Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 346—334 GRE, private equity. Lawyer to consulting. McCombs vs Haas

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MBA Wire Taps 346—334 GRE, private equity. Lawyer to consulting. McCombs vs Haas · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:15
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, April 21, 2024. Are you looking for an MBA program where you'll be more than just a number? Vanderbilt Business offers a personalized learning experience to help each student reach their unique career goals. Whether you're looking to switch careers entirely or accelerate the path you're on, the Vanderbilt MBA program will provide you with the individual support you need to propel your career forward. Vanderbilt is currently waiving their dollar 200 application fee for MBA wiretaps. Listeners to learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, visit business vanderbilt.edu clearadmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, happy April Fool's Day. How are things going this week?
• 1:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, happy April Fool's Day. Fools Day. I hope that the fools sort out our weather here pretty soon, because it's just been abominable lately.
• 1:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I, you know, as we record this, I don't know if we're gonna do anything. We used to do this fun stuff for April Fools with clear admit, where we would, you know, run some fake. Fake articles. It's just that fake news has taken on an entirely new meaning in the, you know, years that have gone by. But we stuff some fun, you know, I want. I wanted to read you a couple of headlines from years past, April Fool's articles. We had one that. That read, leading b schools make this year's acceptance calls in reverse alphabetical oreo order just for the heck of it.
• 1:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:43
  Speaker A: And stuff like, you know, we had a story about how Kellogg was awarding two full scholarships in specially marked boxes of Rice Krispies. You know, stuff like that. So, in any event, I don't think we're doing that this year. But you can read them. They're on the site, in the archives, if you just Google Claire, admit April Fools.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: So maybe we should just do a piece that collates some of these, the best of the past April Fools stories. Cause some of them are very creative.
• 2:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, we've gotten in trouble for some. I remember we got in trouble. We wrote one about InsEaD, the french government requiring insead to put the curriculum into French. They couldn't teach it in English for the french campus, and some people thought we were serious, that it was a real news story. So. Yeah. But, yeah, I'll look and see if we can find some of these old ones, put them into a piece. That would be funny.
• 2:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:33
  Speaker A: The other thing, we still really need your help, so if you're listening, please take our survey. You can go to bit ly, caspring survey, all lowercase, all one word. And actually, we'll just. We'll wait. Go ahead, go fill it out. We'll just wait ten minutes, Alex, while everyone fills it out.
• 2:51
  Speaker B: How to get rid of your listeners in one fast fashion.
• 2:54
  Speaker A: No, no, but we really do need your help. So if you're listening and you haven't taken our survey, please do. So. It's a fun survey. You get to talk about how you decided to choose the schools that you applied to. And it's, you know, it's a mostly multiple choice type, you know, tick the box survey so it shouldn't take you long. Please do it. Other than that, Alex, give me the rundown. I mean, last week was a monster week with, you know, the Wharton's, the Harvard, the Stanfords, all these schools are delivering their decisions. Is there anything left or have we finished round two decisions?
• 3:24
  Speaker B: Can't you guess who's left? Graham?
• 3:27
  Speaker A: Well, it's going to got to be MIT Sloan and, you know, there might be some other stragglers.
• 3:31
  Speaker B: It's always Sloan out of the m seven and certainly out of the majority of top 16. Sloan is perennially, they have a later deadline and a later decision release date, which we think is actually pretty smart on their part. But yes, Sloan next week and Stern and Cornell have deadlines, but they sort of creatively name their deadlines. So I sometimes wonder exactly what they mean. But I think Cornell might also be releasing decisions, final decisions next week, too.
• 4:03
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 4:04
  Speaker B: But we are at the beginning of round three, so we've had several application deadlines already, several coming up next week. So those that are sort of looking to throw in sort of applications right at the end of the season. Now, they're obviously working very hard to get those applications done.
• 4:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. So still some deadlines. And I think we have some good advice on the website. There's some tips for round three if.
