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MBA Wire Taps 472: 655 GMAT, worth retaking. 760 GMAT, expires soon. Columbia vs Ross · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, February 9, 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. Edu ClearAdmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things, Alex?
• 1:09
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:11
  Speaker A: So this week we've got employment reports. Just when you thought we were done, we got employment reports from INSEAD and Cornell. We've got an admissions tip about the hardest MBA interview questions and some out of Emory and nyu, as well as three really great candidates to discuss. But first, what is going on? Alex, how's the interview situation looking? And are people. Yeah. Where are we in the cycle?
• 1:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, we're seeing lots of interview invites rolling out, which is exciting. Columbia was one of the big schools last week to roll out interviews for the first time. We're seeing more from Stanford and from others of the top schools. There are still some schools left that haven't released their interview invites. Instance Wharton. And that'll come in the next couple of weeks. But this upcoming week, we've got.
• 2:04
  Speaker C: I got it written down.
• 2:05
  Speaker B: LBs and Fuqua, they'll be releasing their round two interview invites. And it's really exciting, Graham, because as we announced on the show last week, we have the new NBA interview Simulator, a new AI tool that we've rolled out in beta form. But we're seeing quite a lot of activity on it. Graham. I'm really excited. It. I'm hoping that folks are getting a great experience from it and. Yeah. And guess which school leads the way in terms of number of interviews thus far.
• 2:41
  Speaker A: All right, I should have cheated and looked at this before we came on air, but I'm going to do that. I'm going to guess maybe Harvard, because they just released a big batch of interviews right around the time we introduced the tool. But is that. Is that what it is?
• 2:54
  Speaker B: Harvard is in front.
• 2:55
  Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay.
• 2:56
  Speaker B: Followed by Kellogg. I think it's Kellogg. And Kellogg's tied in second. I forget who with. But anyway, the point is we tried to. Our goal was to release the interview simulator in conjunction with Harvard's rollout of round two interview invites. And that seems to have worked.
• 3:16
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker B: So I'm really excited. It's a tool that we've spent more than a year building and training and developing, etc. Etc.
• 3:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, I love it.
• 3:29
  Speaker B: And yeah, no, fantastic.
• 3:30
  Speaker A: Now I've got a little bit of PTSD on my Harvard interview because when I was testing this tool, I did a Harvard interview just because I was curious. And I did a bunch of them as we were testing, et cetera. And the Harvard interview took me right back to my actual Harvard interview, which I don't know if people know this, but Harvard has, you know, a very kind of probing interview. Let's call it a real peeling of the onion. They've already read your file, right. So they kind of like to ask lots of follow on questions. And our simulator obviously is a little different because it doesn't read your entire file, it reads your resume. But as soon as you start to get into a story, it does have that tendency because it knows what a Harvard interview is like, to sort of get you really pushed you to give details. And I just remember being like, is this interview going to end? Like, I was just feeling like really like, oh, you know, the interviewer was not happy with my answers. Like it kept asking, you know, follow ons and. And then when it did end, I, I got an okay score. But it definitely took me back into that hot seat when I actually applied to hbs. So I'm hoping people are having some fun prepping, but also that it's a, it feels realistic because it's supposed to.
• 4:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And, and they get a report.
• 4:40
  Speaker C: Right.
• 4:40
  Speaker B: And I think the reports are really useful, quite honestly, at least in our testing.
• 4:44
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker B: Of, of the simulators. So. So a bit of nostalgia from you, Graham, but maybe not the. That you fondly look at on a day to day basis.
