from Blair said earlier. You know, it's kind of measuring your communication skills, your engagement with others, how you approach problem solving, how you contribute to a team. Right. All these basic things. And you're right. I mean, Wharton, I can't remember the exact figure, but I think the class size is what, it's around 800. They do have another unit that they break it down into. I think it's called a cluster, which is like 180 students. Then each cluster is made up of three cohorts and then each cohort of 60 is turned into like 10 learning teams. So it's a nice way, it's a unit way for them to kind of make for a smaller experience, which is nice, more intimate. Wharton didn't design this out of the, out of thin air either. The admissions team, as incredibly smart and great as they are, they worked actually with the operations department at Wharton to come up with this process. So, and they claim, you know, that it's a predictive. They've been measuring the kind of traits that they observe in these interviews and then looking at how students perform in the program. So they claim it is predictive of success in both the program and in the post MBA career. So you know, they have 15 years of data I guess now, so they've been looking at that. Alex, I guess I'd love to get into some of the basic tips and do's and don'ts for this, but I just, before I do that, I want to just mention that this year's prompt, so far as we understand it, is as follows. I mean, basically Wharton's career management and alumni relations team are piloting a new school wide trek which is open to MBA students across all career interests. And your team has been tasked with selecting a city and designing a four day trek during spring break for approximately 40 Wharton students. Most treks at Wharton are traditionally organized by student clubs or around specific industries or regions. But this trek is a bit broader and it needs to accomplish three objectives. The first is providing a valuable shared experience for students with a wide range of career interests and goals. The second is helping Wharton to establish new relationships with employers in the city that you select. And the third Goal is to create opportunities for regional alumni clubs to build stronger connections with current Wharton MBA students. Wharton has, has said they're handling all the travel, logistics and costs, so you don't need to worry about that or you know, figure out a budget. So what your team needs to do is select a city and propose a track that effectively addresses all of those objectives. And you know, Alex, you know, those are the basic details. But as I said before, each candidate who's invited to interview has this prompt and has to think through what they would do. But then you come together with five other people who also have their ideas. So how do you navigate that? Like what are, what's your advice for kind of going through this process? Assuming. Yeah, maybe even talk a little bit about how much time you should spend preparing.
• 29:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I know I lean on the side of you cannot over prepare.
• 29:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:05
  Speaker B: And, and, and, and I, I think this is really important, right. You want to get into Wharton, so, so don't take this lightly. Prepare really hard, really figure out what an attractive city would be, what, what makes a city attractive for this type of trek, what sort of activities, etc. Etc. But really do a deep dive on, on, on that research and so forth so that you come to the team based discussion with a really strong plan to, to answer the prompt. So just imagine as you're doing the preparation, you're doing it, you're the only person sort of charged with this, this issue and you're, you're basically presenting it, right? So, so really come very, very well prepared at the beginning of the team based discussion, presuming they're using a, the same format as they've, they've used over several years. You'll get a chance to present your idea right for about a minute or whatever it is. So know the constraints, make sure that, that you've prepared well and you can get your points across in that time frame effectively. But then listen, don't own your plan because you've prepared really well, etc. Etc. You're going to be much more open to others ideas that could absolutely change your point of view, right. And I think this is really important, right? If you haven't prepared well, you wouldn't know what another good idea is, right? But if you have prepared well, you can recognize from your colleagues in this team based discussion actually some insights that would really be really strong, etc. Etc. So my point is your goal isn't that your plan gets accepted and doesn't get changed. Your goal is as a team, you construct Something really coherent in a short time frame that everyone can agree with and then present. So come really well prepared, present, listen and then you can take on a variety of different types of roles within the team based discussion to help synthesize and develop a coherent plan. And that might be, you know, just making sure everybody gets a chance to speak and contribute, so drawing out those that might be a little less vocal and so forth. There are various other roles that you can take, just being a good timekeeper and moving the conversation along productively, etc. Etc. But don't think that if your plan unchanged isn't accepted, then you failed. Nothing's further from the truth, right? Come really well prepared, help synthesize and then help deliver a really coherent final product which is based off of everybody's contribution.
• 32:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, well said. I mean, I think like you were saying, like know the constraint when it comes to pitching your idea, right? I think it is one minute or maybe it's two minutes at most. But you've got to be able to quickly convey where would you go, what would you do with the four days, why, et cetera, how does it tick the three boxes of, you know. But I also think you also point out another really important thing once the discussion gets going. That's the meat of this thing, you know, because everyone presenting their ideas, you got to listen carefully. But then the bulk of the time is spent on this sort of negotiation of like, oh, that was interesting. How do we put together a single idea as a group now? And as you point out, you know, I think you could call the role of like you were talking about making sure people are heard or keeping an eye on the clock. That's kind of facilitator type role, right? Or you could be someone who's an idea generator helping to kind of just helping people to brainstorm. Or I think you mentioned this too, but you could be a synthesizer, like bringing things together. So there are different roles you can play. And I think you just need to be flexible and you know, obviously keep an eye, like you say, on the clock because at the end the team has to come together and make a presentation on like, here's what we're going to do. And that's where the, you know, obviously the moderator is watching the whole time but they're, you know, they want to hear your final, final pitch. So you've got to make sure that you're, you're doing that. And I think, you know, there are a lot of different tips as well that we talk about. Some of them are Very basic, like, you know, be on time. I've heard people talk about how they typically open the room a little bit early since it's a zoom, you know, and so sometimes like showing up a bit early, being backstage with your other team based discussion participants is useful. You certainly wouldn't want to be the one that shows up late and gets everything kind of off on the, on the wrong foot. But, and as I said earlier with our spooky admissions mistakes, you know, be careful that your technology is working and that you don't have, you know, distracting noise behind you. Like you don't do the Wharton TBD from a Starbucks. You know, like get somewhere where you have good Internet and a quiet environment to do it. But yeah, I think, you know, Alex, one thing I did want to ask you is sometimes you run into trouble in these interviews. Maybe there's, you know, someone who doesn't shut up or someone who's a bit bossy or I don't know, like kind of talks over others. Like there are all kinds of, you know, characters that you might encounter or you might encounter someone in the group who just doesn't say anything. Like any advice on how to handle these situations? That could be a little awkward.