• 4:27
  Speaker B: You'Re applying late, and we'll talk about that a little bit in our clear admit plus webinar, which will be later today. Well, later today is Wednesday today whilst we're recording, but later the day this is published.
• 4:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. So Monday, April 1, we will have our clear admit plus webinar at noon Eastern. So anyone who's a registered user on our website can hop on and join us. You can sign up in advance by going onto the website. Just follow the little sign for clear admit plus. And yeah, we'll spend about an hour chatting with probably a lot of the usual folks who've been joining us month in and month. But, yeah, we'll answer your questions. If you've been wait listed, if you've got a round three app you're working on, if you don't know where to go. Cause you got into multiple schools and you're trying to decide, so come and join us for that. Alex, I have some other pretty groundbreaking or earth shattering news when we're talking about events here. So, aside from the clear admit plus webinar, we are gonna do an in person event on May 15 in Chicago. It's gonna be an NBA fair. And it's just, this is. I'm really excited about this because we are gathering together a whole bunch of schools. I'll just read you the list, and you can weigh in on this. It's kind of amazing to me. So we've got Harvard Business School, Chicago, Booth, Kellogg, MIT, Columbia, Duke, Darden, Cornell, Michigan, NYU, Stern, Yale, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Indiana, Carnegie Mellon, Tepper, UT, Austin, McCombs, Emory, and University of Washington Foster, all joining us in person for an MBA fair and kind of a bunch of panel sessions and networking. There's probably gonna be alumni from these schools there as well, in addition to their admissions staff. So should be a crazy about. We're doing it on May 15 in Chicago. You can sign up on our website. Just go to bit Lee, ca, Chicagofair. Now, this is mostly for people in the Chicago area, but I was actually looking at this list of schools and thinking you wouldn't be crazy to just show up in Chicago and come to this event. It's like all the schools are gonna be there. Nice way to meet everybody.
• 6:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think this is a real sort of high watermark for clear admit. We've never done an in person student applicant facing event before. Right. So I think this is absolutely fantastic. But, Graham, having said that, as an alum of the Wharton school, I didn't hear you mention Wharton.
• 6:59
  Speaker A: So I'm wait awaiting word from Wharton. Yeah, they're trying to figure. It's actually. I think that week is a decision or committee week for them, and so they're trying to find somebody. I don't know. I gotta. I'm gonna bother them some more because. Yeah, we have a pretty great list of schools.
• 7:15
  Speaker B: Maybe you could represent wall.
• 7:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, yeah. Although I'm gonna be doing double duty. I'm probably gonna be emceeing some sessions and. Yeah. So, anyway, this will be fun. Definitely coming out. If you live in Chicago, would definitely come. If you're an applicant, you know, it's kind of not miss, but literally top.
• 7:30
  Speaker B: 16 programs by, I think, Stanford and Wharton.
• 7:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
• 7:34
  Speaker B: It's an absolutely gangbuster event. And I'm so. I just think it's brilliant that clear. This is a huge thing for clear admit. So really well done to get. Let's hope it's a great success. I think it will be, but work it out. Let's hope it's a great success. Yeah.
• 7:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. There's a lot of work to do. I'm a little nervous, but, you know, it's gonna be fun. I'm just really excited. So let's see really quick over on the website, I'll give you some updates and then we can get into this week's candidates. Because you picked some really interesting cases this week, as always, we ran an article about business school sending people into consulting. And so I just wanted to ask you, which business school, of the sort of top 25 or so, you placed the highest percentage of graduates from the class of 23 into consulting jobs? Do you have any idea?
• 8:22
  Speaker B: Was it Emory?
• 8:23
  Speaker A: It was. Well, how do you know that?
• 8:25
  Speaker B: I know stuff, Graham.
• 8:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, it was Emory. Mozueta. 54% of their graduating class went into consulting, so that's pretty amazing. Now, okay, now, I'm going to. There's no way you're going to get this if we go to raw numbers. Okay, so now we're not talking about percentage, but raw numbers. Which business school sent the most people into consulting? Class of 23.