• 4:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's been fun overall and I'm glad people are using it. Speaking of all this, we definitely need interview reports. So the reason we have such a great interview simulator is because of all the applicants out there over the years who have left interview reports on our website. So after you have your actual interview, go to clearadmit.com, go to the interview archive and you can upload a report. It takes all of five minutes for you to just jot down what questions you were asked and just share that with the site. That's your way of kind of paying it forward and helping those who come after you. So anyway, I want to just remind people to do that. I also want to plug we have a bunch of events. This is a busy month. We've got another deferred enrollment event this week. I'm going to sit down with admissions directors from Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, uva and Wharton to talk about how college seniors and current Master's students could secure a spot in an MBA program down the road in advance. And then on February, February 18th, we've got a special event with London Business School. We're going to talk about their newish one year mba. I believe the current class that just started is the first class for that one year mba. We're going to sit down with David Simpson, Oliver aspie, those are two veteran admissions folks and program management folks over at LBs. So that'll be fun. And then I think we're doing an event with Vanderbilt as Well on the 19th to talk about Owen and their MBA program. And of course Alex. I would be remiss if I did not mention that we're going to do our livestream on Monday, February 16th at noon Eastern. We made a little bit of a faux pas. We announced it would be like a week after that when we did our last livestream. But then it turns out that between some vacation time for me and I think another event that we're running, we couldn't do it then. So we're going to come back with an AMA on the 16th at noon Eastern. So I hope everyone will tune in and we'll get emails out to people to remind you. But yeah, lots going on. We also have some Masters in Management events late in the month, but I'll stop there because it's a lot.
• 6:54
  Speaker C: Yeah, no, very good.
• 6:56
  Speaker B: Always good to be busy.
• 6:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally. The other thing that's going on is we have some fun news and notes on the website. It is February now, so we did run our monthly piece about all the in person MBA events to check out and there are actually a lot of them. So I'm actually going to head over. I think it's Saturday this week so we're recording obviously the week prior, but there's an MBA fair in Paris for example and I saw a whole bunch of schools are coming to that. There's, you know, just check out this post on our website. It lists everything that's going on everywhere organized by school and even some of the general events like these fairs. We've also got some interesting news out of Emory, they have a one year MBA program and they now have different paths that they've introduced for it. They have some what I would almost call majors or tracks. One of them is healthcare, another is real estate. They've got one for global business. You can read that article if you're curious about how this is all working. But these are new ways to go through that accelerated program at Emory. I thought it was a pretty good article. We also, you know, this is the drum beats on nyu. Stern has introduced an AI concentration. And I'll just read a quote from someone over at the school. We have a quote here that says, at Stern, we've developed an AI and business curriculum that aims for both breadth and depth of AI expertise. We're creating entirely new classes where students will learn how AI can be used for core business functions such as finance and marketing, as well as hands on classes where they will learn how to build AI agents. Our new AI specialization will get students ready to be active participants in the AI transformation happening in our economy. So you can read the article. There's all kinds of details. You'd probably like this, Alex. There's, I believe we have a kind of blurb or list of all the different courses that they're kind of offering under this concentration. So it's, yeah, you know, yet another school, you know, rolling out the kind of big, big effort here to kind of get AI sort of into the curriculum and to have these specializations.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's really important. Right. Folks are going off to business school for two years. They've got to be AI focused. Yes. So when they graduate, they'll be prepared in this very significantly shifting landscape in which we're navigating, quite frankly. Graham, I'd like to take some of those classes. I just started vibe coding and I absolutely love it. Just the idea that you can just build an app to test something, test a business case or like this morning I was thinking I'd like to be able to scrape some TikTok videos and get a summary from those TikTok videos. So that's the latest sort of idea. And it turns out that that's not easy to program because I need some kind of scraping app embedded in my Vibe coding app, et cetera. Anyway, the point is, six months ago I wouldn't even have thought to come up with a quick app that would allow me to do this. And now it's available, I mean, for very narrow tasks. It used to be way too cost prohibitive to do stuff, but now, no. Should take 5, 10 minutes. Build something up and test it.
