Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 407—665 GMAT, from India. 2.9 GPA, how to overcome. Columbia versus Yale SOM

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MBA Wire Taps 407—665 GMAT, from India. 2.9 GPA, how to overcome. Columbia versus Yale SOM · 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 27, 2025. Are you looking for an MBA program where you'll be more than just a number? Vanderbilt business offers a personalized learning experience to help each stud reach their unique career goals. Whether you're looking to switch careers entirely or accelerate the path you're on, the Vanderbilt MBA program will provide you with the individual support you need to propel your career forward. Vanderbilt is currently waiving their $200 application fee for MBA Wiretaps listeners. To learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, visit Business Vanderbilt. Edu clearadmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
• 1:01
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 1:03
  Speaker A: So I've been in the United States this past week where it has been absolutely freezing. I mean like literally minus, I don't know, minus 13 Celsius or whatever that is in Fahrenheit. It's terrible. How are things in the uk?
• 1:15
  Speaker B: We've had actually a really good spell of weather, but we're waiting for some kind of storm to come bash us this weekend, I think.
• 1:24
  Speaker A: Okay, what's going on with Clear Admit? I mean, I know there's been, you know, most of the deadlines, if not all have passed. Right. So everyone's now waiting. But there's some interviews coming out. And what are you seeing?
• 1:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean upcoming this week. Arizona Cary and Minnesota Carlson have application deadlines. We probably could anticipate harvesting interview invites for round two. Haven't seen anything to confirm that yet, but I anticipate that'll happen. Either would have happened. Well, yeah, either the end of next week or the beginning of the following week, but it'll come up pretty soon. And yeah, so quite a few interview invites site especially for those programs that sort of tend to trickle out those interview invites over a period of time and those programs that effectively guarantee interviews. So yeah, there's quite a lot of chatter Livewire and as you know Graham, we launched Ask Clear Admit chatbot last week. Cleverly we decided to launch it on a Thursday, then blast out an email on a Friday, which a little less relaxing I will say, but yes, quite honestly so far I'm really impressed with the quality of the responses it's being we've had, I would say more than 350 prompts into Ask Clear Admit so far. And of course what I do the next day is, I repeat all of those prompts into our dev server just to check the quality of the responses. And I'm learning a lot, Graham. Let me, let me put it that way.
• 3:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's been fascinating to just see how people are using this. And I've been very happy with the way that it answers questions. And I mean, I guess we shouldn't be surprised because it's trained on all the stuff that we've written over the last couple of decades, but that's what I mean.
• 3:21
  Speaker B: Yeah. When I say I'm learning a lot, I'm learning a lot from the answers it's providing as it synthesizes the content from Clear Admit.
• 3:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's really cool.
• 3:32
  Speaker B: So we're going to talk about it someone later today, a decision wire entry. Well, that, you know, you could put those decisions or those opportunities right into the chat bot and you get some pretty good answers, I think.
• 3:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I'm really enjoying watching and playing with it. So, yeah, that's very cool. And if you're curious, you can just go to AI.clearadmit.com and play with it, ask it questions. And, you know, we're, this is a work in progress. I mean, we're really happy with how it's working, but we're continuing to make tweaks and improvements. So, yeah, just have fun with it. It'll, we'll keep, keep adding to it. It's going to be fun. The other thing, Alex, that's going on is we, you know, our events are really fast approaching now. So our first event for the month of February is on February 5th. It's a virtual webinar where we're going to sit down with admissions directors from Berkeley, Wharton and Stanford and talk about deferred enrollment programs. So programs that you apply to when you're still in university, they save you a seat in the MBA while you go off and work. And then the following week on February 12th, we're going to sit down with Tepper, Chicago Booth, Columbia, Yale and Darden again, all about deferred enrollment. You can sign up for these events at bit ly de 0225. So that's on the horizon. I've got actually, I'm reminding myself here, I need to actually start preparing for those events and think about what questions we want to ask their admissions directors. But we'll get that sorted in advance. Alex, did you see that Stanford named a new dean? We published an article about that on our website.
