Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / MBA Wire Taps 322—3.93 GPA, software engineer. 760 GMAT, Round 2 strategy?

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MBA Wire Taps 322—3.93 GPA, software engineer. 760 GMAT, Round 2 strategy? · 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, November 13, 2023. For more than 100 years, Emory University's Guiseueta Business School has been a training ground for principal leaders and a laboratory for powerful insights. Whether you're looking to accelerate your career or make a career pivot, Emory's one year and two year full time MBA programs prepare you for a lifetime of career confidence. Learn more about Emory's Top 20 MBA With Top Five career outcomes offering world class academics and small by design classes delivered in a dynamic global city. More At Emory Biz Slash Clearadmit, I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
• 1:05
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Greg.
• 1:06
  Speaker A: So what's the news? I feel like we've kind of entered what I would consider to be the hardest part of the round one season for know, interviews have happened, etc. But what are you hearing on the wires? And what about round two people, too?
• 1:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say interviews have happened necessarily for everybody. We're certainly in the period now between a lot of interview invites have been released. Some of folks have completed their interviews, some are waiting, know they're interviewing as we speak. And yeah, there's a lot of sort of wait and wait now until those final decisions are released. For most programs, that'll be early December for round one, although INSEAD is rolling out final decisions this upcoming week for round one, and we'll start to see a couple of schools getting in earlier in. And as I say all this, there are still some interview invites coming out. I noticed Stanford rolled a few out last week. Well, we saw a few being published on LiveWire, so they were rolling interview invites still out last week. And I'm sure there's several other schools in that state, possibly Yale, possibly, well, several others Hass and so on and so forth. But yeah, plenty of folks also thinking about round two strategy. What should they be doing Based on what they're hearing a little bit from round one. We'll talk about that a little bit later with one of our candidate that we're going to profile today. So, yeah, we're getting closer to finality for round one. Lots of folks gearing up for round two.
• 2:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely busy, busy times. It's been also busy in terms of events. Like we just continue to do all these events. Last week we had a deferred enrollment panel and we're doing another one this week. So I'm going to sit down with admissions officers from Berkeley Haas, Columbia Business School, Yale Som and Carnegie Mellon Tepper. And we're going to talk about their deferred enrollment program. So MBAs for people who are still in college who are going to basically reserve a seat in the business school. You can sign up for that if that applies to you by going to bit Lee de Clearadmit, all lowercase, all one word. We had a lot of fun doing the last one last week, so there'll be one more. And then later in the month we're doing, again more for the younger crowd, but we're doing another set of events starting, I guess the first one is November 29. And these are events about masters in management programs, which again are targeted at college seniors. The idea being that maybe you are a liberal arts major or you just want to really hone your management skills before entering the workforce. So I'm going to sit down, actually, I think it's Mike on our team that's going to do the first one. He's going to sit down with Chicago Booth, Michigan, Rosk and Carnegie Mellon. And then in December, we have a second one, basically one week later, where we're going to sit down with Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Kellogg and Notre Dame. So you can sign up for those events, too. Those are at Clearadmit Mim. And that's all one word, all lowercase. So, Alex, I'm looking forward to that because we've not really done much work with Masters in management programs, but they seem to be on the rise with a lot of top MBA programs now introducing kind of masters in management. I know this has been a thing in Europe for a long time, but it's newer in the States.
• 4:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting. Isn't know, schools are sort of adjusting to the marketplace with these sort of more innovative, different types of offerings. I just wonder how they impact the demand for their more traditional two year MBA. I'm a big advocate of that two year MBA experience and the need for real innovation in the MBA offerings, given the crises, the perpetual crises that we seem to be navigating now. And I think top MBA programs need to educate the future business leaders to navigate these crises. It's super interesting.
• 5:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And I think there was a question in a session we did. One of the events we did recently is like, well, what's better, a Mim or waiting and getting an MBA? And it's a big debate. So I think you make a great point, Mims, you'd come in without work experience. So it's a little bit different. Any event I look forward to kind of learning more about this as we do these events. We also continue to run our fall survey. The survey is about how schools communicate with applicants. So if you're an applicant, this certainly should interest you. You can go to ClearadMitfall survey and take the survey. We'd love your input. It really helps us to gather this data. We share it with schools. So helpful for the industry. So if you can give back to clear admit in that way, we always appreciate it. We are going to do, I think we're giving away some Amazon cards too, for people to take that survey. So check it out. The other thing, Alex, I don't know if you read, but Forte published a kind of report about women's enrollment in full time MBA programs and how with last year's class that reached a record of 42% women across the 58 member schools that belong to the Forte foundation, which is an organization that helps advocate for women in management and getting women off to business schools. So pretty amazing. I mean, back when you were at Wharton, we were not seeing these kind of numbers at all.
