Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 448: Naval Academy graduate. Mexico to Canada, or Tuck. Fourteen-month break.

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MBA Wire Taps 448: Naval Academy graduate. Mexico to Canada, or Tuck. Fourteen-month break. · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:17
  Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, September 22, 2025. Emory University's full time MBA powers growth it in your career, your leadership and your future. Built on a foundation of cross functional problem solving, leadership development and career readiness, this top 20 MBA program delivers a high return on investment with top five career outcomes. Step into a global network that's connected by design and supportive by nature. Explore the Emory MBA at Emory Biz ClearAdmit. That's Emory Biz ClearAdmit.
• 0:55
  Speaker B: Alex.
• 0:55
  Speaker A: I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, what's up this week?
• 0:59
  Speaker B: Everything's very good. Thank you, Graeme.
• 1:01
  Speaker A: So I've noticed kind of an increased intensity on the website. People, you know, you can always tell because people start to post a livewire with just the fact that they've applied to school and it's because they're hanging out, they're waiting to see is anyone getting interviews yet. And so it's a way to kind of kill time, I guess, but it seems like there's some activity and people asking questions. Still a lot of buzz around Columbia J Term too because I guess all their admissions decisions are kind of, you know, know out now or a lot of them are. Right.
• 1:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, you're exactly right. And J Term seems to be still the, the main topic of conversation over on Livewire. Up coming next week. We've got application deadline so so we're sort of in the middle, I would say now, season one application deadline. So Imperial College toC ise at three of the schools with deadlines coming up coming this week. But also Fuqua has its early action sort of interview invite release date next week. So we should be starting to see more activity on interview invites. We've certainly seen a few coming out of Kellogg, which is not surprising. They have sort of rolling interview invites as soon as folks apply and and so forth. But yeah, no activity is starting to pick up.
• 2:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, and we had Kate Botello from Yale som on a webinar last week and she mentioned that the Yale interview invites are going to start to flow very soon. So we should see those. And the week before that we had I guess it was Morgan Griffin from Duke saying yeah that the invites are going to start coming for early as well. So yeah, I think things are going to pick up here. We'll probably start to see invites in a hurry. So yeah, everyone stay tuned on that front. Speaking of those webinars, we have one more of these webinars Inside the MBA admissions process where we sit down with schools. So this Wednesday at noon Eastern, I'm sitting down with admissions directors from Berkeley, Haas Insead, London Business School, Michigan, Ross and UNC Kenan Flagler. It's going to be a lot of fun. You can sign up at Bit Ly Ca Inside mba. Alex. The other thing though is if you're just, you know, chomping at the bit to hang out with us the day before that, this Tuesday at noon Eastern as well, we're going to do a YouTube live stream again. We had so much fun a few weeks ago when we did that. And so come hang out with us, ask us questions about interviewing, about applications, whatever you want. We'll be here hanging out and you can sign up by just following our YouTube channel, which is just Bit Ly Cautubelive. Alex, is there anything we're going to do in particular? That's tomorrow, I guess. Right. So because this will air on Monday. So this is. Yeah, tomorrow, Tuesday, September 23rd, we're going to get together. So anything we're going to talk about?
• 3:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean like as you say, it's ama. So we're basically open to anything that's top of mind for candidates. But as the season progresses I would hope, I would assume we'll get questions about interviewing Round one, those fine tuning applications for round one. There are still plenty of schools that have application deadlines that are available in round one in October and so forth. So yeah, I assume it'll be a mix. I hope it's as good quality and as fun as the first time we did this.
