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MBA Wire Taps 520: 310 GRE, good enough? Student athlete, 3.3 GPA · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, September 14, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:29
  Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
• 0:30
  Speaker A: So this week we've got a lot. We've got just a ton of great content to get to. We've got the FT rankings for Masters in Management. Duke has published their class of 28 full time MBA profile. There's been a lot of discussion around that. An admissions director Q and A with Bruce Delmonico from Yale that I'll share some quotes from. We launched our real human students and events galore to discuss and obviously the candidates. But I first want you to run down what's on tap this week in terms of deadlines.
• 1:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean we still were very in the busy phase of application deadlines for round one or early action depending on the different schools. So for early action, or I think they call it early round, Ohio State Fisher has a deadline next week. But the round one deadlines include Johnson, Insead, Stern, Yale, and Booth. Okay, so, so yeah, plenty of activity are coming for next week.
• 1:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's always a busy, busy time of year. And then, you know, the schools start to sit down and read everything and we get, you know, a little bit of a silent period while people wait for interviews. But yeah, best of luck to everyone who's still getting their applications together. I did want to make a little bit of a plea to our listeners. We've had a, you know, kind of a growing audience of late doing a lot of fun content with the podcast and we really need your reviews, ratings and, and even subscriptions. So if you can subscribe to the show, which is free, just, you know, subs and Spotify or Apple or wherever you're listening, it really helps us to spread the word. And I did want to share. We got this really nice note, Alex. Someone left a review over on Apple Podcasts and they just said it was just a short note but I wanted to share it. Thanks for continuing to put this together. I've been listening since the spring of 24 when I first became interested in applying for business school. Currently in the military, looking to apply next fall and I'll certainly be reaching out for application feedback when the time comes. So shout out to that listener. That's some dedication tuning in for a couple years leading into the application process, but I'm hoping they'll be all the better informed because there's gotta be something good. We've said over the last couple years. Alex yeah.
• 2:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I think if you, like, in this person's case, if they're in the military and they've got a plan two or three years out that they're going to get an MBA to transition into the private sector or whatever it might be, then listening to a podcast like this maybe helps them keep them on plan and, and so on and so forth. And yeah, no, that's really nice of them to, to acknowledge and stuff and thank you for their service.
• 3:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now maybe there's somewhere where they really don't have anything else to do except to listen to podcasts. So. But no, in any event, I really do appreciate them tuning in and yeah. So please be great to get more reviews and at least, you know, subscribe, rate, review, whatever you can do. We really appreciate it. Alex let's get into some of the events that are coming up because there, there's just so much actually later this week on September 17th, we're doing a webinar that's called Apply now or wait, Timing the mba. And so it's all about like, when is the right time in your career to go to business school? And we're really lucky JR McGrath from Carnegie Mellon Tepper is going to do it with us. He has been in this space forever and also knows quite a bit about kind of career, kind of career paths. And I think he dabbled in career services at one of the business schools he worked for in the past. So in any event, sign up for that on our website. Just go to clearadmit.com events. We then next week begin our Inside the MBA Admissions Process webinar series, one of our biggest series every year where we sit down with admissions directors. So on September 22nd, it kicks off. There are going to be six of these events. So it'll be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday next week, and then the same thing the following week, all at noon Eastern. Just a few of the schools we'll be connecting with next week include Berkeley, Duke, Wharton, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Columbia, mit, Chicago, Booth, Kellogg. I mean, there's just so many schools that are taking part. So sign up for these events and I won't get into any more detail, but I will say that in October, we've got some really fun stuff on tap two where we're going to do a real Humans webinar series where we connect with alumni and current students at leading business schools. And then again, we're bringing back our regional MBA series. So we'll have like a Great Lakes webinar where it's all the schools from up in that region of the country. We've got a west coast, mid Atlantic and it's all the top schools taking part but organized by region. So should be a lot of fun. That's all on tap for October. I'll get more details to you when that gets closer.
• 5:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, fantastic. And they're all great webinars and they create a lot of great content and insights and so on and so forth. So really recommend folks to explore those webinars.
