Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 491: Airlines to consulting. Startup experience, 685 GMAT. Engineer to banking

Transcript

MBA Wire Taps 491: Airlines to consulting. Startup experience, 685 GMAT. Engineer to banking · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:16
  Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, May 11, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things, Alex?
• 0:28
  Speaker A: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:30
  Speaker B: So by the time this show hits the airwaves, I should, in theory, fingers crossed, be in Atlanta with several members of the Clear Admit team gearing up for our annual NBA fair. I am really pumped about this. I mean, hopefully a few of our listeners in the Atlanta area will actually pop by and say hello. But yeah, it's, I'm so excited about this. It's going to be a lot of fun. 25 schools, partners like GMAC and Forte and Consortium and Leland Juno. So all of our, all of the best schools and all of our partners are going to be at this event. It should be a lot of fun
• 1:01
  Speaker A: to say you are with the best of the best.
• 1:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. So hopefully you, you're enjoying it. That's the. I know it's very stressful putting all these events on.
• 1:11
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:12
  Speaker A: But my real wish is that you all, and our team really enjoys it because it says a lot about Clear Admit that you're able to assemble the best of the best in our industry in one place. So, yeah, kudos to everybody involved.
• 1:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, and it's, it's been a lot of fun organizing and I will try to, you know, smell the roses while I'm, while I'm in the, in the throes of running panels and everything. But, but in the meantime, Alex, like, we've got a show to get to here and this week we've got some news and notes about new hires and new roles over at Berkeley, Haas and Carnegie Mellon. Plus I picked out a handful of real humans alumni that I wanted to share some quotes from. And these are folks working at, you know, places like J.P. morgan, Amazon and even a couple of startups. So. Should be interesting. But is there anything that we need to know about this week in terms of the calendar? Are there decisions coming from round three? Any, I don't know, deferred enrollment? What's going on right now?
• 2:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So this upcoming week's actually a pretty busy week for round three or final round decisions, depending on the different schools. But they include Wharton, Kellogg, McDonough, Boston College, Carroll, Yale Sloan, Anderson Foster and Washington Olin are amongst the schools releasing decisions and application deadlines for later rounds are still rolling out. So Rotman, Boston College, Carroll Again and Vanderbilt Owen have application deadlines this upcoming week. So it's still not Too late to apply for some folks.
• 2:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I know some of the schools that we're getting together with in Atlanta this week. I remember some of them were like, oh, thank God it's this week because they're all in committee, I guess last week figuring out, you know, who's getting, who's getting in for round three. So there you have it. I did want to mention, you know, obviously talking about Atlanta, but later this month, on May 19th, 28th, 26th and 27th, each of those days at noon Eastern, we're going to be doing our application overview virtual event series. And I'm going to sit down with I think it's 19 or 20 schools taking part. And I was going over the agendas for these events the other day with Mike on our team. And I love these events because I get to ask all these sort of great questions about, you know, like asking them like what, what separates a great recommendation letter from just a, you know, more pedestrian one? And you know, how do admissions, what are they looking for when they read a rec letter or, you know, all kinds of questions, Basically every component of the application process. And we'll get into it with all these schools over the course of those four days. So you can sign up for those@clearadmit.com events. I'm kind of, I've been having a hard time thinking about all that stuff because there's so much happening this week with Atlanta. But it should be fun later this month to dive into that stuff too.
• 3:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker B: Very good in the news and notes section as I mentioned. So Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business has named Meg Lucas as executive Director of MBA programs. She's been at Tepper before and it says that in her new role, Lucas will lead the strategic, operational and student facing aspects of the MBA portfolio. In addition to overseeing program delivery, student services and curriculum implementation, she will partner with faculty and leadership to drive admissions career outcomes and market positioning. So pretty senior role there over at Carnegie, Mel and Tepper and they have a great team.
• 4:30
  Speaker A: Sounds like she's doing everything.
• 4:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well, she's got, I mean, she's got a really good group of people with her. I mean we know JR McGrath is the executive director for admissions stuff over there. So yeah, good team. And yeah, so I just thought I would share that. We did a little article about this on the site and similarly, some changes over at UC Berkeley, Haas, as some of our listeners may recall, Eric Askins left, oh, must be six months to a year ago and he was replaced by, I think Cindy Millett, who's been kind of acting as interim. She's been on the team for a while there and so took over as interim. But Berkeley just announced two big appointments over there. So they, they have Saba Khan, who's been appointed assistant Dean of MBA Admissions and Enrollment Management. So she'll take that role that Eric had been in previously. And then Julia Huang will serve as Assistant Dean of MBA programs and both roles will take effect this spring. So again, a kind of one, two punch. They've got a really strong team over there. These are folks that have been working at Haas and have an interesting background. And I think I want to say that one of them came from Stanford as well or had some work at Stanford in admission. So yeah, just some interesting appointments and news notes from our industry.
