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MBA Wire Taps 521: Biologist, MBA to pivot? Cyber security, 695 GMAT · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:16
  Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, September 21, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:28
  Speaker A: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:29
  Speaker B: So this week we've got MBA rank rankings news from both Businessweek and LinkedIn. We've got real humans from Cornell, Johnson's class of 28 class profiles from UCLA and Georgetown, some admissions tips, and of course, candidates to discuss. But before we get into that, Alex, what's going on this week with regards to deadlines? Are we through the lion's share of the round one deadlines at this point or how are things looking?
• 0:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, I wouldn't say we're through the lion's share. We're through the lion's share of the sort of very top programs. They tend to sit earlier in the cyc. But we're gonna have two or three more weeks of round one deadlines. October is actually quite a busy month for round one deadlines for, for let's say top 20, 25 programs and so forth. So. So yeah, things will stretch out a little bit. But this upcoming week we, we have deadlines for, for Imperial, ISI and toc. And Fuqua is actually scheduled to have released its, its interview invites for its early action round. Oh wow. By someday next this upcoming week. So. So activity is moving forward.
• 1:43
  Speaker B: All right. Yeah, speaking of Imperial, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be in London this coming week for just for one night but a couple of days of going to an event that GMAC has organized about the future of graduate management education. So looking forward to that. Hoping to catch up with a bunch of admissions folks at LPS and Imperial and other school be present there. But yeah, so that'll be fun. Alex, we do have somewhere in all of this, we have a bunch of events that we're running this week. So let's see. Tuesday at noon Eastern, I'm going to sit down and emcee a webinar with Berkeley, Duke, Georgia Tech, Wharton and Stanford. And this is part of our Inside the Application Process series. This is the first of six events. There are two more this week, one Wednesday and one Thursday again all at noon Eastern. And we'll get to sit down Wednesday, Thursday with the like of Harvard and MIT and Chicago Talk. Other schools are joining as well. So should be a lot of fun. I've had a lot of interest. It's been really interesting preparing these because as you know, this is called Inside the Application Process. So My task is to kind of look at the school's entire application and find kind of quirks or just interesting elements in their applications and ask them about them. So whether it's, you know, oh, you give people, you know, two video questions and five seconds to understand both of them and then respond, you know, why is that? How does it work? You know, anyway, all of them have kind of quirks. And so we'll get into that in these webinars along with a bunch of general admissions tips. And there are three more next week. And, you know, so sign up at our website. Just go to clearmit.com events. Can't wait for these to kick off.
• 3:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, very good.
• 3:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing, Alex, is that I don't know if they. I guess Businessweek and LinkedIn don't talk to each other because they both released their MBA rankings on the exact same day last week. And I don't think either knew that the other was doing so. So, you know, they had to share the spotlight. But I'm going to start with BusinessWeek. I gotta, you know, as you know, I love to get your reaction from these rankings. So Businessweek, as you know, their ranking is comprised of sort of like a survey of current students are really the people who just graduated from top programs, alumni from those programs, and then employers. And so they sort of whip all that together. The methodologies on the website, they whip all that together and come up with a ranking. And. And I think it does showcase some important perspectives. And the other thing I like is that they divide it up by region. So in the US I'm going to give you the top batch. Here in the US it was Stanford at number one, followed by Wharton, then Harvard, Kellogg, Darden, Tuck, Booth, Berkeley, Johnson at number nine, MIT 10, Columbia, 11, Michigan 12, Yale, NYU, Emory, Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, Duke, UCLA and UNC. Keenan Flagler, rounding out the top 20 U. S schools. Any thoughts, Alex, on this?