• 6:23
  Speaker B: No, that's ten percentage points higher than we were able to recruit at Wharton back in I'd sort of mid, early two thousand s. And even at that time, we had Wharton women in business. I think Forte was actually just getting up and running back then. So Forte was on the scene and so forth. To get 58 schools on average across 42% women is absolutely fantastic. And I know some of the top schools have eclipsed the 50% threshold now for the last year or two. So really great work, I think is going on in that space.
• 7:04
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it will change. I remember when I was at Wharton, you were right. It was more like maybe not 70 30, but almost that. And I remember I was talking to a woman in my year and saying, wow, this is like a kind of dating heaven if you're a female looking for a male partner. And she said, yeah, the ODs are good, but the goods are OD. And I thought that was a really funny comment, but no, no one will be able to say that anymore because we're going to be at parody in any event. Yeah, it's great to see. The other thing is, we did run an admissions tip about interviewing, and we've been running a whole bunch of these, but this is actually a post interview protocol tip. So it's all about thank you notes and follow up. So if you've interviewed or going to be interviewing soon, you should read that because it'll help you as you navigate that part of the process. Alex, our sustainability series continues to roll on, and now it seems like we're getting more and more of these out there. We ran one for NYU, Stern, MIT, Sloan and Upenn Wharton since you and I last recorded an episode. So I won't go into the details, but these are great pieces where we really explore everything about the school in terms of how's the core curriculum integrating sustainability? Are they devoting specific elective classes as well? What about the campus? Is the campus itself have a mind or an eye towards sustainability? So lots of great information on Stern, Sloan and Wharton if you're interested in sustainability.
• 8:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is back to my point earlier, right. The importance of creating leaders that really understand how to navigate these crises and sustainability is clearly right at the top of the heap.
• 8:47
  Speaker A: Definitely. And then a couple more things. It's just been a busy week for content on our website, but we did run real humans pieces for Cambridge, Judge, Notre Dame, Mendoza and NYU. Stern and I went through and read these profiles. We always connect with a number of students. It's so interesting to hear their perspective. So we connected with a woman named Alexandra. She was one of the folks that joined us from Cambridge. And I just thought this was. You're going to know this, you're going to make fun of me now, but she was asked, what's one thing that you learned about Cambridge that surprised you? And she says, I don't think I fully understood the scope of how old this institution is until I got into my college. Peter House is the oldest college at Cambridge and was established in 1284. That fact absolutely blew my mind. And I'm excited to be surrounded by such a rich history that includes so many established figures. So, Alex, I'm sure you knew this stuff, but I actually didn't know that. For Americans at least, that's, like insanely old. Yeah. So did you know that that's how old that institution is?
• 9:51
  Speaker B: No. That is absolutely incredible. But I'm going to completely off tangent, and I know I shouldn't do this because we've got lots of stuff to cover, but in our local pub, not my local pub in the village, but in the next town over, we've got a table in the front bar. Right. How old do you think that table.
• 10:12
  Speaker A: Is that everyone kind of sits at to drink their pints and stuff? So it's in use. Wow. I don't even want to guess because you're going to tell me it's probably older than 1284 or. No.
• 10:22
  Speaker B: Well, the one. Three hundreds.
• 10:24
  Speaker A: Wow. Okay.
• 10:25
  Speaker B: Older than the pub itself. And it's in the deeds of the pub, so it's documented into the 13 hundreds.
• 10:32
  Speaker A: That is amazing. Yeah, crazy. So lots of history in the UK and at Cambridge, just kind of interesting. Notre dAme. We talked to Andrew Shea, who I think was in the military prior to going to business school, and he had some good advice about the GMAT and the GRE. He said, if you're lacking confidence on either of these tests, take a well recommended prep course and tell your family members and friends that you're doing it in an effort to hold yourself accountable. He said, I let the test scare me away for a long time, and it took a while to kind of rip the Band aid off and dive in. So good advice from, you know, just it's like with exercise or anything else that people do, like, tell others that you're engaging in this program to get ready and I think know holds you more accountable. So good.
