Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 330—Low GRE, from Central Europe. Boston goal, but odd program selection. Kelley versus Olin

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MBA Wire Taps 330—Low GRE, from Central Europe. Boston goal, but odd program selection. Kelley versus Olin · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:15
  Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA Admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, January 1, 2024. I'm joined by Alex Town from Cornwall, England. Alex, happy New Year to you and to all of our listeners.
• 0:29
  Speaker B: Yes, happy new year. Fantastic. 2024.
• 0:33
  Speaker A: I can't believe it. Yeah. So I got to ask you, do you have any planned New Year's resolutions? Like, is there anything you're thinking that you want to accomplish in this coming year?
• 0:42
  Speaker B: You know, I'd not even thought about that before you asked, so I'll have to get back to you on that, but I've got no sort of real plan to make a resolution.
• 0:52
  Speaker A: All right. But I know you are working really hard on this. Interesting. Doing all this research into trust and information on the web and artificial intelligence. So hopefully you'll continue to do all that stuff.
• 1:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, actually, it's supposed to be rolling out an article of a series of for on trust here in the next week or. Yeah, right. Excited about that. Yeah.
• 1:14
  Speaker A: Cool. So what's on tap this week in the world of MBA admissions?
• 1:19
  Speaker B: Because what about your New Year's resolution, Graham? You can't get away with that.
• 1:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, I haven't thought about it too much. I've been running and stuff, so I want to try to keep up my pace of like 20 to 25 week, but I don't know, I got to think about some other ones. Yeah, there's probably some work related goals I should have in there somewhere, but I'll get back to you.
• 1:40
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 1:41
  Speaker A: So what is going on this week, though? Because this is a crazy week for round two, right?
• 1:46
  Speaker B: Crazy week. Crazy week. I mean, for round two applicants. Absolutely. Stinking crazy week. And it happens like this every year, Graham. You wonder if schools talk to each other at all in terms of how they run their application deadline. So January 3. So Wednesday, Harvard and lbs have their round two deadlines. So it starts off a little quiet. Thursday it's Stamford, Wharton, Booth, Tuck, Yale, Hass, Darden, Anderson, McDonough, foster amongst the top schools with their round two deadlines. And then Friday we have Columbia, McCombs, Marshall, Oxford side, and the consortium has its traditional round two deadline or its traditional deadline. Yeah. So hugely busy week for our round two candidates this week.
• 2:45
  Speaker A: Wow, that is great.
• 2:46
  Speaker B: Are there any, or at least hopefully not hugely busy? Hopefully, just logistically get those submissions completed. Hopefully they've actually done the preparation already.
• 2:56
  Speaker A: I hope so. I mean, I will say one word of advice. Don't submit within hours of the deadline. Ideally, submit know, like the day before the morning of instead of in the evening, because sometimes the servers of these schools have been known to overload a little bit. So definitely get it in if you can. Alex, I just want to ask you, are there any schools camping out, like the week after? I mean, I didn't hear every name of is. Did you say Kellogg? Are they the next week or something?
• 3:22
  Speaker B: I mean, Sloan will be the next week. There'll be 3456 other schools next week.