• 5:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we'll probably see some more of this movement over the summer as typically it is the summertime when admissions teams sort of are in a bit of flux in terms of personnel moving in and out. So yeah, let's see what happens over the next several months.
• 6:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Other than that, I did want to share. We continue to profile alums from top MBA programs who are out there in the world working at companies that are often big time companies or in some cases startups doing the entrepreneurial route. So I wanted to share a few of those folks this week again and some great quotes from them. So we have Max, who did his MBA at Notre Dame. Mendoza graduated a few years ago and he's now vice president at JPMorgan Chase. He hails from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, went to undergrad at Penn State where he studied finance and economics. Before business school he had worked at PNC bank, which is a major bank in Pennsylvania and increasingly in other parts of the US as well. And he'd done, it looks like he'd done four years in total there doing both kind of associate type work, but also he worked as a market research consultant for them in financial services. And obviously, as I said, now he's at J.P. morgan. He's been there for a couple of years and we asked him, is there one thing that you would change or do differently as part of your job search? And he says the following. It didn't negatively impact my job search, but I probably would have focused on recruiting for financial services from the beginning. While I was considering staying within banking, I cast a wide net early on and interviewed for jobs in industries that I did not feel as passionately about. It was good to get more practice interviewing, but I could have spent more time focusing on coursework and getting to know my classmates. So that's an interesting trade off. Alex, I think that he's kind of underlining.
• 7:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. But it also underlines what a lot of other folks are saying when they say go to an MBA program with a plan, with a focus and execute on that plan and focus. And don't cast your, your neck too wide early in the experience because otherwise you'll fall into this bit of a trap. So yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense.
• 7:54
  Speaker B: You got to embrace the joy of missing out, as we learned last week. Right.
• 7:58
  Speaker A: I did quite like that.
• 8:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was good. Right. So the next candidate I wanted to share or alum, sorry that I want to share is this guy named Dhruv Tandon and He is an LBs grad back in 24. He's currently the co founder at a company called Decisional AI. He's originally from Pune in India where he studied at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani. And he had worked prior to business school in a number of roles. A lot of IT in finance though. So he was working at a bank as a product manager. He worked at what sounds like maybe a kind of payments slash fintech company. So he kind of jumped around. But all these roles in kind of finance and banking and now he's started this company called Decisional AI and which is, I think it says here, it says YC s 24 VC backed startup. I don't know if YC is for Y Combinator, but I'm not sure. But anyway, he's been doing this since 24 and it's an AI play in a kind of software service space. And I believe it has something to do with finance as well. And so we asked him, this is funny, we asked him what's one thing you would absolutely do again as part of the job search. Now obviously he started his own company, right. But he says if you think the timing is right, skip the job search and start a company. I knew I wanted to build something and I used every minute of the MBA to lay the groundwork. Customer conversations, co founder, chemistry sharpening how I think about markets. If you have the itch, don't suppress it with a safe recruiting process. The MBA is the best launchpad you'll get. So I think that's really powerful. And we did ask him also, what piece of advice do you wish you'd been given during your mba? And this relates, he said, learn AI tools but don't get attached to any single one. What matters is locking into the Fundamentals understand the shape of LLM intelligence, where it's superhuman and where it falls apart. That mental model outlasts any specific product. And remember, AI companies still sell to humans. You still need to read a room, build trust and close a deal. The MBA gives you that technical knowledge is table stakes now, but the melting pot of sharp minds, diverse backgrounds and great professors gives you something that I can't replicate. Invest in those moments, they compound in ways a polished resume never will. So I thought, I mean not only that, that was really well written, but I just thought so powerful in terms of describing like what is the value in getting an mba? And also just this is, you know, he's obviously very pro entrepreneurship, which I love.