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Very good.
• 11:19
  Speaker A: And then last but not least, real humans over at Stern, we connected with, and, you know, he was asked, what's your initial impression of the Stern students culture and community? And he said, sharing and a willingness to help others are definitely valued as virtues here. Stern advertises this, but I have now witnessed it on multiple occasions from faculty, other MBA ones and MBA twos. If you have a question or need help with something, people will genuinely take time and effort to thoroughly assist you. So that's Sam, who's a first year at Stern. Nice to hear, mean again, that is something they market a lot, and so it's nice to hear that it's true.
• 11:56
  Speaker B: Do you think that's true for other programs? Graham?
• 11:59
  Speaker A: I would hope so. But I think obviously some schools are bigger than others, and I think it can be harder to build culture in a really large institution or you have kind of little, maybe subgroups and things, but I don't know. I've been on campus at Stern, and you do get that vibe of it's a tight knit community. It's a good question. I mean, I think some schools are known for this more than others, but I think they all try to do it.
• 12:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's sort of endemic to top MBA program cultures more generally. Obviously, some schools hit it better than others, Stern at the top of the list there. But one should assume there's that type of culture in the programs that they're exploring and then test it, see if it's there.
• 12:45
  Speaker A: And I would argue that there is not to get all rah rah rah America. But I do think there's something about American higher ed institutions that there is a pretty collaborative nature that maybe you don't see in some other cultures. So, one last thing before we dive into our candidates. There have been a number of employment reports that continue to come out, and we actually ran three of them last week. And I can't get into all the details, but I'm going to give you some numbers and facts and figures and things, and I just want to get your take. So we heard from Georgetown, Duke and Emory over the last week, and so I'll start with Georgetown. Average starting salary for their grads in the class of 23 is 149,000. That's up 8% from last year. 93% of their students had offers by the time of graduation, at least for those students who were actually looking for a job and weren't sponsored or something. 35% of the class went into consulting, 25% into finance and 18% into technology. That's actually, I think, a really nice balance. And then in terms of regional stuff, 70% of Georgetown McDonough graduates go to either the Mid Atlantic or the Northeast, about 10% out west, and then little bits and pieces to the other region. So, Alex, any thoughts on Georgetown's numbers?
• 13:58
  Speaker B: No, the numbers sound very good. I assume some of that tech has. Amazon has a pretty big presence in that region now, is that right? Yeah. Isn't that.
• 14:07
  Speaker A: Their second headquarters is right outside of.
• 14:09
  Speaker B: DC, so I assume that helps. Georgetown must. But, yeah, I mean, these programs in this tier. We'll talk a little bit about Emory in a minute, I suppose are going to be a little bit more regionally focused in terms of their geography. So it doesn't surprise me that Georgetown, 70% Mid Atlantic and Northeast. But, yeah, very good numbers.
• 14:29
  Speaker A: Definitely. Now we turn to Duke. Duke's average salary was up 9% to had offers. And I just want to pause here, Alex. I feel like 175 is the new number for all the kind of top 16 type programs or something. I don't know how they just move in lockstep, but I feel like we keep seeing 175. 43% of Fuqua graduates went to consulting, 21% to finance, 17% to tech. And then in terms of geography, very interesting here, 31% hit the Mid Atlantic or the Northeast. 20% went to the west Coast, 18% in the South, 15% Southwest. So pretty impressive balance geographically, although on the industry side, pretty overweighted in consulting at 43%. I don't know what you make of these numbers for Duke.
• 15:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, very good. Like you say, 175 for a top 16 program within that tier, relative to 149K for Georgetown in sort of the next tier seems to make a lot of sense to me. More geographically dispersed. Again, that doesn't surprise me. A nice number going into the South. So that's obviously a big region for Duke. But, yeah, again, very good numbers. These numbers on the consulting side still seem to impress.
• 15:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there might be a little bit of a reckoning with the class of 24, but we will see. Emory, their numbers, 163,000 is the average starting salary. That's up slightly. 96% of their students looking for work had job offers. And here are the kind of industry breakdowns. 54% to consulting, 14% tech, 12% finance. And then when it comes to geography, 62% landed in the South, 24% into the Mid Atlantic or Northeast, 5% out west, 5% Midwest, 2% Southwest. So heavy geographic concentration on the south and heavy industry concentration on consulting, which I assume is helping that average salary number get boosted to 163 because consulting jobs pay quite well. But, yeah. What do you think of Emory?