• 5:03
  Speaker B: No, absolutely brilliant. And I think you've interviewed the new dean, haven't you, Graham?
• 5:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, her name is Sarah Sewell. She's a lovely person. Obviously, she's a professor at Stanford who had won all kinds of accolades over the years from you, student kind of teaching awards, et cetera. She's noted in her field. And then she obviously has been there a little while and I guess threw her hat in the ring for the deanship. And she is now the first female dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business. So congratulations to her. If you are curious about Stanford and want to know more about the Dean, on episode 138 of this podcast, she joined us with a colleague of hers from Stanford, and we were talking about diversity, equity, inclusion at Stanford and just kind of progress being made on the, you know, like how many female professors. There are all these kind of interesting stats and things that they track at Stanford. So she was a great guest on the show. That's episode 138. You can go dig it out of the archives if you're really curious. In other news, I nearly had a.
• 6:02
  Speaker B: Political response to that, but I kept quiet.
• 6:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, these are tough, kind of tough times. Yeah, I don't. Luckily, we leave the pundits to podcasting about politics. I guess the, the. The other thing. Oh, I know what I want to tell you, Alex. We. The. What is it? I GUESS it was U.S. news. Yeah. U.S. news published the top online MBA programs. And this is a space that, honestly, I didn't used to pay as much attention to. But ever since the pandemic and schools, you know, becoming very adept at delivering remote online, you know, MBA programs, I've been keeping a closer eye on this. And so I'm just going to let you know, I'll read off the kind of top 10 online MBA programs, and they are as follows. So we have Indiana Kelly in the pole position, followed by University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. They're number two. Carnegie Mellon is in at number three. We have a tie at number four with University of Washington and the University of Florida, followed by University of Michigan, Ross. So they kind of have reemerged into the top 10, landing at number six. Arizona State University is number seven, and they are in a tie with USC, the University of Arizona, and the University of Kansas. So that actually rounds out the top 10. Any thoughts, Alex?
• 7:21
  Speaker B: Well, I'm glad to see Ross actually got into the rankings, because that's been my question the last two years. You've discussed these rankings.
• 7:29
  Speaker A: I know.
• 7:29
  Speaker B: So kudos to U.S. news for recognizing that Ross is probably one of the very best.
• 7:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. And in fairness, they were in the rankings in the past Couple of years. But they were very low down. So they were, I mean, sort of back into the top 20, if memory serves. So they. This is. They've kind of. And we tend to talk about the top 10 on the show, but yeah, they've kind of jumped into the top 10, which is great. Yeah. So it's just kind of interesting to see. And I'm not surprised about Indiana Kelly. I mean, they've been. They're one of the first schools to do online MBA education, so they're kind of leading the way still. And that makes sense.
• 8:03
  Speaker B: No, absolutely.
• 8:04
  Speaker A: The other thing we've done, Alex, is we're still trying to help people with their interview prep. So we ran an admissions tip, which is a classic. It's the five MBA interview questions you need to ace and how to do so. So that's a great one. You can read that on the website. I think you had a hand in authoring that, Alex, and I think you might have even. I think we have a video about this in our little Admissions Academy video series. And that video is on the page where the admissions tip is too. So that's good stuff.