• 10:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think this is absolutely fantastic. There's a few, few threads here that I could certainly pick up on. One, I think the MBA is more and more going to become a platform for entrepreneurs because I think what AI does in this sort of shift that we're going through that's going to be as impactful as the industrial Revolution. What AI, what, what this next revolution does is it favors the entrepreneur versus those going to work in large business, which frankly are going to be reducing their human workforce and replacing them with agents. I mean, that's clear as day for me. So this makes perfect sense. And I love the idea of really understanding the models and how they work rather than just understanding the tools. And frankly, I spent a lot of time myself trying to do do that, but I'm also learning tools. So as, as we know, as we've had lots of conversations, I'm really into learning about Claude Chord co work called Code and experimenting with, with these tools. Right. So. So you know, whether it's coming up with a chess app, which I've done recently, or some other stuff, I mean these are fascinating times, but to be an entrepreneur, I think, yes, those with entrepreneurial aspirations, you wouldn't find a better time.
• 12:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. Yeah. So anyway, great comments out of that. That candidate or alum, sorry at LBs, we also. I wanted, there are a couple more that I wanted to talk about. We talked with this woman named Aparna who is an ACC Paris grad, again back from MBA. I got her MBA in 23. So I love it when these alums are a few years out because it just really helps to kind of see where they're headed. And she's currently chief of staff at Carbon Farm. Carbon Farm is a climate tech startup. She's 34, studied law as an undergrad and you know, she's focused on, I guess, finance and sustainability when she did her mba. And, you know, we asked her, is there anything you would change or do differently as part of your job search? And she said, I would actually start earlier in building relationships within specific sectors and companies rather than relying too heavily on formal recruiting channels. So I think that's kind of an interesting comment. Then she also added, we asked for a piece of advice that she wished she'd been given. And she added, don't optimize for the perfect job on paper, optimize for learning, exposure and trajectory. Your first role post MBA is just the starting point. So I think those are two really interesting points that she's making and very true.
• 13:21
  Speaker A: No, absolutely. And again, they resonate really well for folks that aren't perhaps doing the more traditional recruiting process. So she's, you know, at Carbon Farm, which is a startup kind of a little, and I, I would say her process is, is quite similar to our previous candidate. Right. Okay. So the previous candidates started up their own business. But going into these sort of novel careers in, in startups, I think a lot of the same stuff applies. And really thinking about what are you going to learn from this first position, what's the trajectory from this first position, etc. Is really a good way to think about these things. It is, quite frankly, why people go into consulting too. Right. So I get that that still applies for more traditional careers.
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:14
  Speaker A: But, yeah, absolutely. Fantastic.
• 14:15
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I neglected to say not only did she study a lot, but she worked as a corporate lawyer for eight years, so she has a lot. And she specialized in sustainable financ at leading law firms. Right. So she, you know, she's a perfect fit to kind of make this sort of pivot. But I do. It really resonates with me this idea that, okay, obviously companies come to campus, you can sign up and do the recruiting, et cetera, but she's like, get started even earlier than that and figure out which companies you want to talk to and just start having those informal conversations because many times, you know, it's that you just having those conversations can, can really land you a role or get you in the door. One more candidate who's an alum who went to Kellogg from, for this week and is now a senior product manager at Amazon. This person's name is Rasal. He's 31. He went to undergrad at the same school that our first candidate did in India in Pilani, this technical institute. And he majored in math and electronics and then obviously went to Kellogg, graduated back in 25, so just about a year ago, and majored in marketing and finance as well as management analytics. He's been working as a technical lead. Sorry, as a senior product manager at Amazon, and before business school, he was a technical lead at Amazon. So he's pivoted into kind of a management role with the use of the mba. And we just asked him, what is it about your MBA experience that's prepared you for your current career? And he says, before my mba, my career was rooted in technical execution, but Kellogg transformed me into a product leader who can bridge the gap between complex engineering and business strategy. The MBA curriculum provided the rigorous business fundamentals I needed to complement my background in cloud and payments. Further, through leadership and experiential learning courses, I learned how to lead with empathy. So again, we're getting into that notion here. I think of, like, that. That the sort of soft skills and that intersection of, like, business and technology that, you know, an MBA gives you, and that seems increasingly useful in this current environment.
• 16:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. And quite frankly, these four candidates. No, not candidates. Alums.
• 16:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.
• 16:23
  Speaker A: Really interesting profiles, but also show a nice spectrum of different profiles and different career trajectories and highlight then the value of the mba.
• 16:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So those are the kind of news and notes and stuff from the site that I wanted to share this week. If you want to write to Alex and I just write to infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps. We love getting your mail, so please keep it coming. Otherwise, Alex, you picked out. I think you picked out apply wire entries this week. So we've got some prospects. People are thinking about going to business school and they want our take on their candidacies. So should we move along with that?