• 16:51
  Speaker B: I mean, Emory is our sponsor, so fantastic that they're doing so well. Obviously, that salary figure, I think, is really good, again, for that tier. So we would consider Georgetown and Emory to be in the same tier. That 163 is really striking. But also, as you suggest, they're overweighting a little bit on the consulting side. And we know consulting is a very high paid industry. If you want consulting and you want to live in the South, Graham, Emory has got to be close to the top of your list.
• 17:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And I think they're benefiting from what the US has seen in terms of growth in the mean. Atlanta remains a kind of growing city. You see a lot of the Rust Belt cities are kind of shrinking, and you see places like the Southwest or southeast kind of growing. So I think they're benefiting from that, too. Let's move on to the candidates. I did want to say, obviously, if anyone wants to write to us and ask a question or tell us what they like about the show, you can always write to info@clearadmit.com use the subject line wiretaps and we will write you back. So please reach out if you get a chance. You can also rate and review this show wherever you're listening. We always appreciate that. But, Alex, I know you picked out a couple of candidates for us to discuss today, so shall we move along?
• 18:08
  Speaker B: I would also say they could write to tell us what they don't like about the show. But if they're still listening at this point, they're probably in the likable rather than the don't likeable.
• 18:17
  Speaker A: But if people bracket, if people have feedback, we're always open to that, too. Totally. So, yeah, please tell us what you.
• 18:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. But, yeah. We've only got two candidates this week, Graham. Things have been a little quieter on Applywire, so I will encourage folks know, again, please contribute to Applywire if you want to be featured on the show, too. That'd be fantastic.
• 18:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, we're in that little bit of a lull, I think, between the rounds in any event. So let's move on. This is going to be our first candidate. So this is Wiretaps candidate number one. All right, so we've got a candidate who has nine schools on the target list, and those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Dartmouth, Duke, the Indian School of Business, Michigan, Ross, NYU, Stern, SMU, UNC and UVa Darden. And they want to start school in the fall. This candidate is a software engineer, and they would like to pivot into either consulting or technology. They have a lot of the usual suspects, like McKinsey and PwC on the list for consulting. And then similarly on the tech side, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft. Their GRE is a 326. They feel like that's kind of been their best effort. I mean, they really want to move on and focus on their applications at this point. So they have a 326, 3.93 GPA, 5.4 years of work experience. This candidate is located in India and would like to land in the US after business school, but is open to staying in India as well. And they did share some interesting details about their undergrad. They were ranked number one in their undergraduate program. They got a merit certificate each year. They were also kind of a representative for the school, probably school government, I'm guessing, here, and did some outside activities as well. Pretty passionate about and active with art, so they participate in art competitions. Sounds like they were awarded some certificates for their art and did a little bit of work with an NGO. I think they said, alex, in a comment with you, that they've been a bit less active in terms of extracurriculars since university, but I'll let you get into that. So what do you make of this candidacy? Because they're going to be applying in round two. It looks. It's. It's. They're from India, so maybe overrepresented.
• 20:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's the challenge is they're in round two instead of round one as an overrepresented candidate, potentially software engineer, India heritage. And so forth that will present challenges. And the key here mean they could be incredibly smart, they could be super strong candidate, but there's lots of other candidates that kind of are similar in nature. Right. So this point of differentiation with their artwork might help mitigate that a little bit. We'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. I must say, Graham, I'm a super fan of someone who is ranked number one in their class, right? 3.93 GPA, whatever that means. But ranked number one, I mean, that's quality, right? That's really good. Obviously that should come through in their candidacy, and I think schools respect that. I think the 326 GRE is probably at par, the medians, above the medians for several of the programs they're targeting. So I'm not so worried about the GRE. I'm just more worried about them coming into round two instead of round one in terms of round two will just sort of limit some of their opportunity. Their passion for art is quite interesting, Graham, because as a software engineer, we sort of can sort of picture a certain stereotypical software engineer. It's not often associated with someone that's got a passion for fine art as well as someone that can create art. So I wonder how they can best weave that into their narrative and so on and so forth. That would be really helpful. I'd also like to know a little bit more about their long term goals, how everything fits together. But I'm just nervous that going into round two won't present them with their best opportunities. If they were coming round one either next season or had done the season, that would have been potentially more.
