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MBA Wire Taps 523: First-gen, low quant. Top profile, school selection · 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, September 28, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:29
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you. Graham.
• 0:30
  Speaker A: Is there like a chill in the air out there where you are yet? I mean, it's getting cooler. I don't know if it's arrived yet, but I feel like it's got to be getting chilly. No, no.
• 0:39
  Speaker B: Well, I've just been for a lovely run and it's stunning weather out there right now. I mean, we are experiencing a bit of a warm spell, quite unusual for this time of year.
• 0:51
  Speaker A: Wow. All right, well, sounds good. So this week, Alex, as usual, lots to tackle. We've got news about the future of graduate management education admissions, tips for kind of tackling the interview portion of the application process, some advice from the director of admissions at University of Michigan, Ross, and then real humans at Indiana, Kelly and NYU Stern, as well as a couple of candidates that you've picked out to talk about. So I suggest we dive right in. But if you want to give me. Are we still any deadlines or things that we need to know about coming up this week?
• 1:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, lots of deadlines this upcoming week, actually.
• 1:28
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 1:28
  Speaker B: Okay, so Sloan, Fuqua, Tepper Goizada, Kenan Flagler, Anderson McDonough, Foster Carlson, Vanderbilt, Marilyn Smith and BYU Marriott all have first round deadlines.
• 1:43
  Speaker A: Wow.
• 1:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:44
  Speaker A: Okay. Busy week. So I don't, you know, so obviously our listeners are probably writing their essays and not tuning into this episode.
• 1:50
  Speaker B: But you'll notice I included Sloan. So that means the sort of the top 16 programs are basically, this is towards the end of that cycle, but obviously we cover a slightly broader set, maybe up to the top 30, and they tend to be the sort of the back end of the round one deadlines.
• 2:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. All right, so obviously, speaking about deadlines and applications, we're continuing with our sort of Inside the Admissions Process series this week. We did three events last week. We're doing three this week. And I'm really excited. I emceed one last week on the Tuesday and just really informative. I mean, I love connecting with admissions directors and kind of grilling them a little bit on their application. And this series is particularly fun because we get to dig into the little nuances in the application questions they have on their forms.
• 2:44
  Speaker B: All right, Graham, I'm going to put you on the spot. I know as we recording, you've only emceed one of these events, right Because
• 2:51
  Speaker A: I didn't do Wednesdays.
• 2:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Our colleague Mike ii, give me one or two nuggets that you learned. That surprised you?
• 3:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, I think there was some really interesting advice last week. So the woman, Megan from Duke, had this great advice, which is she said, put together a personal board of directors to guide you through the application process. And by board of directors, she just means get some of your friends, co workers, family, put together a group of sort of trusted advisors who you can bounce ideas off of as you go through and share an essay or whatever it might be. I just thought that was a nice way to think of it. And I also learned something again from her where. And this, I think, applies to a lot of schools, but several schools will ask you, what's your career plan? And then they'll say, and if that doesn't work, what are you going to do? And I've always thought, oh, you need to think really strategically about that. Because if you suggest a career path B that is completely different from career path A, then the admissions reader might be sort of like, well, well, what does this person want to do? Why do they see, really? But she had a great sort of way of describing this. She was like, look, maybe you're an engineer. You want to go become a consultant and work at McKinsey. That could be your A path. That's what you want to do. And your plan B, though, might be something that relies a little bit more heavily on your past experiences to date. Like, maybe you were working in healthcare on the engineering side of kind of product development or something in medical devices. Who knows? Right? But then you might say, well, my career goal would be to get into sort of the strategy or product side instead of the engineering side in the healthcare sector. So she was saying how maybe when you go with a plan B, you're picking something that's, you know, just feels a little bit easier and draws on that past experience. But anyway, it was just kind of interesting advice, I thought, yeah, no, and
• 4:43
  Speaker B: it makes a lot of sense when it's expressed to you, but, yeah, no, very good.
• 4:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is, I mean, I kind of asked Wharton. Jake from Wharton was on the first webinar we did in this series, and they don't ask why Wharton anymore? They've kind of pulled that out of the application. It used to be part of the, you know, kind of, why do you want an mba? Why do you want to come here? Sort of thing. And. And it's gone. And I asked him to point blank. So do you. You don't want to know the answer. And he basically said no, you know, that, that they were just getting, you know, people kind of just spit back the. What they read on the website or, you know, the things they know that are great about Wharton. He's like, what we really want to do is get to know you and what you're hoping to accomplish. And so I thought that was kind of interesting.
