Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 444: Low GPA, from India. 740 GMAT, first generation. 332 GRE, from Nigeria

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MBA Wire Taps 444: Low GPA, from India. 740 GMAT, first generation. 332 GRE, from Nigeria · 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, August 25, 2025. Emory University's full time MBA powers growth in your career, your leadership and your future. Built on a foundation of cross functional problem solving, leadership development and career readiness, this top 20 MBA program delivers a high return on investment with top five career outcomes. Step into a global network that's connected by design and supportive by nature. Explore the Emory MBA at Emory Biz ClearAdmit. That's Emry Biz ClearAdmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 0:59
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:01
  Speaker A: So I'm off in the woods in Canada. I'm on vacation but you know, we never miss a week of this show. I've had a great kind of couple of weeks here tooling around through Nova Scotia and Prince Edward island and now Quebec. So getting to discover Canada, which is a country that I, despite being American, had only been to in very limited doses. So it's kind of cool.
• 1:21
  Speaker B: No, absolutely brilliant. I have been to Quebec City. I drove from Toronto via Montreal up to Quebec City when I actually lived in Toronto for a little while. But yeah, I think what you're doing going, you know, Nova Scotia and so on and so forth, absolutely fantastic.
• 1:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. What's been going on on your end. And with regards to admissions, I feel like I saw an email that you sent to the team kind of putting us on warning mode about the flurry of deadlines that start this week. Right.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: The new season officially begins this week, which is really exciting, I think. So Cambridge Judge is first out of the gate, which is actually the same as last year. They led the march last year. With the round one deadline coming up, I think it's Tuesday. And then the following week we'll see a flood of round one application deadlines. Judge just seems to be out on its own next week. But yeah, no, the season is beginning.
• 2:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess and perfectly aligned with that. You've been hit with a flurry of apply wire entries on the website. So I know you've been responding to people who share their profile, looking for some last minute feedback and a gut check before round one. So that's been a lot of fun and it's just nice to see all those posts coming in.
• 2:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely fantastic. And obviously we're going to talk about three of them today.
• 2:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 2:46
  Speaker B: But yeah, folks want to use apply wire to get sort of last minute feedback. On their applications before they hit the submit button on round one, then that's what the tool sort of help is good for.
• 3:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, so I think we're going to actually do something else. Tomorrow at noon Eastern, you and I are going to do a live stream on YouTube. It's kind of an office hours format. Just again with this idea that look round one deadlines are looming. Many of our listeners and clear admit community members have questions right as they approach these deadlines. And so we're just going to hang out. We'll have some prepared things to talk about, but mostly we want to hear from our audience and tackle questions. And the only way to be part of the live stream is to make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel. And you can do that at bit ly cautubelive, all one word, all lowercase. The other thing you can do is send questions to us in advance. If you've got a burning question about your applications, you can just write to infoearty admit.com and just mention the live stream and we'll make sure to put that question into the mix. But Alex, this is a new thing for us. I mean, we've done monthly kind of webinars before with our audience and stuff, but this is our first kind of live stream on YouTube, so it'll be kind of interesting. Hopefully no technical difficulties, but should be fun.
• 4:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, it should be very different for us. We've never done it before, but we used to do Clubhouse, so I'm sure we can navigate some new technology. Well, YouTube's very old at this point, but hopefully it'll be a really interesting new format for us. We're trying to do a little bit more on social, given the dynamics of what's going on out there. So this is just another step in that direction.
• 4:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And then if that's not enough for you, starting on September 10th, over the course of three consecutive Wednesdays, we're doing our admissions series with admissions directors. It's kind of an inside the application process series where we invite admissions directors from top schools. So on September 10th will be the first one. I'm going to sit down with admissions directors from Dartmouth, Duke, Wharton Darden and Georgia Tech Scheller. And then there are two more events after that, but we've got some great schools joining us, including Columbia, Chicago, Yale, INSEAD, LBs and many more. So you can sign up for those events at bit ly ca, inside mba, all one word, all lowercase. So, yeah, some more events on the horizon. Lots of fun and just getting geared up for that stuff.
• 5:17
  Speaker B: Very good. Enjoy, everyone. These are really good events to attend, actually.