• 8:30
  Speaker B: Yeah. And it's also a great prompt to put into Ask, Clear Admit because you would get, you know, the five questions. You get some, some, some things to think about those, you know, responding to those five questions and so on and so forth. But yeah, and why would, would the chat that. Because it's trained on articles. Exactly like.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, totally. The other thing we did is we caught up with current students at HEC Paris. So my hometown, and technically they call it HCC Paris. But I do want to just put out this disclaimer that they're technically in the suburbs, out in a kind of beautiful countryside actually of Paris to the west of the city. Probably like a 20 minute drive or something. So Hec, we caught up with students there. One of those students was a guy named Rafael who is from. I'm going to probably mispronounce this, but he's from Arequipa, Peru and he was an economics major as an undergrad and he had a career as an investment advisor and then he also did a stint as a fintech entrepreneur. He literally started a company. And so we asked him about the application process and we said what's one thing you would change or do differently? And he said I would start my preparation for the exam, be it the GMAT or the green, with a kind of notepad where I could record failures and questions that I was having trouble with so that I could improve more strategically. So I think what he's saying is basically that he just wished he'd kept an error log of the different sort of problems he was encountering as he was prepping, because maybe he would have been more efficient. And then, Alex, we asked him, what's one part of the admissions process you would have skipped if you could and what helped you get through it? And this was interesting. I cannot think of anyone who's ever said this. He said, I can't think of one. Usually the most demanding part is test prep, but actually that becomes one of the processes where you acquire more skills, and I don't recommend skipping it. So, Alex, I thought it was interesting this was someone who doesn't want to skip any part of the application process, despite in his earlier advice, saying, like, wow, I wish I'd, you know, had an error log or kept track of, you know, to do better on the test. But he. He doesn't want to skip the test, though. So it's kind of interesting.
• 10:41
  Speaker B: I mean, I think that's a really interesting response. And you think about the role of the test, whether it's the GMAT or the gre, you know, it's, you know, used obviously by ADCOM as a. As a measure and a benchmark to understand academic sort of prowess and preparedness and so on and so forth. But I think there is a second use of this, these tests that this candidate has. Has highlighted. It helps MBA candidates prepare for their first year of, you know, the rigor of the MBA program. So, yeah, I really like this response.
• 11:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, me too. No, I thought it was really insightful, and it's not something you hear very often in terms of this, so that was cool. We have three candidates that you've picked out to talk about this week, Alex, but we also have two more career reports that have come in. They dropped just after the holidays here. And so we have Chicago Booth and Yale. And I thought we'd gone through all of them, but there are a couple left here. So we'll talk about these two in brief, and I'll get your take. I'm going to start with Chicago Booth, and I'll give you the stats and then you can weigh in. So there were 641 grads in the class of 24, and of that, 521 of them were seeking employment. That's about 81%. That number was about 84% last year, so slightly fewer looking, but pretty similar. Of those looking, 86.8% had offers within three months. Now, that number's down from last year. It was 96% last year. So a bit of a drop there. 84% had accepted a job, and that was 94% last year. So roughly a 10% drop. In these two key stats, the average annual salary, starting salary was $175,000, which is a number that we've seen consistently across many of the M7 school. Average signing bonus, 31,000. Now, interestingly enough, last year their average starting salary was 180, so a little bit of a drop there. And the signing bonus was 33,000. So again, both those dropping slightly. Now, of those not seeking employment, which is about 19% of the class, 10% of them are sponsored and returning to their employer. Another 4% or so started their own company. And I believe the others, there's some of them are going on to, you know, other continuing with their education and stuff. So that breaks down that group. I'll give you the industries in terms of where people are heading for those who are looking for work and landed jobs. So 33.8% went into consulting. That leads the way, although it's down from 38.6% last year. In the second spot, we have financial services at 32.9%. So really nipping on the heels of consulting for that top spot of the main industry people are getting into, the financial services figure is virtually unchanged from last year. Technology, they sent 14.8% into tech. That's down slightly from 15.5%. They sent 4.1% into healthcare. That's up from 2.8%. And then get this, their fifth category is law. So people heading into the legal field at a clip of 2.7%. And I have no data on that from last year because that was not the fifth most popular industry last year. So that's kind of intriguing. And then as far as where people went, geographically, we've got the Northeast leading the way with 29.9%. That's up a little bit from 27%. The Midwest lands at 29.9%. So a tie basically for the top spot. And that's unchanged from last year. Virtually west coast, they sent 20%. That's down from 22%. Southwest, they sent roughly 6%. That's unchanged. They sent 4.3% to the south, that's up just slightly. They sent 3.2% to the mid Atlantic, down slightly. And they sent 6% of their students overseas. That was 7% last year. So what do you make of these Booth numbers?