• 3:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, that seems like a smart move on those schools part, because they can sort of give people a little more time. Okay, so busy, busy times. As you mentioned, Wednesday, this is the beginning of these deadlines. But there's something else happening on Wednesday that's going to be a lot of fun. And that's our cleared MIT plus monthly webinar. So you and I will be together this Wednesday, January 3, from twelve to one eastern, taking questions, chatting with anyone who shows up. We've had a lot of fun these last couple of months doing this. So it's free if you're a clear admit plus member. And to become a clear admit plus member, you just register on our website. So definitely join us this Wednesday for that. Then on January 9, that's next week, we've got an event with Carnegie Mellon Tepper. That's a webinar that we're doing about their ms in business analytics. And you can sign up for that by going to bit le, CMU analytics, all lowercase, all one word. And then our last event that I'm going to promote today is later in the month, on January 24 from eight to 09:00 p.m.. Eastern. And that's an event with real humans. So we're going to have a handful of students from, I think it's tuck. I want to say, oh gosh, is it stern McDonough? I can't remember now. I know I had this right last week, but I've totally forgotten now. But there's a handful of really great students from current schools who are going to talk about their application process and just the experience of going to business school. Kind of an ask me anything vibe is what we go for with these. So you can sign up for that by going to CA, real humans. As I said, that's about it. We do have a bunch of events in February, but I'm going to wait to promo those because we've got so much going on in the coming weeks here. But Alex, in other news, did you see, speaking of Tepper, Carnegie Mellon has launched what they call an accelerated MBA the first deadline to apply to this accelerated MBA program is January eigth. So literally in like a week. It is an MBA program that you can basically complete in either twelve or 16 months depending on I guess on your background, if I understand correctly. And here's what I mean by that. It's only for people with a business undergraduate degree or those who have taken the requisite coursework. So maybe you were an english major, but you happen to take statistics, accounting, some other requisite courses that would help prepare you for business school. The other thing is that you have to have earned b grades or better in all these courses that are the prereq courses and you have to have graduated within the last ten years. So you can't be like 35 and go back to your undergrad days to take those credits and waive. And the reason this is important is because essentially, if I understand correctly, you're waiving out of most of the core curriculum in the MBA program because you've taken these courses, you do have to have worked for a minimum of three years. And so I wanted to ask you, Alex, is this the, this, do you think we're going to see more and more of these kind of short form mbas to compete with what's happening in Europe and with these sort of specialized masters or do you think these are just kind of one mean? We do see, I guess Kellogg has know Columbia has a shorter form j term, but what do you think of.
• 6:37
  Speaker B: Are just, this is one of the two or three sort of trends that we are seeing that sort of challenge the primacy of the traditional two year MBA from top schools. So as you mentioned, we've got the masters in management for those still in college. We've got the deferred admissions program still targeting that group, but for the traditional program and we've got these sort of shorter form mbas that sort of take advantage of folks'background coming into the MBA to encourage that sort of target group a little bit more. So, yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting to see how programs are innovating in terms of their formats. Obviously, more important to me particularly, or more important I think in general is how they continue to innovate in terms of what they're delivering as part of that MBA experience. So issues like sustainability, technology and various other aspects that are becoming so much more important. I'm going to be very curious to see how sort of generative AI and the trends in AI bleed into the MBA experience at these top schools too. So yeah, lots of innovation going on whether it's the format or whether it's the actual content.
• 8:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. So we'll keep an eye on that. The other stuff I wanted to mention before we profile our candidates for this week is that we ran an admissions tip, which I think is very relevant for anyone trying to complete their round two applications this week and next. And it's an admissions tip that we call avoid the comparison trap. And it's basically about how you should go about expressing your interest in joining a school and how you should avoid casting the school in a light visa vis some other program. Just focus on the program that you're applying to. And also, essentially, I guess if I had to distill it down, I would say it's about like, stop telling schools that they're your first choice and just show them by demonstrating the level of knowledge that you've gained about their program and why you're interested in attending and stuff. So that's a good tip that you can read over on the website. The other thing we did, we had another Fridays from the frontline piece, which again is when schools or current students, usually at top programs, share an article on our site. And so this time we connected with a woman named Bailey, who is currently an MBA student at Notre Dame Mendoza. And she went to Chile as part of Mendoza's mod away, which I guess is one of the modules that you can pursue there. She spent seven weeks taking courses there. She took international marketing, international economics, finance, and then a chilean business submersion course. And I believe she was with a handful of her classmates, obviously doing that. They probably have specific regions of the world that they go to each year. And so she learned a ton. But I thought this was funny. She had a quote. We were asked, kind of, I guess in the article, she was kind of explaining some of the different things she did while she was there. And she said, some of my favorite adventures were exploring machu Picchu while wild llamas roamed the Lost City, attending a tango lesson in Buenos Aires, horseback riding in Mendoza, and kayaking through marble caves in Patagonia. So it sounds like she got around quite a bit across South America. But I thought it was funny that she went horseback riding in Mendoza. I wonder if that was like a requirement, given that Notre Dame's MBA program is called.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It's really cool. I mean, obviously a lot of her experience is cultural experience. I assume they attached to it some business experience in the region. And I'm wondering, Graham, when you were at Wharton, did you participate in the global immersion programs because it sounds like this is a very similar sort of experience coming out in.
