Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 409—3.9 GPA, deferred admissions. Finance or Consulting. Tuck vs Haas

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MBA Wire Taps 409—3.9 GPA, deferred admissions. Finance or Consulting. Tuck vs Haas · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:16
  Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, February 10, 2025. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
• 0:29
  Speaker A: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:31
  Speaker B: So let's dive right in. I mean, there's been a lot going on on livewire. This is peak kind of interview invitation season, right, for round two candidates. So give us the lowdown. Like, what have you been seeing?
• 0:43
  Speaker A: We've seen a lot of interview invites over the last week. Schools like Columbia, Ross and Booth and so forth have rolled out large tranches of interview invites. And we're still seeing, you know, other schools that typically trickle them out over a period of time. Haas, Stanford, etc. Still doing that. And they'll do that for the next, you know, several weeks. That. And there are still a couple of programs that haven't released their interview invites yet. Sloan, Wharton, and so forth. But we are right in the sort of the midst of getting the invites out and obviously candidates interviewing.
• 1:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, totally. And I just want to debunk a myth. So I see lots of candidates on Livewire posting really great questions about, well, when might I expect invites, et cetera. And that's great. But sometimes people who post interview invitations get comments on their posts saying, oh, are you in this region? Has anyone from this region yet gotten an interview invitation? And I think one thing to be clear on is in most instance, I would say nine times out of 10, when it comes to these business schools, they're not issuing the invites by region. They're issuing them pretty randomly. They're not even necessarily issuing them by order of when the application was submitted because most of these admissions committees have multiple readers. And even if one reader is assigned to read all the applications from a certain market, that doesn't mean that they're going to get them all out at the same time. So it's just, I know people like to speculate around this stuff, and there are some instances where a school might issue a batch of invites for a certain market because they're going to that market and they're going to do in person interviews, but it's pretty rare. And so I think, you know, just try to hang in there. I think there's a lot of speculation and nervousness that we see usually, Alex, at this time of year.
• 2:31
  Speaker A: Absolutely. We. And we get these same questions year on year. So yeah, so. So, yeah, yeah, it's, it's a little bit random and it's, I'd say, the only sort of Aspect that's less random is a couple of schools and Yale, I think Tepper do this. They'll take a quick first quot and get interview invites out quickly to a specific group, and then they'll trickle and roll them out over a period of time through that sort of round. So that to me would be my only sort of caveat to that sort of. It's actually more random.
• 3:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. So in any event, I just want to help people, calm the nerves, hang in there. There's still invites to come. With many of these schools, we an event last week, an event with deferred enrollment programs, actually sat down with Stanford and Wharton and Berkeley. It was a lot of fun. And we're going to do it again this week, again talking about deferred enrollment. So this is for kind of current college students mostly, but we're going to sit down with admissions directors from Carnegie, Mel and Tepper, Chicago Booth, Columbia Business School, Yale and uva, Darden. You can still sign up. It's this Wednesday at noon Eastern. You can sign up at bit ly de 0225. So please join us for that. We also have events.
• 3:53
  Speaker A: I'm gonna stop you, Brian.
• 3:55
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 3:56
  Speaker A: How was your event last week? Because you had the first event last week, right?
• 3:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, so I sat down with. Yeah, it was fun. I mean, we had a really big crowd, and then we did breakout rooms, and it was interesting. You know, there's a lot less pressure on deferred enrollment candidates when it comes to the sort of career plan. I mean, schools ask about it and ask how you're gonna use the deferral period. But they did stress that, like, they know that you may not have everything mapped. You know, some college seniors have a job offer already where they're going to go after college, but many don't. And so there was a lot of stressing around. You know, kind of just, hey, don't worry if you don't have a plan, but just give us the broad brushstrokes what you're thinking you want to do. And they talked a lot about how deferred enrollment candidates have a great advantage in that they can really, you know, kind of explore things with their career once that once they get in, you know, so you get in, you got your seat being held for you. You know, you can take that job at a startup or, you know, pivot into something different and explore things before business school. Whereas if you haven't yet applied to business school, your career's much more under the microscope and you're doing every step to sort of maximize your application. So it's just kind of interesting to hear schools talk about that. Yeah. And I guess while we're on the subject of kind of undergrads looking at business education, we are going to continue with two more events this month. Again they're always on Wednesdays at noon eastern. So we'll do February 19th and 26th and we're going to sit down with Masters in Management programs. These are one year programs for college grads who want to get a quick crash course in management directly out of college before they enter the workforce. Probably great for like a liberal arts grad who, you know, if you're a history major, poli sci or you just want to polish, you know, and kind of get something, some of that management education on your resume to be more competitive in the workforce. So we're going to sit down with Michigan, Ross, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Chicago, Booth, Duke, Emory, Indiana and London Business School over the course of those two webinars and you can sign up for those at bit ly mim 0225. So lots of events this month, Alex, but it's been fun so far. We'll see how they go.