• 5:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, very good.
• 5:28
  Speaker A: Yeah. So in any event, three more events this week. It'll be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. All of them are at noon Eastern. You have to sign up. So go to clearadmit.com events. The schools this week, I mean, just a handful. INSEAD, LBs, UCLA. Who else is on the list? Emory, Kellogg, Gosh. Washington, Foster, nyu, Stern, Georgetown. The list goes on from there. But anyway, it should be a really good group this week, so hope to see a lot of our listeners and members of our community coming out. The other thing, Alex, is, as you know, last week I went up to London and I went to attend this event that GMAC put on called the Future of gme. And it was just an evening, kind of cocktail and presentation of some research that GMAC had done with a group of 10 European business school deans. And essentially they interviewed the deans and tried to get a sense as to like, what does the future of management education look like? And I thought it was a really fascinating. And actually Neelisha Patel, who's one of the top people at GEO Mack, she gave a talk about this research and she just sort of laid out the thesis that the deans had expressed over the course of this project as they interviewed them. And as you might imagine, Alex, the big theme that was not part of this report back in 2022, when they asked these deans the same questions, was AI. Right. So how are business schools using AI? How are they kind of integrating it into the curriculum? Obvious stuff, right? But then there's this other piece which was how do you teach and how do you assess in the age of AI? And I think it was the dean of HEC talks a lot about off machine versus on machine. So when someone, you know, like you can obviously give people tools and have them work with AI to solve a problem or come up with ideas, et cetera, but then you also need to be able to kind of see if they can defend that or, you know, sort of speak to these things when they're not using technology. So kind of on and off machine learning. Another big theme of this report was around GEOPOLITICS and political uncertainty. And I thought the report had this amazing kind of line and I can't remember which dean it is that spoke about this, but there's this shift that's happened. We went from a kind of a flat world and I'm thinking of whoever it is that wrote that Lexus and the Olive Tree book, kind of an increasingly global world to kind of a rugged world where trade disputes, political fragmentation, restrictions on mobility are making, making security and resilience now more important with regards to management education than they used to be. So that was just interesting. And then a lot of conversation at the event about how business schools still bring together people from all over the world at any of these top programs and that increasingly that's like sort of a rare thing to have happening. And so business schools could be a force for exchange and a kind of, I hate to say this phrase, it's a little bit of cliche, but sort of a better tomorrow if people from different cultures and across different trade disputes are able to come together and work together in an MBA classroom or a business school classroom. So anyway, there was a lot of other stuff in this report. I encourage people to read it. I think it's available for free on the GMAC website. But it's really interesting. There was a lot of stuff in there about what people who go to business school think they should be learning versus what employers want them to know when they graduate. So there's, you know, just a lot of interesting stuff.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, it sounds fascinating. I think I'll have to get an opportunity to go read the report.
• 9:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, I dropped it into our company Slack, so you can pick at it there.
• 9:04
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 9:05
  Speaker A: Otherwise we're continuing on the website to, you know, we run admissions tips week in and week out and we ran a couple over the last week that pertain to interviewing because we're getting towards, you know, interview season. People who have applied in round one will start to get interview invitations. Some already have. And so we talked. There were two. One is about open versus invitation only interviews. And then the second one was about how do you come up with questions to ask your interviewer? Because that's often something you will be asked at the end of an interview. Do you have any questions for me? And we encourage people not to say, oh no, I'm good, you gotta have some stuff to ask. And there's a way to go about doing that. So that's all in the admissions tips on the website. But yeah, I mean lots of, we're kind of getting into the interview season, big time here. And, Alex, we have a couple of different tools that can help people in this regard. Right.