• 14:49
  Speaker B: I mean, I think they're in line with what we're seeing with some of these other prestigious, really top programs, I mean, the average, the median starting salary, 175, a little bit off from last year. And we know these top programs are facing some significant headwinds in the career sort of placement for a variety of different reasons. And I think that's only going to get a little bit more problematic as we continue on with what AI and gen AI is doing and so on and so forth. But nevertheless, 175 is still a good number. And the other number that's again, a little bit worrying is the percent that have offers at this juncture is again down from last year. So that's never a particularly good sign either. But again, it's similar to other programs. And clearly the career management offices of these top programs are having to really work strongly with their students to get more, not necessarily more creative, but a bit more resourceful for seeking, you know, jobs outside of the Big Three. Because obviously consulting across the board is dropping. And if anybody listens to any sort of market news, this is. This is quite open out there in the marketplace now. I was expecting to see financial services ticking up a little bit, and maybe that will start ticking up more significantly over the next year or two. Especially a program like Booth, which is really well recognized for its finance and analytics approach and tech. Yeah. Is dropping a little bit. But overall, Graham, it's probably not great news out of Booth, but similar to other top programs, and we're seeing a little bit of resilience there.
• 16:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think, like you say, numbers are pretty much in line with the other schools. I do like that. Booth is very transparent. I mean, they gave us all the numbers. It's all here to see. Let's talk about Yale, and then maybe we can make some broader kind of conclusions. So I'll give you the Yale numbers. Kind of curious to hear your take on these. So Yale has a smaller class. They're 339 grads. Of that, 20, 282 were seeking employment. That's about 83% and change they have. Let's see, 84.8% of those seeking had offers within three months, 81.2% had accepted offers. And so the numbers for that group in terms of salary and bonuses were 160,000 and 30,000 for the bonus. So a little bit lower than Chicago. Booth, these numbers are down slightly from last year at a similar clip to what we saw with Booth. Right. So, you know, we're seeing these numbers now drifting down into the 80 percentage. You know, we used to be up into the 90s when it comes to like, percent with offers and, you know, the jobs accepted, etc. Now, I did want to clarify, about 16% of the student body were, quote, not seeking employment. And we've got. They give us a breakdown of that. So 6% of those were sponsored. Another 5% were running their own business or starting their own company, rather. And the rest were actually continuing with education, as I said, with Booth as well. So those are the main numbers when it comes to the industries and regions we've got for industries. Consulting leads the way at 31.9%. That's dropped rather precipitously from 44.1% last year. Finances in number two, 26.2%. That's up from 22% last year. 9.6% heading into technology, pretty much the same as last year. It was 10% last year. 6.1% into health care and pharmaceuticals, and that was 3.1% last year. We had 4.8% heading into consumer packaged goods. And that was not one of the top five sectors last year. And then energy was the last sector here, 4.8%. And again, also don't have data from last year because it was not one of the top sectors. So energy kind of emerging on the scene there, along with consumer packaged goods. In terms of the regional placement information, they sent 42.7% of their class into the Northeast. That's actually down a bit. It was 55% last year. They sent 20% to the West Coast. That's up from 15%. They sent 11.3% to the Mid Atlantic. That's up from 9.7. They sent 6.8 to the Midwest. That's up from 4.2. Southwest unchanged at 5%. And the South, 1.9%, also unchanged. They sent about 12% of their students abroad. That's up a little bit. It was 8.8% last year. So what do you make of Yale?
• 19:48
  Speaker B: Very similar to Booth, I think. Obviously, Yale, like Booth's in M7. Yale's in the next tier down in terms of how we interpret these things. And yeah, Yale's average starting salary at 160 is slightly lower than Booth's, but again, comparable to peer schools in that tier. It's a little bit off from last year. We're seeing that across the board. Well, not across board, but for many programs. The same with percent of folks with offers after three months is down a little bit, just as it was at Booth. And the majority of other top 16 top 10 programs. So I think we're seeing a significant pattern. Graham. So, yeah, I could continue to go on repeat, I suppose.