• 10:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I too have been having so much fun. I've been doing stuff that I never would have thought possible. I wrote a script or some code the other day that would help me to send personalized emails to a whole bunch of people and to do so within Gmail and just a lot of fun learning how to do these little scripts and yeah, stuff that I would never even attempted because there would have been too steep of a learning curve. So, yeah, in any event, back to the news. We've got one of our most popular posts. I know I said this last week, but we have this other really popular interview tip that's on the site this week called the 7 hardest MBA admissions interview questions and how to Answer Them. And these are great questions. It's like, oh, what other schools are you applying to? That's no issue there answering that one. Right? There's a great one about what are your concerns about getting an MBA or the famous what would you know, what three words would people use to describe you? So there's all these fun questions, at least fun for us, not fun when you're in the chair. But in any event, we go over those and explain how to answer them. So that's a good tip.
• 11:13
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 11:14
  Speaker A: And then last but not least, before we talk candidates, I wanted to go over their career reports. We've got INSEAD and Cornell. So I'll start with insead. And as always, I'm going to give you this year's numbers as well as in comparison to last year. Keep in mind INSEAD graduates a class in December and in the spring. So these numbers kind of are a combination of the two classes because they have these kind of one year program that starts with two different start times. So they have a lot of students. That's why I'm going to give you the class size. And you'll be like, well, that's a lot of students because it's combining the two. All right, so the class of 25, we'll call it from INSEAD, there were 929 students. That's actually 86 more students than they had last year. So they had a little bit of a bump in size. 97% of these students were seeking employment. That's kind of a stark contrast compared to some of these US Schools where fewer seem to be seeking offers received within three months. 81%. That's similar to last year. Last year was 80%. 5% founded their own companies. That was 4% last year. That's the median base salary. €100,000. So if you're keeping score at home and only understand dollars, right, when this moves up and down, that's probably like $117,000 or so. Last year it was actually €111,000. So that median base salary is off by €11,000, probably about what, $16,000 decline. The median signing bonus is pretty much unchanged. It's €28,900. In terms of the industries that people went into, the number one industry for INSEAD, and this has been long standing, is consulting. 50% of the class went into consulting, that's down 5%. It used to be 55. 18% went into technology, media and telecom. That's up from 11%. 17% went into quote, corporate sectors and that's down from 21%. And 15% went into financial services. That's up 2 percentage points. It used to be 13 in terms of where people landed. This is always fun with INSEAD because unlike the US schools, where it's sort of like, you know, most people land somewhere in the States, they do this sort of global placement. Right, so we've got Northern and Western Europe, 32%, that's up 2 percentage points. Asia Pacific, 23%, it's virtually unchanged. 18% went to Africa and the Middle East. That's actually down from 23. 11% went to Southern Europe, that's up 2%. 9% to South America, 6% to North America and 2% to Eastern Europe. Those numbers are all within a percentage point or two of what they were last year. What do you think of these INSEAD numbers, Alex?
• 14:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously the biggest elephant in the room or whatever it is that drop in the median starting salary, which appears to be quite significant. And as we'll talk a little bit later, I suppose as we compare it to a US school, European schools typically do have a lower starting salary, which to some extent is likely a function of where graduates go post MBA because obviously US based programs, 90 some percent of folks work in the US post MBA. So that average starting salary is generally higher in those markets. But seeing that drop, Graham, I thought that was quite significant. And it's quite interesting to note that even though the finance percentage is up slightly, that that's also probably a reason why average starting salaries are a little.
• 15:02
  Speaker C: Bit lower in Europe.
• 15:05
  Speaker B: Finance is typically one of the highest paid sectors that folks go into. Yeah, I'd be a little bit concerned with that starting salary, Graeme.