• 4:41
  Speaker A: I mean, I think collectively those are probably the top 20 programs. I mean, plus or minus one or two programs, I suppose. I mean, the. The top three in the top three spots, I'm not arguing if they're in the right order, but Stanford, Wharton and Harvard are in my book anyway. And I think in lots of folks, estimation is the three best MBA programs on the planet. And so to see that, I think it's a good reflection of Business Week's rankings. You can argue some of the other nuanced positions like Booth being lower than Darden or Tock or whatever it might be. But. But yeah, I think this is a reasonably decent ranking, obviously, when we look at rankings. And I think we need to make this case a little bit more strong in some, some of our reporting on this is we consider schools in tiers. Right. Rather than ordinal rankings. So, you know, Harvard and Stanford would be in, in a tier at the very top, followed by Wharton, followed by Kellogg, Sloan, Columbia and Booth. Right. So Kellogg, Sloan, Columbia, Booth, the four of them are in the same tier. Which one is better than the other then? Depends on your goals and your interests, etc. Etc. So as a candidate, so. So I think that's really important. But yeah, overall I think Business Week does it this year has done a reasonably good job. Obviously. When I worked at Wharton, Business Week was absolutely fantastic at this because they only ranked as every second. Put Wharton number one twice in a row. And I worked there. So I've been a little partial to Business Week's efforts here, but. Yeah, no, very good.
• 6:32
  Speaker B: Yeah. And the other thing, just a couple of things to note here. You know, Darden jumped up five spots this year and Berkeley fell five spots. So those were some of the bigger movers. Yale actually also jumped five spots. Vanderbilt, Owen jumped 10 spots from 27th to 17th and Duke fell off five spots. So some of the, those, some of the big movers in the US portion of this, really, I won't do each region that they do, but let's just look briefly at Europe. So Europe had IMD as number one, followed by Bocconi, that is St. Gallen in Switzerland, ESE, London Business School, INSEAD, Oxford, Mannheim, and then ESADE. So that was sort of the top 10 out of Europe. Interestingly, Cambridge's not in there. I think they probably should be. You could make some arguments too about the order of this ranking. And there was some movement. Schools like St. Gallen and IE jumped forward four spots each, whereas the likes of INSEAD and LBS fell off a couple of spots each. So anyway, I don't know what you think of this, but obviously some of the best schools in Europe are here. I just kind of wonder about the order.
• 7:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, again, I would argue LBs and INSEAD not necessarily in that order, but I would argue they're the two leading MBA program offerings in Europe. But all the ones you mentioned are all very, very good. But, but the European MBA marketplace isn't as, I don't know what the right term is, mature, fixed, etc. Etc. In terms of order. So you're going to see a bit more movement there than you would in the US I would Suggest so maybe that's a play. But now I would certainly put London Business School. I'm a bit biased because I do some work for them, but London Business School and INSEAD in the top two.
• 8:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing I want to point out is that while breaking this down by region, I think really helps. And I think with the US The US is arguably a region easy. You know, there's free flow of labor across the entire market.
• 8:33
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:34
  Speaker B: I think it is a little more challenging with Europe. I mean, and in fact their region for Europe is actually Europe and the Middle East. So if I were to go further down in the ranking, you would see some, some of the schools in, in the Middle east popping up too. But the issue is that I think things would be really different if, you know, you want to work in Spain or France versus maybe the UK or somewhere else. Like these schools would have very different weightings, whereas that might be a little less so within the US region. I think the US is probably more cohesive region when it comes to kind of networks and the kind of labor markets. But in any event, it's a challenge.
• 9:07
  Speaker A: You do raise a good point. No doubt. But as we often express in the US if you know, you want to work in New York, that's true. Look at top MBA programs in New York.
• 9:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:18
  Speaker A: If you know, you want to be on the west coast. Same advice. So. So I completely agree with you. But it's all sort of, there's a, there's a scale to that. It still has some influence in the
• 9:28
  Speaker B: U.S. yeah, that's a fair point. All right, well, moving right along because we got to get along with this.
• 9:32
  Speaker A: It doesn't help it probably. But to your point, not to think, but it probably doesn't help the UK based schools. Right. Given the, the different employment sort of regulations and stuff. Given that we decided to export ourselves out of, out of Europe in this Brexit fiasco or whatever you want to call it. So maybe that does have some reflection on why London Business School perhaps dropped a little bit. I don't know if it does. Or that Oxford or whatever you stated isn't represented.
• 10:04
  Speaker B: Cambridge.
