Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 470: Returning to MBB. 327 GRE, Chicago-based. Warrington vs Tepper

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MBA Wire Taps 470: Returning to MBB. 327 GRE, Chicago-based. Warrington vs Tepper · 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, February 2, 2026. Looking for an MBA experience where you're truly seen, supported and inspired to grow At Vanderbilt Business, you'll discover a personalized learning environment that elevates your potential and turns ambition into action. Whether you're switching careers or accelerating your current path, the Vanderbilt MBA offers a customizable curriculum, exceptional outcomes, and a community committed to your success. Propel your future with a program invested in who you are and who you're becoming. Vanderbilt is waiving their $200 application fee for MBA Wiretaps listeners. To learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, visit business.vanderbilt.com I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
• 1:09
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:11
  Speaker A: So for this episode, we've got some key interview tips, the latest rankings from U.S. news for online MBA programs, and some interesting developments at Georgetown, McDonough and Duke Fuqua. So stay tuned for all that. But Alex, what is going on? I know last week was a pretty exciting week and you could argue something happened sooner than we maybe had expected it to happen. So you want to walk us through.
• 1:34
  Speaker B: Well, maybe a day before for our prediction. But yeah, Harvard, well, let's just say we're recording this before Harvard releases those interview invites for round two. But Harvard announced on Wednesday that they would be releasing interview invites on Thursday or maybe they announced it on Tuesday, I forget, across from their blog. So if everything went according to plan, we would have seen a lot of activity back end of last week. Lots of folks getting interview invites at Harvard. Absolutely fantastic. They're the first sort of big school to really that rolls out that big batch of interview invites all in one go as we've talked about before. And yeah, this is super exciting and so forth. A bigger prediction was it was going to be on today, on Monday, but in any event, they preempted that just a little bit. But that's absolutely fascina fantastic and it's a big plug. For those of you that got the great news from hbs or if you're preparing for other interviews and so forth, you've got to give our new MBA interview simulator a spin. Graham. I just think it's a fantastic tool. We're starting to see some activity on it and I'm really excited to see what folks think of it.
• 3:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know, you put me, we did a live stream last week and you put me on the spot and had me do an interview in front of a live audience with a resume that I didn't know any of the background for. So that was fun to see. But I do agree with you that it's a really great tool and we've seen some quips out there, mostly from admissions consultants who maybe are unhappy about this existing, but, oh, it's going to ask me the same questions or this school starts this way, this school starts that. But the truth is that when you're prepping for an interview, you've got to know how to answer all the questions and you don't know exactly the order that those questions are going to come in. A practice thing, it's a mock interview, you upload your resume and I think it's fantastic. And, yeah, thanks to you for all the work that you and everyone else on the team put into this. It's been a lot of fun bringing this to life and right in time as people need to prep for their interviews. Yeah.
• 3:55
  Speaker B: Best of luck, everyone. Yeah, I mean, if you've got the interview invite at Harvard, that is absolutely fantastic. They do take the deepest cut from application to interview. So right now, if you've got the interview invite, you're probably around 50% shot at getting a seat at Harvard. Yeah, I forget the actual number, but this is really exciting for those folks. And if you weren't successful in getting the interview invite, because they do take that deep cut, all is not lost. You may still hear from Stanford in a positive way. Wharton's down the road, you know, coming up in a couple more weeks, etc. Etc. So, yeah, so best of luck, everyone, that's sort of facing those decisions.