• 15:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is interesting, but I think you make a really good point about it's like where people land. And remember, only what? 6% of the class goes to North America, which is noted for having its kind of higher salaries. And even beyond that, you might argue that the UK has pretty good salaries, or at least London does, but there aren't a ton of people. I mean, obviously that is in the Northern Europe, northern Western Europe category, but that's still only 32% of the entire class. I think you're onto something with financial services being the last sector. 15% most schools, it's going to be the second or maybe third sector, but it's coming in last year in any event. Interesting to keep an eye on. We'll see where it goes this year. But you're absolutely right. Let's look at Cornell because it's going to be a study in very different schools, in very different loc with very different classes and footprint. But let's talk about Cornell. Cornell. We had a graduating class size for the class of 25. Of 285 students. That's very similar. Six fewer students than last year. Of those 285, 239 were seeking employment. That's a similar kind of ratio to last year. 85% had received an offer of employment within three months of graduation and 83% had actually even accepted an offer as well. Those numbers are very similar to last year, although actually, I should point out they're up a bit. They had 81% with receiving offers last year and 85% this year. They're up a little bit in terms of the percentage of people getting these offers and taking them too. Median based salary, $175,000. That is unchanged. The average signing bonus is nearly $40,000. That's up about $1,300 from last year. In terms of where people go industry wise, financial services is at the top of the pack with 41% of those Cornell Johnson grads going into financial services. That's unchanged pretty much from last year. 28% went into consulting. That's down 3%. 11% went into technology and telecom. That's, that's unchanged. And then 5% to consumer packaged goods, 4% to healthcare, 4% to manufacturing, and 2% to energy and utilities. All of those other sectors are virtually unchanged, like within 1 percentage point of where they were last year. In terms of where people landed geographically, 60% of Cornell grads landed in the Northeast. That's down 5%. 12% went out to the West Coast. That's down 2%. 9% to the Midwest, 5% to the Mid Atlantic. Both of those are identical to last year. Six percent went to the Southwest, that's up a couple percentage points. 7% went to the south, that's up 4 percentage points. And about 4% of Cornell Johnson grads went overseas. That's basically unchanged from last year. So what do you think of these Cornell numbers?
• 18:24
  Speaker C: Yeah, I'd have to say before I comment that I hadn't looked at them before I made my previous comment. It makes perfect sense. Right. Cornell is highly favored finance. Right. So you said 40, what did you say? 41% went into finance, which is typically a very high paying sector. And that's reflected in their average median salary of 175k, which is really good for the tier that they're in. And as we Compare it to INSEAD, it sort of really, you know, looms large over INSEAD's average starting salary. And we consider INSEAD along with London Business School to be the top two programs generally outside of the United States. And the other thing about Johnson, or at least there was something else that I wanted to comment on and I forget exactly what it was, but. But anyway, the point is, you know, there is a stark contrast between US based schools where again, only 4% of Johnson's folks are seeking employment outside the United States. That was my other point. Versus European schools where only a very small minority are seeking employment or gaining employment within the United States. So that has a large bearing on that average.
• 19:50
  Speaker A: So. And I think you're getting at the crux of something too, which is, I think what INSEAD would say is, look, you know, theirs is a one year program, so the cost to do it is lower. And also they would say, look at where we are placing people all over the world. Look at the size of our footprint with about a thousand people that we're pumping out into the world every year. So they would just say it's a really different, you know, different experience. And I think Cornell would say, you come to the U.S. you get this amazing degree at an Ivy League institution, you make great money and you get to stay in the U.S. because all these U.S. schools, at least for the time being, have the opt. Stem, you can say, for three years and work. So yeah, it's just a different sort of proposition I would argue. But yeah, it's hard to ignore that. I mean, there's a big gap in salary and it's definitely notable.
• 20:32
  Speaker C: Yeah. And when we talk about London Business School, they're a two year program or I mean, I know they have some flexibility there, but there's still, there's a big differential.