• 34:44
  Speaker B: I mean, you got to be pretty cautious, right? If you do get one of these dominating characters who loves to hear themselves speak and is really gung ho about their own, their point of view and so on and so forth, you've got to tread quite carefully because certainly you don't want to shut them down in an abrupt way, but you've got to be able to draw out folks that haven't had the opportunity to share and engage also. So really managing that, I mean, quite honestly, a lot of this is to do with self awareness and if Wharton is invited a bunch of folks to the team based discussion that lack self awareness, then they got a bigger problem in their, in their scrutiny of, you know, the application process. So I, I got to think that this is a, getting a more of a rare occasion as well as folks that prepare for the team based discussion, look at resources like this and realize, you know, what's the best way to navigate team based discussion, which is obviously having a great idea and then having really good listening skills. Yeah. And, and you know, being able to synthesize. So, so yeah, I mean this may occur, but I, I got to think it's quite less common. After the team based discussion, you will have a short interview. Yes. A one to one and you may be asked what you felt about the team based discussion. And there may be an opportunity there without throwing anyone under the bus to sort of share a little bit more about the dynamic if you felt the dynamic wasn't there or something like that. But, but yeah, I mean go, go in, go really well prepared and go in to enjoy it and, and come out with a great solution. But don't, don't have this notion that you have to own everything and it has to be your solution.
• 36:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. In fact, I mean the truth is, is that any one of the, you know, of dozens and dozens or hundreds of cities or you know, places could work for this. Like there's no one right answer. And so I mean honestly like this, this is not about choosing the best city or designing like the perfect track. It's more about like showing the committee how you think, how you communicate, collaborate, et cetera. Right. So, so yeah, your proposal does not have to win for you to succeed. But you make a great point that yes, everyone gets a one on one at the end of the team base. And I think what they do is they put everyone into a waiting room and then they do breakouts because usually they're, sometimes there are two moderators so that they can sort of tag team and talk to everybody pretty quickly afterwards. But you'll have like a five, ten minute at most. I think it's five minutes with, with an admissions person one on one where they'll ask you what you thought of the experience and they might also ask you a little bit about your career.
• 37:39
  Speaker B: Potentially. They will ask you. They're not gonna, so, so they're gonna ask either about your career aspirations and why Wharton or about your experience with the team based discussion or both.
• 37:53
  Speaker A: Yeah,
• 37:53
  Speaker B: but you can't presume they will ask both lines of questions because we've seen it in our interview reports that come back. So sometimes they only focus on your career and why Wharton. Sometimes they only focus on your experience in the team based on discussion. So just be prepared for both types of questioning.
• 38:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so that's. So it's very non traditional. I mean we, you know, we talk about this. It's, it's really unusual. You will not encounter anything like this. The only thing that is remotely comparable is that IMD in Switzerland, if you're applying to that one year mba, they do a kind of similar exercise when you come to campus, but theirs is done in person. I don't, I don't know if they might do some virtually as well, but there really isn't anything like this. So yeah, just make sure you read you know, spend the time as Alex says, you can't be over prepared. But don't let that over preparation
• 38:47
  Speaker B: over prepare. Don't over rehearse.
• 38:50
  Speaker A: Yeah. And don't let the over preparation lead to like obstinate on your idea. Right. So but otherwise no, this is, and I actually like this year's idea, this year's prompt because it's pretty open ended and gives you a chance to learn a little bit about Wharton, what they historically do with tracks and, and how you might design a fairly open ended track that has to meet all these different goals. And I was already thinking about oh, what would be cool markets where Wharton maybe needs to engage more with alumni or meet new up and coming kind of employers that maybe don't yet have big relationships. Yeah, I don't know. I mean there could be. Yeah, Texas comes to mind. You know it's funny that you say that because I for fun I was asking Claude to like hey, what would, what would you do with this prompt? And which I'm sure everyone who gets the invitation is going to do. And Claude's first answer was Austin, which I thought was kind of funny. So. But in any event that doesn't mean you have to pick Austin by any stretch. But it was an interesting response. Alex. We've run a little long but we had a lot to tackle from salacious headlines in a New York Times op ed and the response from Wharton to obviously the Wharton tbd. But I appreciate this conversation with you and we'll do it all again next time week getting back to our candidates.
• 39:59
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe everyone. Take care. Of.