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MBA Wire Taps 492: Vietnam to Europe. Darden vs Johnson. Stern vs Ross · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hi, this is Stacey Battasse with the University of Texas at Austin Smithson School of Business. You're listening to the Clear Admit podcast. Hi, Patrick. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, May 18, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:35
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:37
  Speaker A: So we've got a show. A lot of stuff to get into on the show. Obviously, some interesting kind of career placement developments that I wanted to share. We've been digging into some of the data there, but we also have some interesting things happening with a new dean over at UT Austin, real humans who are working at the likes of bcg, Bain and Amazon. And again, three candidates that you've picked out to discuss. But is there anything.
• 0:59
  Speaker B: All right, let's just cut to it. Graham, how was your. How are your meetings in Atlanta?
• 1:04
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah, so I had a great time last week, as you can tell. I've kind of lost my voice. I got sick. But. But I had a really great time in Atlanta. We did our MBA fair. That was. Was that last Monday night? And. Yeah, you know, 25 schools or whatever. And a lot of our partners, like Forte and the consortium and Juno Leland, gmac, everyone was there. Um, it was so much fun. And we did panels. I had a really interesting panel on kind of career placement with the head of career services at Georgia Tech, Scheller, and a partner from Bain. Yeah. I mean. And. And I was just telling you before we came on air, Dennis, our podcast producer and Vic on our team, went around the room and did all these videos with admissions directors. And so we're going to see. We'll have to go through it and see what we have that's, you know, we can use on either on the show or put out on YouTube. So there's a lot of good stuff. And I had a blast being down in Atlanta. It was really good.
• 1:55
  Speaker B: From the panels. Give me two things you learned.
• 1:57
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think.
• 1:59
  Speaker B: Not to put you on the spot, Graham, I know you've had a pretty exhausting few days.
• 2:04
  Speaker A: No, I mean, the panel that we did about consulting was interesting in that the guy at Bain and the director of career services at georgetech was talking about how people get so amped up about casing and preparing for these case interviews that consulting firms do.
• 2:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 2:19
  Speaker A: But that sometimes they're so rehearsed in the way that they go about breaking down a case that it becomes less fun for the interviewer. And on some Levels like the reason these case interviews exist for consulting jobs is because they want to see how you kind of problem solve on your feet. But if everything is kind of already like a pre planned step that you're taking when you're breaking down a problem, it's like they're not really getting that right. So they want to.
• 2:45
  Speaker B: Can't they just use Claude Cowork and break it down that way?
• 2:48
  Speaker A: Yeah, so there. So it's funny, we'll get to this later in the show, but there's some. Someone I can't remember if it's the person who's at bcg, but one of the real humans alumni that I'm going to profile talked about something very interesting with regards to AI that happened in their interview process. So I think you'll be intrigued. But no, it was so definitely just learning a bit more about why they do these case interviews for consulting jobs. And then in terms of the admissions strategy panels that we did, because we did a number of those, there was just a lot of good insights into. I think schools are like really craving authenticity. You know, they just feel, I guess candidates are using AI pretty heavy handedly to produce a lot of their materials. And so I think schools definitely are craving authenticity. So there was a lot of discussion about these video interviews or you know, video questions that you have to answer on the spot because they're really trying to understand the candidate. They don't really want to hear what, you know, you can prompt Engineer chatgpt to tell them. Right. So yeah, so it was just interesting to hear some of that feedback too.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good.