• 4:22
  Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, I'm sure it'll be fun. And if no one shows up, we'll just rant about the rankings that have been coming out over the last week. So let's get into that, actually. So since we last recorded an episode, both LinkedIn and Bloomberg Businessweek have released their 2526 MBA program rankings. These are full time MBA programs. I'll start with LinkedIn. I'm just going to give you some of the ranking and see what you make of it. And as a reminder, you know, LinkedIn's ranking is a mix of US and non US programs. So it's just a global ranking and they base it around kind of the data they have within LinkedIn. So they look at people's titles within a few years of graduation from these programs. They look at how connected they are to others in their, from their institution, et cetera. So it's a, it's a bit of a Different way to look at a ranking, but here's how things came out. So we have Stanford at the top, Harvard, two insid, what, Wharton, the Indian School of Business at number five, outpacing Kellogg, MIT, Dartmouth, Columbia and LBs to round out the top 10. If we break it out and look just at US schools only, it would be Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, Dartmouth, Colombia, Chicago, Duke, Yale. And if we break it out for Europe, it would be insead, lbs, Oxford, Inside esa, imd, hec, essec, Cambridge, Rotterdam and ie. So those are your kind of top tens in the US and Europe as well as the overall top ten. Alex, what do you make of these lists?
• 5:55
  Speaker B: Well, I mean I'm pretty critical of most rankings because I mean again through Decision Wire I think we have a really good sense of the tiers and what they are and so forth. But that being said, I think LinkedIn has done a reasonable job getting the top 10 for US based programs, top 10 for European based programs, and a little bit of quibble on some of that order. But Yeah, I think LinkedIn's done a reasonable job here. I'm not sure that to completely exclude admissions criteria and so on and so forth in the ranking is the right thing to do, but nevertheless they have a methodology. It's all about outcomes as reported, self reported outcomes on the LinkedIn platform and that seems to be a reasonably decent proxy.
• 6:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is interesting how it hues not too far from what we would suggest a ranking to be. Although as you know, you and I prefer tiers. So we wouldn't distinguish necessarily between a Booth and a Columbia, mit, Kellogg, like we might say they're in a similar sort of tier and then it would depend on your career plans. But yeah, I mean this comes out fairly well. As you say, we might quibble with the order. One of the things I noted in an article that we did for the site is that Tuck actually beats out Columbia and Chicago in this ranking. And I would suggest that's because of the bias that's inherent in the LinkedIn where it's really about networking and connectivity. And we know that Tuck has this amazing network where everyone's connected. So I think there's some things happening there I could not agree with you more. I want to see more about selectivity as well. It's interesting all of the rankings have moved away from the sort of numbers based selectivity measures and towards like what's the salary, what's the outcome and I'm kind of interested in knowing a little bit more at least about, well what's the caliber of the students coming into these programs? I think all of it matters. And so interestingly enough, I know U.S. news still has a little bit of that, but it'd just be nice to. I mean, it's almost like there's a door open now for someone to do a ranking purely based on admission selectivity. But in any event, I mean, as you say, we have so much data in our decision wire tool that we have a really good sense of how the market behaves when, when given a choice between schools.
• 8:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, and I'll just pick up on your point about Tuck. I wouldn't call it a bias.
• 8:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine.
• 8:15
  Speaker B: I would call it more. That's a real value that Tuck has a really loyal, engaged, connected alumni network. And I think all schools should aspire to have that sort of real commitment there. And other schools do have strong alumni networks. I don't think Tuck's a complete outlier. They just slightly more proactive or more connected I would assume. But I think it's a really good thing to sense you get your MBA at Tuck, that deeper sense of belonging and that connection such that if you're navigating careers post Tuck, you know, you can tap into this wonderful resource.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. And actually I shouldn't say bias. In fact, I'll probably get a call from my friends over in the admissions office there. But no, I just meant, you know, it's, it's definitely the way that the ranking setup would favor a school that has a great network or a well connected network. So. All right, let's move on to Business Weeks ranking or Bloomberg as they now call it. But I still call it Business Week from the old days. So they just released their ranking and their rankings a bit different. I mean, it's really based on surveys of students, graduates as well as employers. I think it's like alumni employers. They, they, it's a lot of sort of survey based and they have different measures like, you know, entrepreneurship, leadership, inclusion. Depending on the market, they used slightly different measures. But in any event, here's how their ranking came out and they separate. They do a different ranking for US versus international. So let's just look at the US for starters, they have Stanford at the top, followed by Wharton, then Berkeley, Harvard, Kellogg, Dartmouth, Chicago Booth, Cornell, Columbia at number nine and Virginia Darden rounding out the top ten. What do you think of that?
