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MBA Wire Taps 506: Solid profile plus Entrepreneurship. Pivoting from Oil and Gas sector · 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, August 3, 2026. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. How are things going, Alex?
• 0:29
  Speaker B: Good. Thank you, Graham.
• 0:31
  Speaker A: So, just as a reminder for anyone who doesn't regularly listen or tuning in for the first time, Alex and I first met at Wharton in the admissions office. Alex, you're a former admissions officer from the Wharton School, current Clear Admit community manager, and also you teach digital marketing for several top business schools, including Columbia and LBs. I feel like Stanford too. Is that right? Is Stanford on the list now?
• 0:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, digital transformation for Stanford.
• 0:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, there you go. And on my side, I'm the co founder of Clear Admit, also worked in admissions with Alex at Wharton. That's where we first met. And then I have an MBA from the program too. Alex, this week we've got a fair amount of stuff to cover. So we have an admissions tip I want to talk about with regards to letters of recommendation. An oft overlooked area I think that we can get into. There's some interesting news out of Chicago booth and we've got not one, but two interviews with Berkeley's new Director of admissions. One's a podcast and one's a written interview and of course, candidates to discuss as usual. Before we get into it, I did want to mention our next event, at least for the time being, is planned for September 1, Tuesday, September 1, me a live stream that you and I are going to do, Alex. Just sort of a office hours. We'll probably be talking about round one, deadlines, finishing touches, maybe some interview strategy and, you know, maybe some questions around round two as well. But that's the plan there. And I think we're going to try to do those monthly again this season like we did last. So we'll see how that goes. I, I say that maybe that's our next event because there could be some. We have some tricks up our sleeve here in August, we'll see if anything else comes together. But after all that, in late September, we have our application strategy series. I think they're gonna be five or six of those events, followed by a special webinar series that we do called Real Humans Live, and then a regional series where we get together business schools in, in kind of the same regions of, of the US to talk about what that means and, you know, just kind of opportunities that are very region specific. So anyway, lots to come this fall. It's going to be a full plate. I'm glad I have A vacation before all this kicks off.
• 2:37
  Speaker B: Very good. But yeah, these events, I think they're all really, really helpful for candidates and they're generally really well attended, so looking forward to them.
• 2:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. You can go to clearadmit.com events to sign up for any of this stuff
• 2:52
  Speaker B: except the livestream stuff.
• 2:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's just gonna be live and we'll, we'll get an email out to our, if you're registered, you get an email that tells you about our events. So Definitely register@clearadmit.com if you haven't done that. But we'll, we'll get the word out. In other news, I got an email from the kind of comms office over at Chicago Booth and they were letting me know that Chicago Booth has opened a new research center and it's focused on supply chain and applied technologies. So I gotta be honest, when I first saw this come across my email, I was like, oh, okay. You know, like, I, I don't know. I mean I'm not like supply chain doesn't me excited. But then I started reading the release and then we put together an article on our site about this and basically they've opened a research hub that's dedicated to advancing the study and practice of supply chain management. But here's the kicker. In an era increasingly shaped by AI and data driven technologies, so as you might imagine, artificial intelligence is really upending operations because we can do so much more than we ever could in the past when it comes to really optimizing things. So I'll just read you this little quote from the article we put out there and it just says, in addition to advancing research, the center will support the development of new curricula and create opportunities for engagement among faculty, students and industry leaders. A key focus will be examining how technologies such as agentic AI are reshaping supply chain practices and operations management with an emphasis on both innovation and practical implementation. So that's what's going on at Chicago Booth. Sounds kind of interesting.
• 4:24
  Speaker B: Very cool. But they won't be worried about humanoid robots coming from China because Trump's banned them.
• 4:29
  Speaker A: Oh, has he? I have not. Didn't read that. Oh boy.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, this morning or last night from when we recorded. I followed this stuff because like, like I said before, I, I help help with this course at Stanford and, and clearly China are far ahead in humanoids.
• 4:49
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, agree.
• 4:50
  Speaker B: Robots. And yeah, it's quite interesting that the US has now decided that they're going to exclude them from their markets. Yeah.