• 8:45
  Speaker B: Kellogg? Wharton.
• 8:47
  Speaker A: No, actually. So it was Columbia business school with 199 students, edged out. Those. A couple of the ones you're mentioning. And just to give you a sense. So guizueta, which was the number one in terms of the percentage of the student body, they sent 73 students because they're a smaller school, right?
• 9:05
  Speaker B: Right.
• 9:06
  Speaker A: Columbia sent 199. Now, when we get into schools that report on specific firm placements, which, there are only about seven or eight schools that share that data. In terms of, like, who are they sending to? McKinsey or Accenture or whoever it might be. If you had to guess which of those schools that reports, and I gotta say Harvard and Wharton and Stanford, they don't report this stuff, but a lot of the other top schools do. And so if you had to guess which school sends the highest raw number to, like, McKinsey, Bain, BCG combined. So the MBB crowd, like, how many you know, which school do you think is leading the way there in raw numbers?
• 9:45
  Speaker B: Kellogg.
• 9:46
  Speaker A: So you would have been right. Last year with Kellogg, I think they were ahead last year, but this year Booth had 153 students going to MBB. Kellogg had 117. And then, just to give you the percentages, in terms of, like, of all the people going into consulting from these schools, what percentage are going into consulting at McKinsey, Bain or BCG? So at Booth, it's 80%. So if you're graduating and getting consulting job at booth, 80% of the time it's going to be with MBB. Sloan was in second with 75%, Kellogg in third with 72. I should caveat this again by just reminding everyone that there are some schools like, say, Harvard or Wharton, who are not reporting specific firm placements. So just keep that in mind. But these are impressive numbers. So I thought it was a really fun article.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: Which school was second? I missed that. Sorry.
• 10:37
  Speaker A: So Sloan was second with 75% of the consulting jobs.
• 10:41
  Speaker B: It's interesting, I wonder, when you're out of the m seven, how significantly that percentage drops off.
• 10:47
  Speaker A: You'd have to read the article. It's on the website. And I didn't pull those numbers for the show, but it is. We do have all the data. So, yeah, this is fun. It's fun stuff to look at.
• 10:56
  Speaker B: There is a high correlation, right, between top programs, high percentage MBB. And as you get to the next tier down, that percentage will drop off.
• 11:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So last thing we did, three real humans. So I'll just give you some quick tidbits there. We had a woman named Amanda, originally from Indonesia, who went to IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, graduated back in 22 and works at Bain. And because we talk a little bit less about IMD, I thought it was interesting, her quote. We asked these candidates all kinds of questions, these alums. Sorry, all kinds of questions. And one of them was like, why did you go to the school that you went to? And she said, for me, there were two clear points about IMD. Number one, small but very international. And number two, the emphasis on personal growth tied in with leadership development, in particular, the access we have to psychoanalysts and leadership coaches as an embedded part of the program. And then she mentions a bonus point being the absolutely stunning location of the campus by Lake Geneva. So that was her reason. And she seems like she's landed nicely over at Bain, so pretty cool stuff for her. We also heard from Joshua, who went to Ohio State. Fisher graduated in 23 and now works at JPMorgan and Chase. He's a senior associate in the Chase associate program, which I think is some kind of rotational program. And we asked him what was one thing you might do differently as a part of your job search. And he said, I wish I would have invested more time into the internship and job search during the first semester of the program. In reality, I should have been treating the search as a job in of itself on top of my coursework. Working on it consistently, little by little, would have been far better for me than trying to cram connections and applications into a short timeframe. So it sounds like Joshua waited a little bit and was like, well, let me get settled into school, my coursework, and then felt like he was rushed when it came time to recruit, even though he obviously did well landing at JP Morgan. But there you have it there.
• 12:55
  Speaker B: I think that's great advice, though. It's really important.