• 20:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, I think, I mean, one of the only things I will say is there was an interesting discussion that I saw on the web about, you know, these numbers and someone was, someone had actually dug up the numbers for, I think it was Chicago booth from like 1999 to date. And the one thing that really jumped out at me right away was that the declines that we're seeing now are not so different from the clients that we saw after the dot com bubble burst in 0102 and then again during the financial crisis in 08 09. And so I just wanted to mention that because I think with perspective, you kind of can see that. Well, yeah, there is a bit of an ebb and flow here. Now, what we don't know is, you know, it's impossible to predict the future. But the person who shared that data online was mentioning that, look, you know, anyone applying to business school now is not graduating until, what, they're going to start in 25. They're going to graduate like 27. Right. So they were just pointing out that, like, it's really hard to know, you know, what the landscape will be then. But it could very well be that we're out of a recession or if we're, you know, the job market is hotter. It's hard, hard to predict. But yeah, they just point out how, you know, there is a bit of, of up and down in the economy and if we are in a downward period for hiring, that could change pretty rapidly.
• 21:45
  Speaker B: I buy that argument, but I also caution, folks, I think we're going through a very significant transformation in how work is going to be done in the future because of the impact of Gen AI and related technologies. So that, yeah, maybe companies will need to hire more folks, more specialist type folks. But we're seeing the current view is companies are shifting, shedding employees to downsizing. So. So, yeah, I mean, I get that we go in cycles, but I'm really going to be very interested to see how this cycle pans out.
• 22:27
  Speaker A: Agreed. Yeah, so we'll stay tuned. I did want to mention, you know, if you're listening to the show and you've made it this far into the episode, please let us know that you like the show by rating the show or writing a review. It really does help for others to discover the show. I cannot tell you how many people I've run into over the years who are regular users of the site and then are kind of surprised to learn that we have a podcast that, you know, we've been running for over 400 episodes. So definitely spread the word. If you enjoy the show, you can also write to Alex and I by just writing to infoearadmit.com and using the subject line wiretaps. We will write back to you, I promise. So get in touch if you like the show. Shout it from the rooftops, Alex. Anything else before we talk about this week's candidates?
• 23:10
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 23:11
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number want. Our first tenant this week just has two schools on the target list. And they have applied to these schools in round two. They are Dartmouth and Darden. This person had been working in construction and real estate prior to business school. They have a kind of complex set of career goals that relate to kind of construction and things that we'll get into to in a second. They have a 665 on the GMAT exam. And in case you're keeping score at home, a 665 is kind of like a 710 on the old exam if you need that as a frame of reference. Their GPA was a 7 out of 10. They're located in India. They have five years of work experience. And one little note here. While they are located in India and I believe that they're undergrad there, they have worked in the US Too. So they actually, I think, fairly recently returned to India, if memory serves. And so they are actually another thing I wanted to mention is they are sponsored by their current employer, which is some sort of conglomerate, and I guess is in the kind of infrastructure domain it sounds like. In particular, they're working on infrastructure expansion for oil refineries and poultry processing plants and feed plants, plants in India as well as in other parts of Asia like Malaysia, Myanmar and Japan. So they have this kind of role mapped out for themselves post mba. They're sponsored. They're going to go back to this company. They've also done quite a bit of, you know, outside activities and. And you got into a conversation with them. The only thing that I wanted to share, Alex, before we get your take, is that they have, I guess they have another master's degree that they earned from nyu, and that master's degree is in construction management. And they had a GPA of 3.4 out of 4 in that program. So, you know, kind of interesting in terms of this real focus on construction management and now looking to get an mba. What do you make of this candidacy, Alex?
• 25:15
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'm a little bit concerned, I mean, I think that their personal profile and their work profile looks really strong. I mean, I won't go into all the detail, but they share some detail about some of the things that they've done.