• 4:59
  Speaker A: Are they worried about a sort of Trojan Horse, like where these humanoid robots rise up and take over the United States in 10 years time or something,
• 5:07
  Speaker B: for whatever reasons they express. Yeah, I take that. Always with a grain of salt.
• 5:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's funny you're now reminding me. Many episodes ago, we featured a woman who was studying at London Business School and went to China on one of those kind of study tours that they do. It has a different name at LBs. I'm forgetting the exact name, but she went and got to visit some of these factories which you call dark factories because they never don't need the lights on because these are robots. But anyway, it was just really fascinating and yeah, we'll see where it all, where it all goes. But yeah, that, that's. Yeah, I mean, obviously Chicago Booth is. It sounds like they're doing some interesting research.
• 5:43
  Speaker B: And yeah.
• 5:46
  Speaker A: So in other news, we did run an admissions tip about selecting and preparing recommendation writers and what the article on the website or the tip covers is who should write your letters, what should they cover and how you should prepare them. And that last bit is so important, I think. So many people go into the application, they're like, oh, you know, John Doe's writing my rec. Here's his name, his title, his email. And then you know that John Doe's going to get an email from the school asking them to fill out their part. But that you feel, you feel like as the applicant, your work is done. I put his name in the system and I'm done. But that's not at all the way it should work. You really need to spend some time with your recommenders. And we actually recorded you and I, three Admissions Academy videos. These are free videos. They're actually on the site and featured in that admissions tip too, where we talk about who to pick, how to coach them. And I can't remember what the third one is. There are three videos. How do we get three videos out of Rex? I can't even remember what we were doing, but there must have been a lot to talk about.
• 6:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, who knows? But the thing that we didn't cover and actually I think it's going to be quite impactful is how, how you coach your recommenders to use AI in that process, because lots of recommenders now will just stick your CV into, into the box, stick the recommendation questions into the bot and say, spin me up some answers. And I think that would be a little dangerous for the candidate if their recommenders are going down that path.
• 7:15
  Speaker A: Right. And that's where you want to make sure if your recommender is a little lazy and wants to use AI just to do it all, you better be working with them on what those prompts are like. You should be able to give them stuff that'll be much more kind of substantial than your resume. I mean, gosh, I would really hope if a Recommend is using AI, they're uploading your career goals essay, they're uploading your performance reviews or all kinds of stuff so that it still has a grounding in real facts and not just sort of fluff. Right? So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's an interesting point. So anyway, go read that on the site if you're interested in rec letters. We also have been continuing to connect with admissions directors as part of our ADCOM Q&A series. It's a little confusing because we've been doing these as a written thing. Lauren on our team connects with admissions deans and has them fill out a kind of questionnaire and then runs an interview on the site. And then I've been kind of in parallel doing podcast episodes. So we've got a lot going on on the admissions director Q and A. And this week we caught up with Saba Khan of Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She's actually recently named into this role. I think she started in April of this year. And what's fascinating is that she came from industry. She was working at Stripe in financial kind of fintech stuff, right? So she had several years of doing that. But she also prior to that was working for a decade at Stanford's business school, so Stanford gsb. So she has a lot of experience in MBA admissions, just not yet at Haas, where she's just joined. But her interview is really insightful and we asked her a couple of questions that I wanted to share with you, Alex. So the first is we just said, what's one aspect of your MBA program that you wish applicants knew more about? And Saba said, Berkeley's Haas School of Business is at the epicenter of the artificial intelligence revolution, focusing on creating AI native business leaders. Our applicants should understand the depth of our overall AI offerings. UC Berkeley is recognized as a world leader in this space. The Haas faculty is at the leading edge of this work, and Dean Jennifer Chapman is leading the charge. Our AI certificate program includes 39 courses offered as AI electives and will equip students with comprehensive AI capabilities required for so many career paths in business today. So I'm sure you're happy to hear all that stuff. I know you're a big AI fan, and it seems like Berkeley's really I mean, they're in the juice there. I mean, that's all around them, right? I mean, they're in the Bay Area.
• 9:52
  Speaker B: So yeah, I mean, obviously Berkeley and Stanford are right there and this makes great sense. And again, it's really gratifying to hear these top MBA programs really going forward with AI in the curriculum, etc. Etc. Because I think if we you don't, then the MBA becomes irrelevant. But clearly top business schools, I'm not saying pivoting, but making the necessary adjustments in their curricula to make sure that they remain really relevant.