• 10:08
  Speaker B: I mean, it's fine. It's a little bit more random. I'm not sure I'd choose HAAS over Harvard if I have an Equal choice there. But nevertheless, these are all really good programs. Right. And Haas is a top 10 program, so I'm not dismissing that at all. But yeah, I mean, it's fine. Yeah, I think it comes with all the same caveats as LinkedIn and every other ranking.
• 10:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think what's the only thing that did sort of jump out at me this year is that Wharton and Harvard both moved into the top five. So they were not in the top five last year. And so what you see now is that that top group is a bit more dominated by the largest MBA programs in the us so Tuck and Darden, which are smaller highly regarded programs, have slipped out of the top five. They were both in it last year and you have kind of Wharton and HBS coming in. So those are the two biggest full time MBA cohorts in the country. So that changes the mix a bit. But agree with you, we're probably best off just looking at like, what are these 10 schools and are they all kind of top 10 schools? We shouldn't probably worry about 1's 3 and 1 7. Like it just gets into the sort of silliness stuff.
• 11:16
  Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, again, Haas is a very good program, so congratulations to them. And also Business Week is sort of pioneer in this space. So much kudos for them for sort of starting this trend on the, I think John Byrne's guidance at the time. Time. Yeah, but, but, but you know, survey stuff is prone to issues, right, yeah, we know that. So, so I mean it's pretty clear Harvard, Stanford, Wharton are the top three. And then you've got Booth and Columbia and Sloan and, and Kellogg, the next four. And then you've got Haas and, and, and, and.
• 12:00
  Speaker A: Well then it gets a little muddy.
• 12:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, no, it doesn't. There is one more that sits with Hassan.
• 12:06
  Speaker A: Tom, are you thinking of Yale probably, or Stern?
• 12:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, Yale. And then you've got the next tier. So to me that's pretty clear off of data that we've accumulated over several years. And then some would argue, well, actually over time this shift shifts and on the fringes maybe, but I don't know, it does because again, when you have a really strong alumni network, it's hard for that, you know, for that to shift over time. If you have a really strong faculty body instructing, it's hard for that to shift over time. These things are reasonably permanent. So yeah, I'm a big believer in the order that I believe these MBA programs sit. So when I hear these rankings, I always give them a little Bit of a wolf whistle or whatever you say.
• 13:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. So one other thing I just want to call attention to before we just talk about the European ranking with Bloomberg is that in the US Ranking they have this measure that they call inclusion. And I just want to say I think it feels a bit narrow. So their formula basically rewards schools with higher numbers of US underrepresented minorities and a strong gender balance, but it overlooks the global nature of the MBA classroom, if you ask me. I mean, you know, things like international diversity or even socioeconomic background, like first generation access, none of that's captured. Right. So for US Schools, you can you get these odd distortions in the ranking because of that. And then for European and Asian schools, they don't even have inclusion as a measure in the ranking, so they just redistribute all the weighting to the other categories, like, you know, leadership, entrepreneurship, et cetera. So in a global market, I just feel like it's just a weird thing to me and I you. These are pretty global programs even in the U.S. right. So I feel like there might be a better way. But in any event, I just wanted to mention that. And then for the year.
• 14:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, but, yeah, but, but just on, on that score, I think that measure, socioeconomic measure or whatever you call it, that is super, super important. I think schools really need to get a handle on that and really need to measure it because again, with the trends going on in the US with, you know, DEI and all that other stuff, I, you know, lived experience, all these aspects gain much more prominence.
• 14:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 14:36
  Speaker B: Much more defensible.
• 14:37
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 14:38
  Speaker B: In terms of promoting diversity. So I'm a huge believer that that's the direction we all need to be heading.