• 25:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 25:31
  Speaker B: And I'm thinking to myself as I'm assessing that that that's a real strength of their overall profile and numbers. 665 and a 7. You know, that doesn't stand out especially for an overrepresented, potentially overrepresented profile. That is, this person is from India. So that's going to make things a little bit more challenging because they're applying in round two. So if they'd have come in early in round one with these sort of top 16 programs that they're targeting, top 10, top 16, and maybe if they'd targeted three or four of them instead of just two, I, I would imagine that they would have some opportunity for success and so forth. But that opportunity shrinks a little bit in round two. So I'm a little concerned about that. And hopefully, and I think they chose these programs because they would get a guaranteed interview and hopefully they can interview really well and that pushes them over the top. But the fact that they targeted round two, I think is, is potentially limiting their opportunity. And I asked them, you know, if, if they, they're not successful, would they wait and come back in round one and have a more sort of focused sort of strategy as it were. And they, they know if they don't, if they're not successful, they're going to go part time because in India, because they've got certain constraints in terms of when they need to get back to their company and they've obviously got to really interesting pathway to grow within that company returning. So they're a sponsored candidate.
• 27:19
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:19
  Speaker B: So I, you know, I, I just worry a little bit, Graham. I think, yeah, I do believe this is probably an outstanding candidate, but I'm just a bit worried that they round two is going to harm them.
• 27:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree and I, I, one thing I was saying to you, you know, is, you know, they just have the two schools which you mentioned and it's kind of like, wow, if they had cast a wider net, maybe they would end up with more options. But I couldn't agree more. This is someone whose experience and whose goals and the fact that they're sponsored makes them super attractive. But then on the other side, overrepresented numbers that don't jump off the page at all and are maybe even somewhat pedestrian. So yeah, that's the challenge they'll face. But I'm hoping that they can, like you say, impress in the interview phase with these programs if they're fortunate enough to. Well, I guess they have one for talk. Right. But if they can advance to that, that would be great because I think it'll work to their favor.
• 28:09
  Speaker B: You did pick up. Yeah. You did pick one important keyword. They're sponsored. And given the current recruiting environment that we're seeing, maybe ADCOM is going to be more sensitive to that. So that might help.
• 28:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's like a sure thing. Right. So they're going to have a job. Yeah. So in any event, I do want to wish them the best of luck and I want to thank them. They were really engaging on the site. When you asked them lots of questions, they responded. And yeah, hopefully the advice that we've offered is useful. They will. I think one thing they need to know is if they have an interview, they're going to need to knock it out of the park and prep and use our interview archive to see all the sample questions, get themselves ready. It's going to be really important. All right, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two, this week's second candidate is applying to six schools, and those schools are Cornell, Dartmouth, Michigan, Chicago, UCLA and UT Austin. This person's worked as a production supervisor before business school, and they're hoping to get into consulting after business school. And they also mentioned consumer goods, but for the short term, They've got Bain, BCG and McKinsey on their list, kind of the usual suspects for Strategy Consulting. Their GPA is a 2.9. They did give some context. They said that they had to work full time while completing undergrad to support their family. And they also had this massive shift. They had started out as an engineering undergrad and then switched to finance. And once they made that switch, they achieved much higher grades. They say they've been working for about five years, but I think it's actually more than that. We'll get into that in a second. They're located in Southern California. They'd love to land in the Midwest after business school. They have not yet taken the gmat, and that's because they're going to be applying, it sounds like, in the fall, and so they've got some time. So they're planning to take the GMAT exam and hoping to get 675 plus on the test, which would, you know, put them kind of around the average at the very top schools. They're hoping that that might offset their gpa. They say they also shared the fact that they are male, 30 years old, Hispanic American, first generation, and they, they will be applying to business school through the consortium and they're also part of a Big Brother mentor program. That's what they do outside of work. They did say that it sounds like they got into their job via some sort of general production work and then kind of made it into more of a. What they say. What did they say? Three years as a credit specialist and two years of production supervisor. So I don't really understand, understand what these roles entail because they didn't give us a ton of detail beyond these titles. But they were curious about where we should like what we might say about where they could apply because they really want to go into consulting. They said they're not married to this list of schools and they're just curious what we think of their chances. So Alex, what do you make of them?