• 10:04
  Speaker A: Cambridge, sorry. At the very top. So yeah, that could have something to do with that.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. It is fascinating because you think about, I wonder to what extent EU nationals who used to go to Oxford, Cambridge, lbs, et cetera, they would stay and build a network in that market or now they're probably all coming back. So I don't know. I mean, it's a. Or a lot of them are probably Coming back. So anyway, it's an interesting thing to look at, but let's talk about LinkedIn because they also released an MBA ranking last week and we'll be a little more brief here, but what's interesting about
• 10:35
  Speaker A: LinkedIn, did Facebook release a ranking or we just focusing on LinkedIn?
• 10:39
  Speaker B: Just LinkedIn. I don't believe Facebook did. It feels like there's a new ranking every week, but in any of event, yeah, LinkedIn blends everything together. So this was kind of the top 10 globally. They had Stanford on top, followed by Harvard, then Wharton, then Insead, then the Indian School of Business, MIT, Tuck, Columbia, Kellogg, LBs, rounding out the top 10. Not too much movement in that group vis a vis. Last year Kellogg actually fell three slots and that was really the biggest move. Everyone else was kind of up a slot or down a slot or even just in the same exact position. So that's kind of the way that LinkedIn does it. Keep in mind, LinkedIn's ranking is really a measure of kind of LinkedIn stats only. Right. So they're, you know, it's, it's hard to explain this but basically they're looking at, you know, promotions and the level at which people who've graduated from these programs are at in terms of their career. They're also looking a lot at connectivity. So like how connected are graduates of a school to each other, to others, how rich is the kind of network? So on some levels you could argue that it's kind of a ranking of how well do this school graduates, does this school's graduates use LinkedIn? Which could be a little self serving, but it is also a ranking of what kind of titles do the graduates of these schools have. And so that's how they come up with this. I will give you the quick breakdown on US and Europe because I think these rankings are really tough to look at when they're all lumped together. So if we just look at the us you end up with Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, mit, Tuck, Columbia, Kellogg, Yale, Duke, Chicago, Booth. So those are the first 10 in the US and if we do the same thing on Europe, we get insead, lbs, Oxford, imd, ese, hec, Cambridge, that is essec and Imperial. So what do you make of this, Alex?
• 12:34
  Speaker A: Well, I'm not as dismissive of it as I thought I would be. They got again the first are correct and, and yeah, you can make some arguments why ISB is so high reflective on how they do their, their LinkedIn data analysis and stuff. But again when you, when you talked about the, the US based schools. I mean, obviously, I think Booth seems a little bit low, but they were a little bit low in the Business Week rankings. But, but they, they've, they, they seem to have done well and they, they obviously have the us. I mean, sorry, the, the higher.
• 13:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker A: In the European side of things. So, so, yeah, I mean, again, it's all about tiers, not ordinal, and this seems to be as comprehensive as Business Week. I don't know if I expected to say that.
• 13:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. The one school that I'm now reminded because of the LinkedIn ranking that we didn't see in the Business Week ranking, at least in the top 10 was HEC. And here they are, you know, so, so, yeah, I almost would argue Europe top 10 from LinkedIn, INSEAD, LBs, Oxford, IMD. I mean, they, they really, I think they did a, have a better handle on the way that market really is shaking out. But in any event, these are fun. It's not, you know, as we always say, we really think this is a tearing thing and you shouldn't get obsessed about, like, who's number 12 versus nine. Like, it's almost meaningless, it's tiers. But it's fun to look at these. I do feel like if you look at all the rankings over and over again, you know, you start to see, oh, this school's always showing up in the top five, you know that that's a good signal. Right. And after that, focus on your geography, your goals, et cetera. Right. So in any event, enough said on that stuff, I did want to call people's attention, especially if you're finishing your applications for some of these schools. We put up an admissions tip on the website called MBA Essay Polishing. And it's just kind of three quick tips to sort of gut check everything before you submit. So definitely encourage people to read that. But it gets into sort of, you know, what's the right tone to strike in an application to business school? The need for you to emphasize action when you're talking about things you've done. And obviously the need to avoid repetition. You have only so many components in an application, so you want to spread around the stories you have to tell. Don't be repetitive. But you can read more about that on the website.