• 3:54
  Speaker A: Speaking of events though, we also have, starting this week, we're doing our big May application overview series where we get together with admissions directors and talk about the application process. This is designed for people who are just starting to embark on the application process. And I think one thing that's fun about this series is that sometimes schools will unveil information about their application for the coming cycle that they haven't even yet put up on their website. So we'll get more of those details. And in fact, at the event in Atlanta, I'm now reminded on one of the panels, the admissions director at Kellogg mentioned that they're kind of really streamlining back some of their essays. And I think that they're also kind of reframing the way they ask about career goals. And yeah, so we get a lot of these nuggets and I expect we'll get some of them this week as well. Um, so on May 19th, which is tomorrow, Tuesday, May 19th and as well as Wednesday the 20th at noon Eastern we're sitting down and doing these one hour panels. The schools stick around afterwards and do breakouts as well so you can talk to them individually. So the, let's see. So the first one on May 19th is Berkeley, Cornell, Duke, Georgia Tech and NYU Stern. And then on Wednesday we'll connect with Chicago Booth, Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Tuck, mit, Sloan and Yale. So should be a lot of fun. And yeah, you can sign up on website, just go to clearadmint.com events to do that. So should be, should be good. It's no, no rest. No rest for the weary, I guess on my side.
• 5:21
  Speaker B: And where will you be for those events?
• 5:23
  Speaker A: I'll be back in Paris hopefully if I can get on the plane here. I'm still, right now I'm still in America. But yeah, I'm going to be. And you know, I'm in America because I'm going to my 25th reunion for, for work.
• 5:33
  Speaker B: I know.
• 5:33
  Speaker A: So that should be fun.
• 5:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:35
  Speaker A: So that hasn't happened yet. I got, I got to sleep for a day, get better and then go to my reunion. So. So we'll see. Other news and notes. Alex There's a new Dean at Tex McCombs. Well starting this summer on July 1st, his name is Bradley Staats and he will be the dean of UT Austin. McCombs, he actually went to UT so he's an alum and he's got like 30 years of industry and academic leadership experience. I believe that he is currently a professor at unc Kenan Flagler. So he's coming from there. He wrote a book that won a number of awards. It was called Never Stop Learning, Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself and Thrive. That was put up by Harvard Business Review Press. And he worked at Goldman Sachs, also worked in venture capital and he, I guess he studied electrical engineering and Spanish from UT Austin and then he later did an MBA and a doctorate at Harvard Business School. So it sounds like he's got the, got the qualifications for the job.
• 6:36
  Speaker B: He has a very impressive resume.
• 6:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. The other thing that I wanted to call your attention to is that we ran an article on the website about a week ago called how Bay Area AI funding drove MBA tech industry hiring in 2025 at Stanford and Berkeley. So this is a deep dive into the employment reports and what we're seeing happening at those two schools because they both had an uptick. Right. So there's. They both posted double digit increases from 2024 to 2025. When it comes to the share of MBA grads accepting tech industry jobs, Berkeley actually jumped 14 percentage points in that domain, and Stanford rose 13 percentage points. So the Berkeley, I think it's like 39% of their class went on to tech jobs. And at Stanford, we know it's around 35%. So this is like the largest share of people going into tech that either of these programs have reported in more than seven years. And there were other schools too. You know, hbs, mit, reporting some modest gains in kind of in technology placements. But the driver, we think, is this historic surge in venture capital that's flowing into the Bay Area, into AI companies. And so we did some digging, and it turns out that there was $178 billion of venture funding that went to U.S. companies in 2024, which is just in case you're keeping score at home. That's like 57% of the total global funding that was invested. So a lot of money going into U.S. companies. And it turns out that, you know, of that 178 billion, 90 billion flowed into Bay Area companies, which is driven overwhelmingly by AI investment. If you think about comparing that to like 2023, there was like a 52% jump year over year. And so we're thinking that what's happening here is there's this massive amount of capital flowing into these AI startups, AI companies in the Bay Area, and that's translating to jobs for MBA graduates in tech. So anyway, there's a lot of data and charts in this article. I encourage people to go and check it out. And this is just the first of what I hope are going to be many different articles where we take these kind of deeper dives into the data that we have on, you know, historical kind of career placement.
• 9:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely fascinating. And I think this is the sort of content we need to be producing because we have the data, right? Yeah, we have archived sort of career, career report data for the last 10 years at all the top schools, etc. Etc. So, yeah, I'll be fascinated to see what other gems we can uncover. But this is a great lead off.