• 14:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. So in an event, maybe Business Week, Bloomberg will revise that. Just real quick before we move on, their European ranking looked like this. This is just the top 10. We had Bocconi at the top in Milan, followed by IMD in Swit, LBs INSEAD at number five, Oxford at six, IE at seven. We have a tie for eighth spot with Mannheim and San Gallen. And then the 10th school rounding it out is Esade in Barcelona. So that's those top 10. Some interesting things there. I mean, a lot of very good schools in that list. I, I don't, you know, I'm kind of a little wondering, like, why isn't Cambridge in that list? But this is how it shaked out for Business Week.
• 15:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit of an odd order and I, again, to Me, London Business School and INSEAD are the big, you know, full time MBA programs in Europe. Not necessarily in that order. And I'm a bit biased toward London Business School. But nevertheless, if they're not sort of in that top two or three, then I'd be a bit suspicious.
• 15:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah. So in any event, that's how those shaked out. I guess we can. We should move on because we've talked a lot about rankings, but we did. I know people who are applying and in the thick of it, we ran a couple of good admission tips to help you kind of round out your applications or as you consider, round two. So one of them was on data forms. And that's something that you really advocated that we produce, Alex. So it's a really good admissions tip and a video about data forms. Similarly, there's a whole piece on test waivers. And I think this is a question that I see over and over again, whether it's when we do an AMA or in the webinars that I emcee, people are so keen to ask about test waivers. And so we did an entire kind of breakdown of like, well, when is it a good idea to even, you know, think about doing a test waiver? So that's up on the site now.
• 16:34
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 16:35
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we also continued to profile professors. We talked with professors at both Columbia and Kellogg. And so I won't get into all the details, but there's some pretty interesting faculty, as you might imagine. There's this professor at Columbia named Sheena Iyengar. I don't know if I'm pronouncing her last name right, but she's in. She works in the. She's a professor of business in the management division at the school. And, you know, she has this book called the Art of Choosing. It was book of the year way back in 2010. And, you know, the economist always cites her research. She has a TED Talk that more than 4 million people have watched. So she's apparently a superstar. And we also profiled this guy named Bruce Greenwald. He's been at Columbia forever. He's a professor emeritus of finance and asset management. And he's, you know, kind of, I would almost argue, people might call him sort of the hedge fund whisperer. You know, he's got books on value investing and he has this famous book called Value Investing From Graham to Buffett and Beyond. So anyway, cool. Two professors there. We also caught up with two more at Kellogg. There's a really amazing entrepreneurship professor at Kellogg named Linda Darrig. And she teaches this course on global entrepreneurship, Global entrepreneurial Ecosystems. She's also been a huge advocate for women entrepreneurs, creating, you know, kind of this thing called Springboard, which I guess is a kind of investor forum for female entrepreneurs. And then you might have heard of this guy we caught up with, Sunil Chopra, who's a professor of operations management and information systems at Kellogg. And he, you know, his big thing, and I actually remember this, he wrote this book that they use in business school to teach like supply chain management. In fact, I think they use maybe even at Wharton and a lot of the other top schools. So it's a, you know, he's a kind of operations guru. So I've been enjoying reading these. I'm learning more and more about some of these great professors.
• 18:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you say I might know that final professor. Actually the first one you mentioned, his name is very familiar. And I do a little bit of work at Columbia for Columbia Business School.
• 18:44
  Speaker A: That's right.
• 18:45
  Speaker B: So I think the faculty that I work for directly reference is that, that other faculty. So I need to pay more attention and look her up.
• 18:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And then a couple more things. And then we do have three candidates that we're going to profile this week. We just had a lot of housekeeping items to get through, but we've relaunched our Real Human series, which for those of you who don't know, is a series where we connect with current students who are first years at all the top MBA programs. And so we did this. Let's see, the first one that came out was UNC Kenan Flagler. So we talked to, I think five or six current students they interviews, they share all kinds of tips, not only about what it's like in their program, but also about how they applied and any tips they have from, from the admissions standpoint. And you know, it's funny, I just had to read this quote from this woman named Sophie who is a current, you know, first year student. She's from Oregon and she went to undergrad at UVA and is now at Kenan Flagler. And we always ask this question in these interviews about what's the one part of the application process you would have skipped if you could. And I swear, almost 99% of people will always say, oh, I wouldn't have wanted to take a test, you know, or occasionally I'll get someone saying, I wouldn't have wanted to write the essays. Right. But this is the first time that I've seen an answer like this. She said, I don't think There were any elements that I would have wanted to skip completely. Going through the application process, although draining, did help me solidify what I wanted out of the MBA experience and why it was the best fit for my future career goals. So I thought that was interesting because I've never, never heard anyone say that, but I think it's true.