• 4:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I hear that your odds are more like 75% if you use our MBA interview simulator. I'm just kidding. And by the way, it's free. I'm not trying to sell something. We don't really sell anything. All right. One other thing I wanted to mention, and this is kind of a wacky idea that we were talking about as a team, but if anyone's interested, I would love to try this. So if you can record a voice note on your phone, which I think many people know, there's a little voice memos app on the iPhone and I think Android has a similar app. If you record a question and just email it to infoearadmit.com, just email us the little mp3 or whatever audio file, we'll run it on the show and then answer the question. So let's try this. I don't know if anyone's gonna do it, Alex, but I just thought it'd be kind of a fun thing to try to bring some of the voices in our community onto the show a bit more. So we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, if you speaking of our community, we have a bunch of events coming up. So February is a busy month for us. We've got deferred enrollment MBA events with a lot of the top schools. On February 4 and 11 at noon Eastern, we're gonna sit down with Carnegie Mellon, mit, Yale, Cornell, Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, uva and Wharton to talk about their deferred enrollment programs, how they work, how you apply, and some admissions tips and things. So if you're currently in college or in a master's degree that you began straight out of college, this is for you. So join us for that. And then later in the month on February 24th and 25th at noon Eastern as well, we're going to sit down with Masters in Management programs. So these are again for college students, for young professionals maybe with less than two years of experience, you can look at these kinds of programs. We're going to sit down with Carnegie Mellon, Chicago Booth, Johns Hopkins, Emory, INSEAD. Who else on the list? Georgetown, MI and UNC, Kenan Flagler and UC Irvine out in California. So lots of Masters in management schools in the US and abroad joining us for that. Yeah, it should be fun. Alex and I know we're also we'll get word out in a week or so, but we're going to do another Ask me anything on our YouTube live stream late February. But we need to we announced the date during the last livestream, but we're going to have to change that because we have a conflict. But we'll come back very soon with a date for that and make sure everyone's aware. So I'm looking forward to that too.
• 7:00
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 7:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. Busy February. Alex over on the website we did an article about the U.S. news Online MBA rankings. And I look at these, I know that mostly this show is one that folks on kind of full time mba, but I think the online MBA market is kind of interesting as it's been evolving post Covid, but also as we see I love to see how do schools with top regular MBA programs like full time in person perform in these online rankings. And surprise, surprise, once again, Indiana Kelley, their Kelley Direct online MBA program tops the ranking. I cannot remember the last time they weren't at the top. They just have an outstanding online MBA program and even the top five Overall are pretty familiar. We've got Carnegie Mellon and I believe Kenan Flagler is number three at unc. And then we've got Washington Foster. They've got a hybrid MBA program that laid claim to fourth place this year. And then University of Florida online MBA occupies fifth place. I won't get too much more into it, but it was interesting to note that I think six out of the top 10 come from US programs that have a top 25 or top. Yeah, top 25 traditional MBA program. So clearly that seems to be helping these schools.
• 8:24
  Speaker B: I ask every year, where's Ross?
• 8:26
  Speaker A: They're in it. They are. Actually. They did quite well. I believe they're in the top 10. And they are. I'm just gonna tell you the exact. Yeah, so here's the top 10, right? I said Indiana is first, Carnegie Mellon second, then UNC, Washington U, Florida, University of Southern California. So USC was in sixth in a tie with of Arizona, Arizona State and Kansas. University of Kansas are tied at 8. And then you have University of Michigan at 10, tied with University of Texas, Dallas and Oklahoma State University. All three of those tied for 10th. So yeah, so Michigan's been there, although I will say they were number six last year, so they've fallen to number 10. But again, you do have the likes of Michigan, USC, Washington, Foster, UNC, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana all in the top 10. And these are all great full time MBA programs too. So no surprise, I guess. Yeah.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: I would argue Ross is the best of the full time. Right. They're in the highest tier.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Oh, of the full time. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Of full time program, sure. Yeah. So you would expect them to continue to be a part of the top 10 and maybe creep up, but we'll see. Yeah, there's a big. Some of these programs, like Indiana, Kelly Direct, have a long Runway. They're kind of a really nice lead because they've just been doing this for so long and has such a great reputation. Other news, Alex, Georgetown announced that they are allowing people to complete their MBA program in just one year and their part time MBA in just one and a half years if they've done the Master's in management degree that's on offer at McDonough. So they've just sort of created this pathway where if you do the mim, you can come back after getting some work experience and do a kind of accelerated version of the mba. So we did a little article about that with some interesting news and notes from I guess one of their deans who did an interview with us. So apparently, obviously this is. I feel like LBS announced this as well. And some other business schools have done this. Duke, I think is one of them. So this is not uncommon. The question I have is how many people do it? I think obviously that maybe remains to be seen because these MIM programs are newer, but it's an interesting offer.
• 10:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's almost sort of modeled on what Yale does with its Scholars program. Right.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: Or whatever they call that program, Silver Scholars.
• 10:46
  Speaker B: So you do a year, then you go off and work for a while and then you do your final year. So in this case, you're doing your mim, you go off and work and then you return for a one year MBA experience.
• 10:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, very good point. Yeah. And Yale's had that Silver Scholars Program for many, many years. So that's a good comparison.
• 11:05
  Speaker B: And I know like you say, LBS does have exactly what McDonough's just announced.