• 22:51
  Speaker A: I mean, it's know I often make little, like, I give each of the entries you choose, like a title that's just for me to kind of. And so for this one, I wrote Portrait of the artist as software engineer, which is a riff off of a James Joyce novel. But in any is, it struck me as interesting enough, like you're saying, it's not what you ordinarily would see. So this person's passionate about art. I believe they're a painter. They've been awarded some certificates. You ask them if they've exhibited their work, which it sounds like they haven't, but it sounds like they've been pretty engaged with it. And so I'm hoping they can bring that to bear as a way to differentiate. But I do agree, boy, round two, a little bit harder when you're overrepresented. At the same time, I would add that their list of target has. There's some balance there, right? I mean, you have schools like SMU Cox on the list, which an excellent school, but not in the same tier as Dartmouth or something that they have on their list as well. Right? So there's balance there. And my note to myself was, they'll probably land somewhere. I mean, this is Gre is competitive, as you said, ranked number one in their class, so I think they'll land somewhere. The question is, yeah, could things have looked differently if they applied in the first round? Maybe. I was curious to understand the GPA in terms of. Most of our candidates that we see coming out of India are on a ten scale, and so I wondered if they'd converted this themselves or just maybe the school they attended has a 40 scale GPA system. I mean, again, they're ranked number one, so maybe it doesn't matter. I think they're going to get in somewhere, but I think. How would you write about the art stuff? Because art is kind of not what you would expect for a software engineer, but it's also maybe harder. It's like a solo activity for the, you know, you're not working as a team unless you're who is, know, Raphael or some of these guys who had whole schools of painters helping them to paint their works way back when. So this is probably solo activity. So I don't know, do you have any thoughts on how do they share this?
• 24:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things that I wanted to talk about real quick. One is how to address the art in a way that's appealing to the ADCOM, showing that sort of the software engineering being a highly analytical type of work, output versus fine art being at the other end of the spectrum, I suppose. Although someone will probably argue that art is actually science, just articulated in a different fashion. I'm sure there's someone written a book about that that I need to read, but, yeah, this notion that it's more of a solo activity is a bit challenging, but it's kind of more to show that they're left brain, right brain thinker and so forth, and there might be ways to weave it in. What are you most passionate about? That type of essay could draw in sort of their penchant for art and so forth. The key is they're good at it. Are they good at it? I assume they are. They got certificates in it or are they passionate about it? Right. And if they can hit both markers, I think that's better. The other thing just worth mentioning is obviously not all software engineers are the same. So we say software engineer, Indian, whatever, and they're potentially overrepresented. But software engineer that's made impact and shown growth at work and is rewarded by promotions and various other things, that's going to be important because it could be a software engineer that's just sort of bounced around a little bit and just followed the lead of others and not really had that level of impact. So I wouldn't treat all software engineers the same either, and they need to articulate that effectively in their candidacy. But, yeah, I mean, that's a long answer to really not answering your question, Graham. I think it is going to be challenging, but really trying to figure out the best way to position and highlight that fine art will help differentiate them from other software engineers, I would think.
• 27:10
  Speaker A: Right. I mean, at minimum, it's going to come out in their extracurriculars. It probably could sit at the bottom of the resume in the kind of other skills and activities section. So there'll be ways for them to convey it. They did ask us a very direct question, which was, what are their chances at the ISB? Because the ISB, I guess, is pretty hyper competitive, and I would say they're ranked number one in their class. It sounds like they didn't go to one of the IITs or anything, but ranked number one, GPA, solid gre. I don't know if that's going to fall. Probably it might be a little bit lower than what ISB typically sees. I don't know enough about the ISB's admissions process to be, so I presume they'll be okay. But I suspect they'll have better luck in the States if I had to guess, given the range of schools they're looking at in the States.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree, as well as the idea that I would feel a little less comfortable of my understanding of ISB versus the top programs in the States.