• 5:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, should be fun. There have been a few big news stories, Alex, over the last week in our industry. One of them is the FT published their Masters Management ranking. And you know, we tend to talk more about MBA programs but you know, Masters in Management are increasingly important part of the sector and you know, typically pre experience type programs where you go right from undergrad and Europe has always really dominated these rankings. The US schools were slower to kind of get into this space. Although a handful of schools now are offering Masters of Management, I expect to see some of them popping up on the list at some point. I think the way the FT works, you have to have a few years of data to be part of it. So there may be. Chicago Booth, for example, has a Master's in Management, but it's only a couple years old at most. In any event, the rankings came out. I'll just read off the handful of the top schools. The number one Master's in management program according to the FT is University of San Gallen in Switzerland. Nova School came in second. They're in Portugal, just outside of Lisbon. Shanghai. Jiao Tong University is third, followed by Insead, hec, escp, Vlerik in Belgium, which I visited not too long ago. ESE in Spain, Stockholm School of Economics, Rabat Business School in Morocco, Prague University, EM Leon in France, ESSEC also in France, Schema Business School, Rotterdam School of Management. And then in 16th place is London Business School. So I'll stop there. Those are kind of the sort of who's who of big Masters in Management programs. Any quick thoughts, Alex?
• 7:03
  Speaker B: I mean I'll be perfectly honest, this is not a marketplace I know as well as the full time MBA program marketplace. And I. Yeah, it's a little bit concerning that the UK schools aren't that well represented, especially like London Business School is a little bit lower down, but there are also other great management universities in, in the uk so. So yeah it's. And, and you get to the point where you address the point that US schools are a little bit behind in this type of degree. And it's much like the European schools are a bit behind in the full time MBA two year format, which originated in the U.S. so Europe's very good at the Masters in management straight out of undergrad, whereas US has a much stronger and longer history in the two year MBA model. So, yeah, kudos for Financial Times for covering this. And yeah, hopefully it provides some good insight for those applying directly out of undergrad to these types of programs. They do compete with the mba.
• 8:10
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah.
• 8:11
  Speaker B: So I'm a little hesitant to really, because we want folks to go get some experience and then come back and pursue their mba. So. Yeah, very good.
• 8:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, yeah. And there's the one thing I will say is you can tell it's a market that's maybe less settled than sort of full time MBA in the sense that the numbers move quite dramatically from year to year. So you have a school like Rabat Business School in Morocco that was like 20th last year. They're 10th this year. Right. So you don't see those kind of movements or even Vlaric, you know, which is in Brussels. They, you know. Well, they have a campus in Brussels. They have a campus also in, I think in Leuven. I can't remember where it is, but they, in any event, they move from like 14 to 6. Right. So there's a lot of movement that you wouldn't necessarily see as much of in a kind of full time MBA where it's kind of more established, been around for longer. But anyway, this is an interesting, interesting market that we keep an eye on and we've been covering more. And I do, as I said earlier, once some of those US schools that have entered the fray have three years worth of data to share, they may start to filter into this list too. So we'll see.
• 9:11
  Speaker B: Very good.
• 9:12
  Speaker A: Speaking of US schools, Duke Fuqua is, I believe, the first top MBA program to publish their class profile for the class of 2028. So some big news here. It's been covered broadly in the media, but I wanted to kind of just give you the numbers, Alex, and then get your thoughts. So the big number that's caught a lot of people's attention is there are 359 students in the class this year. Last year that number was 426. So they've effectively shrunk the class by probably one cohort. You know, most of these business schools divide their class up into little groups for teaching purposes. And so there's like one less cohort. Those are usually about 60 students, large right. So that's the size of the class. Percent women, 44%. That's down from 47% last year. International students is actually 38%. That's up 3% from last year. The average years of work experience is six years. That's up from 5.8. Average undergraduate GPA. And this is where things get a little more muddy because you may recall Alex and I know you love this, Duke gives the middle 80% for all these counting stats. So the undergraduate GPA range was 3.15 to 3.9 last year it was 3.16 to 3.91. So effectively unchanged. The GRE was between 307 and 330. It was 307 to 328 last year. So again, very similar. The GMAT score they gave the focus this year, 605 to 715 is that middle 80% range and that equates to. Well, they didn't give this last year. Last year they gave the old scores, right, which was 680 to 770. But I looked at the conversion charts and that equates to more like a 615 to 735. So you could argue there's been a bit of a decline in the average GMAT score. And then executive assessment that they also accept was between 150 and 162. Again middle 80% last year that was between 149 and 158. So executive assessment numbers going up for them. Any thoughts on these facts and figures for their class profile?