• 10:30
  Speaker A: So, you know, I actually didn't do that. A lot of my classmates did. But yeah, most of these schools top MBA programs will have these programs where you can go off and spend. It can be anything from, know, six or seven weeks or to just maybe during a break like a couple of weeks where they do these immersions. And I know my classmates at Warden had a blast doing that stuff. It was just very informative. But also for those targeting jobs in those regions that they went to, it's really helpful because you always do these employer was I couldn't go because I was working for the small business development center at Wharton, which is another thing I was really interested in entrepreneurship and startups and so I was kind of helping businesses in Philadelphia with their startup needs and so stayed around.
• 11:13
  Speaker B: No, I think it's super interesting because it gets to the point because obviously now we've got decision wire and people weighing up different programs and it really does require candidates now to really get under the hood in terms of the specific offerings that each of these programs provide. Because a program like this, they call it Modaway, I think you called it, Wharton calls it Global Immersion program, are really appealing to folks that are using the MBA to move to a different geography. And you might argue, well, actually, isn't that what an exchange program does? Lots of these programs also have exchange relationships with other schools overseas, which is again a terrific opportunity. But the exchange programs, they require a lot more from the student, right. It means you're going to spend an entire semester in most cases away from your home campus. The reason why I bring this up is I think that this type of program is a really good sort of in between offering that provides access and resources to another region, but doesn't require you to leave the home campus for the recruiting time for a start. That would be quite difficult.
• 12:37
  Speaker A: And I think one thing I want to mention, so in the case of Bailey, who went on this trip with Mendoza, she mentioned that, if I remember correctly, and I'm hoping I remember this right, she said that she intends, I believe, to do some work. She works for some kind of big company in the States and I think is going back to that company when she finishes. I got the sense that she was returning to her pre MBA employer. But anyway, one of the things she mentioned I think was that she's hoping to actually use this trip, the experience she got on this trip to help that company with its kind of latin american business development and what they're doing down there. So I think it can have all kinds of implications. Even if you don't want to work directly in the region, like get a job in the region, you might want to help your existing firm or whatever firm you go to in the states to enter a new market, and you have that knowledge. So, no, really interesting stuff. The last thing, Alex, that I wanted to get your take on before we talk about the candidates is just Kellogg at Northwestern published their employment report. And so I'll give you the numbers, and I'd love to hear your take. So 83% of their class were looking for work. The rest of them, there were about 12% that were sponsored, 2% decided to start their own company. And I think whatever's left, the remainder. There were people who probably were continuing with additional coursework, like law school or these joint degrees and stuff. So that's the basics of their class. In terms of those who were looking for work, 95% had an offer of a job within three months of graduation. The starting salary average was $175,000. The signing bonus that was delivered on average was $30,000. And then in terms of the industries that people went into, consulting led the way, 42%. That's up 2% from last year when it was 40%. Financial services, up quite a bit. Actually. 22% of Kellogg grads went into financial services. That was only 16% the year before. Technology comes in 3rd. 17% of the class went into tech. That's down a bit from 21%. Consumer packaged goods, 7% entered that field. And then healthcare, 3%. Now, in terms of geography, 32% of Kellogg graduates landed in the midwest. That's unchanged from last year. 28% went out to the east coast. And that's actually up quite a bit. It used to be 22%, so that's up 6%. 23% went out to the west coast. That's down. It was 30%. And actually in second place last year in terms of most popular regions. So that's fallen off a bit south, holding steady at 11%. And then they sent about 6% of their graduates overseas for jobs. So, Alex, what do you make of these numbers from Kellogg?