• 10:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, I could not agree more. Now you're reminding me. I had a really interesting conversation with Lindsay Lloyd, who's the NYU Stern Director of Admissions Executive Director over there. And we talked a lot about AI and she was talking about how, you know, obviously it's integrated into Stern's curriculum and they have a special. I don't know if it's a major or a focus area, etc. But anyway, the interesting thing she was talking about is Stern's really big on EQ and so this sort of combination of EQ and AI and how, you know, there needs to be kind of judgment and all these other elements and how they're working on that aspect too. So anyway, lots to say and yeah, you're right, business schools are quickly adapting, which is important. One other thing from Berkeley, from the conversation that is up on our website with Saba, we asked her if she could tell us about their interview process. The reason I'm going to share this is because I feel like sometimes people get a little confused about how schools do interviews and in particular Berkeley, I think they sort of trickle out. They have some maybe on campus days. It's a little bit more complex than other schools. So here's what she said about their interview process. She said, we invite roughly a third of applicants to interview and interviews are conducted by trained second year students and alumni who know our culture well to keep the conversation fresh and unbiased. Interviews only interviewers only have access to your resume. The interview itself is structured around our four defining leadership principles which are question the status quo, confidence without attitude, students always and beyond yourself. You won't receive the questions in advance, but for each principal you'll be given a prompt and the freedom to choose the stories that best represent you. This format goes beyond your resume. We're not just interested in what you've done, we want to understand how you've done it and how you'll contribute to the distinct culture driven community at haas. So Any thoughts on the interview process at Haas?
• 12:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that sounds really good actually. But it does raise a question to me. Is not all Haas interviews with second year students? Some are like with bots, right? Pre recorded or whatever you call it.
• 12:45
  Speaker A: Oh, that you can. Yes. I think if you are unable. You're right. I forgot about this. If you're unable to make it or something, you could do one. That's. What do they call that? Asynchronous, where you just go online and
• 12:54
  Speaker B: there's a answer some questions basically, I guess.
• 12:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean it's actually an admissions team member, I think, asking them. But it's pre recorded. Yeah.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. So I think that creates some anxiety among students. If the only interview slots left available are those type, are they at a disadvantage? So it would be nice maybe next time we talk to Haas to sort of clarify that.
• 13:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, and I need to do some due diligence because I know that's the way it has been. I wonder if there's anything changing for
• 13:23
  Speaker B: the cycle or not.
• 13:25
  Speaker A: But yeah, you're right. I had forgotten about that. So in any event, if you want to learn more about Haas, go read the ADCOM Q and A on our website. It's very, very extensive, multiple pages long. And then the other thing is, while we're talking about Saba and Berkeley, I had her on the podcast. That episode is live in this feed, wherever you're listening. It probably came out last week. So yeah, just take a peek for that if you want to hear the conversation I had with her, which was a much more kind of broad ranging discussion about her career and how she looks at admissions and a lot of pretty good tips and sort of insider info on how to how they think about admissions generally there. And she got into depth on these four principles that they have. And so there's a lot in there that you can tune in for. So check that out if you can.
• 14:10
  Speaker B: Nice.
• 14:11
  Speaker A: Otherwise, I wanted to just remind our listeners that you can write to Alex and I by just sending an email to infoearadmit.com use the subject line wiretaps. We also accept voice notes. If you want to send us a voice note or anything audio, we'll go that way too. I know sometimes people don't want to write everything down. Alex, you picked out some candidates though. Should we talk about them for this week?
• 14:33
  Speaker B: Let's kick on.