• 9:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. And there was a second article that we put up that came out of a kind of related thing about Berkeley. And it just was this article that I think Lauren on our team put together about how Berkeley Haas students are not only kind of flocking to, and, you know, spearheading all these, like, opportunities with regards to AI, but how it's almost like there's this, like, race within the MBA program to upskill and really get familiar with all that I can do so that these candidates and then go off and take these jobs that are there for the taking. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. So interesting.
• 9:55
  Speaker B: I guess Hass probably gives them all a free subscription to Claude Claude Cowork and everything. Right.
• 10:01
  Speaker A: I'm guessing.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: I assume all top MBA programs do stuff like that these days.
• 10:07
  Speaker A: They must have enterprise. Yeah. Level kind of access. Yeah. So in any event, very cool stuff happening and kind of a nice thing to see because we hear a lot of people complaining about, oh, you know, what's happening to NBA grads, but there does seem to be a little bit of a gold rush happening with regards to AI, and that's fueling some jobs. Speaking of jobs, we connected with some more alums who are out there in the world from top MBA programs. So I want to just give you a little bit of info on those. We talked with Samuel, who went to IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland. Very good. One year MBA program there. And he's now a consultant at BCG. He's 30. He's originally from Bogota, Colombia, and he studied, I guess he had just like an undergrad there, but also he has a master's in finance before having done the MBA. He then worked at MasterCard for five years in the payments and technology kind of domain, and now he's at bcg. And here's the thing I was talking about before we asked, were there any surprises regarding your current employer's recruiting process? Get this. He says, I thought that the first round interview with a virtual case with an AI agent was extremely hard and that I was not good enough. But fortunately, it was only a small part of the full process where the following rounds were much more important. So it sounds like, at least in his case, BCG is using an AI agent to conduct a virtual case interview with someone as a first round. And so that was interesting.
• 11:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's the same as our interview simulator. Right. They're interviewing with an AI agent.
• 11:44
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:45
  Speaker B: That we've built.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: So we're doing a similar thing to allow people to practice their MBA admissions interviews. And to me, more and more firms are going this route in terms of doing that first cut. Using an AI agent to do the interview.
• 12:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Which is interesting. And. Yeah. And obviously we're cutting edge, just like bcg, so of course we have.
• 12:08
  Speaker B: That was the implied point I was trying to make. We're ahead of the game. BCG obviously heard what we're doing and, you know, following in our footsteps.
• 12:17
  Speaker A: So the other thing we asked Samuel about, BCG and stuff is we said, well, why did you choose to work there? And you know what, what led you there? And he says, I chose to join my current company because I believe after the MBA, it's the best time to challenge yourself and learn as much as you can. And consulting is an ideal setting for this. And that was something that was echoed in the panel I did with the guy from Bain and with the head of career services at Georgia Tech when we were in Atlanta. This idea that consulting is almost like a continuation of business school because you're bouncing from one project to the next, trying out all these new skills and tools that you've kind of gathered over the course of the mba.
• 12:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, and that's a really good reason why, for example, for military candidates, doing consulting right out of the MBA is a great way for them to practice what they've learned as they transition into a civilian career. So any sort of non traditional, sort of less traditional candidates, it's a great route after the mba, I think, in the short run.
• 13:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. We also caught up with a woman named Brigitte, and she is a Cambridge judge MBA, and she graduated back in 21. Okay. So she's been out for several years now. She is a manager at Bain and Company. She is originally from Jakarta, Indonesia. She's 31 years old, went to Illinois Wesleyan University and studied economics as an undergrad and then worked for four and a half years at Kearney in consulting. I guess her focus area was transformation work in telecom, and she did that work in Indonesia, then went to Cambridge and now has been, I guess, for more than three years at Bain in both Jakarta and Australia. And she focuses on strategy and commercial due diligence for the consumer industry. And we asked Brigitte what was one thing you would absolutely do again as part of the job search. And she said, double down on the student, alumni and school network. You only need that one right contact to open the door to opportunities that you were looking for. So boosting that chance will help you a lot. We then asked her, what's one thing you would change or do differently about your MBA experience? And she said, be laser focused on what you want to optimize for during the mba. Socializing, job searching, being involved in extracurriculars, et cetera. You don't want to spread yourself too thin by being involved with everything. Figure out your hierarchy of priorities and what you're willing to sacrifice and really enjoy the moment. It was one of the best years of my life. So any thoughts on Brigitte from Cambridge?