• 6:04
  Speaker A: Good.
• 6:05
  Speaker B: We have a bunch of just news and notes. Alex, I think you'll be interested. I mean I know you do some work for LBs, but LBs has just launched something they're calling the Smart Executive mba. And it's a executive MBA program that you can either do in person, which is about 80% in person, the kind of more traditional route, or they now offer it in a blended fashion where you can do what they say, 40, 40, 20. So 40% in person, 40% online and 20% kind of self study so you don't have to be online at a certain time to do that stuff. And they have two campuses for this program. So you can either do it in London or Dubai. So that's the big news out of LBs. I know the team that was working on those changes and they're really excited about it.
• 6:48
  Speaker A: My colleague I'm working with at LBS correspondent sent me an email this morning says he's in Dubai teaching a course. So I'm assuming it might be related to that program.
• 6:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. The other thing we did is we ran a piece about a Wharton podcast that's called Ripple Effect. And I know you know the team at one of Wharton's big kind of business publications which is called Knowledge at Wharton. You're, you're used to be quite friendly with the team that puts that together. And so the podcast that sort of touches on all the interesting research coming out of Wharton is called Ripple Effect. And we did a whole kind of piece about that and we actually put the spotlight on a few different episodes. They have a whole series on cryptocurrency, which I'm going to listen to because I. I am so ignorant about crypto and I'm hoping that this will help me to better understand. So in any event, yeah, that's a really good podcast to check out. I don't know if you ever listened to that.
• 7:41
  Speaker A: I haven't, but I was very fortunate. Knowledge at Wharton featured me twice during my time. So several, several years ago. And actually earlier in my time at Wharton, they quoted me in an article that Peter Feder is also quoted in. So I've still got a copy of that article.
• 8:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, Peter Fader being the very famous marketing professor, right. At Wharton. Speaking of podcasts, we did a whole other thing. We did an article about other kind of great podcasts in the NBA universe. So we featured shows from Berkeley and Darden, nyu, Tuck, Yale, Michigan, Duke. So a whole bunch of podcasts that we just, we did the digging for. So if you're on our website, you can find those shows that you may want to add into your feed. And last but not least, on the news and notes front, we did an article about a bunch of Fuqua students over at Duke who went out to Silicon Valley on a trek and learned they kind of myth bust some things about life in the Valley and the job market out there and stuff. So, interesting article. Yes. There's been a lot happening on the website and a lot in our industry. Alex. I'm just trying to run it all down here. It's a busy week.
• 8:53
  Speaker A: Eventually, hopefully we get all this content into our chatbot.
• 8:57
  Speaker B: Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. So we did a couple of admissions tips. One is a very basic what can you do with an mba? Which some people might be afraid to ask. It's like a really basic question, but we have a great kind of layout of all the different things that people typically do and what you learn, et cetera. And we also did the very timely Interviewing the interviewer admissions tip. So that's like, what questions should you ask your interviewer when they say, hey, do you have any questions for me at the end? So read those if you're interested. Alex. I'm also pleased to report that our Real Numbers series is back. This is where we just kind of compile numbers across top MBA programs. We did a piece on class sizes, so this is all the class sizes for top US MBA programs. And Alex, I want to put you on the spot. Which MBA program do you think has the largest class size of all kind of leading MBA programs in the US.
• 9:51
  Speaker A: In the US So the obvious answer would be Harvard.