• 16:57
  Speaker A: Let's kick on.
• 16:58
  Speaker B: All right, so this is Wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate technically posted to Livewire, but it was essentially like an apply wire type entry where they gave a asked for a profile review. This person indicates that they're interested in Duke, but they also have a bunch of other schools. So they have Emory, Wharton, Ross at Michigan, Kellogg, and Harvard Business School. So all these schools are on their list. They have a 3.96 undergraduate GPA. They have yet to take a standardized test, but they are studying right now the GRE, and they said they're aiming for a 320 score. They currently work in the airline industry, and they're hoping to sort of pivot out of that and into a consulting role, ideally with McKinsey, Bain or BCG. And then in the longer term they're saying they would go back to aviation, but as an experienced leader. So. And that that makes a lot of sense, right? You do some consulting work for a top firm and then return to an industry that you have a lot of deep expertise in. The other thing they mentioned is that they're just kind of wondering about their odds and you know, like whether they'll get into one of these schools on the list and how they should approach the upcoming application season. I mean the first thing that I just should mention here is that they're in Atlanta. So the first thing they should do is come to our fair and which is tonight if you're to going listening on the day we air this. So hopefully they'll come to the fair and get a head start. But what do you make of their candidacy overall? Because I know you had posed some questions to them and you did have some thoughts.
• 18:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I do actually think this is probably a reasonably strong profile overall. I mean you get a 396GPA, that's good, right? I mean that shows real dedication over four years to the academics, etc. Etc. So I really like that. And if they can show that they also have really strong work experience, can show impact and growth at work, et cetera, et cetera, then they're really starting to set up what I would consider to be a really strong overall profile. We don't really know what their interest outside of work. So obviously if that can help elevate their profile a little bit too, that would be good. I just think that they're under playing this GRE. So if they get a 320 GRE. Yeah, fair enough. They'll probably get into some of these programs they're targeting because again, they've got a really strong undergraduate degree, they've probably got really good work experience in the airline, in airline sector, et cetera, et cetera. Their plans make sense with consulting back to the airline industry in a leadership capacity. So that all makes sense. But I think, you know, if you've got a 396GPA, that tells me you're smart, you're dedicated, etc, then go and blow that GRE out of the water, spend some time and really make sure that they get their best GRE score, not just get over a hurdle here, but really maximize. So if they can complement their 396GPA with a 328 330Gre, then the top end of those schools that they're targeting come into play more Significantly, I would say. Graham.
• 20:17
  Speaker B: Yeah, I could not agree more. You think of their school list, they have six schools and some of the schools might be fine with a 3, 320 on that list, but when you start to talk about Harvard or Wharton or something, you know, it'd be nice to see them creeping up into the high 300 20s. I also think this could impact scholarship dollars. Right. So.
• 20:32
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 20:33
  Speaker B: So it's, it'd be, it's a, you know, short term sacrifice for a potentially substantial gain in terms of where they get in, but also how much scholarship they get. The only thing I will add is that they mentioned they want to work at McKinsey Bain BCG in the south. And so the only thing that was sort of struck me as what school is missing from this list is uva Darden, which is, you know, a notable program in that, you know, kind of Mid Atlantic region that places well in the south and that is very well regarded in the consulting domain. So that would be one that I would encourage them to explore. But otherwise, yeah, I think they're looking really good and just need to take the test to do well and. Yeah. And start, start working on their applications.
• 21:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, very good. Good luck to them.
• 21:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, I want to thank them for listing their profile on the site. Let's turn our attention to Wiretaps Canada, number two. So our, our second candidate this week has just four schools on the target list at this point and those schools are Berkeley, mit, Stanford and Yale. And they're looking to start in the fall of 27. They've been working in a kind of both the startup domain and in strategy consulting. And they're thinking about consulting after business school. I mean they mentioned McKinsey, Lindsay Oliver, Wyman, PwC strategy and. But they also might do tax. They're kind of thinking through, but it seems like consulting is the main focus. They have a 685 on the GMAT in case you're still on the old scale, that's like a 730, 740. They have a 3.6 GPA, six years of work experience. They are an international candidate. They mentioned they are Southeast Asian, but not Chinese or Indian. They're 26 years of age and they graduated with an engineering degree in the top 15% of their class at a very good local university, but apparently unknown outside of their country. They then did a couple of years at a, at strategy and in consulting before moving into. They started their own kind of fintech company, got some funding, but a year later had to shut it down. Wasn't going too well. And, and they talk about they're thinking about joining a fintech in the US or financial services consulting in case they can't get a fintech position. So that, that's kind of the goals. You actually asked them a question about like what are they doing now? Because they kind of left it off as like, oh, my company I started didn't work. And I believe they said they are working as a strategy manager for another fintech company. They've just led a series B funding and are kind of in expansion mode at that company. So they said they have a lot to talk about. They did mention though that their extracurriculars are fairly limited. They've been active in local startup communities in their free time and host some entrepreneurship workshops at conferences. So what do you think Alex?