• 14:33
  Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one. So our first candidate this week is looking to start school in the fall of 27. This person is applying to seven schools. They've got Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan, NYU, Wharton and UCLA. And they've been working pre MBA in home services, marketing, analytics and operations. And they're thinking post MBA of doing something with finance and fintech. And they specifically mention companies like American Express, PayPal, MasterCard, etc. They've taken the GMAT and they've scored a 675. That translates on the old scale to like a 720, 730. Their GPA is a 3.73 which they earned at a top 15 public university, its top 40 overall. And they studied computer science with a minor in entrepreneurship. They have five years of work experience. They're located in the Bay Area in California and they would love to land either in New York City or back in the Bay Area. They mentioned that they're finalizing their applications for these schools and they're pretty much ready to go but they wanted to kind of have a sort of gut check from our side and they mentioned, I don't know if I mentioned this, but they're 26, male, Asian of Asian descent. They have, you know, done quite a bit at work and they gave us a lot of details on that. They, in addition to sort of their, you know, regular kind of full time work experience, they also have been leading an entrepreneurial venture for four plus years where they are founder and executive producer of a digital media business business. And they've had some pretty impressive accomplishments both in that role which is their kind of I guess side gig and their main job. They also do quite a bit extracurricularly, they do some volunteer consulting, they are an Eagle Scout, they host and produce a video podcast and when they were an undergrad they were an intramural sports captain for basketball and flag football. So anyway, they gave us a lot more detail in terms of how they structured some of their essays and the kind of messaging. But I wanted to just turn things over to you, Alex. What do you think of this candidate? I know you, you left some thoughts on their apply wire entry. So what are, what are your thoughts?
• 16:58
  Speaker B: I mean like you, I really like their sort of professional profile in terms of their work experience, but their entrepreneurial activity outside of their direct experience looks pretty impressive in terms of what they've been able to build and grow as a business, a profit generating business with good margins, et cetera, et cetera and extracurriculars including being a podcasting host. So you know what that means, Graham, and so forth. And you know, even in that podcasting venture, you know, they're managing a five person team and they've got 15,000 followers or something like that. So I mean that's pretty impressive.
• 17:43
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 17:45
  Speaker B: So I got to think outside of work is, is and, and, and in work stuff looks really good for, for a top tier candidate. Their GPA is, you know, out of a computer science degree. I'm a huge fan of folks with engineering degrees as, as I've mentioned probably a bunch of times, computer science. I mean people think in this age of AI, nobody needs to learn to cope. I completely disagree with that sentiment and I think those that have that strong engineering background, including computer science, are really the ones that can leverage and really take advantage of this current shift into this world which will be dictated by AI. So that 373GPA, very good GMAT, very decent. You might argue it's not outstanding, but yeah, sure, if The GMAT was 705 or something like that, then I think this person should be applying at the top end of the M7. But other than that, Graham, I do think this overall is a candidate that shows real initiative, real entrepreneurial spirit, real sort of adventure, etc. Etc. Along as combined with very decent strong work experience. So yeah, I like this candidate.
• 19:10
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I agree. I mean this candidate will get into some schools. They've got, you know, a solid gpa, a decent gmat, you know, it's, it's not going to jump off the page, but the numbers are good enough. The work experience looks very sound. Really an impressive candidate overall. I did. You know, there are a couple of things though that I wanted to point out. One is I'm, I'm trying to understand this sort of pivot into finance and fintech and how, how well that will be received. I mean my, you know, my view is a lot of people use the MBA to pivot and so it could be fine, but that's something they're going to need to really articulate. And then the other things that kind of jumped out at me were more around school selection. So they want to be in New York or the Bay Area. So obviously they've got Columbia, NYU and Wharton. That's probably for the New York thing. There are some other schools that place well into New York too. I mean Cornell would be one, maybe some of the other New England schools, whether that's talk or even HBS and mit, but those aren't on their list. Right. And then they have California as a potential target and they only have, they said the Bay Area and they only have UCLA Anderson. So the first thing I was thinking is oh, where's Haas, Where's Stanford? And if they want to be in the Bay Area or New York City, what is it that's drawing them to programs like Georgetown, Michigan, Duke, et cetera on the list? And those are all great programs. I'm just trying to figure out what's driving the school selection. Is it their interest in Fintech? And there's something that I'm missing that I'm just trying to understand it. And I also wondered, do they have enough M7 programs on this list? I mean, this is a very qualified candidate. Solid numbers, good work experience, really impressive outside activities and they only have Columbia and Wharton from the M7 on their list. So I just sort of wondered, where's MIT or Harvard or. I mean, I don't know, those are just two that came to mind. But what are your thoughts? Stanford, et cetera.