• 5:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, they're fun. So the other thing is, because we're approaching all these deadlines, we've been publishing a lot of good content on the website, some big admissions tips. And so there were actually four that we ran in the last week or so. One of them was about how to dig really deep with MBA program research. I think sometimes candidates are always wondering, how can I get that extra edge and learn more about schools and have that show in my file? So I did this great piece about anecdotes and advocates, and it's sort of like, how do you connect with students, alumni, faculty, and then take those interactions and turn them into, you know, solid content for your materials? We also published another admissions tip about how to show an MBA program that you mean business, you know, in terms of, like, really digging deep. And it relates to that first tip, but it just talks about how you really want to keep things personal. You want to cite your sources to the extent that you've gone and done things and interacted with folks in the community, and you want to tailor your content, obviously for the school that you're applying to. So there's some good advice there. And then two other quick ones. We did a should I apply in round one or round two to my top choice school? And that is a really interesting piece that kind of does some myth busting about the rounds. And it actually refers to a podcast that we recorded as well on that same topic way back when. There's some quotes from Elliot on our team. So that's a really important tip as well. And the last one, one of my personal favorites, and I think I might have actually written the very first draft of this one is an admissions tip called know your application readers. And it's sort of all about like, who's reading the file on the other side, what kinds of people work in admissions, and, you know, this classic marketing thing, know your audience. So anyway, a lot of good advice. Alex, on the site right now.
• 7:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, I know you like that last admissions tip, and I assume it also links to our admissions academy video on exactly the same topic.
• 7:23
  Speaker A: It does.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: So, yeah. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah. But all really important tips. We are getting close to crunch time for round one, so should you be applying to your best school in round one? That might have something to do with whether you're potentially overrepresented or not, but there are lots of other factors to consider, and it's not just because it's my Best school. It must be in round one. There are actually advantages of applying in round two.
• 7:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, one of.
• 7:55
  Speaker B: I won't reveal them. Right. More. More to come when you go read the article.
• 8:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. And the other thing, Alex, is that, like you said, if someone. If you're not a reader and you're more of a video person, almost all of these admissions tips have these videos that you and I recorded as part of that Admissions Academy video series. So you can get this content however you want. One last thing, we did a piece called, as part of our mythbusters series called the Higher the Rank, the Better the Fit. Obviously, that's false, but we had a lot of fun debunking that myth. So you can read that piece as well. Yeah, it's been busy. This is that time of year where we're gearing up for the new application cycle, so we're trying to provide everyone in the applicant community with as much content as possible.
• 8:37
  Speaker B: Graham, let's be frank, too. Whilst you're on holiday, which is very well deserved, etc. We did record two podcast episodes in short succession. Now we've had a bit of a gap.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: Yeah. So there's more.
• 8:50
  Speaker B: So we're playing. Yeah. Just a little bit of capture.
• 8:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. And actually, speaking of that, in our last episode, we talked about how we started this new series called Professor Profiles, and we started with Wharton. I'm not sure why. I mean, I like to think it's because that's where I went and because you worked there. But I think it was coincidence. But in the interim, we've done Professor Profile pieces for HBS and mit, so we, you know, I mean, there's. We talk about two professors at each institution. I won't get into all the details, but some pretty interesting professors that we're profiling. I actually loved at. I guess it's at hbs. There's a professor named Francis Fry. I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that right. And she's a professor of technology and operations management over at hbs. And, you know, I will point out she has a PhD from Wharton, so I just want to mention that as an aside, but she teaches at HBS and she wrote a book that you may be familiar with, Alex, called Move Fast and Fix Things, the Trusted Leader's Guide to Solving Hard Problems. I thought that was kind of a very clever title, given the move fast, break things kind of thing you hear out of Silicon Valley a lot. I think that was like a Facebook thing, right? But in any event, I don't know if you're familiar with that book or not, but it was interesting profile on that professor.
• 10:07
  Speaker B: No, but I think it is a really clever title. I do like that. Yes. Move fast and fix things. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:15
  Speaker A: And then we also with mit, profiled again to a couple of professors. I won't go into all the details, but we had a woman named Deborah Ancona who's a professor. What is her? Let's see. She. I guess she is known or most famous for this thing called the X Team theory. And it's the method by which organizations can drive innovation from where she sits. And basically what she does is she challenges team members to externally orient themselves, connecting with and learning from the world around them. She has this book called X Teams. How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate and Succeed. So I guess it's this whole idea of be careful about looking too much within the enterprise, make sure you're really looking outside of it as you try to innovate. Sounds like good advice. And she, along with Andrew Lowe over at mit, were profiled in that piece.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely brilliant. I do a little bit of course management or teaching, whatever you want to call it, for Columbia Business School out in New York. And the subject next week is all about innovation. So I need to get up to speed on some of that stuff.
