Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to the clear. Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, October 9, 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 you, graham so you know what's the news like. Last week was absolutely crazy. I know we had HBS issuing Round One interview invites, but I feel like that's like the kind of official start of the results season for Round one. But what else has been going on?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's obviously the big sort of first day of big activity on Livewire, a top school. Some argue the top school releases all its interview invite decisions on one day. We knew the day it was scheduled. I like the way Harvard does that. And, yeah, absolutely fantastic. We saw a lot of activity on Livewire as a result of that. And then this upcoming week, we've got London Business School in INSEAD are also releasing decisions for their interview invites. So we'll see activity there. We're also seeing plenty of interview invite activity from schools. That what we might call trickle out those invites.
So whether it's Stern, Stamford, we've seen a few Stanford and several other schools, lots of activity. Texas McCombs has its Round One application deadline coming up this week. So I'd say we're getting towards the latter part of the actual round One application deadlines as we sort of head into further into October. And, yeah, interview season is picking up.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Graham yeah, and we do keep seeing a little bit of activity around Columbia's J term. I noticed some people are posting on the site about that, some getting results positive and negative, and some waiting still, maybe on interviews. But, yeah, I love this time of year. I mean, we keep talking about that, but it's a lot of fun.
I did want to mention we have a couple of events coming up. One is on October 18 at noon Eastern. We're going to be doing a joint kind of webinar with Management and Leadership for Tomorrow, which is an organization that helps minority candidates find their way to business school and find success in an MBA program in terms of their career strategy. And so this webinar is going to actually be all about when's the right time to go to business school and which round should you apply in, how do you know that an MBA is the right fit, et cetera. So a lot of details there. I think there are going to be a couple of MBA students or kind of alumni of the MLT program that join us for that. So that should be fun. And then, I guess, along those lines, on October 25, we're going to be back again with a real humans webinar. As many of our listeners know, those are webinars where we bring together usually first or second year students from top programs and just have kind of an ask me anything with Mike and our team. So those are fun, too. Stay tuned. I'll get links and things for those as we get more details. But these are never a dull moment in the Clearadmit office. We're kind of doing more and more events these days, which is fun.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: No? Absolutely fantastic. We had our Clear Admit Plus monthly webinar last week, which was really enjoyable, I thought. We had a pretty decent attendance and lots of great, great questions. And we focused on interview prep because we're getting ready for interview season. So I thought that was a really good session.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I want to give a shout out to anyone who's tuning in who joined us for that. It's a lot of fun for us to get a chance to hang out with podcast listeners, community members, and just hear how things are going. And yeah, as you say, great questions. So that really made for a really interesting session. We will do that again at the beginning of November. I won't plug that now because I'll get the date later. But in any event, Alex, we had a ton of stuff that we published on the website. I can barely keep up and read it all. I don't know how candidates manage. I guess it's a great way to procrastinate. You can read about applying to business school rather than work on your essays or interview prep. But we ran an admissions tip on the seven hardest interview questions and how to answer them. We talked a little bit about that in our webinar last week, but there's stuff there. We also have a whole episode of the Clear Admissions Academy that talks about how to answer those hard questions. But the tip is up on the website. Check it out. There's a link to the video there, too. We did an admissions director Q A with Steve Thompson, who is at Kellogg, and Steve's great. I met him back in May of this past year. He came out to Philadelphia.