• 20:41
  Speaker A: Yes. And I suspect that's why, you know, they've introduced that one year accelerated version which we're doing that webinar about coming up. So. Yeah, I think. Yeah. And you know, maybe, and I don't know, I'd have to look back at the LBS report and see if what the salaries are exactly. If they're a little bit higher because it's, you know, a lot of the students are going to London to work. But still. Yeah, in any event, yeah, really interesting stuff. Let's get into our candidates. But before we do, I wanted to just mention to folks that there are a number of kind of bonus episodes of the podcast forthcoming. And I of teased this last week, but I had a great time chatting with a marketing professor from Indiana, Kelly, who also had used to work at Wharton. I'm connected with associate dean over at Georgetown McDonough, to talk about a new curriculum that they designed. This week I sat down with one of the co founders of Juno who kind of helped people with student loans and we talked all about what does it cost to get an mba? What do you likely have to pay in terms of loan fees every month after you've graduated? Lots of nitty gritty stuff that for better or for us, we don't talk about that much on this show. So it was a whole episode just devoted to how much does it cost? How do you finance it? What does that look like when you graduate? It was just super informative for me.
• 21:57
  Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:58
  Speaker A: I hope it'll be. Hope it'll be for everybody else too. Obviously, if you want to reach out to Alex or me, you can write to infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps. That's all I've got. Alex, should we get into the candidates that you've picked out for this week?
• 22:12
  Speaker C: Let's kick on.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. Our first candidate this week has nine schools on the target list. They're not going to be applying until they want to start in 2017. So they're applying next season. They've got Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, Kellogg, Wharton, Stanford, uva, Darden and Yale SOM on the list. They've been working in technology consulting and they're thinking about a pivot over to MBB Consulting. So McKinsey, Bain or BCG. They have a GMAT score that they took the Focus Edition, which came out at 665. If you're still used to the older scoring, that's like a 710, 720. They have a 3.67 undergraduate GPA, six years of work experience. They're located in Toronto, they'd love to land in the US and they did indicate that they applied to Harvard, Stanford and Wharton in the previous cycle and they were rejected without an interview. So they're planning this kind of reapplication strategy for next year and you know, to a broader group that includes both M7 and kind of top 16 type programs. They said that their work experience has been with a tier two or three tech consulting firm in Canada. They've currently got five years of experience, they'll have six by the time they matriculate a couple of promotions. They, you know, talk about a lot of the initiatives that they've led and it sounds like a pretty interesting, you know, set of experiences with some nice milestones. And again, they want to move into strategy consulting after business school. They did say that they had that, you know, kind of their, their undergrad. They actually started at like an associate level degree for undergrad where they were doing very well, three, eight out of, out of four. And then they transferred to university to get their BSc in computer science and as I said earlier, they landed with like a 3, 6, 7 overall with their undergraduate experience. They do do some extracurriculars, a lot of kind of mentorship and onboarding type stuff at work, campus recruitment initiatives. And they say they were very engaged as an undergraduate as well, working in as a peer mentor and a learning assistant. They think that their GMAT score may have plateaued, although they say they're willing to take another attempt at it before they apply. And the last thing they shared is that they said demographically they are an Indian origin male with Canadian citizenship. So. Yeah. What do you make of this, Alex?
• 24:41
  Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, looking at their professional experience, they've probably, like you say they've achieved some really good milestones, they've been very successful, etc. Etc. They're also very highly involved at work in sort of mentorship and various other activities outside of their direct responsibilities. So that looks really good. And you know, I think that's probably the aspect of the application that really might help them stand out a little bit. But therein lies a bit of a larger problem that likely an overrepresented profile overall, right. With a tech focus, India origin, etc. Etc. Now there's some outstanding folks in that group of candidates as we know. So one of our key pieces of advice is make sure you get everything in the first round, etc. Etc. To sort of overcome that. That issue. But I'm worried about this test score at 665 and 665 is within the range of the schools that they're targeting, but it's going to be below the median. And whilst they think that they might have plateaued and I presume they've taken the test on more than one occasion, if the test score is older and below the median, it's signaling to the adcom, I think, a lack of care to some extent. I think they need to come back and take the test one more time, have it be very current and close to the deadline, you know, within a year of the deadline or whatever it might be. Now, if they think the test has plateaued 665, why don't they potentially explore taking the GRE? That would be an interesting alternative. We've talked several times on this show about the potential for taking a GRE over the gmat. Is it a backdoor? But I mean, the point is, if they get the median GRE score of the programs they're targeting or higher, that will look better than getting a below median GMAT score. That's old. So I would really encourage them to look at gre. All schools take both tests. I think at this point, my prediction for this year is the gre, it's more popular than the gmat. And just anecdotally looking at Livewire, hopefully we'll end up doing a data analysis. Radical on this, but looking at Livewire, I think GRE is more popular than the GMAT for folks that participate in the ClearMIT community. So, yeah, I would really push them to potentially look at the gre.