• 21:02
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I have that noted in my thing. M7 question mark. And Sloan is an obvious choice, right? Yeah, to, to add to the list certainly in round one if they, if they, they should have all their ducks in a row by this point or they might decide, okay, I'm going to save a couple of schools to round two and I might also revisit the GMAT to see if I can blow it out of the, blow it out of the water and have, have just one more go at a couple of other schools. So maybe, maybe that's in the back of their mind too. But I do agree that Sloane looks very conspicuous by its absence here in this list. And there probably are one or two schools on this list that they could drop to round two if that's one of their constraints.
• 21:53
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. I mean, I think the one thing about the GMAT is as you say, like, yeah, maybe they take it again because right now it's enough to get them into many of these schools. But you know, we talk a lot about scholarships on this show and you know, sometimes I wonder like if this person had a 695 or something, you know, a higher score. Like suddenly you might be like, wow, they're going to get not only into all these programs but probably with quite a bit of money. So yeah, it could have long lasting ramifications when it comes to the dollars and cents here. But any event, interesting candidate and I think they're going to land on their feet. You know, they mentioned they're working with an admissions consultant, so they, you know, they clearly have their ducks in a row. But yeah, I'm just kind of curious about that school selection.
• 22:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, good point.
• 22:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. All right, well I want to thank them for sharing their profile and wish them best of luck as they, you know, we're getting down into the last month or so before a lot of those deadlines, so good luck to them. Let's turn our attention now to wiretaps candidate number two. So our second candidate this week also comes from an apply wire entry on on the site. And this candidate is similarly targeting start date of the fall of 27. This person has 10 schools that they've listed. Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Rice and uva. And this is a kind of a very non traditional candidate. They are a chemical engineering grad. They had a 10 year career in oil and gas upstream industry. They currently have left that role after 10 years and have diversified and are doing a whole bunch of freelance things ranging from advertising to being an educational environmental consultant, etc. So they're doing a bunch of different things right now. Post MBA they say they're interested in management consulting, potentially healthcare, manufacturing. They list a lot of different things. Their GPA as an undergrad was 3.7 and as I pointed out, they have 11 and a half years of work experience, full time work experience. So this candidate is older, they are from Pakistan, they are male and 37 years old. So much older they're hoping to land in the US after business school or to stay in the us. They mentioned that they're going to apply to some of these schools in round one and to do so with test waivers because you'll notice I did not include a test score in this little overview here. They then said they're going to take the GRE in December to apply in round two to the consortium and to some other universities that don't offer test waivers. So there's some schools on their list that don't allow for waivers. Right. So that's how they're trying to split things. They mentioned that their short term goal is to get into operations or program management or strategy at a place like Amazon or Tesla. They really want to pivot out of this oil and gas kind of experience that they've had and more into something in the tech or health care industry. And then in the long term they're hoping to reach the C suite. They say I'm trying to think there's anything else I should share. That's a lot. They give us a ton of information, Alex, and I know you had some back and forth or at least left them some comments, but you know, I will share. I mean it Seems like they have some nice outside activities as well. But I want to just ask you, what do you make of this candidacy? Because there's a lot here that's sort of non traditional in terms of the experience.