• 28:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. So. All right, well, I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Hopefully this advice helps as they dive into all those round two applications. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So this week's second candidate is also looking to start in the fall of 24. The key difference, though, in this instance, is that they've already applied to eight schools, and those schools are Tepper, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Kellogg, Stern, Chicago, and Uva Darden. So they applied to those schools. They had been working as a digital marketer. They want to pivot into consulting. They've got companies like Carney, Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Ernst and Young on the Target list. Their GPA is a 760 and their GMAT is a 760 and their GPA is a 3.44. They've been working for three and a half years. This Canada is also located in India and really wants to land in either DC, Boston or New York City. So somewhere on the Amtrak line, Northeast quarter kind of thing, they mentioned that most of their work in digital marketing has been focused on the US and Canadian markets. And they say that they've driven almost $14 million in revenue for the company single handedly. So they go on to talk a lot about a lot of their sort of extracurriculars. They have a number of extracurriculars from college and they also share the fact that since they applied in round one, they've had interview invitations from all the universities. Now, mind you, I think about half of them are interview like automatic, but then there are some, like Stern, Booth, maybe one or two others on their list where they've been invited to interview. So, so far so good. But Alex, what do you make of this candidacy? So again, potentially overrepresented coming from India, but there are some other things here that you got into with them in the comments. So, yeah, tell us more and what do you make of this?
• 30:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this canDidate, again, is potentially overrepresented coming from India, but applied in round. So our prior candidate is going to face those additional challenges that round two is potentially going to be a bit tougher than round one for them being overrepresented. But this person's already applied. Very, very good. They applied to eight programs. That's quite challenging in of itself in one round. And they have interview invites to all these programs. And as you mentioned, Graham, some of these programs, they were going to get an invite anyway, right? So the likes of Kellogg, Tuck and maybe one or two others, depending on exactly when they applied, but they got invites from Booth and Stern for sure. Tepper also and Johnson. That's good. I think that's really strong signal value. So they should feel very good about that. Presumably they've done some of these interviews, but they're also maybe prepping for one or two others. It looks to me like their work experience, digital marketing, that's slightly different to many other folks coming out of India, so that might help separate them a little bit. Super GMAT, absolutely fantastic. 760. And lots of co curricular, extracurricular activities, again, helps further differentiate them, helps show that they care, they're involved, they're engaged and so forth. So lots of good stuff there, too. You made a good point before we came on air that I wanted to raise. And obviously, you can talk to this a little bit more if you'd like, but the tone of the entry does give a little bit of pause. And what I mean by that, or what we mean by that, I should say, is the initial parts of the notes were all in caps. I've primarily worked with us and Canadian markets, I think, trying to overemphasize that they sort of know these markets better and so forth. Driven almost 14 million in revenue for the company single handedly. Nobody does anything single handedly in life, let alone in business, let alone as a reasonably junior employee. I mean, their work experience is three and a half years, so I don't think they're running the company just yet. But the point is, this might be a little bit of a cultural thing or whatever, but I wouldn't use that tone in an interview. Yes, it really shows a lot of impact that the work that you've done has generated 14 million in revenue for the company. But acknowledging you work within the context of a team and other resources within the firm that support your work and various other things is going to be really important. So just wanted to throw that out there. And that's not just for this candidate specifically, but sort of more broadly advice. The tone of the candidacy is really, really important. They're also trained classical singer, they've got lots of other stuff that's really interesting about them, and I would hope that they interview really well. I would assume that they're going to get some really, hopefully they'll get some good opportunities. Graham. But that tone is a little bit of a.
• 33:46
  Speaker A: Was just. And again, I think, as you say, this person has all the ingredients to be successful. They applied in round one. Numbers are great, et cetera. And so, yeah, just as a tip to them, if they're listening and they go on to interview from some of these schools they haven't interviewed yet with. Yeah, just make sure you're not bragging. I think the best thing is just to show don't tell. Right. And also, like you say, you don't do anything alone. You're working in a company, there are people helping you, supporting you. So I think it's just important to make that point for all candidates, not just this one. So, Alex, I know you only picked out two.
• 34:20
  Speaker B: Well, just one other question. Graham. They did ask for round two strategy.
• 34:28
  Speaker A: Mean, to me, if they get so far, they've got some great, as you say, like signal value in the interview invitations they've received, should they already be working on round two apps or should they just be kind of waiting for those December notifications? They have a wide list of schools here. I kind of feel like they're going to get in somewhere. But what would you do?
• 34:52
  Speaker B: I think their round one strategy is outstanding. Right. So they've applied to a couple of M seven programs, Booth and Kellogg. They've applied to top 16 programs in terms of the tiers that we sort of classify. So they've got Johnson, they've got tuck, Fuqua and Stern and Darden. So that sort of top 16 is really their sort of real target. And then they've applied to Tepper, who sit at just outside that top 16, as it were, and some might argue is comparable certainly for certain areas, aspects of their MBA offering. So I think their strategy in round one is really, really good. Also, as we mentioned, coming from India, they're slightly overrepresented. So round two will be tougher than round one for that type of. Really. Oftentimes you can see an obvious. This is what you should do now for round two. But as I'm seeing this and they've got interview invites across the board, I'm like, I'm really hoping that they get an admit or two at least and then they can make decisions. And if that's the case, I don't think round two should be considered at all for this candidate because then the only thing that they would potentially do in round two is apply to programs that are in the same or a tier above the programs they've got admits to in round one.