• 9:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. Mean, I. I really hope that we do a good job promoting the. The tools that we have, because literally, we've got the best archive on the Internet for. For interview reports. We've been curating those for several years or across all the top schools. We have Clear Admit Admissions Bot, which is a great tool for interview preparation. So, for example, you could go to the interview bot, you could upload your MBA resume and ask it to provide you 10 potential questions for an interview at whichever school you're targeting. Right. So it could be Harvard, could be Fuqua, or whichever it is, and it'll provide you those potential questions because it's trained off of the interview archive as well as lots of other resources that we have. And you could ask it to suggest some frameworks for response. Right. And then once you've done your preparation, you can use our interview simulator to run through simulated interviews with the schools of your choice. So there's probably about 18 schools represented on that tool. And we're starting to see now an uptick, Graham, of use of the interview simulator for Round one, which is nice to see. But, yeah, I think it's a fantastic tool. And that sort of preparation and then sort of actually practicing the interviews live, even in a simulated environment, I think is super, super helpful.
• 11:31
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: To get ready. Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker A: And you may remember this, but, you know, you and I extensively tested this tool when we were building it. It's a. You know, it's an AI tool. And, you know, the way that I could tell that it was good is that I was feeling really nervous when I was being interviewed by this tool. It reminded me I was suddenly back in the chair at Harvard Business School. And. Yeah, so it really is good. And you talk with it. You could type if you want, but it's got voice recognition and it speaks to you.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. Better to talk.
• 12:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think so.
• 12:05
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it gives you a great rapport.
• 12:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, it gives you a really detailed rapport. So, anyway, we'll probably talk more about that in the weeks to come. But, yeah, so there's a lot of great free stuff on our website to help. You have no excuse not to practice. Speaking of interviewing and all this stuff, we did connect with Jada Kavanaugh, who's a director of admissions at Michigan Ross, and we did a Q and A with her on the website, and she talked about all kinds of things, but I wanted to pull out a quote from her Interview that is just about kind of how they look at the application. So, you know, we sort of have this question in the interviews that we do on the website about, you know, well, tell us about your process, et cetera. And so she, she had this to say. I thought it was really interesting. She said, as we move through the individual elements of the application, we ask ourselves, will the person be academically successful in the rigor of our program? Will they be an active community member and participate fully in the action based learning components of our program? Is an MBA from Ross the right fit for them at this point in their career? For example, academic preparedness can be found in a transcript, test scores, resume, letter of recommendation and an essay. Our job is to mine the entire application to answer our questions. It is important for applicants to remember that no single piece will get them into a top MBA program, nor will one element keep them out of an MBA class. So I thought that was interesting and maybe relevant to some of what we're going to talk about with our candidates this week.
• 13:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I like that approach, I like that philosophy and I've always been a big advocate that the first thing that you've got to look at is academic preparedness. Because if a candidate struggles with the academics, they can't get involved in the community. Right. Because they've got to prioritize getting the grades for the classes or whatever sort of survival mode. So I think that first piece is fundamental and then the other pieces then fall into place. But yeah, I really like that approach.
• 14:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I had a chance to meet Jada from Ross back in May earlier this year basically, and she's terrific. And I thought she just did such a great job of answering Lauren's questions on the website. So if you're interested in University of Michigan Ross, go read the article on the site. It's a full interview with her and there's a lot of nuggets like the one I just shared. Otherwise, Alex, we continue to connect with first year students at leading MBA programs. So this week we've got Indiana Kelly is the first school that we connected with students. So I think we did six interviews with current first year students there. I'm just going to give you a quote or two from one of them. His name is Carter Bainbridge and he's a first year at Indiana Kelley. He's 25 years old from Nashville, Tennessee and he went to undergrad at Syracuse where he studied broadcast and digital journalism. And before business school he worked as, quote on air talent in the sports media domain for nearly Three years. And we asked him, you know, so he was basically a sports broadcaster. We asked him, why did you choose Indiana Kelly? And, you know, what were the factors? And he says, out of all the reasons I chose Kelly, two stand out. The first is Kelly's marketing program has a strong reputation, and that was a main draw toward applying. I felt that compared to other similarly competitive programs, Kelly's strength in my desired area of study was a primary advantage. Additionally, I toured Indiana ahead of my undergraduate studies, and I came away with a really positive impression of both campus and Bloomington as a whole. So he had been there, obviously really liked it. So those are a couple of the reasons that he was drawn to Indiana Kelley. They are known for being quite good in marketing, which is what he's studying. The other thing we asked is, is there anything that you would change or do differently? And he said, if I had to do it over again, I would reach out to more current students at my programs of interest to hear their insights. In a less structured setting, active students can tell you a great deal more about specific ins and outs of a program than an alum or an admissions member. In addition, shaking off the nerves and reaching out to active students is a great way to get a head start on networking before you come to campus. So I thought that was really good advice too.