• 15:03
  Speaker A: So my advice to folks would be go to admissions bot, upload your draft essay and ask these three questions. Am I being repetitive? Yeah, is. Am I treating this as action? Or whatever, however we, we qualify that, etc. Etc. And just ask direct for feedback. Don't ask For a rewrite, just for feedback that then you can adapt.
• 15:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:32
  Speaker A: To your essays. And we are seeing. I mean, I, I track this even though it's completely anonymized, but folks are using the, the admissions bot quite well, I think, for getting feedback on draft essays. And I like that. Just get feedback. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker B: And yeah, just so people know. I mean, you just go to the website and, you know, our bot is featured there and you can, you know, literally attach PDFs of your essay or application and ask it questions.
• 16:02
  Speaker A: And we don't save the. Save the PDFs. They're not used to train anything or, you know, there's none of that stuff going on.
• 16:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's another benefit. Benefit.
• 16:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:12
  Speaker B: So real quick, we've got two more schools. Remember last week we talked about Duke's class profile. This week both Georgetown and UCLA have published their class of 28 kind of admissions profile. And so I'll give those to you and I'd be really curious to get your feedback. We'll start with Georgetown. So Georgetown had 1269 applications. They enrolled a class of 197 students. To give you a point of comparison, last year they had 16, 17 applicants and they enrolled a class of 248 students. So they dropped about 50 students. So bringing in a smaller class, as you might expect, with that smaller class, they were able to maintain most all of their stats and quality. So 33% women this year. That's actually up a couple percentage points from last year. 44% international. That's unchanged. 5.3 years of work experience on average. That was five years last year. So very similar. Undergraduate GPA. The average was 3.3. That's unchanged. The GMAT was a 713 on the old version of the test. That was 700 before. So that's up a bit. And the GMAT focus was a 626 average. That was identical to last year. GRE was a 315 average this year. And it was 318 last year. So a little lower there. Any thoughts on these numbers out of Georgetown?
• 17:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't realize the average GRE is below 320.
• 17:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Speaker A: I need to pay more attention to programs that I would consider, let's say top 20 in that bracket where they sit with that. I mean, the big number number obviously is class size. Just like Duke. It looks like they've dropped a similar percentage. So whether that's a cohort or whatever it might be, and that's obviously as a result of the applicant Pool dropping. So these are very interesting times. It looks like school strategies that we've seen thus far is to hold firm on the quality of the candidates that they're admitting and bringing into the program. And by holding firm they're reducing that class size. So it's interesting to see how sustainable that is and see how that plays out maybe into next season. Are they able to recover a little bit on the class size or is this trend sort of more persistent and so forth? So yeah, so yeah, I mean, fair play for making that decision, holding firm on, on the quality. But yeah, it's definitely. There's no which way you can look at it. It's not good that we're seeing lower class sizes.
• 19:00
  Speaker B: Right. The only people that it's good for those maybe applying this year who probably have better admissions chances. But I think I'll be really curious to see how this plays out at the likes of say Wharton and Harvard and so the sort of top 10, we haven't yet seen those schools report in. So we're kind of of holding firm. I guess what these schools that are reporting so far could say is something like, you know, same quality and shorter lines at the cafeteria. Yes, I don't know, but we'll see. UCLA Anderson also shared their profile really quickly. They received 2,422 applications and their class numbers, 287 students. If you're comparing last year they had 3,000 applications and they had a class size of 307. So they have subtracted about, oh, what is it, 30 students or no, 20 students.
• 19:52
  Speaker A: 20.
• 19:52
  Speaker B: 20 students, yeah.
• 19:53
  Speaker A: Math's never your strong point even though you did a second GMAT test.