• 11:13
  Speaker A: The only other thing I had, and we do have a couple of admissions tips, but one other kind of news and notes item is that Duke, we did this kind of Fridays from the Frontline piece, which is when we kind connect with someone on a campus. And this was a current student named Eliza Harrison and she is in the fuqua full time MBA program, class of 26. So she'll be graduating this spring. And she talks a lot about climate action and how business leadership sort of interacts in that space. And what's interesting in the article, aside from all the kind of anecdotes that she shares about her journey kind of exploring climate alongside business, is that. But there's a new joint degree between the Nicholas School of Environment at Duke and Fuqua. So it's a Master of Business Climate and Sustainability. So I thought that was interesting. It's a good read if you're at all interested in those kind of in that domain, climate, sustainability, et cetera. It's a good read. And that's up on the site as well.
• 12:06
  Speaker B: I think that's absolutely brilliant and I'm really impressed that schools stick to their guns on this because the US Administration is trying to annihilate this. This area of whatever. Right. You could say it whichever way you want, but to me it's shocking. And MBA students that stick to their guns in these regards, I think is absolutely fantastic.
• 12:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. And it does. I mean, I think it's clearly politics aside, like it's a business problem, you know, I mean, climate is a business problem too. Right. And people need to understand how to attack it. And so, yeah, so this is an interesting joint degree we did run a couple of admission sips on the site that, that I wanted to highlight. The first is a classic, probably one of our most read tips every year. It's called five MBA interview questions you need to ace and how to do so. So it covers the classic questions you might get in an MBA interview and walks you through how to respond. Obviously you can then practice those questions. Yeah.
• 13:04
  Speaker B: Do you know how to best ace these interview questions, Graham?
• 13:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, to use the simulator.
• 13:10
  Speaker B: Use the simulator because you would be pretty guaranteed that the interviewer will ask you these five questions.
• 13:16
  Speaker A: I bet it will, yeah. And then the last thing we did is we did a tip about unusual interview practices. And no, this isn't when the alumni interview asked you out for a drink after the interview. No, this is when an interview has an extra component. So I guess can you think of any of these, Alex?
• 13:33
  Speaker B: Well, one of my favorites is Harvard. Right. So Harvard asks you to write a sort of memo summary of the interview experience within 24 hours or posting it in within 24 hours. And I just think that really does a great job of closing the loop of the interview experience. And I'm a little bit surprised that other schools haven't followed that lead in that regard. But yeah, so one of them is definitely Harvard.
• 14:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. And the others that we cover in this article, which is quite a long article, we talk about how I believe MIT does something where if you get an interview invitation, you are then asked to write an essay. So kind of a pre interview essay. There are some schools like LBS and HEC that require you to do a presentation in the middle of the interview. Like it'll be sort of like the interviewer will say, hey, here's a business problem. And it's usually something very simple and you know, straight down the middle of the plate, like nothing complicated. You're given a few minutes to think about it and then you have to make a quick kind of presentation of your thoughts. And then the other big thing is, I don't know what it is about France, but both INSEAD and HTC do two interviews and it's quite interesting how they do that. I can't remember how it works, but I believe with insead, you know, you'll have one interview with someone in your space and I think one with someone who's not in your space. There's some kind of way that they organize it. But yeah, so just knowing all these little ins and outs. So we did a piece about that.
• 14:59
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 15:00
  Speaker A: So the other thing we've got is a number of kind of bonus episodes for the show are coming up. I'm out there recording shows with various faculty and deans and things at school. So I'm really excited and I'll just tease it with that. Stay tuned. They're going to pop up in the feed here wherever you're listening, but stay tuned for that. I'm really excited. And obviously if you have any questions or comments for Alex or me, you can write to us@infoearadmit.com and use the subject line Wiretaps. Alex, I don't have anything else to go over, but we do have three candidates to talk about this week. So should we get moving with that?