• 9:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 9:55
  Speaker A: But I'm gonna. I'm gonna hedge and wonder if Columbia's up there with its January.
• 10:01
  Speaker B: Ooh, you.
• 10:01
  Speaker A: Wow. J Term.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: Wow. Now, I know I do the show with you. You are good. It's Columbia with 972 grads each year or, you know, or students each year across their January intake and their regular September intake. But if we're just being strict. You're right. Harvard, with 9:30 in their single intake, is the winner. Do you want to guess the s. Smallest leading MBA program out there? And this is, let's say US top 50. Okay. So it's not just the top 20, but any idea what size the smallest or what school it might be?
• 10:33
  Speaker A: 50.
• 10:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:35
  Speaker A: Wow. Didn't realize we covered 50 US programs.
• 10:38
  Speaker B: Well, close to it.
• 10:39
  Speaker A: Let me. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm guessing 30.
• 10:43
  Speaker B: Yeah. So that the smallest class size is University of Florida, Warrington. They have 32 students. So that's really good. Yeah, that's exactly where I'm pretty good at this. I know.
• 10:52
  Speaker A: I haven't even seen the article.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: I know. And I put. Totally put you on the spot. And then we did an article about tuition. And I think I asked you this last year, but do you want to take a guess at what school? So what we do is we take the tuition, and it's really more than tuition. It's like, what's the total cost to attend an MBA program for one year? So this includes room and board, tuition, books, all that stuff. Right. So any idea which program is most expensive?
• 11:17
  Speaker A: Well, again, Columbia is probably up there. Just, you know, being in New York, cost of living is probably quite high relative to. So, yeah, just my guess would be Columbia, New York, Stern.
• 11:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. So those. Those two are very much up there. But MIT Sloan is 134k for one year in terms of living, tuition, et cetera. And that's just a tick ahead of those New York schools. Want to guess what there's a. Amongst top programs the cheapest. Want to guess what that might be?
• 11:49
  Speaker A: How low down we go again? Well, top 35 programs. So.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 11:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Well, let's go. University of Florida.
• 11:58
  Speaker B: So it's actually University of Georgia. So smart topic. State school. University of Georgia, Terry. 56k a year, all in. Right. So nice. So kind of interesting. I did notice rice is 81k all in. So, you know, some of these schools are like, you know, not quite half, but, you know, a little more than half, I guess, of. Of what it costs to go to some of the other leading costly, most costly programs. So in any event, we have fun with these numbers. We'll keep publishing these article. You can check them out on the site and see all the schools.
• 12:25
  Speaker A: I'm going to ask you a question though, Graham. Which schools are most generous with scholarship dollars?
• 12:33
  Speaker B: Right. And that's the thing, is it's almost like we need to take the average award amount for scholarships and throw that in a column and show what these schools look like after that. Because that could be interesting. And I would say, you know, it's the top, top 20 schools are really top 16 that are most generous with financial aid.
• 12:49
  Speaker A: My point is, you're speculating. It would be great to have that data.
• 12:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so that's something we can look into. We have one more thing to talk about, Alex, before we can discuss this week's candidates. And that is the career report for the class of 2024 at Berkeley Haas. So I'll give you the numbers as we've been doing, and then you can weigh in. So there were 255 students in the Haas class of 24. 207 of those students were seeking employment post MBA. That's about 81% if you're keeping score at home. That number was 87% last year. So a little bit down there. By three months post graduation, 86% of these students who were looking for jobs had received an offer of employment, and 84% had accepted an offer. Those numbers last year were 90% and 89% respectively, but still pretty good numbers. Out of Haas there, entrepreneurs starting their own business made up 3.5% of the class. That's. That's almost identical to what it was last year. The median base annual salary was 160k. That was 166 last year. And in terms of the signing bonus, it was 34,000, almost 35,000. And last year that was 36,000. So down just a little bit. In terms of industries we had, the number one industry this year was consulting, sending 25.4%. That was down a little bit from 27% last year. Technology was number two, 24.3%. That was down more substantially. It used to be. It was almost 30% last year. In fact, it was the number one industry last year for Haas. It slipped to number two and fallen down in the numbers a Little bit. They sent 15.6% of grads into finance. That's up from 14.5. So pretty similar. Healthcare, 7.5%. That's unchanged. Energy and utilities, 6.4%, virtually the same as last year. And then they give us another category for consumer packaged goods at 6.4%. We didn't have that number last year because it wasn't one of the top groups in terms of where people landed. 78% of those, you know, those grads landed in on the West Coast. That's up from 75% last year. They sent 9% to the Northeast. That's the same as last year. They sent almost 3% to the Midwest. That's up from 1.8% last year. And then they sent a little more than a percent to the Mid Atlantic, the South and the Southwest each. And those are pretty similar. Although they had better numbers in the south and Southwest last year. They were actually more like 3 to 5%, and now they're down to 1.2% each. So there you have it. What do you make of these numbers from Haas, Alex?