• 27:38
  Speaker A: Yeah. So just stepping back a second, the thing that jumped out at me with this candidate was, you know, they are kind of a tech consultant, computer science background, Indian male. Right. So they're overrepresented in the pool. And I would expect to see high numbers, above average numbers. I mean, that's just kind of the reality of the situation. And I agree with you that, that 6:65 is not going to cut it. Even if they expand the net and go to top 16 and don't just apply to Harvard, Stanford and Wharton like they did last time. So they need to improve this test score, whether that's by buckling down and trying to get a really stellar GMAT score or looking at the gre, whatever they need to do, they got to come in above average because they're in an overrepresented portion of the pool. And I would also add that the fact that they did the associate's degree into a proper university. You know, I mean, it's. There are going to be candidates out there who went to, like the IITs in India or who went to McGill in Canada or did all these great schools and, you know, so they kind of have something to prove with the test. Right. Because the cynic in me says that an ADCOM will look at this profile and say, well, associate's degree, and then they transfer to a proper university for the final two years. Gee, you know, maybe that's why they have a lower test score, because none of this was as rigorous as some of these other candidates who went to, you know, top rated, you know, kind of undergraduate institutions. And I recognize everyone has their path into education, and I'm not trying to belittle it, but I'm just saying the hard facts are that sometimes the ranking of the school you attended matters in terms of the rigor. That's where the test score comes into play for me, because the GPA is great, but it's good enough. But if the test score is low, it starts to cast a little bit of a shadow on that gpa in my view.
• 29:19
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think you make a great point. There's obviously a whole other part of the story for folks that do go to sort of community college and then go on to university that can play well in their profile. Right. So it's like the bootstrapper that, you know, has really taken advantage of all their opportunities given, you know, their lived experience, how far they've come. So maybe that plays well for them. But your point is well met in terms of the rigor and, you know, good GPA for sure. But is the rigor really there? And the test score can really help confirm that rigor.