• 15:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think these numbers you could have copied and pasted in three or four other m seven programs and you'd see pretty similar stats in terms of the overall salary. I mean, we're seeing across quite a few programs a drop in tech placement this season and inflation in consulting placement, even though we wonder when they're actually starting those jobs in some cases. And that correlation with a drop off on west coast correlates heavily with the drop off in tech, which basically means they're getting less jobs in Silicon Valley. I guess for some of these mean overall the numbers are fantastic, they're holding up. But that sort of shift away from tech, an increase in financial services, increase in consulting, we're seeing that in quite a few programs in that similar tier. Graham?
• 16:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. And I mean, one of the things we should highlight is that Kellogg's always been very balanced about sending. It's like sort of a third midwest, maybe not quite now it's not quite 25% out west and then a batch to the east as well. So they're well, kind of grounded across the US. But we are seeing that shift a little bit more towards the east coast now, which you're absolutely right, totally because of the tech fading. But in any event, very good numbers overall. I think that's all I've got. Should we move into the candidate reviews? I know you picked out a couple of apply wire entries and then another decision wire entry to talk about this week.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, let's kick on.
• 16:56
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week is applying to seven schools. Those schools are Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Uva and Yale. And they want to start next fall. They have been working in kind of supply chain consulting and the mobility sectors, which could be like groceries or Uber, that kind of stuff. They are thinking about consulting or tech after business school. And they mentioned some companies like Amazon, Tesla, Uber. Their GRE score is a 311. Their GPA is 3.3. This candidate has five and a half years of work experience. I think two and a half of those years were working in forecasting for an S and P 100 company where they were promoted a couple of times. And then they've also got two years at MBB where they had this kind of focus on supply chain. And they've also been promoted with some awards at that job. They are located in central Europe. And I have to say they did leave us a little note, Alex, with a bunch of information. But they also said, hi all, I love the show and the website. You're doing a great job for all of us. And they mentioned that they were featured on the podcast some time ago, but have had a chance to change jobs, take the test and rethink their goals a bit. So they now have more details to share and more questions and concerns. So, Alex, what do you make of this? I mean, there's a lot more detail that they provided that I'll let you get into. But it's funny, I guess we must have profiled them. It must be more than a year ago or something. And now they've taken the test. Right. And they have some more idea of their path and stuff.
• 18:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. Hopefully we don't completely contradict our discussion from the last podcast episode that they were featured.
• 18:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get the team to delete that.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: But I think there's a lot to like about this profile. The GPA is 3.3, but they did get a scholarship for the best. That's awarded to the best students at university. So I would be concerned with a direct conversion on that GPA. It's probably on a relative scale higher than that and so forth.
• 19:14
  Speaker A: Obviously, no inflation.
• 19:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, the GRE is the big issue, I think, that they're going to be challenged with, because it does sound like Graham, that their work experience is really interesting and that they've done very well. Two and a half years in an S and P 100 company with a couple of promotions now, two years at MBB focusing on supply chain with some awards now they're sort of looking into this mobility space, which I think is a sector that's very interesting, quite innovative. I mean, there's probably a lot of stuff going on in that sort of sector from an automation standpoint and so forth. So I think there's a lot to light there. And coming from central Europe, they're certainly not going to be overrepresented in the applicant pool. They've got. Their extracurricular activities seem strong, too. They led teams at their sort of university. There's lots of sports related extracurriculars, swimming, amateur racing, driver, and so on and so forth. I would say there's a lot to like here. The sort of question is, should they apply round two this season with what they've got, or come back next season in round one? And I think, yeah, that 311 on the GRE is going to prove very challenging, even if that is only the one aspect of their overall candidacy that's relatively weak. If everything else is in place, that's still going to cause concern for the admissions committee. So I would say, yeah, maybe apply to one or two programs in round two. Obviously, they need to have made that decision already. So hopefully they listen to this and have already made that decision with the thinking that they're probably not going to find a lot of success, but with the plan to come back in round one next season with a lot of effort to really ramp up the GRE score. Because if that GRE score was at par with the rest of their profile. Graham? I would say that they should be targeting the very programs they have listed in that range from the very best, I. E. They've got Harvard and Stanford. Wharton's missing, but they've got Harvard and Stanford. They've got other m seven, they got Columbia, they got hass. So they've got a nice range of top schools with a strong GRe. That's where they should be. Graham?