• 20:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, and actually I've heard a similar sort of sentiment more so. It also helps prepare folks to begin their MBA program. So yeah, I think it's a really good sentiment. I get it that it does then require a lot of work and preparation and so on and so forth. But I do think there's value in that process in of itself.
• 20:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And you're making the point that, you know, we do occasionally hear someone saying, yeah, writing these essays was helpful for me to figure out my career plan, but there's that other element, like prepping for the GMAT is actually useful when it comes to excelling in those first year quant heavy or, you know, just challenging classes. So in any event. Yeah, so I thought that was cool. We will continue to roll those out. We're going to do probably about 40 or 50 of them and every time we connect with the school, we talk to at least, you know, four to six students. So. So stay tuned if you're interested in that. The last thing, Alex, is. It is now the season for class profiles to be released. Duke Fuqua is the first one out of the gate sharing statistics about their incoming class. That's the class of 27. They mentioned that they had 47% women. That's down from 51% but still very, you know, very close to parity. They had 43 countries represented by citizenship. That's down from 45. 35% of the student body are international students. That's down from 41%. Average work experience 5.8 years. Just a little bit younger than the six years that people had in last year's class. Average undergraduate gpa. This is. I know this really bugs you. Duke never gives like hard numbers. They give these ranges. So average undergraduate GPA, they give the middle 80% 3.16 to 3.91. That's very, very similar to last year. GRE verbal 307 to 328. Oh, sorry. Verbal quant combined 307 to 328. That's actually up a bit. Well, it depends. It's up at the bottom end and down a bit at the top. Last year it was 305 to 330 but very, very close. On the GMAT side, the middle 80% range is 680 to 770. That was 660 to 760 last year. So the GMAT score improving. What do you think about this? I mean, there's not a lot of movement. It's. Things are pretty similar. But what do you think about Fuqua's incoming class?
• 22:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, pretty similar. I mean, obviously we'll get a stronger read when we get a few more class profiles in. But as you say, I hate these ranges because you don't know the median. Right. So a range can be that. We just got a couple of outliers over here stretching the range in this direction, but the. The majority actually sit on this end of the range and so forth. Yeah, I don't like it.
• 23:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It certainly gives them a little bit more maneuverability. So in any event, it is what it is. We'll. Yeah, we'll keep everyone posted as more of these come in.
• 23:19
  Speaker B: Who knew? I. Who knew? I took a stats course recently. I'm kidding. But yeah, I just think it's a little. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: So let's see. I think that's it. We can probably talk candidates now. I did want to mention. If you have any questions for us or just want to send us a note about how much you enjoy this program, write to infoearadmit.com and use the subject line wiretaps. But Alex, are you ready to talk candidates?
• 23:46
  Speaker B: I think we need to kick on.
• 23:48
  Speaker A: I think so, too. This is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate has just one school on the target list, at least at this point. And they list UT Austin McCombs as their target. They're going to look to start in 26. So they're applying right now. This candidate has been a Navy surface Warfare officer. They're in actually kind of a leadership development program within the Navy. They've been in the Navy for eight years now. They're thinking about pivoting out of that type of role and into consulting or maybe an entrepreneurship. So they list a bunch of companies, even some tech companies, but all the usual suspects, you know, from Accenture, Bain, BCG, McKinsey to, you know, some of the big tech companies like Microsoft. They also listed some of the finance or VC companies. So it seems like they're trying to figure that piece out a little bit. They have a GRE score of 316 and their GPA, which they earned at the Naval Academy, is a 2.0. So again, eight years of experience. They're Located not too far from Austin in Texas. And they just kind of wondered what we thought and they, they basically, they said, what's my rough estimated percentage chance of getting into UT Austin? McCombs with a 316 on the GRE and their overall applicant profile, they do think strategy consulting is probably the first landing point. But they're also kind of of interested in VC down the road and they like the idea of staying in Texas and working there, but they're not so sure and they could be flexible if they need to be. So what do you make of this? I mean it's these numbers 316 and 2.37 really jumped out at me. But what do you think?