• 11:27
  Speaker B: I don't think we can hide from it. This is not good news. Right. If they've had to drop a cohort then that, that shows some softness in demand for from top tier MBA candidates. Now we will see over the next several weeks if this is repeated at their peer schools. My suspicion is that that's going to be the case because I don't think Fuqua stands out for any competitive reasons. Right. I don't think they've done anything to cause this themselves. So that will be really interesting to see how it plays out. But kudos to Fuqua for sort of sustaining the, the, the, the quality of the, the student body for the most part. Right. So, so I think, you know, they, they would have had two choices, right. They could have lowered a little bit of quality metrics to sustain the, the, the, the, the, the student numbers and that would have helped their budgeting, etc. Etc. But it would have experience. Right. So, so those folks coming to the program, they want to be surrounded by, you know, really quality peers, etc. Etc. That's part of the value of the MBA program is your networks and so forth. So kudos for not dropping the bar just to sustain the number in the cohort. I don't like these middle range statistics they produce. I'm actually preparing a class on data analytics for. Well, I'll just brag it's for Stanford and I wouldn't use this method to highlight our metrics. So that being said, yeah, kudos for what they've done but it doesn't fare well for the MBA marketplace across other schools. So we'll see what's going to occur with other class profiles that will be coming out.
• 13:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I think we'll see a mix of slightly smaller classes or maybe slightly lower numbers. It'll depend on what the deans of these schools decided to do if they need the revenue or if they want to preserve the caliber. I will say they had softer application volume as did all top business schools.
• 13:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker A: But I want to mention it was off of an all time high. So I think some of the headlines are like, you know, 30% drop in application or whatever it was. I'm just throwing that number out there but it's probably somewhere between 20 and 30 and, and you know, that's the headline. But then if you look at the historical data you would see that they were at an all time high for application volume and so you know. But still.
• 14:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, but the counter to that is when they're at the all time high, they said 30% rise in application volume, right?
• 14:09
  Speaker A: Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah, totally.
• 14:12
  Speaker B: So you get that. Actually there's one interesting statistic that you did pull that is a bit surprising that the international student body increased as a percentage. Now as total numbers. It wouldn't have increased because obviously as a percentages coming off a smaller base. But, but you would just imagine that the reason for the smaller class size is for a significant drop in international candidates given. Well, let's not get into the geopolitics on this show but given all the stuff that's going on with visas and so forth.
• 14:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. And what I don't know, and I would need to dig further into this is you know, what percentage of those are dual citizens. And you know, but I presume they, but, but I presume they've been count this the same way and that they didn't change the way they counted one year to the next. So in any event. Yeah, so we'll see how this shakes out.
• 15:04
  Speaker B: But even if Even if they count it the same way, they might have been more deliberate this season to pick dual citizens.
• 15:11
  Speaker A: Oh, maybe. Yeah. Who knows?
• 15:12
  Speaker B: So there are ways to. Not manipulate is a bad term, but there are ways to hold the numbers steady by doing some different things.
• 15:20
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 15:21
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker A: I'll be very curious to see as all the other top schools start to publish their class profiles. So we'll see how it goes. Moving right along, we did an admissions tip on the website that's really important for people who are applying to business school now or even in round two. And it's called five questions to ask yourself before submitting an optional essay. And I love this piece. We run it every year. I think we also have a video where we talk about this, too. But essentially, you got to ask yourself, is it relevant what you're going to share? Is it requested? Because some schools are very specific about, did they ask you to share this category of information, or were they very specific about what they want? Is it welcome? So some schools are kind of like, hey, only use this if you really have to. And then is it constructive? Does it actually help, you know, build your candidacy and convey something? And then the last piece in that tip is, is it concise? Because you are creating extra work for the admissions reader.
• 16:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:17
  Speaker A: So anyway, read the tip. We get into a lot more detail as to the nuance of this, but it's a great tip if you're applying to business school right now.
• 16:23
  Speaker B: Yeah. Some people think, well, it's an optional essay. I need to say something. Yeah. Right. It's an advantage to. And that's just not the case.