• 11:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, it sounds like a really interesting book. The other thing we did in these last couple weeks is we ran some more admissions Director Q&As. Perfect timing for people applying to some of these schools. So we caught up with admissions directors at Tuck, Cornell and Kellogg. So over at Tuck, Lawrence Murray, who's the dean of admissions there, he had an interesting quote that I thought you would enjoy. Alex. He said something we need to talk about. With AI becoming so prevalent, we expect applicants to write their own essays, their ideas, their experiences, their voice. That all needs to come from them. Can AI help them brainstorm or catch errors? Sure. But the heart of what they're saying has to be authentically theirs. We can tell when something doesn't sound genuine or when it doesn't match up with the rest of their application. The biggest piece of advice I'd give to anyone sitting down to write is to just be themselves. Don't try to guess what we want to hear. Tell us their real story. Share their actual perspective. That's how we get to know who they are and what they bring to our community. So what do you make of that?
• 12:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, I really like it. But again, it's sort of getting to this idea that use AI as a brainstorming tool. Use AI to sort of do the grunt work of just making sure that you're doing a really good job of capturing all of your sort of experiences, etc. Etc. So maybe brainstorming some of your experiences in terms of how to address certain essay topics and so forth. But then, you know, work on the drafts through your own voice, maybe use the AI then at the other end of the thing just to, you know, check for sort of grammar and all that kind of stuff. But I think, you know, having your own voice is really, really important. And that means you do all that middle work, I would say.
• 13:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And, you know, along those lines, some more essay advice. You know, we connected with Eddie Aspie at Cornell, who's the dean of admissions over at Johnson, and he, you know, he also talked about essays. And it's a little bit different, though. He didn't talk about AI, but he said the essay portion is one of the most insightful components of the application process. It allows us to hear directly from candidates in their own words and better understand why they see Johnson as the right fit for their goals. Finally, as a reminder, we want to hear your authentic voice in your essay. This past year, our team noticed an uptick in the use of ChatGPT in many essays. And there were clear mistakes. For example, leaving in the sections that instruct you to, you know, enter a school's name, or the drastic inconsistencies from other communications or essays throughout the admissions process. So he's just talking about they've started to find these weird, you know, inconsistencies. But the thing that I. The reason I share that quote, especially the top part, is I thought it was interesting, this focus on, you know, Johnson as the right fit for the goals. Right. So there's definitely a bit of emphasis there that Eddie's calling people's attention to. I think it's important.
• 14:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's really, really important. But that whole idea that folks are leaving in ridiculous things from Chat GPT, that's just pure lazy. And I hope that using these AI tools isn't making us lazy easier. You know, just make sure that you really own the end product, the essay as it's written and so forth before you submit. I've seen it in my work, Graham. You know, people submit sort of discussion posts or essays or whatever in response to questions in the courses I teach. And I do. I see stuff like that, and I'm like, this is ridiculous. All they did was put the query into ChatGPT gave it a little bit of context and then copied and pasted the response.
• 15:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, and this is like an important step in your life. I mean, you're going to spend the amount of money you drop on an MBA degree is significant. It's two years of your life in most cases, sometimes one year depending on the program. But yeah, you got to make sure you put some time and effort into these essays, otherwise, you know, why are you bothering? Right.
• 15:34
  Speaker B: So, yeah, and frankly, some schools, and you know, it's not the luxury of all schools, but some schools have, well, many more qualified candidates than they have seats in the class. So this is giving them an easy excuse to put you in the wrong pile.
• 15:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally. So while we're talking about AI and stuff, I wanted to shift gears and share a quote from Steve Thompson at Kellogg. So he's the head of MBA admissions there. And we do ask in our interviews with admissions directors sometimes about what's something you wish people knew more about at your program. And so he went down that path and he said, one aspect of Kellogg I wish more applicants knew about is our emphasis on constantly innovating our curriculum, especially in areas shaping the future of business. We're not just teaching students about emerging technologies, we're embedding them into the Kellogg experience in meaningful hands on ways. A great example is our new AI curriculum which launches in the fall of 25 and offers MBA students a cross disciplinary foundation in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The centerpiece of this new curriculum is a five week high impact course called AI Foundations for Managers taught by faculty from Marketing Strategy, Operations, Finance and Management. So I thought that was kind of interesting. I mean they've really revamped their curriculum. It starts this fall so very quick kind of response and is cross disciplinary, which I think is smart.