• 19:58
  Speaker B: That's true. Yeah. So in any event, so yeah, they shaved about 20 students off of their class size stats. Wise women, 39% previously, that was 46%. International students, 36% that was 35% last year. So pretty much the same average work experience 5 point versus 5.6. Last year the average GMAT score on the old version of the test was seven hundred and eighteen and that's actually up from 703. The issue there is that I think they probably have much. It's probably a much smaller base because most people are submitting focus scores and the average focus was a 660. They did not report the focus score average last year because they were still in that middle mid, midway period of adapting to it. So I don't have a comparison point but a 660 on the Focus is like 710 on the old test. So that gives you some understanding. Average GRE is a 326. It was a 325 last year. And the mean undergraduate GPA is unchanged at 3.5. So those are the stats from UCLA. Any thoughts?
• 21:06
  Speaker A: I mean, again, you look at the stats, the difference between Georgetown, UCLA is pretty stark given in my book, they're one tier apart. Right. So you've got three. Five versus three. Three. You've got 718 versus 713. You've got 660 versus 626 on the GMAT Focus.
• 21:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker A: And 326 versus 318 on the GRE. I find that to be very interesting.
• 21:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, same.
• 21:37
  Speaker A: Anyway, the point is, they dropped off what you said 20, 20 students in the class, so not as dramatic either.
• 21:44
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I think. I think we're going to see that as we go up in the rankings. We might see less of an impact, but. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to see how this shakes out. But I think, yeah, UCLA, you know, many would argue is kind of top 16. Right. And then some would say Georgetown sort of, you know, top 20 or even 25. So.
• 22:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, no top 20. So then in my book, they're one tier apart.
• 22:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 22:06
  Speaker A: I just didn't realize that they're counting stats. Stats.
• 22:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. A little different.
• 22:10
  Speaker A: Are quite different. So we can track that as we go through some more of these class profiles, more to come and so forth. But I think Anderson also has a bit of a peculiar whether it's an advantage or disadvantage. But we talked about region. Right. So Anderson is way out there on the west coast, whereas Georgetown, I mean, I guess you consider it Mid Atlantic, but they're clustered with all the top programs in the Northeast. Right. So there's a lot more competition for that geographic focus with Georgetown versus with a school like Anderson. So I think that's quite interesting.
• 22:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. So we'll keep these coming as they come in from the schools. One other thing is just stay tuned in this channel. We're gonna be publishing some additional admissions director Q and A episodes. So I've caught up with Tepper Yale Foster at University of Washington, and we've got some more that we're gonna be recording with a bunch of other great MBA program. Tuned for more of those. You can just pick them up in the feed here. You can write to Alex and I@infoearadmit.com Otherwise, Alex, I want to just very briefly share. We connected with a bunch of students in Cornell's class of 28. So this is part of our Real Human series. And before we talk about our candidates, just very briefly, one of those students, and I think we featured six of them, but one of them was this guy named Nicola Rivetti. And he is, as you might gather, from Italy, somewhere called Guaran Italy. I've never been there. He's 28 and he went to the University of Modena and studied vehicle engineering. And his pre MBA work experience has been forecasting manager, supply chain, working at Amazon. Okay, so he did like three and a half years at Amazon. And I just wanted to read what he said about why he made the decision to go to business school, because I think he does such a great job of articulating this in a parallel paragraph. Really good advice for people applying to business school. Like, as to how to articulate this. He said, three factors drove my decision to pursue an MBA at this stage of my career. First and foremost, moving to the US has long been both a personal and professional goal. The US offers an incredible ecosystem of opportunity, and earning an MBA is the most effective way to transition to this market while building a lifelong network. Second, during my engineering studies in Italy, I realized I was far more drawn to business strategy and commercial dynamics than pure technical concepts. While it is common in Europe to pursue a master's degree immediately after a bachelor's, I chose to enter the job market first to build a solid professional experience before deep diving into business topics. Finally, after establishing a technical and operational grounding, returning to business school now provides the rigorous finance and strategic foundation I need to advance into leadership roles at the intersection of technology and corporate finance. So I thought that was pretty well said and concise and just a good explanation for why he's taking, you know, pursuing his mba.