• 25:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean just to be fair, they're looking at other programs too. Ross, I think, and TAPA and a couple of others they wrote about.
• 25:37
  Speaker A: Oh yes, down below. Okay, I see that.
• 25:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So it's not just all in on McCombs, but yeah, I mean we talked about this before we came on air. We sort of potentially qualified this candidate as a late bloomer. We've got to assume that they're doing really well in service now, right. In terms of their career in military and so on and so forth. And so they can show that they've sort of got a very positive trajectory going forward. But even with that they're going to have to overcome the GPA test score combination. So my suggestion to them is to retake the GRE if they think there's any scope for improvement, to push that up to any extent that they can whilst also taking a class or two to show that now that they are dedicated to the academic side of life and so forth. They were a Division 1 athlete in the Naval Academy. They sort of admit that they were sort of immature and so on and so forth. So there is a possibility that they could be qualified as a leader bloomer. But I really do think that they need to really deliver on numbers now to show that difference between that was then and this is now. And my aspirations going forward with the MBA are really valid and so forth. And on that score I would knock off VC and that kind of stuff. In terms of goals, I mean that's, I mean who doesn't want to go and work in VC or private equity or whatever, right? That's the pinnacle for many, many candidates. But I think there needs to be a dose of realism in the post MBA planning. So strategy consulting as the first step out makes sense. And then find a longer term goal that just is a little bit more within the scope of the profile of this candidate for now, anyway. So, yeah, I mean, they do some interesting things outside of, you know, outside activities and so on and so forth. I think there is some ingredient there, Graham, but they've got to overcome the potential missteps earlier in their academic studying.
• 28:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, again, service career with the Navy seems like it could be quite compelling. And they were, they were a Division 1 college athlete, which, you know, I think they explained might be part of what happened with their grades. You know, they just weren't focused and. But you're right, I mean, they host a podcast now. They're doing some other things. And the thing for me though is that walking into the admissions process at McCombs or Ross or Tepper with that combo, you know, the 237 and the 316 is a recipe for failure. And so I think, as you say, retake the GMAT or the gre, sorry, and get that score up above the average of these schools to counterbalance the GPA and then take some courses. Both going to be really vital otherwise. I, you know, they could look at other programs in Texas. There are other business schools that are lower ranking that might have room for them, but I would be concerned with these numbers going into the process. So they, you know, all the other things you said to hone on those career goals, etc. But yeah, so I hope that it works out.
• 29:13
  Speaker B: And round two. Round, round. Sorry to interrupt, but round two would be perfectly fine for them. They got a couple of months. Really go hard at fix, you know, trying to fix. Fix this issue.
• 29:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I would really recommend that they apply in, in January and use the fall to get these things sorted. Yeah. So. All right, well, I want to thank them for sharing their profile and thank them for their service as well. Let's move on though, and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two, our second candidate this week has three schools on the target list and those schools are Dartmouth, Rotman, and then they just listed other. And that other is, I guess, McGill. I mean, they actually listed. They mentioned they're going to apply to a bunch of other schools in Canada that I guess we didn't have in the pick list, like University of British Columbia, Queens, Western. So they have a handful of schools in Canada. They have a 8.3 GPA in chemical engineering and that 8.3 is out of 10. And they did attend one of the best chemical engineering programs or top five university in Mexico where they're from. They're hoping to land in Canada as, as I mentioned with all these Canadian schools on the target list. Although they did have Tuck on the list too. So I guess one kind of close to Canada in the U.S. and all the others in Canada. They have six and a half years of work experience across a range of different roles. They, you know, it was actually a little hard for me to, to keep track of, but essentially eventually they started their career in digital marketing, moved into IT vendor management at a big consumer packaged goods company. But then they felt like they were too back office so they went to Pivot and work in sales. They got a job at HP as a sales analyst and now they're a senior key account manager for a large Mexican pharma company and consumer packaged good company. They also did a stint with Proctor and Gamble in between there. So they've had a number of roles but I mean a kind of progression here from arguably more technical back office into more client facing roles. They're thinking about getting into strategy consulting after business school and would love a kind of strategic planning role in the outdoor sports industry. They didn't list, you know, kind of target employers but they did say, you know, consulting, consumer goods, stuff like that. So yeah, this is an interesting candidate. I mean they have this big focus on Canada except for maybe Tuck and they haven't taken a test yet. Right, that's what it says here. I think they're going to be, but that's where they stand. What do you make of this?