• 16:31
  Speaker A: Right. So make good use of it. We also. I'm really excited we've kicked off our Real Humans students series. And this for those of you just tuning into the show or haven't been listening, like our reviewer, for a couple of years. This is a series we run every year on the website where we profile four to six current students who've just started at top business schools. And we do it for each school. So the first school out of the gate this year is UNC Kenan Flagler in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And we caught up with, I think, six students in their class of 28. And I wanted to just share. One of the students is this woman named Maren, and she's 24, originally from Denver, Colorado. She studied public health and political science out in California for her undergrad. And she'd worked as a behavioral health counselor as well as a healthcare benefits consultant. So very much active in the healthcare domain. I Think she had about three years of experience before coming to unc, and we just asked her a few questions. I mean, there are a ton in the. In the interview, but I'm going to share a few of them. One is, what is one thing you would absolutely do again as part of your application process? And she says, talking to as many students and alumni as I can, those conversations taught me things about each program that went beyond what was on the website, and it made writing the essays and interviews much easier. So great advice there. We also asked her, what's one thing you would change or do differently? And she said, I would have started writing essays earlier. It was a very tedious and time consuming process that I wish I would have spread out a little more. So maybe a little late to tell that to our round one listeners, but if you're applying in round two, like, get started, I think is her advice there. And then the last question that we asked her is, what is one thing you've learned about Kenan Flagler that has surprised you? And she says, one thing that has truly impressed me is how accessible my professors have been. I've been able to attend multiple review sessions throughout the week, and they have made themselves readily available for additional support. And she talks a lot in this interview about the kind of culture at UNC Kenan Flagler, and how welcoming it is. So definitely read that if you're interested in unc. It's a great read. And there are five other students who we profile as well in that piece.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely brilliant. I'm not sure the qualifier tedious in terms of doing essay prep is something we really want to promote the other side of. I think doing all that work is hopefully so introspective that it has value in of itself. Right. So there's some value in the tedium. That's kind of what I'm trying to say.
• 19:12
  Speaker A: I agree. Yeah. And then last thing before we talk about our candidates. I know we got a lot of stuff this week, but the last thing is Bruce Delmonico from Yale School of Management did caught up with Lauren on our team and did our admissions director Q and A on the website. So a written piece that's up on the site and I wanted to share a few of his comments. He's always super eloquent, and so I just thought it'd be good to hear what he has to say. So one of the questions we asked him was about, you know, ROI. We said conversations about the MBA's value often center on jobs, salaries, and ROI. But what are some of the other ways students benefit from the MBA experience that might be harder to quantify?
• 19:52
  Speaker B: And.
• 19:52
  Speaker A: And so Bruce said, that's a great question. And there are good reasons why conversations about MBA value tend to focus on jobs, salaries, and roi. I continue to believe in the transformative value of the MBA when it comes to expanding opportunity, heightening one's professional ceiling, and delivering deep and rapid roi. Beyond that, though, among the benefits of the MBA are the ability to have greater impact and the way in which it instills confidence, which I think are interrelated in terms of impact. This is somewhat wrapped up in things like jobs and roi. But one key thing the MBA imparts is a heightened ability to have impact in one's work, one's community, and in many ways, one's personal life. The skills that the MBA helps you develop in terms of self knowledge and interpersonal relationships are broadly applicable. This is partly due to what you learn in an mba, partly due to the network you develop, partly. But underlying these things is the confidence you gain through the degree. I hear this benefit cited very frequently by students as they graduate, that the increase in confidence they have from the time they started the MBA to the time they finished is perhaps the greatest value of the degree. They are more confident in themselves, in their abilities, and in the impact they can have when they begin the program. They're guided by intuition and instinct in making decisions. But being able to step back in the MBA program, put structures and frameworks around these instincts and approach their work and their lives in a more organized and intentional way is the thing that has been most transformative for them. So I thought that was a, you know, he really got into some detail there, but I thought that was worth sharing.
• 21:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, brilliant. And just a couple of adjectives picked up the notion of confidence that the MBA provides and intentionality, I think those are. That's super important. But, yeah, Bruce always very eloquent.
• 21:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we also asked him about any trends he's spotting in the applicant pool or admissions or just the MBA experience. And he talked about how, you know, the market's changing and evolving constantly. And he said AI, it seems, is top of mind for most people. But he said in terms of the MBA experience, he wanted to note that they've been incorporating AI into the coursework for several years, and this year they added an AI course to the first year core curriculum so that every student has this AI. Foundations for managers in their first semester at Yale som. In addition to the fact that AI concepts are being, you know, pushed everywhere out into the core curriculum and that there are electives that specialize in that domain, too. But he said one thing that he always tells MBA aspirants is when it comes to application trends, he said, don't undermatch in the admissions process. This is not a recent trend, specifically because I've observed it for years, But I always see candidates who feel that they're less competitive than they actually are and who therefore fail to apply to schools. So he goes on from there. But I thought this was interesting, Alex, because you often talk about this idea that if you're not applying to places that reject you, you've done something wrong. Right. So you've got to reach for the stars. And I think he's kind of hinting at this fact that some people, they just disqualify themselves before they even start.