• 12:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. And then the last one we have is this really fascinating story. This woman named Jess went to Nyu. Stern, graduated in 22, and she now works at Hulu as a senior content acquisition associate. And actually, I mean, it's interesting in that she did something totally different. I can't remember what it was, maybe finance or something. And so she was looking for an MBA program that could help her make a pivot into media and entertainment, which she was really passionate about. And so we asked her, like, well, why Stern? And she said, after considering a few programs, I became completely enamored by NYU Stern's entertainment specialization and the connection that NYU has to the broader film and entertainment industry. Because I was making such a big pivot, I knew I needed to attend an MBA program where I could garner as much knowledge and requisite skills related specifically to the entertainment industry as possible. So there you have it. And she mentions a lot of the resources she's tapped into. Now, Alex, she did contact us in her capacity as a senior content acquisition associate at Hulu, and she asked if we wanted to turn the podcast into a Hulu mini series. So I don't know.
• 14:04
  Speaker B: What's that? I'm going to ask you, though. That's your April fool's joke. I do like that. But I am. I'm going to ask you, what are the top four programs you would advise someone to apply to if their interests are media and entertainment?
• 14:21
  Speaker A: Well, okay, are we including, like, gaming in there? And I don't mean gambling, but gaming, like, you know, multiplayer video games and stuff. So I would say, well, NYU, obviously. And then I would have to put the two LA schools like UCLA and USC on the list. After that, it's a little different. I mean, I think we get into. I mean, Wharton's actually not bad historically. And, you know, I think HBS, too. Columbia is also in New York. You can make an argument there.
• 14:47
  Speaker B: That would be it for me. Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:49
  Speaker A: So those are the schools. In any event, lots of good stuff. We continue to run those articles. So go read more about Amanda, Joshua, and Jess on our website and their experiences. If you have any questions for Alex and I, you can always write to us@infeeredmit.com. Dot use the subject line wiretaps. I'm not even asking for reviews this week because I just feel like, you know, no one's writing them. I don't know what to do about that. But anyway, let's get into our candidates, because you've picked out some really interesting folks this week, unless you had something else you wanted to share before we do that.
• 15:19
  Speaker B: Now, let's kick on.
• 15:20
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one. So this week's first candidate has six schools on the target list. They're looking to start school in the fall of 2025. The schools they're looking at are Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Wharton. This person has a total of four years of work experience. The first two years were at a big law firm as a paralegal, and then the most recent two years have been as a part of a legal team at a top secondaries private equity firm. Now, after business school, they're really interested in venture capital and private equity. They listed a whole bunch of, you know, the usual suspects, and I'm not going to list them all because they're just a whole bunch. From Bain Capital to Blackstone and Carlisle and KKR, they have a GRE score of 334, very high GRE, and a GPA of 3.83. They're located in New York. They would love to end up in New York or Boston after business school. And they mentioned that they think they have kind of average extracurriculars. Their president, or I guess, were president of their fraternity, and now they're kind of on the alumni advisory board. They do some volunteer work with a group called Minds Matter in New York. And then they mentioned it's kind of nothing consistent, though they did say that between high school and college, they took a gap year and worked extensively in winemaking and sustainable agriculture. So in any event, they're really hoping to use the MBA to pivot to the investment side of, you know, secondaries, PE or buyout pen. And they're particularly interested in climate and sustainability as a focus. And so they're wondering, though, whether their non technical background will put up some obstacles to making that leap. And so, Alex, what do you make of this candidacy? Because there's a lot of interesting data points here and pretty good numbers.
• 17:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this is a very smart candidate. They write 334 GRE, 383 gpa. I got to imagine that their experience in law has been very positive, like, on the private equity side and various other things that they've done. So I think there's a lot, a lot to like here. There's a couple of things that I think would be worth discussing or they would want to think about in terms of their extracurriculars. If they have the time and the ability or the wherewithal to do it, I would probably just try to ramp up a little bit their involvement in minds matter, because they've done it just not consistently, so they're not applying for a few more months. So maybe there's something that they could do there just to ratchet that up. And then, in terms of their goals, they want to front face in private equity and so forth. And it makes perfect sense based on their experience. You would wonder if it wouldn't be better for them to recruit for investment banking, get some of that really hard sort of finance toolkit together over a couple of years, and then marry that with their prior private equity experience, to then explore their opportunities, private equity and sustainability and so on and so forth. I think potentially there's so much to like here, Graeme. I'm just a little bit conscious of them going back directly into private equity. That might be a bit of a challenge for the switch that they want to make. But other than that, yeah, lots to like. I mean, you got a 334 gre, they got to have some quant shops to be able to do that, right?