• 31:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, just to answer that question real quick, if they want to go into consulting. Yeah. The best school you can get into is going to give you the most access to consulting, basically. Right. So consulting, financial services. They're the big feeders or top MBA programs. The big feeders for that. So again, much like the first camp, I think the work experience side and the backstory is probably going to be very strong. And this person is, you know, they've come from, you know, their first gen. They've obviously overcome a lot of obstacles to get to where they are today. They're a little bit of an older candidate as a result of sort of the pathway that they've gone through through their work experience. But they've, I reckon they've overcome a lot of challenges and I think ADCOM are probably going to like that. But this 29 GPA is going to be very problematic. Just anything below 3.0 is just sends a, a big sort of red, red flag signal. So how do they mitigate that? There are two things they absolutely need to do. They need to get that GMAT score. They're targeting 665 plus. So, you know, I would really encourage them to prep hard now, get the test taken reasonably soon so they have enough time to retake it. So have a couple of goes at it to get absolutely their best score. So if they, even if they get 665 in their first go, have another go at it and see if they can drive the score up 675, 685, but also take some additional coursework and that serves two purposes. One again it shows the ADCOM that they recognize, you know, self awareness, they recognize their weakness. So they're doing everything that they can to prepare, but it also, you know, will help them prepare for, for the beginning of their MBA program. And I know they're teaching financial literacy to under, you know, to, to, to, to folks and doing some really good stuff. So I think they are smart. Now they've got to demonstrate that through the metrics and that's going to be the GMAT and that's going to be additional coursework.
• 33:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean this is like sort of someone you're rooting for because they have an interesting story. You know, they kind of work their way into a kind of white collar job it sounds like, and so that you're rooting for them. But then you know, you look at the 2:9 and you don't have a test score yet. So they're going to need to, yeah. Hit the test out of the park. Now the beautiful thing is, and we say this week in and week out with these early bird candidates is that they have time, you know, so they could spend all spring just working like devote like three months to just prepping for this test, taking sample tests, timed tests. I cannot stress that enough. The more that you see the test and practice, the better you're going to be on game day. So yeah, as long as they can boost, you know, have a kind of score that says wow, okay, that 29 was a aberration. And they're, you know, they're much smarter than that number suggests that it help. But I agree with you, taking some outside coursework would be smart too. Yeah, beyond that, it's sounds like they have a plan. I mean I, I think they, you know, the outside activities, tick the box, et cetera. So it, it's, yeah, it's just gonna, they're have to buckle down and work really hard to get a high test score.
• 34:25
  Speaker B: Yeah. And outside coursework could be, you know, mba, math, it could be HBS core, whatever, GMAT fundamentals or, or whatever.
• 34:36
  Speaker A: Right, Business fundamentals.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, business fundamentals. Yeah.
• 34:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. So best of luck to them. I want to thank them for sharing their profile and again, make the most of the time, you know, because they have several months here where they could just, just get their ducks in a row. So work hard over the coming months. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three, our final candidate this week is coming from a decision wire entry that you chose, Alex. And this Person can't decide where to go. They applied to Booth and Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford and Yale. And they came away with three offers. They got in at Booth with no money. They got into Columbia with a hundred thousand dollar scholarship and they also got into Yale with $160,000 scholarship. They're going to be starting school in the fall. They want to work in private equity and they mentioned Blackstone, Carlyle Group as a couple of potential targets. Their gmat score was a 695. That's a very strong score. They are trying, they say, to decide between Columbia and Yale. So I guess they've ruled out Chicago Booth because of the fact that they didn't get any scholarship there. And they've got these big scholarships of 100k and 160k at Yale. They talk about how they have been working. It sounds like in. They've been working in. Well, they said the industry is not very different. So pre and post MBA industry, not very different. They say clean energy. So I don't know exactly what that means, Alex. Like, I think it means they want to get into private equity, but maybe with a focus on clean energy. So investing in firms that are in that domain. And I don't know what they've been doing prior to business school, but something in the clean energy space it sounds like, but maybe not private equity. They say that they're hesitant about Columbia because it's a bigger school with less community. They also say they're trying to understand if CBS offers something that Yale doesn't, that would materially impact their career. So what do you say, Alex?