Really great guy. And I always try to find little tidbits from these Q as that we do that you can read on the site. But one thing we always ask about classes, and I thought you would be really interested in this, Alex, so we know Steve like, hey, what are a couple of classes that people are pretty into these days at Kellogg? And he said, a let's see. He said, the importance of artificial intelligence in the current business landscape requires understanding not only the technology itself, but the societal, ethical, and organizational implications of this technology. In addition, navigating these issues involves increasing collaboration with these technologies. Of course, they have a course that's called Leading AI. Organizations, Ethics and Society. And it's taught by Professors Adam Waits, Hatim Raham and Leslie De. Church focuses on helping students think through all these issues as leaders and to anticipate quandaries that might arise through increasing reliance on AI and how to address them. So that's one of the courses I'd love to take, that class.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's also really a real good reflection of how top schools are innovating their curricula almost in real time. Because if you'd have said to me two years ago that this was the course, I'd be like, what? I don't really get what they're talking about. But as we know right now, this stuff is super, super important.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And the other thing Steve mentioned, he said they have a class called The Economics of Energy Markets and the Environment. And that's taught by Professor Megan Busey, I think is how you say her name, or Megan Bus. Anyway, it basically describes it. He says that this is a class that is in high demand among our student body that is increasingly focused on sustainability. So, yeah, again, another kind of know, innovative course that's on offer. And so I just thought it'd be interesting to mention those two classes that Kellogg has.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: We need to get our colleague Lauren to reach out to Kellogg and get them to complete our oh, good point. New Assay series, our new series that we're going to do on sustainability, because it sounds like that's a class that fits right into that right into that area.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: And you heard it here first. We have a little project where we're talking to schools about sustainability and how their curriculum is shifting to accommodate this and different things on offer on campus. So stay tuned for more. On that front, we've got a couple of really great schools lined up to talk about that in articles we're going to run on the site. The other thing that happened, Alex, before we get into our candidates, we published a ton of Class of 2025 profiles. And just like last week, there's sort of way too many to tackle all the details, but if you're interested, on our website, we profiled the incoming classes at Stanford, Chicago, Darden, Cornell Johnson, and Berkeley Haas. And again, it's sort of all over the map. I mean, everyone's doing pretty well. Numbers are holding quite steady. I'm impressed. Stanford has 431 students in their class this year. That's up slightly from 424. Their numbers off the charts, 3.77. Average GPA, 738. Average GMAT, 328. GRE. And these are all up a tiny bit, usually like a point or 0.1 on the GPA side. Women, 46%, that's up 2%, and International State, 37%. So Stanford looking pretty good, wouldn't you say, Alex?
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's absolutely fantastic. And again, I think when we looked at Harvard's numbers last week, their numbers held remain very strong. And that just tells me that last season, even if app volumes were down across all the top schools, right at the very top end, it looks like volumes sort of held almost steady in terms of the real high caliber candidates. So those numbers from Stanford are so impressive.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: I agree. Yeah, just crazy.
And then I can't share all the stats for everything, but Chicago's class was up to 637 students from 621. So they grew a little bit as well. 36 GPA, 728 on the GMAT, which is down a point. And then they had a 325 on the GRE, which is I think down a couple of points for them.
Women 42% at Chicago Booth and International, 36%. Those numbers held pretty steady. They were like offer up a percentage or so, depending on which one the other things just with UVA, Cornell and Berkeley, the things I'll point out is Cornell's class is a bit smaller. So they had 280 this year instead of 303. So they took the class size down a bit. But as a result, GPA, GMAT, all that stuff stayed the same. Cornell doesn't share GRE numbers, but GPA and GMAT stayed the same. Berkeley, similar class size, very similar numbers.
Actually their GMAT went up to 733 from 729 and they lost a little bit on the they have a fewer fewer women this year for some reason. So they have 41% women down from 46. And then as far as UVA is concerned, a slightly larger class, 352 students, that's up from 349. So just a few students different. And the thing that did jump out at me a little bit is their GMAT went down a bit. So they had a 720 last year at 716 for the incoming class. So slightly lower average GMAT score. And again, most of the other numbers holding stable. So any thoughts? That's a lot to digest. I encourage people to look at the website, but any kind of quick thoughts?
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I think Darden and Johnson and Hass, they sort of reflect some of the other programs sitting in similar tiers that we've talked about before, where possibly their app volumes were down a little bit. And that put pressure on either reducing the class size a little bit or forgiving a little bit on some of the dimensions of the class.
So that doesn't really surprise me. What you haven't revealed in any of these programs is the actual application volume and whether those were up or down.