• 16:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And any school that's not doing this is in trouble in my book.
• 17:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:04
  Speaker B: So I'll leave it at that. But it's really good that Kellogg is doing it. I know we talked about Wharton, as we like to talk about Wharton. They have a whole specialization now on, on AI if I remember correctly. But any school that isn't innovating in this space will get left behind.
• 17:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I guess that those are the main news and notes I had. I know we can talk about our candidates this week. I did want to remind everyone tuning in that we do take your listener mail. If you write to infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps and we will get back to you. We did get an amazing email in the last few days. I've been on vacation. But we'll talk about it next week because it's. I want to read some quotes from it and stuff, but please send us your emails and don't forget to just tell other people about this show and about ClearAdmit more generally. That always helps us. We're kind of a grassroots organization, so good to spread the word. Alex, anything else on your side before we talk about our candidates this week?
• 18:01
  Speaker B: Week, let's kick on.
• 18:02
  Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. Our first candidate this week has five schools on the target list. And those schools are Berkeley, the Indian school of business, INSEAD, NYU, Stern, and Yale SOM. They want to start school in the fall of 26. Their career to date has been in software product management, currently working at an AI stage startup, I believe. And they've also done some work at an ngo. They're thinking about either consulting or technology after business school. And as a result they have, you know, Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Carney, etc on the list, but also Amazon, Meta, Google, etc. So some different areas they're kind of considering. They have a 2.8 GPA and we'll get into that in a moment. They have yet to take one of the the standardized tests, but I believe are doing so in the next month. They have four years of work experience to date. This candidate is located in India and would like to land in either the United States or Europe when they graduate from business school. And I believe you had a little bit of dialogue with this candidate in which you said, hey, are you taking a test? If so, when? And you also kind of said, what's the deal with that 2.8 GPA? And they did respond, they're taking the GMAT within the next month and that the GPA was due to a bad second year in undergrad, but that after that year the GPA was a really good kind of incremental gains. Their fourth year they said they had a nine plus, which again, this is an Indian candidate. So when I say 2.8, it's actually they probably translated it from there. You know, it's normally out of 10. And so they did very well in their final year. And they also did mention that outside of work they've been mentoring schoolgirls for alternate career paths. I'm not exactly sure what that entails, but they are doing some volunteer work and they said they're applying in round two and they wanted some advice on target schools and Et cetera. But what do you make of this candidacy?
• 20:01
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm a little bit worried, honestly. Overall, I got to believe, like their last year at undergrad they performed very well. And I got to believe that also their work experience is really strong and, you know, they can show that sort of requisite growth and impact and so on and so forth. So I again, I sort of believe that they're probably a really good sort of, you know, person and doing well at work. Right, doing really well at work. So now they've sort of had their head turned a little bit. Maybe I should could go get a top MBA and so on and so forth now that I'm on the right track. That's, I guess that's the point I'm making. I think they've sort of managed to navigate themselves from whatever was going on in that one year at undergrad to a really good track, they establishing a good track record, etc. Etc. But the concerns I have is they're going to have to mitigate their overall gpa, even though they had that really strong final year grade and so forth. And one way of mitigating it is coming out with an outstanding test score. So they haven't taken the test yet, so they're going to really need to knuckle down and look at the medians of the schools they're targeting and sort of excel beyond that to absolutely demonstrate that now they are a different candidate than they were when they were, you know, several years ago. So they've got to get the test score done. I'm also a bit worried that they're targeting round two, you know, potentially overrepresented and so forth. So it just might be a little bit more challenging for them in round two. So, you know, it makes me think that, or it makes me curious if they've just suddenly decided that they want to pursue a top MBA and they're sort of trying to scramble to get things together or, you know, maybe this was a plan all along, but I'm just curious why they haven't taken the GMAT sooner. So I guess my, my point is if they do ultimately get that great test score and they do apply in round two and they're not successful at the very best schools they're targeting, they might also think, well, actually, if I reapply next season, maybe do, you know, take another couple of steps to further mitigate that lower gpa, I might provide myself better options coming back into round one, or maybe they can take this test a little bit sooner than they currently Anticipate and get a couple of applications in, in round one, which will better present their overall profile.