• 15:40
  Speaker A: I mean, if you want your career to be in, you know, on the West Coast, I mean, Haas is a very viable option. Right. 70, 78%. And we're seeing that regionalization. Right. Even at the very top programs, more and more of their candidates are going, you know, local, regionally. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I mean, I think what we're seeing at Haas is mirrored with a lot of their peer schools. Slightly lower average starting salary, slight hit on the tech and consulting areas, but they're sort of being challenged by these strong headwinds. And I say these numbers are actually, relatively speaking, they're pretty good. They're decent.
• 16:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I will say, even though consulting's down a bit, one thing to keep in mind is that Haas is one of those schools that doesn't really have their eggs in one basket. Right. I mean, they're sending a quarter to consulting, a quarter to tech, 15% to finance, and, you know, seven and a half to healthcare. So it's pretty balanced. You know, we see some schools with like 40% more into consulting, and they've taken a bigger. It's kind of a steep decline there. So that's harder to kind of recover from. But in any event. Yeah. And the other thing that obviously, as you say, stands out is that west coast centric placement. But, yeah. So anyway, good, good numbers overall out of Haas, again, I keep saying, I think we're done with these career reports, but I I know LBs is forthcoming. We mentioned that last week. I suspect that's going to be out any day now. So we'll we' that when it comes out. I do want to remind people you can write to us by writing to infoearadmit.com use the subject line wiretaps. We did get an email this past week from a regular listener whose name I will not share because she sent us kind of a private email, but really nice just to, you know, some really kind words about the show and ask some questions about her profile. So really good stuff. Please keep those emails coming. If you're a regular listener, we love to hear from you.
• 17:41
  Speaker A: Good.
• 17:42
  Speaker B: So Alex, anything else that you want to talk about or should we dive into the candidates?
• 17:47
  Speaker A: Let's kick on.
• 17:48
  Speaker B: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one. Our first candidate this week is applying to just four programs. They have Duke, MIT, Chicago and Yale on the target list. And this is a deferred enrollment candidate. They are currently a college student. They have done internships, one with a Fortune 500 utility company and I guess in the energy sector. And then they also worked with Bain for a summer as well. They have a 730 on the GMAT exam and they have a 3.9 GPA. They're located in the United States and they had this great line in their notes. And I assume this is why you picked them, Alex. They said, hi, Graham and Alex, love your show and have seen all the episodes. Can you wiretap me? So I never knew that one could use wiretapping as a verb, I guess, at least in this context. So here they are. We're going to do it. But just to give you some more details, Alex, before you weigh in, they have a BS in statistics with a minor in Urdu. Their GPA overall is a 3.9 and they are already signed on to go on a mission. They're Mormon, I guess. And so they're going to go on a two year mission upon graduation. And so that's why they're looking at deferred enrollment. I guess they can go do their mission and then maybe come either back to work for a bit or direct into business school. They are pretty active extracurricularly on campus. They belong to the Wind Energy association at their undergraduate. They've done a bunch of pro bono consulting work and they also do a lot of work with their language, this urd, which as you probably know, Alex, is the. That's the main language in Pakistan. That's the main country that you sit. Although there are parts of India where it's spoken as well. So they do say one thing. Alex, I want you to weigh in. They say, worried about my gpa. Deferred cohorts seem very competitive now. I remind you they have a 3.9 GPA. So I'm curious to hear what you have to say about that, Alex.