• 23:23
  Speaker A: Quite frankly this sounds like a really interesting candidate in terms of their professional profile. That sort of mix between sort of corporate work consulting and sort of startup experience, etc.
• 23:36
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker A: So I would think that that is the strength of this profile overall. You know, as we talked about before when we were doing the Real Humans, I mean, I'm a big believer that that sort of entrepreneurial mindset is going to become more and more important for candidates coming to MBAs and MBA programs, helping candidates pursue that type of career. And this candidate fits really well into that, that bracket. I would say they tried the entrepreneurial route. They probably learned a lot of lessons from that experience and so on and so forth and their numbers are decent, so that should help them. The just slight weakness potentially is in the extracurricular side. And I know it can be more challenging I think, for the sort of entrepreneur type person because they put everything into what they're doing. But that then relates also to their extracurricular experience which is again, entrepreneurship related. Right. So they're helping folks in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and so forth and there's nothing wrong with that. It would just be nice if maybe they played a sport or did something else completely different to just sort of show a little bit of balance in their overall personal profile and so forth.
• 24:59
  Speaker B: Right.
• 25:00
  Speaker A: But overall I think this is a strong candidate. They did ask me what they, what can they do to improve their profile before they apply this season. So outside of the usual stuff like just make sure that you're working well, you're getting good experience, it looks like they've got that checked in spades. They have a decent GMAT. Right. 685. There's no doubt that that places them into the means of some of the top programs for the medians or whatever. But if they think there's some improvement now and they have time and they can still apply in round one, I would say go for it and try to get the GMAT in 705, 715. Just show that they're outstanding in all aspects of their profile to help mitigate some of this EC stuff. Yeah, that's probably what I would do, Graham. I mean, I hate to give someone a recommendation to retake the GMAT when they've already got a very decent gmat, but frankly, frankly, they wanted to know what little things that they can do. And it's clear a higher GMAT score is always better.
• 26:12
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. There's nothing wrong with it. I guess one of the things that struck me is when I looked at the schools that they're targeting. Mit, Berkeley, Stanford especially. These are kind of slightly smaller programs for the top, among the top schools, and with typically very low acceptance rates. I mean, Haas is a little bit under pressure because of it being a state school. So there's lower tuition if you're in state. And so that seems to. To result in, you know, pretty high application volume. So I was just a little worried that they're kind of casting a pretty narrow net. I mean, Yale is on their list, too. But, yeah, as you say, better test score wouldn't hurt, I think their test score, obviously, is certainly fine for now, But I do worry about them having a limited number of extracurriculars, and as you said, just none of those extracurriculars seem to be different than their kind of work. And I get it. You know, when you're running a company, starting a company, even one that fails, like, you're busy. Right. Probably even more so when it's not doing well because you're, you know, trying to save it. Right. So I. I get that. But it would be nice to add some color to the mix, because otherwise they're a Southeast Asian engineer with a 3, 6 and a 730. And, you know, that's a fairly common kind of profile in the pool for. Especially for these top, top schools. Right. So, yeah. Anyway, I agree with you, though. They have an interesting story to potentially tell. I think that'll come out in the essays, but, yeah, maybe take another shot at the test. It wouldn't hurt and get. Get moving with some of those. The extracurriculars, I would say. Yeah, I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week is applying to the M7 London Business School. So that's Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, California and MIT +lbs. They have been working in finance and they wrote finance technology and they're hoping to do consulting after business school or possibly banking. They listed both. So we'll get into this in the news and notes here section of their post. They have a 715 on the GMAT which you know that's obviously a really, really high score. In fact we were just talking about how the previous candidate, if they could nudge up into that domain that, that that's in the kind of, I think I want to say 7 60, it's like a 99th percentile on the test. Right. So it's a really, really good score. They had a GPA of 9.16 out of 10 as an undergrad, five years of work experience. This candidate is from India. They want to land in the US after business school and they basically you know, have a undergraduate in information technology. They, they I guess have been working as a machine learning engineer within a bulge bracket investment bank. They've been doing that for about three years and they say they would have almost five years at the time of matriculation. They've been given a lot of awards for high impact innovation. They actually you know, won like a you know, most innovative project award etc. They also you know, have been helping the company in, in what seemed to be very impactful ways like they engineered an agentic AI system to automate some customer support. So lots of good stuff happening at work. They are also active with something called Youth Parliament, been recognized for leadership in simulated legislative environments and they you know, have developed skills in that domain and been doing that for several years it seems they would love to go into investment banking in the short term. So it sounds like even though they listed consulting and banking, banking is the number one choice and they would love to you know, do that in a domain that's covering tech or fintech type companies. So in an event they've had this banking experience but on the technical side, right. They're an engineer and they're looking to switch to the front of the house if you will. And then in the long term they're hoping to find executive leadership roles within the global financial services ecosystem. So Alex, what do you make of this capital Canada?