• 15:32
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 15:33
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week has six schools on the target list and they've actually just applied to these programs, I believe in round two, the schools are Columbia, Harvard, LBs, Kellogg, Wharton and Stanford. This person's working in consulting. They're actually working at one of McKinsey, Bain or BCG and they are sponsored. They've been at the firm for three years. They've had one promotion and they will be returning to the firm post MBA. Their GRE score is 327 and their GPA from undergrad is a 3.87. They did mention that that came from studying at studying. I guess they were majored in one of the humanities with a minor in economics. They also mentioned that they're currently in PA and hoping to land in New York after business school. And they did say that they took a secondment which is, you know, a placement at a non profit. So their MBB job placed them in a nonprofit that focused on sustainability in countries below the equator. And they mentioned that this includes one of the countries. One of the countries that they were focused on is a country that they are originally from. And they did connect this in the essays. They also mentioned that they're hoping to go to MBA for the network but also to continue sustainability focused work and kind of inching closer to being ready to work in a field like impact investment. So they feel like the MBA will give them a lot of the skills they need to do that. And they again mentioned they're sponsored so they've got to go back to MBB afterwards and you know, to kind of earn out the cost of the degree. They did say one other thing, Alex, which is that that 327 GRE includes a 158 on the quantitative portion of the exam, which is at best a 70th percentile and they're a little bit worried about that. And they also include the fact that they are an underrepresented minority applying to these programs. So Alex, what do you make of this candidacy?
• 17:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, frankly I think this is an outstanding candidate all around. You know, they're obviously working mbb so that says a lot about them. I assume, you know, on the front end, not back office but so working as a consultant mbb, I like that. Sort of plus one year secondment. So they doing some interesting stuff in a non profit focused on sustainability. Kind of like the student we were talking about at Duke pursuing that climate stuff, et cetera. So I like all that and the fact that they've got the opportunity to return mbb, that's a real bonus I think especially in this sort of geopolitical climate the top programs are facing. So that's very good. They have, you know, their numbers on the surface look really strong. 387. I know that's in the humanities. I know there's a, there's a quote in Big Bang Theory where the guy comes out and just screeches humanity. Anyway, the point is it's still a very good gpa. They did some economics in that too. Yeah, they had a minor and clearly they perform very well because they got an opportunity to work at mbb. Right. So very strong there. The slight wrinkle may be this GRE, the median GRE score is very good. So the overall GRE327 will hit the medians of the schools they're targeting. Is there a concern on the quant side? I don't really think so. I think they'll be fine. Again they've got some economics classes in their undergrad that they can point to and probably doing quite analytical work too. At mbb, if they wanted to mitigate that at all, they could easily just enrol in MBA math now and just, you know, cruise through that just to show that they've got that self awareness, etc. But even if they don't do that, Graham, I think this is, this is a strong candidate. Should be at least getting interview invites and hopefully using our interview simulator to prepare themselves to be very successful.
• 19:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I expect, looking at this list of six schools, I would fully expect this person to get into more than one of them. The question for me will become one of will they get into the kind of Wharton, Stanford, Harvard group within this six. Right. Because those are the schools that are probably a little bit harder to get into and that's going to come down to they didn't share a ton about their outside interests and activities. They said they're strong. They mentioned they have some leadership roles. But they did say they're kind of work related clubs. So I kind of wonder what exactly that is. And I also don't know. You know, they said they majored in a humanity and minored in econ. I don't know where, you know, did they go to Jap State or did they go to Princeton? You know, so some of these things.
• 20:44
  Speaker B: I don't think they went to Jap State if they got a job at Andrea.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: No, I know.
• 20:49
  Speaker B: I mean to me that's a pretty strong signal. Right?
• 20:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So I suspect they're going to get into, you know, at least several of these programs. The real, the pedal, whatever the rubber will hit the road as to whether, you know, when we get to sort of Harvard or Stanford or something. So we'll see how it works out. I do want to wish them the best of luck and I agree with you. I don't think that the quant is going to derail them. GPA is very strong. Minor and econ GRE is good enough. Right. So I'm not worried about that part. So I want to wish them the best of luck and thank them for sharing and hopefully they'll keep us posted. And as you said, hopefully they get interviews and can use the simulator as they go through that process. Let's move on though and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week is an early bird. They're going to be applying next fall to start in the fall of 27. And they have seven schools that they're currently considering and those schools are Chicago, Booth, Duke, Indiana, Michigan, Kellogg, Notre Dame and uva Darden. This person's been working in financial services and they're thinking post MBA about getting into consulting, ideally with an Accenture, Deloitte, ERNST AND YOUNG, KPMG, PwC, that sort of field. And they talk about their numbers. Let's say they gave us a 327 again on the GRE and a 3.38 GPA in undergrad. They've got five years of experience located in the USA and they mentioned that they are also an underrepresented minority. Like our first candidate this week. They have strong extracurriculars. They said they mentor and tutor low income students of various ages. They also pointed out that they worked 25 to 40 hours per week during undergrad and that that definitely contributed to that. 3.38. They feel like if they hadn't had to do all that work, they might have been able to have a slightly higher gpa. They've led automation projects at work and they feel like they'll get strong letters of recommendation. And again, the goal is to pivot to management consulting at a big four or tier two in the financial services space since it sort of matches their prior experience. So Alex, there was one wrinkle here and this is why I'm guessing you picked this candidate. They shared the fact that they're concerned that their current supervisor won't support them if they apply to schools outside of their current city, which is Chicago, and they're wondering if they could pivot and use a previous supervisor to write letter of recommendations for the other schools on the list that are outside of Chicago. And they're just kind of wondering like, should they, you know, throw their hat in the ring with some of the M7s given their background and goals. So Alex. Yeah. What do you, what do you make of this? And yeah, this is kind of an interesting quandary like why wouldn't the current supervisor support them going out of the city?