• 23:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, this is a tough one. I mean I looked at it, I was like, wow, 2.8, that's a low GPA. And you, we always talk about how the best way to compensate is to hit the test out of the park, but they don't have the test yet and we, so we don't know. But even if they do get an amazing score on the test, they face this other challenge. As an Indian software product manager overrepresented in the pool. It's possible that their role as you say, is quite strong. You know, in terms of this work experience. We have four years of experience. They are a product manager. That is a role that a lot of people try to get into post MBA potentially. So I think like you say, the work experience looks promising. We don't quite have enough detail on it, but it seems promising and it does sound like they have some outside activities. I also was a little concerned about their goals. You know, they're kind of, is it consulting or is it tech? Like they should probably pick one and that may help to just shape the narrative a bit more. And the last thing, I, I just, I wasn't sure about the target schools. You know, I, I both in terms of the ranking of these schools. I mean these are all very top schools, very hard to get into. But also the geography, like, I was sort of like, okay, what is, what's, what's making that group of schools come together for this candidate's list? You know, they have insead, it's a one year program, they have the ISB in India, they've got Yale at Berkeley and NYU in the States. I almost wonder. They just sort of going after kind of big brand names, but they're not going after Harvard. So it's, it's, it's a little confusing to me. And I, I made a note to myself, I was like, they need clearer goals and they may need to apply more to sort of top 25, not just sort of top 16 type schools. So I don't know, I mean it's, it's tricky and we don't have complete information because we don't have that test score. But even if the score comes in very high, like you said, round two apps to some of these top schools, they may fall short just because they're kind of overrepresented and they have that red flag with the gpa. So it's tricky.
• 25:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm wondering whether the school list is Again, a function of. They've only recently decided that they want to pursue an mba. Right. So they're sort of trying to get things, things together and they haven't done as much sort of in depth research on really identifying the right, the right schools for them and so forth. I could well be wrong. But yeah, there are challenges. Right. They're low gpa. They're going to have to use the optional essay to address that. They've got to come in with a really, really strong test score to help mitigate. And again, hopefully the work is experience and the last year at college really does show a more mature and not just mature because I don't know what, what occurred in the, in the second year but, but it does show that they're really on the right track and they're doing really very strong things, which I got to believe must be the case.
• 26:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, again, I think there's some potential here and like you said, they could always, they only have four years of experience so they could, you know, wait and apply first round next year if things don't go their way this year. If they were to do that like you said, I definitely would recommend pursuing business fundamentals or MBA math or one of these programs to just sort of bolster their academic profile and demonstrate readiness for business school with high grades. But any event, I do want to thank them for sharing their profile and wish them the best of luck as they head into the process here, especially with that test coming up in the next month.
• 26:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, best of luck.
• 26:33
  Speaker A: All right, so let's move on and talk about wiretapping. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week has six schools on the target list. Those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Tepper, Duke Fuqua, Emory, Kellogg, Washington Foster and Yale SOM. They're looking to start in the fall of 26. They have been working in consulting prior to business school and they're interested in staying in that domain. They mentioned companies like Accenture, Carney, Bain and BCG as post MBA targets. Their GMAT score is a 740. They had a 7.5 GPA out of 10. This is another Indian candidate. They went to one of the IIMs which are the Indian Institute of Management, very, very prestigious schools. So they had that strong, that's a very strong GPA out of a program like that. Just to give some context, they six years of work experience. They've been working in a few different domains, but it sounds like a fair amount of leadership. They mentioned, I guess they've been working at an auto company, automotive company doing Sales, digital transformation, network planning. And you know, they've, they've managed, it looks like over 50 million in P&L for the last four years. So big, big job, lots of leadership, GMAT score and as I said, was 740 also quite strong. They also did indicate they're kind of first generation to graduate from university. They're from a rural part of South India and they have quite a few outside activities in terms of, you know, when they were in university it sounds like, you know, their current extracurriculars are rather weak. But they did do a lot in undergrad. I mean they founded a career development club. They were chapter secretary for a sustainability organization. They were the college chess team captain and they also headed the dramatics club. So they were involved as an undergrad, but they've been less so as they've headed into their career. They wanted to know, they asked some specific questions, Alex. I mean these are. They want to know what are my chances at Kellogg, Yale, Duke, Tepper, Emory, at Washington. They're applying for round one, they said. And they also wondered what about scholarship chances and how much scholarship they might be given. And they did share the fact that they think they have strong essays and strong letters of recommendation, but they are heavily dependent on scholarship for enrollment.