• 25:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I'm a huge believer that engineers with an MBA are super, super valuable. So. So that's a really good combination. I hope the first point that they made isn't diminished by the current administration. You know, that's a whole nother conversation and you can't, we can't kick on yet to do the, to do the, the. The applicants that we've chosen this week. Graham, because you've got to talk about our ROI ADCOM article.
• 25:45
  Speaker B: Oh, that's right. Oh, my God. Thank you so much. So, yeah, just very briefly, we ran an article on the website where we, you know, we had been connecting with admissions directors, and one of the questions we've been asking them is, what is the ROI of an MBA that's less measurable? Like, what are some of the things you get out of it? That aren't just the dollars and cents, the kind of first job out of school, et cetera. And it was really fascinating and that that article's up on the site and it's just chock full of quotes and comments from all these admission directors. But the one that really struck me was Bruce Delmonaco. And we talked about this last week on the show, but he was talking. Bruce is at Yale. He's the assistant dean over there of admissions. And he was just talking about things like confidence and judgment and dealing with ambiguity. And there's a whole bunch of comments along those lines. But other schools talk about the kind of lifelong network and the sort of support and the number of people that end up finding a business partner or someone to invest in their company or whatever it might be. So really interesting article. It's up on the site. Encourage people to check that out too.
• 26:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, very good.
• 26:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that's it. Alex, I know we've had a really long preamble, but it's not my fault. It's because LinkedIn and Businessweek both decided to release rankings in the same week and I didn't want to like wait another week to cover one of them. So. But I'm ready to talk about candidates that you've picked out if you are.
• 27:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, let's kick on.
• 27:05
  Speaker B: All right, so this is Wiretaps candidates number one. So our first candidate this week comes from an apply wire entry. And interestingly enough, this person has one school on the target list and that school is Berkeley Haas in California. This person is going to be applying hopefully now or in round two, and they want to start next fall. They are a biologist, so a little bit of a non traditional background, and they're thinking about consulting after business school. Their GPA as an undergrad was 3.6, a BA in biology from an Ivy League school. They then earned an Ms. In Entomology where they earned a 4.0 GPA. And that was from a Big Ten school. They've got eight years of work experience, they're located in the Bay Area, and that's where they want to stay. And they're saying in their note to us that they are entertaining the thought of pivoting their career by earning an mba. But they can't tell. They say, I can't tell if I'm being delusional or not. So that's where we come in, Alex. They want us to give them a reality check and giving you some more data before you kind of weigh in. They're 34 years old, having that eight years of experience and a couple of degrees under their belt already. They are Chinese American, US citizen based on the West Coast. They mentioned they're gay, first generation college student as well, in case those things matter. They say they took the GRE when they did their master's, but it's expired. But they mentioned that when they took it back then they had what looks like a 322 on the test. And that was without preparation back in 2013. And they know they're gonna have to take it again. They also mentioned they've done some things like first author scientific publication. They've been working as a biologist for an agricultural department. So they work for the government doing kind of regulatory inspections. And they basically have a comfortable job, but they also realize that it doesn't. They've kind of hit a ceiling. There's no room for them to earn more or to get a promotion. They mentioned that the last open position for a promotion in their department was in 2020. So it's kind of stagnant. And they're thinking MBA might sort of help them to pivot out. They mentioned they're unfortunately a little bit lacking in extracurriculars. They do had. They did have a certification to teach high school biology. We're wondering if that kind of matters. And they do a few things, committee work at work and do some graphic design on the side for their department. Anyway, they wonder what we think of their profile and they're kind of concerned. They say it's completely unrelated to business compared to other MBA applicants and they're a little worried about that. Anyway, I'll let you get into more of it, Alex, but what do you make of this candidate?