• 23:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure the reasons why. I mean one can speculate, right, that maybe the current supervisor is hoping they're coming back to the firm and they don't want them to leave the area, etc. Etc. But who knows? But yeah, I mean, if they're going to have to go after different recommenders, I mean, we have admissions tips that talk about this and so forth. Use the optional essay just to very briefly explain those choices. In this case, they're going to need to use the optional essay 2 to explain the context around their undergraduate degree. Right. 338 GPA is not outstanding, but they had to work significant hours and so on and so forth. So they need to make sure that that's addressed. And there's no harm in using the optional essay to address two or even three particular issues. Right. Hopefully you're not having to address five or 10 issues because that's probably going to sink your ship. But yeah, use a paragraph for the undergraduate gpa. Use a paragraph to explain the recommendation as choice. And yeah, frankly Graham, if you toss out the GPA of which there is context for that, you know, they had to, you know, work significantly, I'm speculating, maybe they're a first gen college graduate, etcetera, etcetera. You know, if this person had a strong or even a medium GPA for the, for top schools, I would think this person's more M7 first.
• 25:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker B: And maybe target 1 or 2 top 16. Whereas it seems like their approach is, you know, using M7 as a reach and only focusing in that case on Booth and Kellogg because they're obviously Chicago based and then going after top 16 and even top 20 programs.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: So.
• 25:47
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they're applying next season, so they got some time, you know, if they continue their professional development in a strong positive way. And it seems like they're doing really well at work. They've got lots of strong extracurriculars on the mentoring and tutoring side for low income students, which I love because clearly I'm presuming they were a low income student. Right. So they're giving back because of the experiences that they've had themselves. So if they can tie all that together with really strong post MBA goals. I like this candidate, Graham.
• 26:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. So I think this person needs to reframe. So number one, for the schools outside of the Chicago area, absolutely. Use a prior supervisor. I mean they've been. It sounds like they will have had like five years of experience. And so assuming they have someone else at work who would support them, who maybe led them on projects not too long ago and maybe just isn't the current supervisor, that would be totally fine, as you pointed out. And then I agree they should apply to Kellogg and Chicago because that's where they're located and those are two fantastic schools. Beyond that though, I would look at this list and reframe it. I would apply to some additional M7 outside of Chicago. You recommended Wharton and Sloan to them in the notes here. I think that combination of finance and consulting obviously plays well to those programs. Probably collabor Columbia as Well could be 1 on the list. I think they need to kind of reframe and they probably don't need to have. They've got Notre Dame on the list. I'm not so sure that they need that here. I'm much more bullish on this candidacy than the candidate themselves are. The only thing I would say if they really want to hit a home run and increase scholarship dollars, etc. I would recommend that they could consider if they feel like it and feel like there's a ceiling that they didn't hit their ceiling. I would consider sitting the GRE again and trying to go for like a massive home run, 3.30 plus or something because that would balance the 3.38 entirely on the GPA side and maybe position them for some serious dollars. But I would only do that if they Feel like, yeah, that was not my best day. I could probably do better. And they're not applying for almost what, six, nine months, right? So yeah, that's why I say that.