• 31:43
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really, I, I, I just find this quite curious. A candidate from Mexico targeting Canadian schools plus Tuck. Yeah, so, and yeah, I'd really, really be interested to understand why, why they, why they're doing this. That's not the only reason why I selected this candidate. I just thought that was quite curious.
• 32:06
  Speaker A: Well, maybe, you know, I could see how someone in Mexico may not feel like the US has been super welcoming.
• 32:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, that's my point. Are we going to see more of this type of application strategy as a, as a, as a, as a result of the current sort of, you know, administration and so forth. So, so that is, I, I do find that interesting now.
• 32:28
  Speaker A: I mean I do want to say, I do want to say that I think all the US schools are very welcoming of candidates for Mexico, but the government of the US right now is, you know, having some different policies and things that could make someone think twice. But yeah, so, but what do you make of this candidate?
• 32:41
  Speaker B: But, but that might then, you know, materialize in employment right post MBA employment. So Right. So you know the government has pretty big influences we're seeing right now. So. Yes. Anyway the point is this candidate, I do actually really like this candidate despite, not despite their application strategy but given their application strategy. I mean I love and again it is a bit of a personal bias but chemical engineering is a very rigorous undergraduate discipline. They've done well there academically, top 20, top quartile of their class. They're targeting hopefully a decent GRE score. We don't know that yet. If it hits that mid-30020s I think that'll be very good but obviously push that as hard as they can as long as they can put together a good narrative on the whys behind their career transitions and they explained it to some degree quite well I think on ApplyWire and they can show that impact and growth and so forth. I do think that this is potentially a strong candidate. They also have like their own, you know, they co founded a business themselves in the consumer packaged goods space and so forth. So they've done quite a few interesting things. Graham. So yeah, overall I like their profile. I really think they should target going to do their NBA this season. I think they, they decided this might be this season or next season but you know they've got several years of experience onto their belt now so I think if they can I would get some applications in this season anyway to see where, where they sit and hopefully get some opportunity in, in North America.
• 34:37
  Speaker A: Yeah first of all I think they definitely should apply this year. There's it's actually they're going to start to get a little too old. They'd be applying with like eight and a half years if they're enrolling like more if they wait another year. Right. So I think they should apply. I worry that they're kind of like oh I don't want to take the test yet and they're kind of procrastinating potentially. So I think they need to take the test and apply in round two and get off to business school. They've got plenty of experience and they need to kind of get going with their career in terms of that post MBA career especially since they're trying to pivot a little bit. So I do like the candidate. I mean yeah, chemical engineering always impressive. It's not like it's art history but you know, it's impressive. But no, I think, yeah, take the test, apply. I do. I like you. I find this candidate really intriguing. I mean they have interesting work experience with some key you know brand, you know brand names and yeah they're an entrepreneur on the side and so there's a lot to like here and I. Yeah, just to encourage them, go do it, get the test done and move on and get the absent for round two.
• 35:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, sounds good to me.