• 25:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, as you say, they're very non traditional in as much as they're coming at this decision to apply to top tier MBA programs with probably twice as much years of work experience than the more traditional candidates. So 11 some years and they're literally trying to just pivot completely out of what they've been doing into some new opportunities, using the MBA to help facilitate that pivot, which I think that's fair enough, and, and so forth. But it's going to be a little bit challenging to really outline why mba, why now? That's going to be quite difficult in terms. Yeah, why now is better than next year, for sure. But why didn't they make this pivot earlier in their care, etc. Etc. So, and maybe it's just come to the realization they don't want to work in oil and gas anymore because the planet is burning up or something like that. Right. I see some of their volunteer work is about environmental issues. So, so there could be that, that could be a good reason for, for, for planning the pivot. And, and if that's the case, then own it and, and make it part of the narrative, I suppose. I think, you know, their work experience is probably very good in the oil and gas sector. Well, I'm speculating that it might be very good. They're a chemical engineer undergrad, so again, big props to folks that are smart enough to do that and stuff. And you know, that probably set them up for a really interesting career in that sector. Right. Or a career that can really show that growth and that impact, etc. Etc. The challenge again that they face is they're doing a pretty significant pivot later in their career. If you're doing a pretty significant pivot and you've worked maybe three or four years in a sector that's going to be more palatable, I think, to ADCOM than 11 or 12 years. Right. And then deciding on the pivot, they're also an older candidate. Right. So 11 years sounds a lot, but they're 37, so that would make them a bit of an outlier. So again, they got to show fit in the programs that they target. So they're going to be presented with a number of challenges. Not completely insurmountable, but a number of challenges. Another aspect for a candidate like this, I'd want to see a super test score, especially if I'm an ADCOM at one of the very top end of the programs that they're targeting, and we're not seeing that. Right. They're looking to test waiver in round one and then take the test potentially in December and then target some programs in round two. So that, that might be challenging, I think. Now that all said, you know, they've got a couple of top 16 programs on their target list, maybe you'd argue one top 10, but, but there are some programs on their list that may well be accessible to them if they do get their narrative correct, etc. Etc. So I'm not saying I don't think they're being overly ambitious in their school targets and they might well get some positive news here, but they're going to have to work hard at it. Graham?
• 28:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, so I think you're referring to they have Rice on the list and George, Georgia Tech and, you know, some schools that are, you know, kind of top 20 plus, right, like Emory, etc. So, yeah, I think, yeah, the thing for me that just jumps out is it's sort of this like, red flag of like, as you say, when someone is older, they need to demonstrate fit and have a really clear set of goals. I also would argue that, I think it's harder to do a massive pivot when you're an older candidate than when you're a younger candidate. But finally, the other thing is just that, like, you're saying, like, when I see someone that's been out of school for, you know, they're 37, so they've been out of school for like 15 years potentially, right. In total. And I, when I see that, I say, wait a second, where's the academic evidence of this person's ability to perform in the classroom? I look at a test score, I can't really rely on, you know, the undergraduate performance because it's like 15 years ago. I mean, I look at it, but I'd love to have a recent example of academic readiness and so waiving. I would never wave in this type of a situation. It's just a bad idea. And I would imagine that some of the schools where you have to apply for a waiver are going to tell them no. So, yeah, we'll see. But I think they need to take a test and they need to get a high score if they're going to have a chance at some of these schools, that's for sure.
• 30:07
  Speaker B: Would you encourage them to delay then to round two? Even the programs that they're targeting in round one so that they do have that test score ahead of their, their applications potentially.
• 30:18
  Speaker A: I mean I would, I would encourage them to, you know, they need to get this test. I mean that to me that's like the number one thing they need to be doing. I would like stop everything. Yeah. Probably apply in round two and just spend the next like three months getting a very high score, like 330 on the GRE.
• 30:32
  Speaker B: But it does then bring in the issue are they potentially going to be, I mean I know we've talked about them being completely unorthodox or, or whatever but you know, potentially they're over represented from their region so. So that's a challenge in round two.
• 30:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And then the last thing that did occur to me is I'm like, wow, the 37, like I wonder if they should be applying to one of these mid career, you know, kind of leadership programs. Whether that's, you know, the Sloan Fellows or. I mean I think Stanford has one. I think MIT, Stanford and LBs all have variations of this. Yeah, it's kind of a one year program. But the issue there is that's often for people trying to accelerate, you know, a career rather than do a huge like pivot. Yeah.
• 31:20
  Speaker B: They're on a track.
• 31:21
  Speaker A: Yeah, this is a challenging situation.
• 31:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. And, and I gotta admit it doesn't necessarily help that they quit that 10 year job a couple years ago and are, you know, kind of doing, I guess a year and a half ago or something. Right. And they're just sort of doing a variety of odds and ends and, and I mean they're all kind of interesting but it just, it makes for a more complex narrative in an already complex candidate. So. Yeah, yeah. Any event, I do want to wish them the best of luck, I would say, yeah, go take that test, get a high score. That will help and then you know, see where the chips fall and try to get those apps together. But yeah. So best of luck, Alex. We've done it once again. We've spent a half an hour talking about all things MBA admissions. Let's do it all again in one week's time.
• 32:04
  Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe everyone. Take care.