• 14:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that Last bit of advice is quite typical, right from alums coming out of the program. How important it is to have that focus and have those goals and the plans and take advantage of the right resources along the way. So. So it makes. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
• 15:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. I feel like we've been hearing that quite a bit this year in our Real Humans alumni series. The last one I want to be.
• 15:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, and it might be because, you know, the, the markets are getting a bit tighter so you've got to be a little bit more laser focused. Right?
• 15:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, it could be. It is interesting. I love hearing these stories and I think what's so fascinating is that you don't usually hear the alum saying, oh, the thing I wish I'd focused on more is roi or it's usually different stuff like the relationships forged and the conversations had and connections and so in any event, the last one I want
• 15:51
  Speaker B: to also, these are either self selected alums or selected by the schools or whoever selected the ones that have been quite successful, I would imagine.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: Right, yeah. And they're willing to talk about their experience.
• 16:03
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 16:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's fair. Fair. Fair point. We also caught up with last one is Carly who went to Dartmouth. Tuck graduated back in 23 and is a senior product manager at Amazon. 32 years old, originally from Winston Salem, North Carolina. Went to UNC Chapel Hill for undergrad and studied business and then went to Amazon and worked there for six years in tech, retail and media and entertainment. Also did some work as a brand specialist, a vendor manager. So all these different roles at Amazon finally ending up at as a senior product manager and I guess after business school. And this is what's so fascinating, after business school, Carly goes to Oracle to work as a product manager, but then leaves that role to pivot to work at Amazon again in a more senior role and with a focus on media and entertainment. So kind of full circle coming back and it's interesting we said, what's one piece of advice do you wish you'd been giving during your mba? And once again we hear something that we've been talking about that she says. The two years go by faster than you think. Go in with specific goals and be intentional about how you spend your time. But also keep an open mind, get to know all the people around you. Say yes to professors, dinner invitations, show up for your classmates, cultural celebrations, take the trip to Peru. The people you're surrounded by are your greatest asset. Not just during the program, but for the rest of your life. Lean in to every experience, you won't regret it. So. Yeah, really, I mean, it's similar sentiment here, right?
• 17:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, similar sentiment, but it also reflects on the fact that you're looking forward to your 25 year anniversary this weekend at Wharton and you'll see folks that you did that with during your two year MBA experience.
• 17:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I, you know, thanks to social media and just to the fact that I travel a bit, I've seen a lot of these people on and off over the 25 years, but there's some that I haven't seen as much of and I'm. Yeah, it's exciting to go back and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it should be really interesting.
• 18:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. Tell Alec I said hello.
• 18:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I will definitely do that. So if you want to reach out to Alex and I, you can write to us always@infoearadmit.com There was a great moment at the fair the other night. I got to give a shout out. There was a gentleman who came up to me during the fair and said that he listens to the podcast every week, I think he said, on his way to work or something and that he's applying this summer. He's currently working on the test. I guess he's going to be applying and he works in the airline industry and it's just great to connect with someone who listens to the show and seems to really enjoy it. And he told me to say hello to you. So there you have it.
• 18:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, it could be, I mean, not, not that it's, it's this particular individual, but somebody posted on Livewire that they were in the Atlanta area and they worked in the airline industry. So maybe it's this individual. Because I said, why don't you go to this event? We're in Atlanta next week or whenever it was. So yeah.
• 19:06
  Speaker A: Oh, that's perfect.
• 19:07
  Speaker B: So, yeah, yeah.
• 19:08
  Speaker A: So I want to thank that person for coming up to say hello. Yeah, there were many others and yeah, it was great. We had a whole, I met a whole bunch of people over the course of the evening doing that, so it was great. In any event, we have work to get to though. Alex, you picked out three candidates and we should probably talk about them, right?
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Yep, let's kick on.