And obviously that would then dictate some of these numbers. But overall, this is actually pretty good news, I think. I think what we're getting the sense of last season is app volume was down a little bit, maybe five to 15% across different top programs.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: But obviously for Stanford, if app volume was down a little bit, it's still such a high caliber pool of candidates that they're able to sustain such a ridiculously strong, brilliant. Chicago, again, held pretty strong, too.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm not sharing numbers of applications because not all these schools share that information. So it's interesting to see. But you're right. When we talked to these schools, they all were saying things like, oh, yeah, we're off a bit in terms of volume, and I would imagine yeah, between five and 15%, like you said. I will say initial conversations this year with schools suggest that volume is stable and up. And I think we saw some of that with the Harvard interview invitations coming out last week in terms of some of the data points we're seeing on livewire. So I think this year might be a little more competitive than last year in terms of volume, but we'll have to see verdict's not in. And it's only one round, right? So we have to wait for the whole season to go through.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Last thing I wanted to mention, real Humans. We talked about how we're continuing to do these Real Humans pieces on the website. We've got Indiana Kelly, Carnegie Mellon, Tepper and ASU carey We've run stories where we interview current first year students at all those institutions. If you're applying to any of those programs, this is sort of must read stuff, really would help you with your applications. So check those out. We did do a special podcast episode, too. I interviewed the senior associate dean of the MBA programs at Georgetown McDonough, so please tune in. That aired late last week, so if you missed it, check it out. It's in this same feed where you're listening to us now. Alex, that was a lot. We should get into our candidates. So do you want to move on?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Let's kick on.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one.
This week's first applicant wants to start school in the fall of 24, and they are applying to Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Wharton. So the creme de la creme, they have been working in strategy at a fintech company, and they want to be in tech or media after business school. They specifically mentioned Facebook google Walt Disney as potential targets. Their GMAT score is a whopping 780, the GPA is a 3.4, and they have three and a half years of work experience. They do note that they are Hispanic and a member of the LGBTQ community. They study data, science and business at an Ivy undergrad. Or it says Ivy Plus undergrad. What does that mean? Have you ever heard that expression, Alex? Ivy plus?
[00:14:42] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: I'm going to look it up.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: No ivy plus. I don't know.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: In any event, maybe it's the next tier.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it might be. I'll look it up while we're chatting here. But in any event, they worked a couple of years doing strategy at a high growth fintech unicorn, a couple of promotions led large initiatives, et cetera, and they have a bunch of activities outside of work. They've done charity work, sports teams, college clubs. They've got some what they call successful side hustles and they advise multiple startups. And one of the things I should mention is they're hoping to sort of transition from fintech into kind of AI. They're really interested in AI strategy and particularly in media and entertainment. So they recognize that's a little bit of a leap. But Alex, what do you make of this? Because the number, I mean, that GMAT score jumps off the page. This candidate sounds like they had a good undergraduate experience, but the GPA is a little lower and as I mentioned, they're only applying to the very best schools. So what do you make of this candidacy?
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Well, quite honestly, Graham, yeah, the GPA would be a little bit of an outlier at 3.4, but I think it's overall it's a pretty fantastic profile. I think that the key will be to show focus because it seems like this person just does a lot and is able to do a lot and is very successful at work and so forth and very sort of active outside of work. Very good. And now they want to do a bit of a pivot into media, which again, might be a little bit of a potential sort of stretch, but it appears that they have a real passion for media. They can show that through some of the things that they've done and so on and so forth. So I got to think that with good really strong execution on their applications and so forth, and coming from the Hispanic LGBTQ communities, I'm sure they've got some lived experience that they can add to the narrative that really will help sort of flesh things out too.
That should present a really strong profile overall. I mean, if this was a 3637 GPA, then yeah, you would think, absolutely. Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and target rest of the M seven. Yeah, the GPA is a little bit lower. They were really active in college and so forth. There's a little bit of me that sort of pushes back a little bit on that as an explanation. It's like, all right, make sure that you can show that focus and prioritize and so forth because you're applying to an academic program and we want to make sure that candidates that come to our top programs are really successful and so forth. But they got a 780 G Macra. And I mean, this guy's smart as a whip.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah, guy or gal.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Guy or gal for sure, but smart as a whip.
The focus is the only thing.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, two things for me on this. So number one, I did look it up. Ivy plus is apparently a term that's given to non Ivy League schools, but that are schools of similar caliber. So, Stanford, MIT, prestigious universities that are not members. U, Chicago, Caltech, Northwestern, so there are a handful of them. Duke et so. And there's no agreed upon list, apparently. But that just in case you're kind of wondering.
That's the deal there as far as this candidate is know. Ordinarily I would say, yeah, I think they're going to be fine as long as they execute on their application. The only thing that you picked up on as well is that when we asked them about the GPA, they were sort of like, well, I was really busy and I have no regrets, and I did what I wanted to do. And it was kind of like, okay, I think it's great that they were busy, but I wouldn't take that angle in terms of an explanation when it comes to telling an academic person at a school.