• 30:02
  Speaker A: Right, exactly. Yeah. So in any event, what I would say to them is they have some time. I would hire a tutor. Whatever you need to do, get a better test score and apply in the first round and yeah, cast a wider net and they should be fine. Yeah. So. All right, well, I appreciate you picking that candidate out. Let's move on and talk about WireTaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate has five schools on the target list and they are looking at, let's see here, Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Wharton and Yale. This person's career prior to business school has been. They founded two direct to consumer companies, but they, they're thinking post mba that they want to actually pivot into doing some consulting. That could be McKinsey they mentioned or one of the strategy consulting firms. Their GMAT score is a 760. It is the old test and it will expire in December of this year. So they're going to be applying in probably round one this fall. For these schools, they have a 3.5 GPA from undergrad, six years of work experience. They are located in India and they want to land in the US after business school. Now here's the real interesting part and I'm sure this is why, why you picked them. Alex. This person writes, they said this is a follow up to wiretaps221. I was featured on the podcast three years ago when I was 22 years old. I would love to be featured again if I'm allowed to be greedy. Your insights were really helpful, helpful at the time. So just in case, I went back and like dug up this episode and yeah, it was literally March of. Was it 22 or something? Yeah. So in any event, it was, it was a while ago. And they, you know, I guess they've been following whatever, whatever advice we gave them because obviously I have no memory of the actual conversation that we had. But what's interesting about this candidate is that they are a co founder and and CMO for a direct to consumer luxury tableware company. And they've grown this company from 20,000 in US dollar revenue to 1.5 million. And you know, they also started like a clothing brand as well, another direct to consumer type play. And that though has not worked out. They started that in August of 24, but they're close to maybe shutting it down because of unit economics issues and a lack of, of growth. So two kind of startup experiences heading in sort of opposite directions. They also do mention that they feel like they would benefit from the mba, that they made some mistakes with the second startup that they think, you know, may have been avoided with the mba. So they have a good sort of story there. Yeah. And then they talk about having a range of reach, fit and safety schools. They characterized Yale, Stern and Top, which were on their list here as potentially safety schools. They have a longer list in the note they left us than the schools they put in to apply wire. In any event, they think they'll have good recommendations from the CEOs of the suppliers that they use since they're an entrepreneur and they just are wondering what we think about their chances. They did note great extracurriculars during college and they've done all three levels of the cfa. I know that was a lot. Alex, what do you make of this?
• 33:24
  Speaker C: Yeah, no, it's great to have them back.
• 33:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker C: You know it's nice to know that folks stay engaged with Clear Mid over a long period of time. I know mostly it's a year, six months or a year and they go off to school. So this is really cool. I really like the entrepreneurship aspect of this profile. Even the failures. Right. So they, they've basically run two businesses, had two very different experiences and you know, that's going to create such a great platform for them to grow and have impact and to learn, etc. Etc. As well as to contribute to conversations in the classroom and so forth at the schools that they go to. So I really like that entrepreneurship stuff. I'm a little bemused by the fact that they just want to become a consultant at a time top consulting firm. I'm hoping that that's just a stepping stone to add more rigor to their training to then go back and do some really interesting, thoughtful entrepreneurship in the long run.
• 34:29
  Speaker A: They need to pay off their loans.
• 34:31
  Speaker C: Yeah, pay off their loans. But also I get it's really good practical experience and tv, right?
• 34:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:38
  Speaker C: But I'm hoping that's not the end of their aspirational store. So hopefully they tie it to a really impactful, interesting long term goal that would be really helpful. And yeah, 760 GMAT is absolutely fantastic. And yes, it expires in December. So that's an added reason why they really need to target the first rounds. And I think their list of schools is fine in terms of their order. And I know you're going to say maybe they should target one or two more top 16 just to round out that sort of notion of safety. But they have to get all their applications in, in round one. Don't be delaying round two some of the more safety schools because if they do that they're going to have to jump through the hoops with another GMAT score. And they are from India, so again they'll be somewhat overrepresented. Although the fact that they're an entrepreneur sort of waters that issue down just a little bit, I think.
• 35:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree with everything you're saying. And yeah, as I said before we came on air, I worry a little bit that they, when someone's like, oh my safety's Yale, I'm kind of like, boy, you know, you still, you know, their numbers are good, they have a great story. But I would, you know, what they could do is apply to these schools in the first round and I guess if things really come off the rails, they could look at a lower ranking group of schools in the second round, but I wouldn't wait. I would definitely get everything in, in round one. And actually, as now I'm remembering, their GMAT score expires in December, so they kind of probably need to apply everywhere in the first round. So they may want to throw a legitimate safety school into the first round, something more at the back end of the top 16 or even within that sort of top 20 group. But overall, great story. I kind of wonder if they've bothered to listen to this show for three years. If so, we should send them a T shirt or something for their trouble. But in any event, no, it's really, it's really great to hear from them. And I'm just thrilled that someone like you said has been on this journey with us and got some advice from us when they were first starting and has had some real success. I mean, these entrepreneurial background kind of experiences are great and I think it's going to be a compelling application.