• 19:23
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week comes from an apply wire entry and this person has a number of schools on their target list and they are all in Europe. They have Cambridge Esade which is in Barcelona. They've got 18 Paris IE Business School in Madrid ESA Imperial INSEAD, London Business school and Oxford. So kind of a who's who of great MBA programs in Europe. They're looking to start in the fall of 27. They'd been working before business school here on the buy side investment for an in house corporate capital, doing in house corporate capital raising. They're thinking after business school they want to be in finance. And I guess they're not exactly certain but they listed corporate finance or maybe investment banking. So they have a few different options here. But all finance oriented. Their GMAT score is a 675. That translates to a 720 or 730 on the old version of the test. They have a 3.5 undergraduate GPA. They will have three years of experience by the time they matriculate at business school. They're located in Vietnam and they're looking to either be in Europe after business school or potentially back home in Vietnam. And they indicated that they would like. You ready for this, Alex? A brutal evaluation. They say their biggest concern is that they have limited work experience. They will just have under a little bit under three years when they matriculate. And they want advice as to how they should maximize their overall profile in the next handful of months so that they can compete with more seasoned candidates. A couple other tidbits, they do some extracurriculars. They're part of the CFA society in Vietnam. So that's kind of a work related thing or you know, these kind of, you know, finance and accounting related. But they also are the co founder of a small language center, so a little bit of an entrepreneurial activity there. And again they're hoping to transition to investment banking or maybe do corporate M and A after business school. And so that's the real question for you is just what can they do in the next 120 days to strengthen their profile. And yeah, what do you make of their profile overall?
• 21:36
  Speaker B: You know, I get that concern, right. They're going to come in about a year or two under the median for work experience. But you know, if that is the case then, you know, one option is to say, well you know, maybe I'll apply the following year and come in a little bit stronger. And you know, they should this season only applied to schools that they would be really excited to attend. And if they're not successful, they could then reapply in another year if they keep their progression, you know, growth and impact, etc. Going in the right direction. That's not to say they won't get in this season, but there's certainly no harm in applying a Little bit early, getting dinged and then coming back. There's no stigma attached to that. So the question then becomes, well, how do they maximize their profile for this season and so forth? And that's at work. What can they do to further that growth and that impact? What sort of projects can they take on that really give them a little bit more of that seasoned experience if they have some latitude there? I mean, it looks to me like the experience they've had to date is relatively competitive. You know, it looks like they've done some buy side finance and then they've transitioned into corporate finance, perhaps from, into a business that they were funding or something like that. Right. So it seems like the type of experience they've had has been pretty good or very good. I do also like that potential that they, you know, exploring entrepreneurship in terms of the language center. So if there's some real impact there, I think that would be very good. And it adds a little bit of a nice, nice balance to their overall profile. Right. They're not just finance, finance, finance and so forth. So highlighting that a little bit more, I think they declared that maybe 675, there's some room for growth there, a little bit of headway. So it might be, yeah, the younger candidate really knocked the GMAT out of the ballpark. If they came back with a 705 or, you know, 6.95 or something, I mean, that would certainly elevate their profile a little bit too. I'm just a bit curious why they're only targeting European based programs versus US based programs. And you know, there is some sentiment that European schools tend to favor slightly more mature candidates, you know, slightly longer, average length of experience over some of the US counterparts. So that was just a question that I had.
• 24:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:23
  Speaker B: But otherwise, yeah, I think there's really good potential here. Whether now's the right time is is the question. And if it's not, then they can just come back in another year's time.