• 35:38
  Speaker A: All right, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week is. Has just two schools on the target list. So we've got Cornell Johnson and NYU Stern. This person is looking to start in the fall of 26 and they indicate that they are an associate at a small. So they did a role as an associate, a small boutique IB firm in New York for over two years prior. What is it? Oh, before they were an executive assistant. I think that's what that is to a CEO at a SAS fintech startup in London. And then they're thinking tech after business school. So they want to pivot. They've been kind of in the fintech space, but they want to pivot into pure tech and they have companies like Apple, Google, IBM, Oracle on their target list. GPA was a 3.5 and undergrad. They also have a master's in finance from a Russell Group UK university. That's. The Russell Group is sort of like the Ivy League in the us Maybe not quite as prestigious as that because it's a much larger group. I think there's 18 or 20 some schools in the Russell Group, but it's really good universities including Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, etc. And they had a 3, 5 in that master's degree. This is an international student, female candidate, 5 years total of work experience to date. Currently located in the eu but really wants to land in New York after business school. And what else do we have here? You know, it's. There is one thing that I know you want to comment on which is she mentioned she had a 14 month career break and she just says travel, family, personal development and is hoping to do kind of a six month stint at a central European consulting firm before the MBA begins. She's got a bunch of certifications on the finance side and would love to return to New York, as I said, from Europe and pivot into, you know, tech or fintech, strategic finance, corporate development. She says she doesn't need to do the GMAT for these programs so that she doesn't plan to take it. I'm assuming she's looking at the two full time MBA programs here, but it's possible she could be looking at the tech MBA programs but it's unclear. So. Yeah, Alex, what do you make of this There's a bunch of variables here, especially that career break for 14 months.
• 37:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think that the career break for 14 months and we don't know specifically when it is, when it was, but I'm assuming she's just now coming off that career break.
• 38:08
  Speaker A: I think you're right.
• 38:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think she explicitly stated that. But anyway, I think she's coming off that career break and that career break could have been for a variety of reasons, but she's going to need to explain that in the optional essay and so forth. So I think just because she had that career break and she's going back now, I suppose to hopefully a six month stint before starting business school, I think it would be a little naive of them to not take the test now. You know, I thought about this long and hard. You could argue with this candidate. Well, actually they've got really good experience, they've got good academic record, etc. Etc. They've got the ingredients to make, they've got the required ingredients effectively to be a decent candidate and schools will likely want to snap her up and so on and so forth. That might be the case. But to me taking the test is about the effort that someone puts into the admissions process. So she's, you know, basically saying, you know what, I'm not sure that I need to take this test, I'm not going to take it, these schools waive it and I should get away with it because I've got all this other stuff. But because she has this career break, I think she does have to make this extra effort. And I think any candidate, you're going to be measured on two very broad aspects in your overall profile. One is do you have the ingredients? And two is how much effort did you put into this application process? So to me, I think they've got to take the test. Graham?
• 40:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, I worry that, yeah, it's sort of this career gap and you know, there's kind of a, I don't know where the undergraduate degree is from, it's a 3 5. But you know, it's not something that's like jumping off the page. Right. I mean, is that what she said? Three five? Yeah, three five. And in the Masters as well. I mean, clearly this person's got the quant chops with that Master's in finance. But I just, I feel like the test would help to sort of level set a little bit here. Yeah. So. And I mean, I wonder why that. Well, maybe she didn't know she was going to go to business school when she was on this career break and.
• 40:44
  Speaker B: It will help her get scholarships.
• 40:46
  Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah. And then the career goals are a little bit fuzzy for me because she's got, she says post mba, target, industry tech and she lists Apple and Google, IBM, Oracle. But then in the actual note to us, she's talking about how she wants to pivot into fintech, strategic finance or corporate development. So things are a little fuzzy for me still. And so she needs to iron that out and have a very clear plan and path. But yeah, I think taking the test would be smart in this instance. And again, because she's kind of non traditional in some regards. I mean, it's not like there are going to be a ton of female applicants from Europe to these programs. I think she could afford certainly to apply in the next round. So no, no need to race and get the stuff in right now and that might give her the time to take the test. Right. So yeah, in any event, I appreciate her sharing her profile. Wish her the best of luck. Alex, we went on really long this week because it's so much to talk about, but it's been fun chatting as always and I'm happy to come back next week and do it all again.
• 41:44
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe everyone. Take care.
• 42:06
  Speaker A: Of.