• 36:27
  Speaker A: Right.
• 36:30
  Speaker B: But again, it'll be more challenging for them in round two anyway. So I just hope they executed well in round one and don't have to worry about it.
• 36:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would say they probably sit tight, see how things pan out. And then since they've already applied to eight, they probably have a lot of materials and things that they could use to quickly produce other apps if they needed to in round two. But I'm going to guess that they're not going to need to. So we'll see how it goes. I do want to thank them for submitting their profile. Hopefully our advice is helpful as they do some of their interviews and things, which like you said, they probably haven't done them all yet. But Alex, you mentioned there are only two this week and so we're going to wrap up shoRtly. But there was a subject or two that we wanted to touch on in terms of just more general advice and one of them, maybe if we have time for it, is this idea that we see on Livewire a lot, people sharing concern about not having received an interview invitation. And we also see this even with respect to calls that go out when people are admitted, candidates often seem to feel that the committee is dishing out invitations to interview or acceptances in some order. And we see it based on industry or region of the world or even company. So I saw the other day someone posted on Livewire, I'm guessing that Stanford has issued all the interview invitations for people working in private equity by this point. And I thought, wow, that's kind of an interesting assumption that they're reading that way. And so, I don't know. You've been on the other side of this at Wharton, and so have I. But do you want to shed some light on this so that people stop speculating on reading alphabetically by region? I mean, there's so many different theories that people come up with.
• 38:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, but the speculation is good for Livewire, so it keeps people engaged, and I mean, in all honesty. So we're talking about programs that trickle out interview invites rather than the likes of Harvard and Wharton and three or four other programs that release them all at the same time, where there's no speculation, the likes of Stanford has, and there's lots of other programs that fit into the second bucket. Let's assume that the schools did have particular readers dedicated only to private equity, particular readers dedicated only to a region of the world, or whatever it might be. And it might be that they have particular readers dedicated to a subgroup that they're particularly interested in. Right. That's plausible. But even if that is the case, the randomness that occurs when individuals are doing the actual reading, and maybe they've got to get two reads before a decision is made instead of one, and then someone's gone on a recruiting trip, so their apps haven't come back yet, et cetera, et cetera, just makes it very difficult to identify any patterns across all schools that have this process. So I guess my point is, Graham, even if schools tried to have some segmentation in terms of how they read and prioritize or whatever, I wouldn't read anything into the flow of interview invites. And, oh, I haven't been invited yet, therefore, I must be dinged. It's like, only when everybody's, only when the process is over, do you know that there's just too much randomness in the process to deal with it in any other way? I think.
• 40:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I have talked with some schools that they have people who are kind of expert in a certain region, less of the industry stuff. But even still, like you say, there's just a lot of randomness in this. I mean, someone gets a stack of reads that they're responsible for, but then they simultaneously head off, like you say, on a recruitment trip and so they fall behind. It doesn't mean that those candidates in that stack find out later just because of the fact that, and it has this snowball effect, because as you say, there's not usually one read, there's often two, if not even in some cases three reads before an interview decision is rendered. And so you can see how it just know you get a couple of people at the wrong time who are your readers and they take. So in any event, I don't think that Stanford is looking at every private equity candidate together and then making the decision. So if you haven't heard from Stanford or any of these other schools that trickle them out, don't get sucked into the idea that, oh, they've already invited all the people from my region or my job, et cetera. It doesn't typically work that way. And it just going to cause a lot of heartache, I think, if you get stuck on that. So I wanted to kind of blow up that bit. The other one, Alex, that we talked about was a few weeks ago.
• 41:27
  Speaker B: We hit 40 minutes. Graham, I reckon we talk about the next one next week.
• 41:31
  Speaker A: All right, then we'll save it. All right. I totally lost track of time. I always had so much fun chatting with you, Alex. So we'll tackle the other one next week. But in any event, thanks for picking out these couple of candidates and just sharing your insights on all the news and notes that we had to cover this week. So we'll do it all in one week's time. I'll see you next week, Alex.
• 41:51
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.