• 22:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's the main thing. And I did recommend to them that, wow, if they're struggling with the test, just hire a tutor, take a class, it's going to be money well spent, especially because I believe they mentioned that they're really hoping to get some scholarship. And I think if they had a 325 or some great sort of GRE score, even higher, possibly, then you'd say, wow, this person, as you say, great work experience. They're from central Europe, which it could mean Austria or something, but it could also mean Romania or Czech Republic or Poland. So these are countries that are not sending a ton of people to business school in the US. And so they're going to be sought after. And so if they could just get the GRE score that kind of, as you say, matches their profile, not only could they run the table or get some really good results at top schools, but they might also see some money coming their way. So I think that's the move. And I think they could try and apply now, see if a couple of schools work out for them. But again, another option would be, as you say, just give it a go in round one next year if things don't pan out. And I would spend the entire spring making the GRE. My mission? To aim for 325 plus and see what can happen. Because, yeah, clearly the GPA, if they were in eastern Europe or central Europe or something, that GPA has no great inflation is my guess. And as you say, they were, like, top of their class, so that's fine. Right? So they just got to get the test score up, and that'll probably do it.
• 23:41
  Speaker B: And they're smart. Right? So you would think that they could conquer this gre with the right preparation.
• 23:47
  Speaker A: Totally, yeah.
• 23:48
  Speaker B: And they said they got to focus much harder on the verbal aspect. So obviously, as an international student, that is going to be more challenging. But, yeah, they can double down, get that dealt with and so forth. Yeah, I think there's a lot to like here. I think there's a lot to like here. Graham.
• 24:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I love that they have that outside activity, like race car driving. They have some things that are going to help them stand out. Yeah. So best of luck to them. I want to thank them for the kind words about the show. Good luck prepping for the test and with any round two apps that they get in. But, yeah, so we'll see how that all turns out. Alex, let's move on, though, and talk about wiretaps.
• 24:32
  Speaker B: Candidate, just one final quick question about this round two strategy. Let's say they do target a couple of schools in round two. Should they plan to schedule a Gre in time before the interview invites go out?
• 24:50
  Speaker A: I mean, if they have.
• 24:51
  Speaker B: And note that in the optional essay.
• 24:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, that would be. One strategy would be to let schools know that they're taking it again if they think they have the bandwidth to do it. Yeah, I would absolutely do that.
• 25:02
  Speaker B: Definitely. But that wouldn't stop them retaking the GRE, let's say, in the spring with the requisite preparation that they need. But if they could get a GrE score or a GRE taken sort of the back end of January with a couple of weeks of really hard push, that might shift the needle a little bit.
• 25:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's possible.
• 25:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. Anyway, it's just another quick thought.
• 25:30
  Speaker A: All right. Yeah. So we'll see how that turns out. In any event, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week is a really interesting case. This person wants to start school next fall, and they have just three schools on their target list. The first is Georgetown McDonough for their online MBA. The second is Harvard business School, and the third is Vanderbilt. Owen, this person's been working in med tech or in healthcare prior to business school. They have some ideas for post MBA that are a little bit different but adjacent, I think, and we'll get into that in a moment. But their test score is they've taken the GRe and they have a 318. Their GPA from Undergrad is a 3.5 where they majored in neuroscience and English. So that's a really pretty amazing double major. They've got five years of work experience located in Boston, and they love Boston. That'll come up again later, too. They won a land in the northeast after business school, and they did a lot of stuff in undergrad aside from that double major. They were on the swim team. They taught swimming lessons. They wrote for the school magazine. They've been working most recently. And I think it sounds like maybe for their whole career, for the largest medical devices company on the planet. They did like an internal leadership development program there. They've led software translation projects, done a whole bunch of things at work. It sounds like a very competent and rich kind of set of work experiences at this company. They also do some volunteer work, patient outreach for people with heart defects. They're on the board of a nonprofit, and they're really into hiking, biking, kayaking, and skiing. The other thing that kind of ties this all together is that this candidate actually has had two major heart surgeries, and I believe that ties into why they're working in healthcare, why they do this volunteer outreach for people with heart defects. So there's a nice thread that weaves everything together. As I said, georgetown. They're applying online. Harvard, because it's in Boston, and they love Boston. And then Vanderbilt, they mentioned they're applying there because they have friends and family that they could live with in Nashville. And so the last thing I want to mention is they say they specifically have not targeted MIT because their Gre, which I'll remind you guys, is a 318, is not within the middle 80% at MIT. So that's kind of the basics on this candidacy. And, Alex, you and I talked quite a bit about this one, so we have a lot of thoughts, but I'll let you start. What's your take on this person's profile?