Because basically the message would be, well, classes are only so important to me. I got to do other stuff, too, and I balance because the answer there. What I would think if I'm an academic person at a school is, gee, we got plenty of people here with 3738 who are also active. Right. So you got to be careful about what I would say is I was super active, and as an undergraduate, I hadn't fully mastered kind of balancing my time, and I recognized that I probably could have done better. I wish I had done slightly better, but I was spread a little too thin and now that was a lesson learned and now I'm working. I've got a side hustle or two. I do a lot of activities, and I'm really good at managing all that now.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:27] Speaker A: So that would be my approach as opposed to the way that they responded to your question. But I do wish them the best of luck, and I think they're going to get into one of these schools. And I guess in a worst case, they could always look around two and fish a little further afield if for some reason it doesn't come through for them.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: And it would be good to know if they got an interview invite at Harvard, right, because they'll know that now, so that'll be a really strong signal in terms of where they sit. And just for anyone listening that sort of applied to Harvard, whether you got an interview invite or not, harvard does take a deep cut from the applicant to the interview process. So ultimately those that are invited to interview, the admit rate is quite high. It's about 50%, I think, or something like that. But it would be really interesting to know if this person got an interview, maybe. I think they've already applied to Stanford, these programs in round one, so maybe they've heard from Stanford too.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I think they did apply to all them, so we'll see. Hopefully they keep us posted. I do want to thank them for sharing their profile, and hopefully our advice has been useful as they head into maybe interviews et cetera. So best of luck to them. Let's move on, Alex, and talk about wiretaps candidate number two.
So, this week's second candidate is quite interesting in terms of nontraditional. They want to start in the fall of 24. They have five schools on the target list as well. So Columbia, Tuck, Harvard, MIT, Kellogg.
They have been working in K through twelve education for the most part. So they started as a K to twelve teacher. They recently transitioned from that into working in talent or HR, I guess, at a consulting firm. And that's, I think, where the seed was planted to get the MBA. So they're thinking, I want to go from the kind of HR side of working in strategy consulting to the client facing side. And so they're targeting companies like Bain, Deloitte, et cetera, for their post MBA goal. The GMAT score for this candidate is a 680. The GPA is a 3.3. This person has nine years of experience. So definitely on the older side when it comes to MBA applicants, they're located in Boston. They'd love to stay there after business school. And they did mention that in addition to being a former teacher, they also have an 18 month year old daughter. This is a female candidate. She mentioned she's a mom and that she knows that being a student and a mom might be difficult. She's ready to take on that challenge and pursue career goals while being a role model to her daughter. So, Alex, what do you make of this? Because the numbers are mean. Let's put that right out there. And older candidate, et cetera, but kind.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Of an interesting candidate and targeting the very best programs, right?
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: So I believe that she's applied in round one.
Did I read that correctly? I think that's correct.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: I think so, yes, I believe you're right.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: I've applied in Round one, et cetera, et cetera. So she will hear pretty well. Again, she should know if she got an interview invite at Harvard right from last week. So that's an early signal to where she sits.
Hopefully she did get an interview invite, but her numbers would look a little bit challenging. 680.3.
I really actually like her experience as a teacher. Potentially, that could be really interesting experience. And then that transition to HR and consulting, I like that, and I really like her goals. I think that all makes a lot of sense.
So from that perspective, I think there's a lot of potential strength in the candidacy, but I'm a little bit nervous about these numbers. So she will know now, having heard from Harvard where she sits there, most people will get an interview at Kellogg, so she should have the opportunity, the way Kellogg's process works, to undertake that interview. So that should be good and helpful for her. But obviously she's going to have to wait to hear from Columbia Sloan.