• 23:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, as you state a great application strategy, unless you get into the very best program to fit your particular goals, whether it's Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton, unless you get into the very, very best, you. You should have a couple of rejections on your. On. On your spectrum of schools that you've. You've targeted. Otherwise, you've perhaps you've just not reached high enough. You just don't know. Right. If you've got an admit. Admit across all the schools you've targeted, you'll always wonder, should I have done this? And should I've applied to Yale? Should I apply to Harvard or whatever it might be.
• 23:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker A: So with that, I think we should get into our candidates. I did want to mention I'm excited to say that there are more podcast episodes coming. And in fact, I'm going to catch up with Bruce from Yale and record one in a couple of days. So that's forthcoming, as well as podcasts from Tepper, Carnegie Mellon, Michigan, Ross, Emory, unc, Foster. I mean, there's a whole list more that I'm kind of making my way through to record. And we'll get them out to you, but, yeah, we'll keep that up. Anything else, though, Alex, from you? Before we talk about our candidates, let's kick on. All right, so this is wiretaps. Candidate number one. Our first candidate this week comes from an apply wire entry, and this person shared their profile. They're looking to start school next fall. So they're applying now. They have 10 schools on the target list. Those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Booth, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, ucla, usc, and uva Darden. And this person's been working in agribusiness prior to applying to business school here, they'd love to get into consumer goods after earning their MBA. They have a GRE score of 310. Their GPA is a 3.7. They've got four years of work experience located in Washington D.C. and they're very flexible about where they land after business school. They're just, just willing to work kind of anywhere in the States. They mentioned that they are applying as they know and as I pointed out, with a lower GRE that 310, they really grinded to get that score. And they shared in the comments that they, you know, worked with a tutor. I believe they've taken the test more than once and this is kind of where they've landed. They said that they have okay, extracurriculars and about four years of experience, as I mentioned, in corporate strategy and development. They're really hoping the rest of their profile can balance out this lower GRE score of 310, which, you know, is a good at least. Well, probably about 10 points below the average, you know, if not more. Right. Than maybe 10, 15 points above the average a lot of these schools. So, Alex, what do you make of this candidate?
• 25:40
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, obviously we can readily identify the weak point of this profile. It seems like it's that GRE score. Right. And they have a humanities degree. So I wonder if a lot of that GRE score is compromised by a less heavy quant profile. I know they've done MBA math, but that'll be something that the ADCOM will scrutinize in terms of what have they done to prepare themselves for the rigor of that first quarter or whatever it is that the schools that they're targeting. So what's the evidence that they have good quant aptitude and oftentimes you can point to the test score, etc. Etc. To support that and you can point to undergraduate coursework, etc. But in this case, perhaps that's not, not going to be the case. So that's going to be the big challenge and I'm assuming everything else is in, in very good shape. I mean, their overall GPA is very good, human analytics degree and so forth. And then presuming there's lots of impact and growth at work, they've developed their goals well, etc. Etc. And some impact outside of work. So the consequence of this GRE is potentially quite significant. They reckon that it's going to be their best score. So at least they can go into the admissions process with the full sort of understanding that They've put their best foot forward in putting their profile together. I just wonder if they took that GRE before or after completing MBA math. And my point is, have they updated their quant profile and then had another go at the gre? Because that might give them a couple more points and the level of their GRE score. Now a couple more points will make a big difference. The other thing that I did Graham, and it was as a consequence of a Slack message I sent out this morning is I used our data dashboard and I just wonder if anybody knows we've got a data dashboard but we've got all this data from Livewire entries and so on and so forth. So you can easily go to the data dashboard. You can key in your statistics like a 310 green and you can look at all the schools that you know. You can then select by admits, not admit or interview, invite whatever it might be and you can look at the percentage of the class class that was admitted with that level of GRE score. Right. So maybe this person could go scrutinize the data dashboard. I did it a little bit and there are some, some schools that will, you know do have admitted folks with a 310 GRE. And you, you mentioned earlier with Duke's class profile they will take folks in that mid 80% at 307. Right. So this is possible. I know I've gone very long winded on this. It is possible that they will get admitted to top 16 type programs less likely to M7 but they're going to really have to have their ducks in a row to be in that small percentage group that does get admitted. And everything else has got to look really strong. But they've still got to show some quant evidence regardless. That's going to be critical because nobody wants to be struggling in that first quarter.