• 28:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I love the neuroscience, English double major. I could just imagine them geeking out with all this generative AI stuff and linguistics and various other things. I assume they're pretty passionate about all that stuff, and it looks like their career in the medical devices industry. AI medical devices, they say, for robotics or whatever. Anyway, it's super interesting. So I think their academic and professional profile should probably really help them stand out. As you say, they've had some health issues, and that appears to have driven their professional and personal sort of life experiences, which you say can sort of help drive the narrative and so on and so forth. But they're also active sports on the swim team and stuff, so that's very good, too. Yeah. So overall, again, I really like this profile, much like our first candidate, for very different reasons, and like our first candidate, the GRE is a bit of a limiting factor. It's not as much in this case, it's 318. So I'm not sure what the Sloan range is, but I've seen on Livewire this season, Graham, plenty of people getting offers at top programs with GRE scores in the 318 17 range. I don't think Sloan would be completely out of the market. I do think, and we talked about this before their school selection is frankly just bizarre. Why McDonough online when there's probably some other schools that they could have applied online if they wanted to do the online route, why Harvard and not Sloan if they want to be in Boston? And yeah, Vanderbilt. Yeah, Vanderbilt's got a good reputation for healthcare, but just seems like a random other school to choose just because you've got a couple of mates that live down there or whatever it is, or maybe some family. So I would try to really focus a bit harder on school selection, which might be quite difficult given that we're very close to the application deadline. And again, it might be that they could get a GRE rescheduled for that sort of back end of January and noting the optional essays are planning to do that. Because again, that does seem the weaker aspect of this profile. Lots to like here. Just a bizarre set of school choices.
• 30:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. If this person, just like the last, if they had a 325 or something more around the average of top schools, I would say, hey, go for the best healthcare kind of MBA programs possible, or tech. I know they're interested in tech and stuff. So, yeah, it is very puzzling to me. And I also don't fully understand the. I mean, obviously McDonough has a great MBA program. This is not meant to say that anything negative about them, but I'm just saying, if you're willing to go all in and do an in person MBA at either Vanderbilt or Harvard, why wouldn't you? Also, just usually people don't mix and match types of delivery, right? So that's one thing. But I did mention to them, I'm like, you know what? That 318 GRE is going to be no better for Harvard than it would be for MIT. So they should apply to MIT. I think MIT would actually quite enjoy this person's background. And so I would argue they should apply there. They love Boston, they want to stay in. Know you've got to apply to both of the big programs in that.
• 33:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, very interesting. Like I say, like the first candidate, their profile is super interesting for some quite different reasons. And we hate. Well, in this case, there's a couple of issues, a slightly lower GRE and the school selection, whereas in the first person's case, it's like really just knuckle down and sort out this GRe.