• 16:27
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely fantastic. And I don't know if you remember, Graham, in one. One of my previous lives, I, I sort of was. Was quite well connected with the sports broadcasters of. Of. Of the US Obviously in my little niche sport of horse racing. But I kind of. Yeah, yeah, I, you know, I would go get press passes for, for the big sort of horse racing events and, and, and you know, I created content actually for, for the New York Times there for a little while.
• 16:57
  Speaker A: That's right, yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker A: And I think our listeners don't know the sort of other life which is in the kind of horse racing industry. And we're an exercise trainer and wrote a book about Barbara and all these different things. But I think this. What was his name? Carter. Yeah, I think he's going to be an interesting addition to life at Kelly because he has such a different background in kind of journalism, broadcasting. But yeah, sounds like a great guy. We also connected with students at NYU Stern in New York City. And I'm going to share one profile again. We talked, I think, six of them, so encourage people to go read these on the website. But we did connect with Lydia Whitbeck. She's 29, she's from Ocomos. Michigan, and she studied at the University of Michigan as an undergrad, and her major was environmental science. Before going to business school, she was a manager working in a global sustainability practice at a company called Sodali and Company. So she did that for several years. She also worked on the carbon neutral strategy for the University of Michigan, so helping that university get carbon neutral. And then we asked her a couple of questions, just like we did Carter about, but in this case, about Stern. So we said, why did you choose Stern? And here's what she said. Stern's emphasis on EQ and its smaller class size drew me in. But what really convinced me was seeing the Stern culture firsthand. Throughout the application process, I had conversations with students, alumni, administrators, and admissions and consistently came away feeling that people genuinely wanted to help each other. These interactions made Stern feel like a community I could see myself being a part of from the beginning. And then we also asked Lydia, what is one thing you would change or do differently as part of the application process? And she says, I would have started my essays sooner than standardized testing ate up more time than I expected. And by the time I got to the essays, I felt rushed, even though I already had a strong sense of my story. So my advice to anyone starting this process, begin earlier than you think you need to. So a little bit of word to the wise. If you're applying in round two, get working on those essays now.
• 19:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Very, very good advice for those that are sort of looking a little bit further ahead. Right. There's no time like the present to start that. Even if you're applying next season versus this season, there are things that you can do now to really set yourself up. That is get the standardized test taken and out of the way. Right?
• 19:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally.
• 19:30
  Speaker B: With lots of prep and yeah, Stern, always the pioneer on the eq.
• 19:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 19:35
  Speaker B: So it's good that they're still getting acknowledgement for that.
• 19:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So the only other thing I had, Alex, before we talk about our candidates this week is I just wanted to give a shout out to Brent Nagamine from the University of Washington Foster School. He join me for a special episode of the podcast. You can find it in the feed here. I always love connecting with Brent, and it's a little bit of a for selfish reason. So he. Besides working now, he's obviously the head of admissions over at Foster, but he had another life where he worked in undergraduate admissions and he was an admissions officer at Swarthmore College, where I went to undergrad. He also did his master's work in higher ed. If Memory serves at University of Pennsylvania, where I went to grad school as well. So. So we just have a nice kind of Philly connection. We can always talk cheesesteaks when we connect or whatever people from the Philadelphia area like to talk about. But he was a great guest and a lot of really good insights. If you're interested in Foster and Alex, you'll love this. He did a deep dive into that school's relationships with companies in Seattle and how deep those ties run.
• 20:39
  Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah, super important.