• 19:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, clearly smart. I mean, very good GPA, very good gre, everything lines up. The question would be, would the buy side firms look at them and say, well, this is a paralegal. They probably have a fairly qualitative undergraduate background, and so they might say, wait a second. Now, if this person majors in finance and is getting good grades, that may help. But as we know, recruiting starts from kind of day one. But in any event, I think ramping up the extracurriculars is smart, and using investment banking as the fallback plan, I think, is the way to go. They could try for private equity, and if it doesn't work, they can also be recruiting for some banking jobs. So certainly.
• 20:03
  Speaker B: But if they're applying in their applications. Graham? I think the admissions committee would feel much more at ease if they talk about the short term goal being investment banking because they want to develop that toolkit to then move back into private equity.
• 20:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's obviously the most palatable kind of storyline. And then the only other thing I was going to say to this candidate is I. I would like for them to develop this idea of they did a gap year where they focused on sustainable agriculture and winemaking. And I think it'd be interesting if their finance related goals somehow touched on that sector like they were suggesting. So I just want to make sure they really develop that because that could be a nice differentiator for them. So they might want to look at which of the banks are doing deals in that sector, very actively looking to help these sort of a lot of new companies in this domain that are going public or getting acquired. Just be good for them to be knowledgeable of that stuff. And then finally they say they have some extra careers. I'm assuming they have some hobbies. And so I'd want to know more about those hobbies and how they can develop those as well. But, yeah, overall, this is a really strong candidate who can probably get into one of the schools on their list. They just. Yeah, their goals need to be sort of fleshed out in terms of the planning.
• 21:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And you're not concerned that the gap year occurred before undergrad, right?
• 21:29
  Speaker A: No, no, that's fine. I mean, it's kind of interesting to me. I think as long as, as long as they've. I mean, it seems like they've maintained an interest in that sector.
• 21:36
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 21:37
  Speaker A: So I think that's fine. Yeah. So. All right, so let's move on. I want to thank them for their posts. Let's move on, though, and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week, also applying for the fall of 25 and also has kind of a pre MBA career in the legal field, as a lawyer, actually. So this person has ten schools on their target list. So right now they've got Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Nyu, Wharton, Darden and Yale. And they're thinking about getting into consulting. So they mention a lot of the usual suspects like Booz Allen and Bain and BCG, Deloitte or KPMG, PwC and McKinsey. Their GPA from undergrad was a 3.75. They haven't yet taken a test, but they're planning to take, I think, the GMAT and hoping to get a good score. They've got eight years of experience, they're located in Colorado, and they want to land on the east coast in New York City. They mentioned that they're a non traditional applicant, as I said, eight years of experience as a practicing attorney. And so they've spent three years, first three years of their career, they were in kind of commercial litigation, but the last five years they've worked as a federal prosecutor. I guess their technical job, they gave us an acronym, AUSA, which stands for assistant to the US attorney. And it's actually pretty interesting what they've been up to. I mean, they said they were responsible for organizing and coordinating large scale, complex narcotics consistency conspiracy investigations involving multistate and international criminal organizations. They have trial experience securing numerous criminal convictions in federal jury trials, in their cases where they served as lead counsel, and in many other cases they served as second chair. So, you know, interesting background, but they want to go to business school and pivot and we can get into sort of why that is and what they're hoping to accomplish. But what do you make of this candidacy? I mean, this is a slightly older candidate. You know, obviously a lawyer. Is this going to be, can they make this jump? And what do you think of them?