• 36:39
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I, I'm surprised it didn't apply to Wharton, quite frankly. I think, you know, given where they got admitted and scholarship and stuff, they probably would have had an opportunity at Wharton and maybe that, that would change this conversation too. Yeah, but, but you know, in terms of Columbia versus Yale. Yeah. So does Columbia offer anything that Yale doesn't? Well, it's in a higher tier, which means the quality, the aggregate quality of your networks is going to be a little bit higher, even if that's only marginal. But that makes a difference, I think. Right, so you've got more classmates because M7 programs are larger than the next tier, so larger networks. And that may help in terms of networking into private equity, which we know is really difficult to do outside of Harvard and Stamford and possibly Wharton. So I think they will find that really challenging at Yale, even though Yale is a terrific program. And yeah, sure, they're going to place a few folks in private Equity. But Columbia will place more folks in that domain, I'm sure. And if that's what they want to do, I think there are advantages probably for being in New York City from a networking standpoint. I understand the reticence in terms of community and so forth, but, yeah, I do think that Columbia has the slight edge in this case.
• 38:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think this is kind of a fascinating debate only because the money difference of 60k is not inconsequential. And so you start to say we have, okay, maybe Columbia's a little bit better, but are they $60,000 better? And it's a little challenging. And I also, I'm sensing from what they're asking us that they sort of like Yale and its smaller community. So, yeah, it's an interesting quandary. I mean, I think what Yale would say is, well, you jump on Metro north and you're in Manhattan and like, I mean, it's a short train ride down to the city, and so they would say if you need to go down and have meetings with private equity shops, just jump on the train. There's a train every half hour or something down to Manhattan. So they would say that, I think. Yeah, it's tricky. The other thing that's surfaced here is they're interested in clean energy. And as you recall, when I just read out the employment reports, energy was one of the top five industries for Yale. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And I don't know if they've done much exploration into what the strengths are in the programs in that domain specifically, but that could be interesting because Yale does have a bit of a reputation when it comes to renewables and sustainability and things like that, so. Would be worth investigating. I mean, I would advise they spend some time on both campuses to the extent that they're able. But. Yeah. And you. You told them to go ask our AI bot, Alex, what to do.
• 39:36
  Speaker B: And. And, yeah, I. Why not? Right. Because, again, our AI bots trained on a load of content that we've written about Yale and a load of content we've written about Columbia, and this won't be the first candidate that's facing this type of decision. So, yeah, using the AI bot, I think helps, but we can't promote. Overly promote the AI bot, Graham, otherwise people will stop using Decision Wire.
• 40:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Or they'll stop listening to the show. They'll just go to the bot. But, yeah, no, I hear you. So in any event, I do want to thank them for sharing their case. I mean, obviously.
• 40:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. Just to finish up, if this person was looking for a career in sort of social impact nonprofit. My arguments would be very different. But if they're looking for a career in private equity, one that's a really difficult leap to make. And secondly, if they can make that leap, the payback is huge. Right. So in terms of average salary coming out, if you're going into private equity, it's got to be very high. Right. So. So that's why I think the 60,000 is less consequential if you're looking at PE than if you were looking at social impact, where I'd say, yeah, Yale's probably a really viable option in that case.
• 40:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, no, that's a fair point. And I did pull the numbers for class of 23.6% from Columbia went into private equity, and about 2% went into private equity from Yale. So it's a smaller number there, for sure. Yeah, I would encourage them, as I said, go spend time at both programs and see what they think. But, yeah, obviously, great position to be in Champagne problems, as they say. They got all this money from a couple of schools, and, yeah, do the due diligence and just figure out where they need to go.
• 41:19
  Speaker B: Very well done, Alex.
• 41:20
  Speaker A: Thanks for picking out candidates, as always. Let's connect next week and do this all again.
• 41:25
  Speaker B: Very good. Good luck, everyone. Stay.