• 24:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think, yeah, low stakes, right. Apply now this, this time around and see how it goes. But I do agree if, if they feel like 675is, is underneath the best performance that they could get, then they should maybe spend a little time this summer, see if they can boost that up. Because that could speak volumes. You know, I think younger candidates with big numbers tend to do. You can compensate a bit. They Also, they are CFA level 2. I forgot to mention that. And they did really well on that exam. So. Yeah. So I feel like continuing this trend at work, which does seem like impressive work and then maybe retake the test and go for it. I would say I'd like to know if there's anything else that makes them interesting. So it sounds like an interesting venture they're pursuing entrepreneurially on the side with this language center. But I also would like to know, like, are they, you know, do they, are they a cyclist or do they like to cook or is there anything else that makes them interesting? Because right now, you know, most of their hobbies are kind of business oriented. Even if the business, you know, this entrepreneurial thing is a language center, it's still they're doing the operations, sales and finance for it. So, yeah, just anything that could give lend some color to their candidacy would be smart too because I think schools are going to want to know how they fit in to the community that they're joining. And then, yeah, I too share the kind of, I wonder what's driving this Europe. Only thing I think, like you point out when you're younger, I mean, well, there's two things. One is the European schools tend to take slightly older candidates than the US schools, but also they tend to be one year with the exception of, you know, LBs. I mean, HEC is sort of halfway between the two, but they tend to be short programs. And I wonder, is this person like, what are they in a rush for here? You know, it's sort of like, I don't know, part of me could see someone recommending that they wait a bit and apply for Europe later or that they try to go to the US where they could do an internship and have a kind of more robust two year experience. But again, I recognize some people are maybe a little turned off on the US Right now, but you need only look at the salaries to see that there's a big, big bump that you don't quite see the same thing happening with some of the European programs. So anyway, lots for them to contemplate. But I would say go for it this year, maybe retake the test, see if they can get a higher score and see where the chips fall.
• 26:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good.
• 26:52
  Speaker A: All right. I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Now, the next couple of candidates, Alex, that you think you picked from Decision Wire. So let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So I guess we had some people with complicated dilemmas here, but the first one I want to share with you is a candidate who they applied to a whole bunch of schools. So I'm just going to focus on the ones they were admitted to but they, they got into Cornell with 70,000 in scholarship. Michigan, Ross gave them 20. They got $70,000 from Boston College. I think that's Boston College. Or is it University of Boston? Quest drop?
• 27:29
  Speaker B: That's. I think that's university. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker A: Then they also got into UT Austin with a $10,000 scholarship and to UVA Darden with an $80,000 scholarship. They didn't. The thing that's kind of a bummer here is they shared that, but they didn't tell us where, like what they want to do after business school, which by the way, if you're posting a decision wire, that's a pretty vital piece of information. The thing that they did tell us though is that they're still waiting to hear back from Columbia Business School. So I guess that could be kind of a. We need to hold that, keep that in mind. But what would you do, like if you had these offers? I mean, you know, Cornell 70K, Darden 80K. I know Michigan's giving 20 and Utah Austin 10. So there's some that I think come off the board almost immediately. But what's your take?
• 28:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's between Johnson and Darden with those big numbers that they're getting the offers from. And Darden typically would sit above Johnson for many scenarios, but not for all scenarios. Right. So as you point out, it's going to be dependent on their goals. Right. So if their goals, investment banking, New York City, that provides Johnson a little bit more weight into the argument, I think. But if the goals are reasonably, I'm not saying pretty much anything else, but if the goals are a bit broader than that, consulting or corporate or whatever, or maybe just not that focused, maybe that's the problem with this candidate, then I think Darden stands out. But they're all different. They're different programs. Right. So Darden is obviously a bit more case based, it's a bit more of a heavy load on the academic side, et cetera, et cetera. So fit will also matter. But I do think Darden and Johnson stand above with those scholarship offers, above Ross with 20,000. But those would be the three. And then if they got into Columbia, then obviously things change. I noticed last week Colombia took a few people off the wait list. So they're obviously bringing some more folks in. And you know, admitting folks are actually seeing quite a lot of weightless movement right now, which is indicative to me that schools are, I'm not saying scrambling, but they're definitely trying to tighten up their incoming class. So maybe they've got heard from Columbia, I don't know. But right now, Graham, I'd say Darden is slightly in front.