• 23:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I mean, this, I think, I mean, they qualify themselves as non traditional. I think that's absolutely the case. I mean, the difference between our first two candidates is our first candidate, they both got legal training and legal background for our first candidate that's been working on business transactions and so forth. Or at least I assume that whereas this person seems to have been sort of putting narcotics, drug traffickers in jail and various others.
• 24:17
  Speaker A: And this person's a lawyer.
• 24:18
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 24:18
  Speaker A: Right. So whereas the other was maybe, I guess probably. My guess is the other person or first candidate maybe was thinking about going to law school when they first graduated from college. And so they took a job as a paralegal and then have realized that they don't want to be a lawyer.
• 24:31
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but super interesting. They've got a really good GPA. I got to imagine the eight years of legal experience is absolutely fascinating. So there should be lots of stories to tell from that, lots of learnings and so forth. And I think the pivot to business is absolutely very viable, and going into consulting makes perfect sense. I'd like to learn a little bit more about the longer term goal, I think. I don't remember exactly what the long term vision is, but having some kind of long term vision would make things really viable. And if that ties back to some of the experiences that they've had as a lawyer, that would be even better, I suppose, actually, yeah. Sorry. Long term, I think, is to go to become a general counselor. Yeah, that's right. Or like a strategy which makes perfect sense. Right. So that does draw from their legal, their GJD and their MBA. So lots to like here. I think, you know, as any non traditional candidate, they've got to really show fit that they fit in and so forth. So recognizing that they've got to get a really good score on the GMAT or the gre. But I think they're going the GMAT route. So I would make sure that they give themselves enough time to retake the test if they need to prep really hard, because that's the only element of their profile that isn't there yet. So they have the most influence and control over, as it were, is to really push for a very strong test score. I have to think if they do get a test score that reflects the medians of the programs they're targeting, I think their legal experience. Graham just sounds really interesting. So I got to think that they're going to land somewhere really good.
• 26:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is a really fascinating candidate. And my only quip with them is that they need to think about how they position the storyline. They had this line in the post that they shared on the website where they mentioned that they want to have a new career, and they talk a lot about wanting to use creativity and problem solving, and so they want to pivot into consulting and stuff, and that's fine. But then they mention that they want a career that allows me to use my skills to create value and to be a positive force in the world. And the way that they wrote that and the way that it came off, I was like, wait a second. So they're saying they want to go work at Ernst and young as a consultant, to be a positive force in the world. When they've just said in the paragraph above that they put away all these drug dealing criminals, I was sort of worried that it came across wrong. Because not that people working in Ernst and young can't do good. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying that they shouldn't downplay the impact that they've really had already. And so I think they just need to focus on the idea of not maybe wanting to be on the sidelines as kind of refereeing things as lawyers are often thought of. And they want to be an actor and create things. And that makes sense.
• 27:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think that metaphor is fantastic. The referee or the actor. I think what they're thinking is they spent their careers snuffing out negative forces. Now they want to be a positive force. So.
• 28:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, well put. That's another great way to think of it. So, yeah, anyway, super interesting candidate. Obviously, the test will be important because they're a lawyer and have this sort of qualitative background, so they need to do well on the test, particularly the quantitative section. But, yeah, super. I mean, this is going to be a great, great candidacy. I'm sure admissions officers will enjoy reading their essays, too. So. Very good stuff.