• 29:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, again. Well, again, I shouldn't say again, but I do think this is a strong candidate. One thing I really like about this candidate is they are first generation. They have come far, as you said, they went to an IIM and they were heavily involved and so on and so forth. They have a really strong gmat. I assume they've done well at work and so on and so forth. So I think overall they probably can show a lot of the attributes that the top business schools admissions committees look at. The other thing that I like about them is their list of target schools is a nice range. Right. They've aimed quite high and then they've gone after some top 16 and even top 20, top 25 and so forth. So, so I like that range and clearly for someone like this, because I guess they're first generation coming from very sort of rural upbringing, you know, financial aid scholarship might is going to be quite important or very important. So I think that's the reason why they've spread that list of target programs through some of the different tiers. So the argument would be that the lower tier schools will likely be more willing to want to encourage this person to attend through more scholarship money. That's why. Or how most schools use scholarship money. Right. It's to Attract their best admits to really try to encourage them to attend. So I think that strategy is good. You know, maybe at the very top schools, it's going to be a bit more challenging getting scholarship, but some of these very top schools have a lot of scholarship money and they're all, all these schools are competing with each other for the same pool of candidates. Right. So I think they have opportunity here. Graham, as you said, maybe outside activities now is a little bit of a weakness, but other than that, if they're targeting round one, which I assume they are, because, you know, for whatever reasons, they might be in the old bucket of being slightly overrepresented, but if they're targeting round one, that mitigates that. I think they should have some fairly decent opportunities because of the school list that they are targeting.
• 31:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, I tend to agree. I mean, I think that one piece of advice I would have for them is focus on how active they were in university and hopefully if they were head of the chess club and running the drama club, etc. Hopefully those are still interests that they have that they can mention in some way as kind of things they also do currently. You know, maybe they're a big theater goer or they're playing chess regularly. And even if it's informal, showing a continuity of activities is always helpful to give your candidacy some color. I tend to agree that they're going to have way more luck as they go down in the rankings when it comes to money. And the reason for that is because Indian applicants with great numbers are pretty prevalent in the application pool, especially at the top. And so if you're looking at scholarship dollars, it's, you know, they're more likely to get money from, you know, you look at their list like they're more likely to get money from, say, Foster or Emory or Tepper than they would be from, say, Kellogg or Fuqua. And that's just the way, you know, we see this time and time again in terms of the scholarship outlay, especially when you're overrepresented. Right. So I think I like the school selection. I mean, it's diverse and they should, you know, get some, some good results. It just, it's really hard to predict the, the money, you know, will they get, you know, 25 or half scholarship? I. I don't know. I mean, it really is. It depends on the season, what's out there in the pool. And they may find that in the first round. Some of these schools admit them maybe without a lot of dollars, and then, you know, it because they're the schools are kind of like, oh, we've got lots of time to kind of put together a great class and we might find other candidates that look like this candidate. So I don't know, it's tricky. It's hard to know with the money. But I think they have the right strategy, you know, apply to a broad range of schools. And I guess what they could do is if they're not seeing what they want in round one from a monetary standpoint, they could cast a slightly wider net and add in some additional, you know, top 25 schools, you know, whether that's in Indiana or a Vanderbilt or Georgia Tech or something. You know, as they move through the process, if they're really focused on getting a big scholarship.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. And again, maybe they look at a couple of those now if they can get them in round one. Because some of those schools, round one deadlines will be be in October. Right. So if you look at, and I've been looking at, you know, each year I create a list of where all these round one deadlines fall. And it's typically the top tier programs are fast out of the gate with their round one deadlines. There's a couple of top 16 will have early action deadlines, sort of early September 2nd, but then we get into late September, early October. It's typically more the top 20, top 25 have their round one deadline. So they would have a little bit more time to look at a couple of other programs. I always think it's best if you're potentially going to be overrepresented to be targeting round one. You made this comment about maybe they'll wait and offer scholarship later in the process to round two, folks. But I do think, and have you comment on this, Graham, overall, if you're seeking scholarship, it don't deliberately wait for round two.
• 34:52
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:53
  Speaker B: If you're ready, apply in round one.