• 20:42
  Speaker A: Yeah, big time. So anyway, you can listen to it wherever you're listening to this episode if you're interested. Otherwise, you can write to Alex and I with feedback or, you know, anything you want to share at all. Just write to infoearadmit.com use the subject line Wiretaps. Alex, anything else from you? Before we talk about this week's candidates, let's kick on. All right, so this is WireTaps Candidate number one. Our first candidate this week comes from an apply wire entry that was submitted on the website. And this is someone who's applying now. They want to start school next fall. And they have eight target schools on their list. Those schools are Chicago, Booth, Indiana, Michigan, Kellogg, Notre Dame, Wharton, Vanderbilt, and Yale. This candidate's been working in nonprofit program management and they're thinking of pivoting into consulting. They have a GRE score of 323 and they have a 3.03 undergraduate GPA. They do also have an MA though, so a master's in what they call a humanities discipline. And in that degree they have a 3.9. So much better GPA there. They have 7 years of work experience located in the US want to land ideally in Chicago after business school. And they did share some additional details. They are a first generation to college, low income, kind of come from a low income background. They also have a number of sort of outside activities. They run marathons on charity teams. They're engaged at their church. They're a member of their high school's alumni board. And I think they might also be a mom or a dad because I think somewhere they mentioned kids, so juggling a number of different things. They did also share that their GRE split is a159 on the quant versus a164 on the verbal. And I know you had some conversation with them about this that you'll get into. But just for our listeners, I wanted to mention that a 159 on the quant is I think the 47th percentile. So a little bit lower than the average quant score on a GRE that we might see for someone applying or getting into these top schools. But Alex, I'll turn it over to you. What do you make of this candidacy?
• 22:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think think one thing that you can admire about this candidacy is how far they've come. Right. So, and I think that's why, you know, top MBA programs like to look at first gen. Yeah. Those coming from low income backgrounds and how they've managed to navigate to get to where they are today. So clearly there's been considerable growth here, etc. Etc. So I think that's going to play very well and so forth. But you know, you can't get around the fact that the 3.03 GPA over the four years is going to stand out as a potential cause for concern for the adcom. And they expressed that there's been a positive trajectory. I think they made the Dean's list towards the end of their academics, but that's still there as part of their profile. The 39 humanities degree is going to provide some assurance, but it is again humanities. And then you combine that with the slightly lower quant score on the gre as you pointed out to me, there's a flashing light here. It's like, is this person academically prepared certainly on the quant side for our rigorous first quarter or whatever of our MBA program. And going back to the Ross ADCOM sort of quote that you pulled out, Graham. So I'm just proving that I do actually listen to you when you talk about this stuff. You know, that's fundamental, right. They want folks that aren't struggling academically, they want folks that are thriving academically so that they can then fully engage in all the other aspects of what a strong MBA program can provide them. So they've really got to show that this is not going to be an issue. And I think that they reckon if they retook the green, they can get a better quant score whilst holding the verbal score steady. So I wouldn't want to see them only concentrate on quant and bomb the verbal, but I think if they did that, that would be very good. Now they've already applied to some of these programs in round one, but even for those schools, if they come up with the higher score and they come up with a higher score before the decisions are finally made, that can help them, right? Because they had the GRE at the time they applied, so they had a complete application. And these schools, you know, these schools that they're targeting, they want you know, more, you know, as many well qualified candidates as they can. So a candidate that comes back with a higher GRE score is signaling to the school. Actually I'm a little bit better qualified than I first appeared on paper and that's going to set that, that's going to be received very well. Well, yeah, quite frankly. So, so I would say retake the GRE and potentially do MBA math, but they've really got to show that quant is not an issue. All the other stuff in the profile looks pretty good. Right. But this is the outlier.
• 26:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, I, I feel like I read it that they, they applied, did they, they already applied to these, right?
• 26:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:12
  Speaker A: So they're. Yeah, yeah, they said.
• 26:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So they're waiting to get interview invites and hopefully they do at some of these schools. But even if down that path, I would still advise them get the GRE retaken.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: Right.
• 26:24
  Speaker B: Try to be a bit strategic about the timing so that they know that they can deliver a result before the final decision is made or before the interview invite decision is made or whatever it might be. I think Ross is a school that they're targeting that they haven't applied to yet. So this would certainly be important for Ross. Round two, Very good school, very rigorous admissions process. And as we heard from their adcom, they really are very conscious of making sure folks that they admit will thrive academically.