• 30:11
  Speaker A: Fantastic. I mean again their skill set in machine learning as a machine learning engineer and working on a Gentic projects etc. Etc. Is going to be really well sought after by, by companies period I would think so, so the world is our oyster in that regard. They, they're sort of like you say they're working on in the back office, I suppose you could call it for, for a bulk bracket bank. And they want to flip over to the front side and I think that's absolutely doable in their case. They have really strong numbers. 715 on the GMAT, 9616 GPA, which I just assume is a really high, high score, high school there, lots of awards at work. Gotta love that they're doing some extracurricular stuff with the youth Parliament. So you know, I think that schools are really going to like this profile. They really do need to apply in round one just because of that potential for overrepresentation, India origin with highly technical skills and so forth. So as long as they target round one, I would, that would be my only real push. But yeah, I think they've got a really, really strong profile. You might argue that maybe they need to add a top 16 or whatever into the target school list because they've only gone M7 plus LBs. But still I think this is a really strong candidate.
• 31:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean on the one hand you could say oh it's another engineer from India and they want to go from back of the house to front of the house. So these are common things. But 715 on the GMAT, 9.16 GPA, five years of experience by the time they matriculate. And it sounds like all with the same bulge bracket bank. Lots of accolades and awards at work and some interesting extracurricular. You know I think that parliament work they're doing where they're kind of, it sounds like it's a, you know, kind of simulating legislative environments is that's kind of particularly interesting because they're an engineer and so they're getting that more qualitative sort of maybe public speaking, etc. So yeah, I love this candidate. I think if they apply in round one, go for these top schools, I think they'll come up with something. But obviously wouldn't hurt to think about is there anything outside of that group that would be a good fit. And I think they could also stand to potentially narrow this list. If they know they want to do investment banking, then the list may shift a little bit. So I would encourage them to explore placement stats across these programs because some of the schools on their list here, whether it's a Booth or Columbia or Wharton, might rise to the surface when it comes to investment banking and others if they're in, you know, in search of a school that's outside of the top, you know, seven, they might look at a Cornell or something. Right. There are schools that do really well. Or Stern.
• 33:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would say they should look at Stern and Cornell. Yeah. And the key here is round one is their best shot.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: Right.
• 33:20
  Speaker A: Right. Because they're overrepresented. So in round one, they need to really think about how many schools. Schools can I apply and just make sure that I have a balanced portfolio of schools. So I would still include in round one a Stern or a Johnson or both, along with, like you said, Columbia, Wharton, and Booth and so forth. And that would make a lot of sense to me.
• 33:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. So in any event, they're in good shape. They just need to kind of refine that list and get to work. But I think they're, you know, obviously, there's a lot to like with this candidate. I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Alex, thanks for picking these out. After all these weeks of talking about people's outcomes and where they should go, it's been fun to get back into the mode of talking about people who are applying for next cycle. So I guess we're kind of turning the corner and starting to look towards next season. But in any event, thanks for picking these out, and we'll do it all again next week.
• 34:17
  Speaker A: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. And, Graham, hopefully you enjoyed the big events today. Tomorrow.
• 34:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Should be fun.
• 34:25
  Speaker A: Very good.
• 34:25
  Speaker B: All right, take care.
• 34:26
  Speaker A: Take care. Cheers.