• 19:47
  Speaker A: Don't worry about that gpa. That's outstanding. Yeah, yeah. And overall, I think this is a really strong type of profile for deferred admissions candidates. Right. They're active on campus, having an impact on campus. I'm not sure their internship experience. Did you mention that, Graham?
• 20:11
  Speaker B: I did, yeah. With Bain and with the Fortune 500.
• 20:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. So there you go. I mean already a brand name on their CV with Bain at Fortune 500 company, etc. Etc. Their numbers are really, really good in terms of the 3, 9 GPA. So they've managed their sort of activity on campus with a strong gpa because sometimes, you know, they're all, you know, taking up time. Right. So being outstanding at both sides of the coin, that's really important for deferred candidates. 730 GMAT is obviously right around the average for top tier business schools or close to it. I mean, if they really had some spare time and really thought that they could drive that up, even just 10 points. Well, obviously with the new test, but whatever that might be an avenue to look at. I'm not sure though that they'll necessarily improve their, their overall chances that much. The Urdu thing is also interesting, I think.
• 21:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker A: The fact they're going on a two year mission is really interesting. I mean, obviously from Brigham Young that, that, that's sort of expected, but there's a lot to like here. Graham, I think I know you had a little bit of pushback on their choice of target schools. I'll let you speak to that. Overall, I think. Yeah, there's great ingredient here.
• 21:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And the thing that I don't like about their school choices, there's two things. So one is Duke does not have a deferred enrollment program to my knowledge, unless they just announced it since we started recording. So I think they need to take Duke off the list. And then Yale, you know, does, does something called Silver Scholars, which is deferred enrollment, but it's not, not really because you do the first year right away upon graduation from college, then you go and do an internship for a year and then you do the second year. So it doesn't seem like it would be compatible with their two year mission. I'm guessing they're going to be heading off to. Maybe they're going to use their Urdu and go to Pakistan or something. But they're going to go off somewhere and that's not compatible with starting at Yale right away, as far as I understand it. So I would encourage them to look at some of the other. I mean there are many other deferred enrollment programs out there and I would venture that they might want to take a shot at why not a Wharton or Harvard or any of the other kind of top M7 MBA programs that offer these. I mean they have good numbers. I do agree that the GMAT might be a little lower, you know, than, than it could be. But you couple it with a 3, 9 and you know, the rest of their profile. Good internships, good activities. Presumably some interesting goals and some interesting experience laid out for them with, with their mission. Yeah, I feel like they could, you know, aim higher with those two slots with. If they remove Duke and Yale for not being, well, Duke not offering and Yale maybe not being compatible. But yeah, other than that. I like what there is here.
• 23:18
  Speaker A: Yeah. Again, and I think we said this before with deferred admissions candidates, they have the luxury of applying now, aiming high and if they don't succeed, coming back in two or three years time as a reapplicant or whatever and reapplying. So it's, you know, they have that luxury. So my point being it's better to aim a little high rather than include. Anyway, you get my point, right?
• 23:48
  Speaker B: Totally. And you actually just reminded me in the deferred enrollment event we did last week and I'm sure it'll come up this week in the event too. The schools were stressing the fact they're like, this is no risk. Apply now. Why not? If you don't get in, go work for a while and apply again. They don't penalize anyone for being a reapplicant. So. Yeah. So in any event, I agree, I think this person should and I recognize they probably don't want to take the test again because they have the old GMAT score which is going to expire soon because it's only a 5 year your validity and they would have to sort of get used to the new GMAT kind of format. But I mean, obviously if they could improve the score, why not? It would probably open the doors at some of these top schools or make it easier. But in any event, it depends on how much time they have.
• 24:34
  Speaker A: And we made the point about the gmat, just to be quite clear, as a Deferred admissions candidate. There might be a little bit more focus on the standardized test, the gpa.
• 24:46
  Speaker B: Right.
• 24:47
  Speaker A: Et cetera. Because there's less other material for the ADCOM to work with in terms of no post undergrad experience for them to dissect.