• 29:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, as a former art history major who went to Wharton, I can tell you that first quarter quarter is a sprint. And this person's taken MBA math which helps. I think back at the time that didn't exist but I had taken, I don't know, Cal and accounting intro courses at my local college just to kind of get up to speed before I started but so they've done some of that. But I agree this is going to be the weakness. They mentioned they attended a top 25 liberal arts college. But your correct point out humanities major. So yeah, I think this is probably what it is if they've already applied maybe in round one but, but obviously if they could eke out a few more points on the gre. It would help them. I think you're absolutely right, though. They have a better chance at the schools that are maybe slightly lower ranked on their list that have these broader ranges of acceptance rates per test score than they will be maybe with some of the M7 schools. But as Bruce pointed out in the admissions Q and A, they might as well go for it. And so they have a mix of schools on their list. So I want to wish them the best of luck. I hope it works out for them. My guess is that their career has been great and they'll have to push some of their outside activities and, you know, that 3.7 GPA to really draw away attention from the GRE. But let's hope it goes well for them.
• 30:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, very good.
• 30:38
  Speaker A: All right, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two. So our second candidate this week that we're going to discuss also comes from an apply wire entry. This person shared their profile. They're applying right now. They want to start in 27, and they're looking at eight schools. So they've got Chicago Booth, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Kellogg, NYU Wharton, and uva Darden. This person has been working in the medical devices space, mostly in a kind of a sales role. And they want to switch and do investment banking, but with a focus on the healthcare segment. Their GPA is a 3.3. They did go to school for five years as Division 1 student athlete, and they were captain of their team for three of those years. So that may explain a little bit of that 3.3, very demanding kind of sports schedule. They've been working for four years, located in Boston. They want to land in New York after business school if possible, given their banking goals. They also have a master's degree, which they earned in business analytics. And this is their grades. There are 3.97. So much higher grade. They mentioned that the company they've been working for is a Fortune 500 MedTech company and that they've had three different positions there. So it sounds like they've been moving up in the ranks outside of work. They started a fund about five years ago to help families affected by cancer. This was in the memory of their mother. And with that, they plan annual events and present to, you know, the attendees that come. They also allocate funds to event beneficiaries. So a lot of work in that. They said they're going to be applying in round two and that they're taking the GRE in October because you notice I did not offer up A test score. And they wondered what kind of score should we, would we recommend that they get in order to be competitive at the top schools? So, Alex, what do you make of this?
• 32:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, quite honestly, I think this is a very strong candidate and we talked about this before we came on air. I mean, yeah, so you could identify the potential weak point is at 3.3 GPA. But being a student athlete can be very demanding, as you pointed out, five years captain, etc. Etc. And then complement that with the 397 in there masters. I think that the schools are going to be look past a little bit that 3 3. But that said, the best way to sort of dot the I's and cross the T's is to get an outstanding GRE score. So look at the schools that they're targeting, you know, top schools, and add two or three points to their median and that should be where they're really targeting, sort of 3, 30, etc. Etc. If they're able to target, do that and they apply in round two, I think they're going to have some terrific options. There's just a lot to like about this overall profile. Graham.
• 33:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. Like, I think that the student athlete, captain of the team for three years will really help to put that 3:3 in context. And then you see that 397 at the Master's level. Right. So I'm not worried as to the gre. I mean, I think they want to be, you know, they've got, you know, schools like Chicago, Columbia, Wharton on their list. So they want to look at the average of those schools and try to get, you know, in there. I don't think that the 3 3, which is below average for these top schools means that they need to have like a home run GRE or something. Because I feel like the Masters and the student athlete piece of it will help explain. Right. So, but as long as I think the GRE is in the ballpark, right. So I would want them to aim for the mid three, you know, three twenties or something. That would be great, you know, and they should be very competitive, as you say. Like, this is a really interesting candidate. They're doing some amazing work outside of work with this cancer foundation fund that they've set up. So I think there's a lot to like here. I was kind of curious what sport it was. They didn't share, but they, you know, seemed like an interesting candidate and yeah, just buckle down, take the test, do well and then move into writing those essays for round two. But I. There's a lot to like here.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 34:48
  Speaker A: So I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Apologies to everyone. A little bit. A little bit longer this week. Although not too bad, Alex, but. But anyway, yeah, so stay tuned. You can, you know, catch this show. Every Monday we air a new episode and know we'll continue to have some of these one off admissions director guests on the show too. So, Alex, I'll catch up with you next week. We'll do this again.
• 35:08
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.