• 33:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. All right. Want to thank them for their post and we'll see how things turn out. Hopefully they will keep us up to date. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate for this week is actually a decision wire entry that you selected Alex and this person. It's an interesting case. They applied to a couple of schools. They applied to Indiana, Kelly and to Washington University, Olin, which is in St. Louis, and they got accepted to both schools. Kelly is offering them $70,000 in scholarship and Olin is offering them 80,000. So pretty neck and neck, but both nice scholarships. This candidate is starting school in the fall. I guess that's probably obvious. They want to get into consulting after business school. And they mentioned Accenture, Carney, Ernst and Young McKinsey. Their GMAT score was a 680. This candidate is brazilian, located currently in Brazil, and hopes to land in the midwest after business school. They mentioned that they haven't yet settled on a school, but they're very undecided between the two. And they say that their goal is consulting big four or maybe even MBB if they can pull it off. Alex, you had some dialogue with this candidate, so tell us a little bit more about that and what do you make of this choice?
• 34:47
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think this is quite a difficult choice. I mean, one question to the candidate is, did they really only apply to Indiana, Kelly and Olin? And if that's the case and they want to be in the midwest, shouldn't they throw in an application or two to the likes of Ross or Kellogg or something like that? Whilst they have these offers in hand, that might make sense for round two and for these options that they have now, I mean, the scholarship money is very tight, right? So I'm not sure I'd make a decision on based on which program is offering more money because it's literally, I think it's a 10,000 differential, although I'm a bit arrogant saying that maybe 10,000 is a huge swing for them and that could have an impact, but they want to stay in the midwest and they either want to get into consulting or stay in tech. And they have a background working for Google in Brazil. So it sounds to me like in a startup background, sounds to me like they have a pretty interesting professional experience to bring to the table. So they'd be paying 40,000 more, or be paying 40,000 to go to Indiana and 60,000 to go to Washington University. Olin. I guess this is kind of like when we were talking about our Friday from the front lines person doing that mod away program. I'd really scrutinize the aspects of each of these programs and what might be directly tailored to their specific interests to see if there is something about Kelly or Olin that really strikes them. And if that's the case, then I think that's a good argument to attend one or the other, you know, at a real squeeze, maybe Kelly is considered a tier above, but I think it's a pretty gray at that level. Right. They're sort of top 25 programs, I would think top 20 to top 25. When you're at that level, I think it's very nuanced. And I would really look under the hood at alumni networks in the region that they want to be, as well as specific academic and professional options that each of the programs provided. There's no obvious answer, I don't think.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: Graham yeah, I guess I'm leaning Kelly on this one. And the reason is that Kelly is actually going to be, even though Kelly's given a little less money, it's actually cheaper. I think their tuition is lower. Okay. Because they mentioned they'll pay forty k to go to Indiana and 60 to go to Washington New. So I think it'll be a little bit cheaper. But that's not the reason I'm leaning that way. The reason I'm leaning that way is because, and I may be biased, I spent a little bit of time interviewing a couple people there not so long ago in their careers department, and I feel like they just have a great career services track record and have historically had that. And I also think that while it is a bit of a gray area, they very consistently do rank above Washington University when it comes to all the rankings, at least I don't think I've ever seen them behind Olin. So I don't know. I mean, this person wants to land in the midwest, so both schools are probably pretty good at satisfying that. I do think of Kelly as being pretty good at getting folks, maybe not for MBB, but certainly for accenture, Carney, Ernst and young, all those types of companies. So I would lean that way. Also, I'm pretty fond of Bloomington as a college town experience kind of thing, which might be a little bit different. So I don't know. That's my take. But you're to, they can do that due diligence and figure it out because it is close. But yeah, it's a nice problem to have. And I thought it was a great idea that maybe they throw in an app in round two and see what happens. Maybe they'll get into some other schools, too.
• 38:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, they've got a six and 180 GMAT. Right. So that might be why they got a bit queasy about applying to top 16 m seven. But we know GMAT scores coming out of South America tend to be slightly lower than the median coming out of United States and so forth, for reasons about sort of test taking culture and so on and so forth. So my advice in that regard is, if they haven't already, I would take a flyer on Ross and Kellogg.
• 39:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. Good advice. All right. Well, thanks for picking these out. Some really interesting quandaries, as always, across these three candidates to discuss. So, Alex, we'll be back in one week's time to do it all again. Appreciate you doing this. And I'll see you in a week.
• 39:35
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care. Happy New Year.