• 24:59
  Speaker B: Right. So if you're tuning in now and you're not a deferred enrollment accountant, you're saying what on earth? Yeah, like what on earth These guys saying to the 7:30 to retake. It's different for deferred. Yeah. Cause there's more focus there. All right, Wanna thank that person for tuning in regularly and for allowing us to wiretap them. Alex, shall we move on? Let's talk about WireTapp candidate number two. So our next candidate has a whopping 15 schools on their target list. And those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Michigan, Notre Dame, Rice, smu, ut, Austin, uva and Vanderbilt. So big list of schools spanning a range of admissions difficulties. This person has worked as a data engineer in their career to date. They've got three years of experience. They're interested in either consulting or banking after business school. And they listed off most of the kind of leading firms in those two domains. They have a 322 on the GRE. They have a 3.2 GPA. They're located in. Looks like they're in Wisconsin. They did say they went to a top three public university in engineering. They also simultaneously were a three sport varsity athlete. Sounds like mostly running, cross country, track, you know, indoor and outdoor. They did a number of internships while in undergrad and they did say that, you know, the first two years of school they had a fairly low gpa, but they were able to kind of pull it up to that 3.2 by the time they graduated by having a solid final two years in school. They do volunteer work with young kids about three times a week. They say that they are, quote, semi elite in their sport. They still run the world's major marathons and they're kind of curious to know what we think of their school selection and if there are any schools that they should target specifically. So it sounds like they're not going to apply to 15, but they're wondering whether we could direct them towards any of the ones that they mentioned. So what do you make of this, Alex?
• 27:05
  Speaker A: I like aspects of this profile. I mean, you know, varsity athlete, semi elite marathoner. I mean that takes a lot of dedication and commitment. And we've talked about sort of that athlete archetype before in terms of the importance of dedication, et cetera. So I really like that aspect. I think, think, as you say, they're targeting lots of programs at this point because they've not got focused goals. So they're talking about banking or consulting. That needs to be sorted out first before they decide which schools to target. Right, right. And they don't want to be applying with those two waffling back and forth. They really want to come up with that concrete plan. Is it investment banking or is it strategy consulting or tech consulting or whatever? It is their domain for consulting. So I really think long and hard about that and get that clarified. They've got plenty of time. They're applying next year. So they have that luxury of time to go network with people, interview some people in potential jobs they're interested in to see which fits best for them. Now, now when they're in business school, they can change their mind. I mean, I'm not saying they've got to fully commit and that absolutely shuts the door on the other opportunities and the other career, but they'll have a better experience in their MBA program and they'll be more successful in the application process if their goals are better developed. They'll also target the right schools, et cetera. So this is really important. The other thing that I really encourage them to do, which they might not be as thrilled about at, is retake the GRE and try to boost that score. Even three or four points will make an impact because their challenge is the lower overall GPA at 3.2. I know there's a positive trend and they can point to that, it is an engineering degree, etc. Etc. But if they think there's any scope for improvement in the gre, it will provide them more access to slightly higher profile MBA programs. And again, because they're applying next year, I think they have the opportunity to do that retake.
• 29:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. And actually one key piece of information that you just highlighted is that, yeah, they're not applying right now. You know, they're either going to apply. They even say they're either going to apply in the fall to start the following fall, or they might even wait another year so that they have four or five years of experience by the time they apply. And so because they have all that time, I think you're right. I mean, they need to. It would be great to raise that score just because it will help to prove the point that their final two years of college are more indicative of their academic abilities than the first two years. And as you say, It'll also open some of these doors at the sort of leading programs on their list and make them more competitive because you see this list and there's Some arguably top 10 MBA programs on the list, whether that's Fuqua or Michigan or I think there's Darden on the list, et cetera. So you have some of these very top programs, Tuck, et cetera. But then there are other, more regional, regional programs. And so this will help, like if they could get a higher score then they can really sift down the list a bit. But as you say, it's got to start with the career plan. I am hoping that there's opportunity. They didn't talk much about their work. I'm hoping there's opportunity for them to continue advance at work, etc. But yeah, good candidate overall. I do like the sort of three sport varsity athlete stuff and you know, it's interesting and it sounds like it's all around running so there's a consistency. Yeah, I like this candidacy. I just think they need to figure out their goals and maybe improve that test score if possible.