• 29:43
  Speaker A: Clearly they're well accomplished, they're very intelligent, they've done really interesting things and they are at a stage in their career where they frankly sound like they're a little bit bored and they've realized they've hit a ceiling and what can they do about it? Oh, let me go apply to an MBA and see how that sort of elevates and enables me to pivot. And then they go ahead and do that and they won't get into a top school because they to have you haven't approached it appropriately. That that's my real sense. So what I would suggest for them to do is knock that GRE at the ballpark. They're smart enough to get in the 330s, so do it right. So really commit. They're only probably working 30 hours a week. Right. They've got Loads of time to, to really excel at the GRE that then complements the 4, 40 master's degree, the 3, 6 thing. But I think that's important for them to do to show that seriousness and then really come up with a fantastic long term goal that complements what they've done to date both academically and career wise with the MBA on top. And I'm sure they're really interesting, very impactful careers that they can identify with that really good combination. So if they do those two things I reckon that they're going to see some really interesting opportunities with, you know, ADCOM and getting an mba. My point is Graham, I really like this candidate but I fear that their approach to date hasn't, won't set them up. But thankfully they found our site, they posted on reply wire and really they need to sort these two issues out so that they can maximize their opportunities. There's no doubt they are super capable.
• 31:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think what Alex, what you're reacting to here is, you know, they had this comment in there about how they only work four days a week, it's stress free, it's kind of ho hum, which is great.
• 31:59
  Speaker A: And lots of people are satisfied with that. That. Right. And there's nothing wrong with that. Have a great, you know, career life balance. That's absolutely lots of people. But those people that are Targeting top tier MBAs.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:14
  Speaker A: Are ambitious.
• 32:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Speaker A: And I think this person is ambitious and I want that to shine.
• 32:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I think what was missing was like you said, they don't really express a career plan other than oh, maybe consulting. I'm going to go to business school. And so I think they've expressed that they're bored.
• 32:32
  Speaker A: Everyone can bolt on consulting.
• 32:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:34
  Speaker A: Because that's an easy hit for short term. But I want to know what the long term plan is.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I think what could be really interesting here, as you said, would be to come up with a career goal that blends their experience and exposure to kind of bio and agriculture, et cetera. I'm sure there's some corporate jobs out there that would really value someone who has like an mba, this kind of science background, maybe a couple years of consulting under their belt and then boom, some kind of big role in agribusiness or whatever it is. So they need to iron out their goals as you say, and obviously they need to take the gre. I have all, every confidence that if they prep for the GRE and take it, they'll get a really great score considering they took it cold and had a 322 back in, you know, a long time ago.
• 33:15
  Speaker A: So yeah, I mean, again, that's my point. Why did they take it cold? I mean, okay, so I don't know.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: That was when they applied to their masters.
• 33:23
  Speaker A: No, I get that, I get that. But I don't want them to do the same thing. Just because you are smart doesn't say you should challenge, challenge yourself in that way. Prep really hard like you think this might be difficult and get that 330 something score that you should be getting is my point. And obviously, you know they're focusing on agriculture, right. Or whatever in their career today. Well, what does agriculture do? It creates food. Food security is a huge issue around the world. Surely there are really ambitious goals that they can, they can hook on.