• 36:56
  Speaker C: Yeah, completely agree.
• 36:57
  Speaker A: All right, I want to thank them for sharing their story. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week, Alex, you picked a decision wire post that someone left where they applied to Columbia, Duke, Michigan, Kellogg and Stern, and they got in to. It looks like they ran the table. Columbia, Duke, Michigan, Kellogg, and cern. They got into all the schools they applied to. Fuqua actually gave them $85,000 in scholarship. And Ross came in Michigan with, with $140,000 scholarship. All the other schools that I mentioned are full fare, so no scholarship. They have a 327 on the GRE, in case you're curious. And they want to end up in New York City post mba. So they're trying to determine whether Columbia would give them a significant advantage over Ross for recruiting roles and if it would be worth giving up all that money that Ross is offering them. They said they're planning to explore roles in brand product strategy in retail, and they wondered if recruiters prioritized Columbia or Stern students for New York City roles over other schools. So, Alex, you had a point of view. Share it. And then I want to share my kind of counterpoint because we, we didn't come. We kind of disagreed on this one a little bit.
• 38:13
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I think the disagreement goes to their professional goals and their geographic goals.
• 38:18
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:19
  Speaker C: But if they want to be in New York City post mba, there's so much advantage of being in New York City during the mba if they can do that. Right. So even just on the recruiting side, they can have more access to Companies, not just during the traditional recruiting cycles, but, you know, through the semesters and so on and so forth. They can certainly engage at a more. A deeper level, one would assume. And then, you know, from the perspective of, of their alumni networks in New York City, I mean, sure, all schools will have alumni networks in New York City, but Columbia and Stern's alumni networks will be so much richer because we know that the majority of their alums are going to be working in New York City, even if Columbia doesn't publish that statistic. I'm sure it's true and would be favorable to them in this conversation. So, yeah, Ross will get them to New York City, but that alumni network will be much smaller and potentially less useful in the longer run. So that was my perspective. Is that worth the significant scholarship differential? Again, that will boil down to the resources that the student has coming to the table, their appetite for debt, et cetera. So for some folks, yes, it will be worth that differential. For other folks, perhaps not so much.
• 39:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I mean, my view on this was, yeah, you're right. I think that the career goals are puzzling to me versus the geography. So they want to land in New York, but they want to work in brand strategy with regards to retail. And you know, I know quite a bit about this, actually. Talked with a marketing professor at Kelly recently and we talked about this very kind of domain. And a lot of those jobs are either in the Midwest or the Southeast. There are a ton of jobs. There's some out on the west coast too. I don't think of New York as being a hub for that. That got me thinking, wow, what a better place to land than Ross with $140,000. If you want to go work at a place like General Mills or Target or any of these big retail brand management type product strategy companies that dominate the Midwest or even the Southeast. And you can make an argument for Duke and the money they're giving. That was my thing. I just didn't see a connect with what they. They seemed like they want to live in New York, but that doesn't necessarily seem to fit with their career plan. So. And maybe they would say, oh, the priority is New York, I don't care, I'll do something else. I just want to be in New York. In which case, yeah, go to the New York School. Even though I did attend a great alumni club event of Michigan in New York City many years ago. And I was like, wow, there are a ton of Ross folks here. But in any event, yeah, so they need to figure this out. And as you said, they also need to just be comfortable with what's their financial situation and their kind of appetite for risk and stuff because of the, you know, the money is a big deal here and they need to that's something they need to decide. But you could make the argument either way, depending on, you know, how important the career goal is versus the geographic location. So it's a little tricky.
• 41:23
  Speaker C: Yeah. Very good.
• 41:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. Alex, thank you so much for picking out these candidates, as always. And I will see you next week for another episode.
• 41:32
  Speaker C: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.
• 41:47
  Speaker A: It.