• 31:04
  Speaker A: Very good.
• 31:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. So our final candidate this week comes from a decision wire entry that you've selected Alex and this person to give you the background. They applied to Berkeley and took. They got into both programs and they got in in both instances with an identical scholarship amount of $50,000. They're starting school this fall and they don't know where to go. So they've asked us for advice. They want to work. They talk about looking short term at private equity and long term at doing something entrepreneurial. They say that they prefer kind of traditional finance, which Tuck is strong at, but the Haas location for startups, which it sounds like is part of their longer term plan, is tempting. They also indicate that they do not want to go to New York City after their mba, but that they are okay with other places like the west coast or the east coast. They also say. I don't know why they said this. They said like west coast or east coast. Chicago, Booth, Philly. So I didn't know that. I guess it just meant to say Chicago and Philly. But in any event, what do you make of this? They had a 322 by the way, on the GRE, which is the same score that the person that we just talked about had. And they got into these top schools but we don't know enough about their background to really put it all together. But what do you make of their choice here, though?
• 32:32
  Speaker A: Let's sort of distill it out a little bit. Hass and Tuck are in the same tier, right. I would place both these programs just outside the M7 in the top 10 tier year with Yale, for example. So, you know, same scholarships, same tier program. So to me, that's important to recognize. I'm a little bit concerned that goal is private equity coming out, because I think that's most challenging even at the MSAP and at the top end of the M7, Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. So I'd really be quite interested to know what their Plan B might be. So if private equity isn't possible, are they going down the banking route or are they looking for something else to get them ready for their entrepreneurial career or whatever it might be? Because I think that then might more influence which of these two schools to choose. From a pure finance perspective, you would probably say that Tuck is the better option. And Hass, you know, obviously had, as we've just talked about with their career reports, tech would be a bit more of an option there. And the biggest difference obviously is geography. If you go to Haas, you're going to be in, you know, you're going to be on the west coast, and if you go to Tuck, you're going to be most likely in that northeast corridor. Yeah, so I do think that matters if they. You can't be completely ambivalent. These are, you know, 3,000 some miles apart, very different culture. I do think geography does matter. So anyway, that's, that's my assessment. I don't think there's one right answer for everybody. It's about personal fit, it's about geography, and it's about what that Plan B might be if private equity isn't an opportunity.
• 34:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, I almost wondered where this person's from. Like maybe they're an international candidate because. Yeah, you're right. I mean, there's a big difference between the west coast and the east coast or even a place like Chicago in the middle. And I think, like you say, it'd be great to know what's their Plan B because private equity jobs are not. I mean, we don't know enough about the background of this candidate. Like maybe they're a really successful former investment banker and so maybe that would make them an easy pivot into pe. But if not, if they're like an engineer or something totally different, that the private equity can be tough to break into. I do lean a little towards Tuck in this instance, just given the kind of interest in finance and Tuck has on the margin a large network on the east coast and a little more flexibility in terms of where people go. I actually dug up the numbers because I knew we were going to talk about this candidate and we just heard that nearly 80% percent of Haas grads stay on the West Coast. And that number is more like. I think it's. What is it? Yes, 65% or so for people staying in the Northeast with Tuck. So it's not quite as hyper concentrated in one region. You know, obviously Tuck sends a batch of people to the west coast, they send people, you know, into the Mid Atlantic region, so Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. et cetera. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it does depend on the person's preferences, too. And I think, you know, know, we didn't mention this really, but the campus experience is different. You know, I mean, Haas is obviously beautiful campus in kind of, you know, San Francisco suburbs, you could argue. But, you know, it's a big university and it's part of a major metro area, whereas, you know, Tuck is in, you know, Hanover kind of up in the woods there. So a really different environment and community. So they need to explore this. They should probably talk to current students or go to welcome events to the extent that they can. But it's a nice, as we say with all these, it's a great problem to have.
• 36:39
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 36:40
  Speaker B: Yeah. So we'll see. Hopefully they keep us updated on where they land. Alex, thanks so much for picking out candidates, as always, and for, you know, just walking through all these facts and figures this week with me and we'll do it all again next week.
• 36:53
  Speaker A: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.