• 26:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think one, so there are a few things here. Number one, I just want this candidate to know if they happen to be listening, that if I'm an admissions reader and I see this come across my desk, the first thing I'm thinking is, wow, this is a really fascinating candidate. And like you say, distance traveled. I mean, there are a lot of interesting things about this candidate. And I also would be, I would be buying that, hey, they can work hard. Look at that. 3, 3, 9. And their master's degree. But like you, I would have this concern, you know, around the, the quantitative skills. So I absolutely agree. Retake the test and alert all of your schools when you have a new score. Hopefully that new score is, you know, a slightly better result on the quantitative.
• 27:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:34
  Speaker A: And then, yeah, take MBA math. So I, I, but I feel like, you know, everything else, it's like, oh, they have a fairly logical kind of career plan. They have interesting work experience, they have great outside activities. So, so there's a lot to like. And I think candidates, sorry, admissions officers would be sort of rooting for this person inherently, but they need to. Yeah, just make it all come together, you know, with, with the quant side. So in any event, I do want to wish them the best of luck. And you had a great. I saw there was a lot of really good back and forth with this poster on the site, which is nice to see because I think you take a lot of time to answer people's profiles and it's always nice when someone then writes back to you and answers questions you pose or so it's terrific.
• 28:12
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I would say even with their current profile, they may well get some success given the schools that they're targeting.
• 28:20
  Speaker A: Sure, sure.
• 28:20
  Speaker B: But I think if they do come back with a slightly higher quant on the GRE and an overall GRE score slightly higher, that's absolutely going to improve access for them totally.
• 28:31
  Speaker A: And may result in, who knows, maybe even some scholarship dollars, so.
• 28:34
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 28:34
  Speaker A: In any event, I want to wish them the best of luck. Hopefully they'll continue to keep us posted. Let's move on and talk about WireTaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week has five schools on the target list and similar to our first candidate, wants to start school next fall. The schools are Brigham Young, Marriott, Duke, Fuqua, Harvard Business School, Northwestern, Kellogg and Wharton. This person's been working in medical device sales, pre MBA here. They're very interested in healthcare post mba, specifically medical devices and specifically, if memory serves, robotic surgery. They think that AI is going to continue to kind of revolutionize and bring interesting technology into the healthcare sector. They have a gmat score of 705 in case you want the old scaled type score on. That would be almost like a 750 on the old versions of the GMAT. So very strong GMAT result. They have a 3.89 undergraduate GPA, five years of work experience. They mentioned they want to live in the mountain states after business school or somewhere warm. So they kind of one or the other, I guess they pointed out. And this Alex, I'm guessing might be why we're profiling them. But they had this lovely note at the outset of their Applied Wire post in which they say, first off, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. I listened to nearly every episode for the last two years and it's a little surreal that I'm now submitting my profile. I'm excited to put into practice everything that Alex and Graham have taught me. So I. I'm guessing that's why you picked them, Alex, but you'll shed light. In any event, you know, they. A couple more little details before we get into breaking down their candidacy. They studied biophysics as an undergraduate and again have been working primarily in medical device sales, in surgical robotics and they've had a couple of different roles in this domain and with those roles they've been promoted. So they've done well at work. And again they mentioned that they think AI is going to continue to revolutionize the healthcare field, in particular surgery, and they want to make sure those changes benefit patients outside of work, very active in their church. They have kind of leadership roles at the church. They teach children. They're also their congregation's organist. And in college they were the captain of several different intramural sports teams and they were a team lead in a research lab. They do a lot of other stuff too. I'm kind of rambling on here because there's been a lot sort of comment on this candidacy in terms of all the details they shared. But Alex, what do you make of this person's chances? And yeah, any, any advice? Because they did ask whether they should be retaking the GMAT because they think they could get better than 705.