• 34:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. This is a kind of, I was really. It's a sort of this combination of the fact that they're potentially overrepresented and. Yeah, but I would not wait. No, they need to apply.
• 35:05
  Speaker B: No and yes.
• 35:07
  Speaker A: So, yeah, this is an interesting case. I do want to wish them the best of luck. Hopefully they get into a lot of schools and get a lot of money because it sounds like that's the focus for them. Let's move on though and turn our attention to Wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate for this week is targeting nine schools. They want to start in the fall of 26. And the schools they're looking at are Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Harvard, Indiana, Michigan, Rice, Toronto, Rotman and unc. Kenan Flagler. This person has had a couple of roles pretty pre business school. They used to work at an NGO but then they moved into finance and they're working in tax specifically after business school. They list a few different potential target fields. They mentioned consulting, they mentioned non profit and they also mentioned tech. And you know, target Companies include Bain, BCG, McKinsey, but also Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc. So they haven't really figured out that post MBA plan yet. Their green score is a fantastic 332. They have a 4.58 GPA. That's out of 5, 5 years of work experience. This candidate is located in Nigeria, they're a chartered accountant and again have been working in finance for that's been the latter portion of their career here so far. They also, when they were in the NGO space prior, they did some interesting work helping you know, with kind of what it says here that they led a project that helped bridge the gap between citizens and the legislature through social media and they also helped to kind of help eliminate kind of violence against women and girls among road transport workers. So there's a bunch of interesting kind of NGO type work. They have a bunch of activities as well. They're really interested in traveling and cultural exploration, fitness, reading, I guess, grassroots football development and personal investing. So they didn't talk a ton about their finance career. They seemed to focus more on the NGO stuff they'd done in the post here. But you know, it sounds like finance wise they're, you know, in an interesting role. You did ask them some questions, but what do you make of this candidate, Alex?
• 37:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean again, I think this is probably a very good candidate. Overall test score is outstanding. I think their undergraduate GPA is also very good. They've sort of blended that sort of NGO work with sort of more sort of formal, you know, the sort of work we tend to see out of places like Nigeria in the finance sector. Right. So tax related work and so forth. So I would imagine coming out of Nigeria this is probably a really good candidate because they're coming from Nigeria again, they're potentially going to be overrepresented, so round one is best for them, but they should have everything ready. I think you had mentioned their biggest weakness at this point and that's their goal focus. And if they could spend the next week or two really hammering on coming up with a really good sort of post MBA pathway that would help them one in the application process too. It would help them in. In the. During the MBA itself. That's why we asked. You know, we'd like to understand their goal focus, but I. It might even help them in school selection too. Right. Just making sure they're targeting the right schools and so forth. But yeah, if they can get all their ducks in a row, round one. Graham, I, I think they, they should land. They've got a nice breadth of. Of programs they're targeting, much like our second candidate. So that also helps too, I think.
• 38:58
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, they have nine schools and it's as you say, broad range. I mean, I do wonder how it's hard to apply to nine schools and have every. Especially for the recommendation letter writers. It's a big ask, but hopefully they can get all their ducks in a row, get everything in. I mean, I might suggest that they maybe go after, I don't know, 6, 7 or something as a starting point. But if they can do it all, great. But it is a broad range and yeah, I like the numbers. I mean, they have a really great GRE score. That GPA is probably like a 3.7 when you translate it to when you convert it. So. Yeah. And I mean, again, good work experience. They could stand to focus on their goals a bit like you were saying and something that I had pointed out too. So. But overall, I mean, it seems like they're active. This would be a good person to have in the classroom. Yeah, they took a lot of boxes and you know, I know there are more and more candidates from Nigeria these days, so it's a, it's becoming a, you know, overpopulated kind of crowd in terms of the applicant pool. But this candidate has the numbers and the work experience and seems like they can make the grade. So I, yeah, I'm confident in their approach and I again, like the school selection. It's broad. So they're going to land somewhere for sure.
• 40:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Best of luck to them.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Alex, we did a little bit of a long episode today, but it was because, yeah, we had a lot to cover because I've been out on vacation and stuff. I'll be back back in the office next week and we'll get back on the, you know, kind of regular routine here. But yeah, appreciate you picking these out and holding down the fort as we've had this flurry of apply wire entries coming in.
• 40:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, you're kidding. Everyone. Because we don't have an office. But stay safe, everyone. Best of luck. Take care.
• 40:48
  Speaker A: Sam.