• 28:31
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 28:32
  Speaker A: All right, so let's move on and talk about our final candidate for the week. This is wiretaps candidate number three. So, Alex, this is a decision wire entry. So someone who's been admitted to school, and I'll just give you the information and we'll kind of hash it out. But they applied to Berkeley, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford, USC, and UT Austin. They've ended up getting into Berkeley. They got into USC Marshall with a full ride, and they got into UT Austin with $35,000 a year. This person had a 326 on the GRE and a 3.5 GPA. They're located in Texas. They want to get into consulting, ideally at Bain, BCG, or McKinsey. They do mention that they're 31 years old, white, male, and that they're a veteran in with ten years of service. And so they're actually on the GI bill, which means that it sounds like they won't pay tuition at any of these schools. So the real difference comes into kind of cost living and other expenses. And so that $35,000 a year at McCombs, for example, they could, you know, they'll get as basically a stipend, apparently. It seems like they're down to deciding. What they said is, you know, between McCombs and Haas, and they say they're looking to pivot into consulting. And, you know, they would love to be in California, specifically the Bay Area, after business school, because they grew up there and they have family there. They do include the information that their wife wants Texas for the exact same reasons. I guess she's from there. They mentioned that, you know, Berkeley's been a dream school of theirs, but the lack of scholarship is a bummer. So, you know, what do you make of this, Alex? Cause there was a lot of really interesting debate that ensued on this post, and there were like six or seven comments. None of them are from us. I mean, they're from just people in the community, including another veteran who kind of weighed in. But, yeah, what do you say about this?
• 30:27
  Speaker B: Yeah. They're from people that are smarter than us, Graham, that have gone through this process more recently than us, and so on and so forth, and offered some great, great insight, sort of, you know, to summarize and just make sure I've got it correct. Their tuition is paid, right, regardless of where they go?
• 30:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker B: So if they go to Haas, they got to come up with some living expense more so than if they go to McCombs. That's my understanding. Now, in terms of, you know, McCombs versus Haas, if we're going to keep it between those two, the challenge is going to be convincing their wife that they should go to Haas simply because, I mean, we had this conversation earlier about placements for MBB for top programs, and I'm sure if both those programs are reporting MBB placement by percentage and so on and so forth, that Haas will be higher than McCombs. Why is that? Because Haas is in a higher tier, which is back to the point that I made earlier, that if you want MBB, which does give you a higher average starting salary type thing, versus other consulting, which can still be really, really good, but NBB is sort of the equivalent of the harbour, Stanford, Wharton of the business school space, then Haas will provide higher returns. They obviously want to go to the Bay Area. I think they just got to convince their wife growing.
• 32:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, this is a challenging one because. Yeah, we should almost. Maybe the wife should not listen to this part. But what I was going to say is it's not just the two years, because it's not like they're deciding, oh, let's go live in Texas for two years, or in the Bay Area for two years. This is probably the long term. Well, because these schools tend to place people in their local geography, I mean, particularly with Berkeley. So if this person goes to Berkeley, they're probably going to stay in the Bay Area and work there, and that'll be that. I mean, you know, they could proactively try to move somewhere else afterwards, but it sounds like the candidate here would like to live in the Bay Area. So it comes down to kind of a marital discussion, I think, that they need to have, because there are long term ramifications for this. But I do agree that if they want to work at MBB, Haas will give them better odds of doing that. I mean, that's just, that's in the numbers. You can see it. Right. So that's what it comes down to. I mean, the $35,000 from McCombs is nice. Does that make the difference in terms of long term geography and career opportunity. I mean, I think someone who commented on the post doesn't think so. That's what we saw.
• 33:24
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I think they've got to remove the 35k from the equation.
• 33:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. And just decide where they are and.
• 33:30
  Speaker B: If they still choose McCombs. That's fair enough. Absolutely. But I don't think 35K is enough to swing it to McCombs if Haas is the better choice. And frankly, Graham Haas is. That's their dream school, right?
• 33:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, they said that. Question is, is it their wife's dream school for them to attend? But that will leave them to discuss, and they can be curious what this person decides so they can report back to us if they don't mind. In any event, Alex, great content this week. A little bit of a legal theme on the first two, and then obviously a really tough decision on the last one in terms of, you know, for personal reasons. And I think it does shed light on the fact that sometimes it's personal stuff that, you know, helps to kind of make these decisions, so.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, and that's. That's very valid. That's really important.
• 34:21
  Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. So, in any event, thanks, Alex, for picking these out. Let's do it all again next week, if you're willing.
• 34:27
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.