• 28:13
  Speaker B: I think that's a really good, really good point though. But also, if you're factoring in scholarship dollars at these top programs, if they boosted their GRE score like you say to the 330s and they got a 50,000 or 100,000 award at a school, that's probably time well spent right now. You wouldn't know the counterfactual would they have got that 100,000 with the 327. So I get that. But the point is sometimes people dismiss. You know, I've hit the median score so therefore I can move on. It's like, well, no, let's see if you can go for scholarship dollars, really get as high a score. The key is make sure that 327 is your best score. You're not applying till next season. If you think there's points to be had there, have another go.
• 29:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So in any event, I know we've spent a lot of time on this candidate, but I think it's an interesting case and they have time before they apply. So there's a lot to potentially work on. And I think reframing the school, set those targets, thinking about the recs and possibly the GRE is where they should start. So best of luck to them. Thanks for sharing and hopefully they'll keep us posted. Let's move on though and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week, Alex, is as we've been doing for many weeks now, comes from a decision wire post where someone has applied and they have a dilemma that they presented us with. So they applied to Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Florida, Warrington, Michigan, Ross and NYU Stern. This candidate's located in India and their post MBA goals are to transition into tech leadership or product management within tech or fintech. And they. So I told you the schools they applied to, what ended up happening or at least what they've told us so far is that they got into Carnegie Mellon Tepper with $70,000 in scholarship and they also got into Florida Warrington with a full ride, so 100% scholarship there. And they are undecided. And they said the dilemma is that they are extremely debt averse due to the current market and geopolitical uncertainty is the prestige network of Tepper or Marshall. Now it's funny they didn't mention Marshall anywhere, but I guess maybe they have an offer from Marshall as Well, is this prestige or network of Tepr Marshall worth the hundred thousand dollar plus debt gap for someone with a strong technical background or is University of Florida the safe option? So what do you think about this Alex?
• 30:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not convinced that they should go to Florida. I think you know, TEPA or Marshall, just outside of the top 16, you would argue Tepper's right there on the border of that tier. It's a really strong program, you know, you know Carnegie Mellon is really strong in tech, etc. Etc. And it seems to really fit the strengths of Tepper, really seem to fit what they're looking for. So you know, and I get that they're debt averse and you know, I'm not dismissing the Warrington program, but I do think it'll provide them great opportunities in a very tight regional space. And as you take that MBA program further afield, it's going to provide less, less sort of impact than the likes of Tepper's MBA program in terms of other alums in your space in different geographies. Even the resources at the programs themselves, TEPA would stand above Florida and you know, the size and scale of the student bodies, etc. Etc. They're just different. I mean Warrington is, is a smaller program, some would argue more intimate, but nevertheless when it's a smaller program you got less alums, et cetera, et cetera. I guess that I know there's that database. I know there's a risk given all the geopolitical climate, but I would argue there's also a risk in doing an MBA from a lower tier.
• 32:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, I could not agree more. This is, this is to me pretty straightforward. Carnegie Mellon is a world renowned institution known for obviously technology, engineering and business. And they have a strong reputation in computational finance, fintech, tech. And so it's a perfect fit with their goals. And yeah sure, $100,000. But they can also put on their resume that they had a half tuition scholarship at Carnegie Mellon. Tepper, that looks good too. So I think, I'm not worried about this person finding a job. I mean we see even in kind of like 90% of students graduating from these schools are getting jobs. At least those who are seeking it's a STEM program for now. There's no changes to that. I mean I think this person, I would roll the dice. Absolutely. Because let's imagine a scenario where worst case they can't stay in the US wouldn't. I mean the global reputation of Carnegie Mellon in engineering, technology, finance, et cetera. I feel like they could land a job, whether it's back in India in a senior role or maybe in the UK or one of the Commonwealth countries. Like, there's gotta be somewhere for them to land with a prestigious degree. I don't think you would find that to be true with a much smaller, lesser known MBA program with Warrington. So, yeah.
• 34:06
  Speaker B: And frankly, just the resources that you have exposure to in those two years at Tepper is just going to be fantastic.
• 34:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, I would. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, this is. This is a bet. You're betting on yourself and you're betting on the value of a great institution. I would take the offer. I know we're rarely cut and dried on these, but this one seems pretty straightforward to me. All right, well, Alex, thanks for picking these out. We've done it once again. Spent half an hour plus chatting about MBA applications. Let's connect next week and do it all again. Hopefully everyone's getting interview invites as we head into the big interview season here for round two.
• 34:44
  Speaker B: Very good. Best of luck, everyone. Stay safe.