• 31:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, I will say you did ramble on pretty good there, Graham, but there was a lot. Yeah, yeah, no, there was a lot. And I didn't select this because they said nice things about us despite first appearances. I selected this candidate simply because I think they are an outstanding candidate. Yeah, I, I think any which way you look at this profile, it's outstanding. Right? So the numbers are ridiculously outstanding. That 389 in some rocket science type degree is, is, is fantastic. 705. So I, yeah, I don't think retaking the GMAT's a very productive use of their time given the overall score. And it, you know, they're a little worried about the quant but it still hits the 80 percentile threshold. So I think that's going to be perfectly fine. I love, love, love their, their career to date. Medical sales, AI, robotics, etc. Etc. And, and you know, quite frankly that's a hot, hot field going forward. And I think someone with, with, with their profile, when you map on top of it, a top MBA is going to be an outstanding leader in, in an industry that's only going to be super impactful. So, and, and, and then you, you, you map on top of all that their extracurricular, they just seem like a good human being too, which again is important. So, so, so yeah, I'd be, I, I would struggle to find a weakness in this profile. I, I think that they should be targeting all the Very best programs that relate to what they want to accomplish. So I know before we came on air you also talked about Sloan as an option out of Boston, but I'm not sure that Boston's warm enough for this character. So they made it quite clear they want to be in the Mount or at least somewhere warm. So I think Stanford should be that target program. And I would be really interested personally to see how they address the, the essay prompt. What means most to you and why? Because I think they'll probably, if they do the, the requisite level of introspection to really nail that essay. I think, yeah, they're going to have some terrific options and, and tackling that essay will set them up for all the other schools that are applying anyway. Yeah, but. But yeah, I don't think I can give them any advice other than, yeah, just make sure they apply to Stanford too.
• 33:59
  Speaker A: Well, so I have a. I have a couple pieces of advice. So the first one is that I want to push back on. I know that post MBA they want to be somewhere in the mountain states or somewhere warm, but you know, they have Kellogg and Wharton on their list. They have Harvard, so I'm assuming they might be willing to tough out cool weather for the duration of their MBA and then go land somewhere where they want to be afterwards. But I would argue that you're absolutely right. Look at the healthcare programs. Look at the programs with ties to obviously medical devices, any kind of medical innovation, robotics, et cetera. So having obviously Wharton on the list, a great healthcare management program, Kellogg, Duke, those are programs very noted for sort of healthcare. Harvard, great place to be. They have that new joint degree program that's in biotech, I believe. Right. But they also are in a market, Boston, that's very rich for this type of thing. Really big, big healthcare infrastructure. But I would argue, yeah, Stanford, very smart, as you point out. There's probably a lot happening with regards to that intersection of kind of engineering, healthcare, et cetera. Right.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: So robotics and AI, robotics. I mean, I think Stanford's probably doing a lot in that area.
• 35:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. So that's a great one to add. And then I would just encourage them to also maybe think about a Sloan. And I would argue they can aim very high for the reasons you pointed out. This is a terrific candidate. I don't see any flaws. So I just want to make sure they get the school selection right. And then the other thing I want to make sure they get right is the application right. So the applicant clearly is stellar. They have everything you would need to get into a top school. I just want to make sure that they do a really good job on the application, which needs to represent them as an applicant. And so, yeah, just hoping that they're taking the time that's needed to put together a compelling set of essays, get great recs, all that stuff, because, you know, you could have amazing stats and everything, but if you kind of, you know, lazily drop in your. Put together your application materials, you could get bad results. So I want to make sure they just head down, get it all done, do a great job on it, but otherwise, this is a stellar candidate who could probably name the school they want to go to.
• 36:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree, and your second point is very well taken. But I get the vibe from how they posted on applywire, etc. Etc. That their approach will be always to. To put their best foot forward. Oh, yeah, you know that I don't think they, they take things lightly. Right. They. They're not the sort of candidate, I think, that says, you know, I got a magnificent profile, they're just going to beg to have me, and therefore I don't need to put effort into this. This.
• 36:28
  Speaker A: Right.
• 36:28
  Speaker B: This candidate, you know, they've listened to the podcast for a couple of. Couple of seasons. They, they put in a pretty detailed post on apply, why, etc. Etc. That signals to me that they're very thoughtful. Thoughtful, but that's really important to be very thoughtful throughout the application process. Absolutely, yeah.
• 36:46
  Speaker A: And I've asked admissions directors, you know, what's the sign of a candidate that you just know, has it all? And they've said, you know, well, anyone who's listened to the ClearedMIT podcast for a couple years before they apply. Right. So in any event, no. So best of luck to this candidate. I'm so glad that they listened to the show and grateful that they shared their, you know, their profile. So best of luck, Alex. That's all we've got for this week. That was a lot. But let's connect next week and do it all again.
• 37:11
  Speaker B: Very good. Take care, everyone. Stay safe.