• 30:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, I tend to agree. And just speaking to the waitlist stuff I saw, I think Wharton took a bunch of people off the list the other day, too. So there's, there's movement happening. But yeah, when you look at this group of schools, I mean, obviously you would say Cornell and Michigan and Darden are in the same general tier, their top 16 schools. But Cornell and Darden offering way more money than Ross in this case, and Darden actually 10,000 more than Cornell. So, yeah, Darden does seem like a front runner. I would argue that the two schools, like you said, there's a fit question. So they should spend time on the two campuses, but we'll see what happens with Columbia. I mean, maybe they'll post and let us know there. But in any event, congratulations to them. A lot of good and. And yeah, you can't really go wrong. These are, these are all excellent schools and some nice scholarship money too. So. All right, I want to thank them for sharing their dilemma. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate for this week is another decision wire candidate who posted that they're undecided and they applied to Cornell, Michigan, Michigan and Stern, and they got into all three. And actually, what's pretty amazing is that they have essentially what amounts to a free ride. So full tuition for all three schools. They have an accounting background, they said, and their goal post MBA is to work in investment banking in New York, but with a healthcare focus. So they want to meet, you know, that's that to be their sort of sector of focus. So again, full tuition at the three schools. And they then said that they've narrowed it down to two of them, Michigan and nyu, that they're drawn to Ross because of its campus and college town, et cetera, et cetera. What do you make of this, Alex?
• 31:46
  Speaker B: Well, I think if they want New York City investment banking as part of their focus, I think Stern has got to be a really good option. So I would encourage them to think a little bit harder about this idea that they want more of a campus environment, a college town environment, versus coming directly into New York because they're gonna have to relocate to New York at some point. Right. If that's their goal. So. So it might sort of help help them to just make that transition and have that business school experience in New York and therefore have a much stronger network, alumni network in New York, more Present than, than Ross. I'm not saying Ross doesn't have an alumni network in New York, but I mean, obviously Stern has a much richer alumni network and so forth. So I would look at it a little bit more from, from that perspective, I think, and, you know, bite the bullet and go to Stern.
• 32:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting because I, I was kind of when, when I started to read the sentence where they're saying, I've narrowed it down, I thought for certain that what they were going to say is, I've narrowed it down between NYU and Cornell because I, you know, both of those schools have decent investment banking placement track records and they're both, you know, obviously Stern. Right. In New York and, and Cornell. Not so far. So I, I was surprised that they. And, and that's not a knock on Ross. I just, if you had predict. Asked me to predict which two they were narrowing it down to, I probably would have said the other two. So I was confused by that. And what I would argue is that if they're drawn to a school because of its campus, that it's in a college town, lower cost of living, then Cornell would fit that bill too, and has a better pipeline into investment banking than Ross. But I do also agree with you that, like, hey, if you can be in New York City at Stern, you know, talking about cost of living, they're paying $0 for tuition. I mean, like, at some point, you know, borrow the money to make up your difference in cost of living if you need to. Like, this is, you know, this is an investment that you're making in yourself. And so sometimes I don't. Yeah, I think there's like a little bit of a misalignment. Like, it's not a big deal to go into a little bit of debt so that you can afford to live in New York City for a couple of years when you're going to be doing investment banking afterwards. I mean, it's going to be the least of your concerns ten years later.
• 34:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
• 34:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I think they need to figure this out. Obviously, they did mention they're moving with their wife and that the wife doesn't have a job, so they need to think about that, too. And one could make the argument to go to a school that's not in New York City or something, but I would encourage them to maybe have a closer look at Cornell again if that's the case, because, yeah, I'm a little confused here. In any event, congratulations to them. I mean, that's really impressive to run the table with full rides at three top programs. So it's amazing news. And I don't want to be harsh in my comments here. But anyway, I think hopefully they'll figure this out. Maybe they'll land in New York City at Stern, as you suggest. But best of luck to them as they figure this all out. Any other thoughts on this one, Alex?
• 34:46
  Speaker B: No, best of luck to them.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, so next week we'll do this again. I'm actually in Philly right now, but I'll be back on the other side of the ocean. So record next week. But thanks for making time to pick these out but also to do it on a kind of US time schedule for me this week. That was very helpful. Appreciate it.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. Very good. Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care,
• 35:18
  Speaker A: Sam.