• 33:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. So they have some work to do. But certainly in terms of their initial request for a reality check, go for it. They could get into a top MBA program, including Berkeley, Haas. They just need to get their ducks in a row. I think actually most admissions officers, assuming they aren't at a goal, et cetera, would be like, wow, this is a fascinating individual who's going to bring a completely different lens through which they view things into the classroom Anyway, anyway, best of luck to them. Hopefully they've taken our advice and get to work on their Round 2 app to Berkeley and go from there. But yeah, they're certainly not barking up the wrong tree. I think they just need to do a little bit of work. So let's move on and talk about WireTaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week also comes from an ApplyWire entry that someone submitted and this person's an early bird. They indicate, indicate they want to start in 28. So they're kind of a year away from applying. But they wanted our take on their candidacy. This person's been working in industrial cyber security and they're interested in tech. In the long term post MBA, they have a whopping 695 on the GMAT Focus edition. And again, in case you're kind of curious, the way I always am because I still think on the old scale that's like a 740 or a 700. They had a 4.57 undergraduate GPA. That's out of five. They have, I believe what they have right now, it's a little unclear because the, there's a weird thing in their post, but I believe they have a couple of years of work experience and that they would have for by the time they begin business school. Right. They're located in Singapore, they would love to land in the US or potentially Singapore after business school. And the schools on their target list are Chicago Booth, Harvard, insead, MIT and Kellogg. For the time being they wondered whether we think that school list makes sense, whether their profile is competitive. This is a female candidate, 24 years old, Indian but long term Singapore resident. And the only other thing I'll share is that she is an active mentor for foreign domestic workers, helping helping them with financial empowerment and digital literacy. Also works with the rural Youth Employability programs in Asia. She's an active speaker and volunteer at a regional women in Tech community. She also was the dance captain for two years in college. And interestingly enough she was selected for INSEAD's mentorship program and Bloomberg Women in Finance program as well. So she's had some exposure to insead. It sounds like she's thinking in the short term that she'll go into product security or tech leadership at an industrial technology Firm or Specialized B2B Tech Advisory Practice and then in the long term launch or lead an industrial cybersecurity advisory practice focused on enterprises in Southeast Asia. She'd love to transition from like the technical execution where she is now into kind of business and product strategy and, and, and also to build her executive leadership capabilities. So anyway, what do you think of her school lists? What do you think of her candidacy? She's worried she's overrepresented as an Indian with kind of long term Singapore residency. I don't know what you think of that.
• 37:12
  Speaker A: I mean if she targets the first round that, that helps mitigate that particular issue. But I love, love, love this profile. You know, if you've read any news lately, you know, cybersecurity is a really, really hot topic and, and so forth. So, so she's in the right field. She's doing all the technical stuff now which again, I think leaders that can combine real fundamental tech skills with a top MBA are going to be really sought after in the, in this future in which we're navigating. So I got, I mean we, I don't think we need to spend a lot of time, time on this candidate Graham, because it's been a long show. But I really do like this profile. I think she should be targeting top programs and I think she should just make sure she's targeting those first rounds. She also, like you said, has some nice extracurriculars to sort of complement her profile and so forth and maybe just throw in a flyer in round two this season to sort of test the water right There might be an opportunity to actually start the NBA a year sooner but only apply the season to the very best programs on that list. I would argue, but maybe there's that opportunity. I know I stole your thunder because that was your advice, Graham, as we talked earlier. But yeah, there's a lot, to be frank, for me, there's a lot to like here.
• 38:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, I could not agree more. First of all, I don't really think a 24 year old female Indian who lives in Singapore and works in cybersecurity is going to be overrepresented. I mean, I think yes, there are a lot of Indians who apply, but I think she's differentiated enough being female working in cybersecurity and also located in Singapore. So I'm less concerned about that. I could not agree more. And this is what we talked about before we came on air. She should pick one school on her list. Maybe it's Harvard, whatever school. She's her kind of dream program from the list. And I would actually apply this year in round two. And the reason I say that is it might save her a year of time. Worst case, it's a great exercise. Even if she gets rejected from that school has no bearing on whether she'd be admitted the next year. Business schools are very re applicant friendly so I would actually say, hey, take a flyer, this is a great year to apply. As we mentioned earlier in the show, she could just get get started on this new track even faster. But I think she's got a great set of goals, really interesting extracurriculars and is just an all around great candidate. So anyway, I agree with you. She should apply and she's going to get into some of these schools for sure. Sure.
• 39:46
  Speaker A: I would just check with insead. They might not be re applicant friendly or at least something in the back of my mind suggests that they are an outlier on this issue.
• 39:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think INSEAD is. I want to go out on a limb and suggest that INSEAD may be her backup because they're kind of her local option in Singapore. There she talks about wanting to be in the US after business school or maybe Singapore. So I'm guessing that's like her not safety because it can't be a safety school for anybody. It's so good. I would argue that if we were to ask her pick your favorite favorite school that you want to go to, I'm guessing she might pick one of those US programs, but we'll see. In any event, best of luck to her. Alex. We covered a ton of ground this week. Never a dull moment. Appreciate you doing this. And I can't wait to do it again next week with you.
• 40:28
  Speaker A: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.
• 40:44
  Speaker B: It.