Maybe with Tuck two, she can get an open interview but anyway, I'm a little bit nervous and whether then she needs to target Round Two, just going after a few more programs in that Top 16 bracket, because I'd really like to see her go to a top program after all with this type of profile. So if that's the case, do MBA Math. And I think she's actually doing MBA Math now, so hopefully she's made that clear in her Round one applications that these are things that she's doing to further prepare herself for the MBA journey. But do MBA Math and potentially retake the GMAT one more time or look at the GRE and just see if it can boost that test score just a little bit. I think any increase in the test score, Graham, in Round two, if she needs to apply in Round two, hopefully she doesn't need to, but if she needs to, I think will have yeah, if she can do that, spread her list of target schools a little bit. If she needs to do that, I think hopefully she'll end up in a top program this season.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a challenge. I guess one of the things I was thinking about as well, she mentioned in her note that she applied in Round One because daycare waitlists can take a while. And so I think she's thinking ahead to the fact that she's going to need daycare for her young child while she's in business school. And so I'm sure that she would love to get into a school by Christmas and be working to set up fall daycare, which I agree to sometimes take a really long time, I guess. I do tend to agree, though, that it could be a bit of a stretch. It's possible that there's a school on this list that will find a spot for her, but I am a little nervous about the numbers and particularly given the nontraditional background, I don't know what her quantitative score was on the GMAT, for instance, but that's going to be an area that they will focus on. And they'll also look at the undergraduate GPA in terms of like, were there math courses or was it all more qualitative stuff? So we don't have the answers to that. But that's why taking MBA Math is smart. I would encourage her to finish it fast and let these schools know she may still be in the running at a number of these schools because they're still probably reviewing her file, so letting them know that that's something that's been undertaken. And I guess, like you said, it might be smart to cast a slightly wider net. If she's in a rush, she might want to look and see. I don't know if we've passed all the Round one deadlines at this point, Alex, but maybe there's some November deadlines for a couple of schools. But she may want to look into the top 16. I agree, because these numbers, they're definitely below the averages by a good margin at these target schools. So that concerns me.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah. For the top programs, we've basically passed all the round one deadlines.
We've still got a few round one deadlines, but they tend to be in the top 20. Top 25? Yeah. Maybe with one or two exceptions, but certainly the M seven and most of the top 16. I think those round one application deadlines have passed now.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I do want to give a plug for I don't know when the next deadline is, but I think Cornell Johnson is a school that could be interesting. I mean, she mentioned she wants to land in Boston, so she's still kind of in that Northeast New England kind of corridor there.
Their numbers are a little bit less. I think we just went over them earlier in the show here.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: It was like 710 or something was the average, I think, GMAT score or somewhere around there, I can pull it back up. So that puts her more in the ballpark and yeah, just something to think about as she's trying to find additional schools to go after. So, for example, Cornell is three 3710. Right. So that puts her squarely in competition, I would say. So anyway, just something to think about. Hopefully she'll keep us posted. And I did want to thank her. She did give a shout out. Apparently she listens to the show and enjoys what we do here, so maybe she'll like us a little less now. But I'm just trying to be very brutally honest, and I think you never know. Like, hopefully interview invites come and she finds a path to one of these programs. But anyway, just want to make sure she's got all of her contingency plans organized and stuff, too. So best of luck and thanks for that post. Let's move on, Alex, and talk about wiretaps candidate number three.
So our third candidate this week has just four schools on the target list, and those schools are Harvard, MIT, Kellogg, and Wharton. They want to start school next fall. They have been doing strategy consulting with a mergers and Acquisitions life Sciences focus. And after business school, they're thinking consulting and pharma focused consulting. And the company they're targeting is PwC. And the reason for that is that this is a sponsored candidate. They have to go back to PwC when they finish because PwC is footing the bill for their education. GMAT score for this candidate is a 760. GPA is a 3.5. They have five years of work experience. And they do mention that in the longer term, after fulfilling their duties, I guess, at PwC, they would love to lead growth stage biotech companies through their kind of scaling process. And they think going back to business school would help them sort of not only build the skill set, but also help with the network of investors and just having kind of the broader base of education and stuff. So. That's this person's plan. You then asked them and I'll let you talk about it, Alex, but you asked them about what else they do in their spare time, because they only really gave us kind of the numbers and work stuff. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about what else they do and just what do you think of this candidacy?
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, they're on a board for a small university affiliated nonprofit. I think that's very good. Obviously, I really like the fact that they support a local animal rescue, animal shelter, working with the CEO for presentations and so on and so forth. And they foster a dog. So I think they sound like a really cool person, quite honestly. Their GMAT is again very high, much like our first candidate at 760. GPA is decent 35, although they reckon that they're not applying to Stanford because their GPA is too low.
But you did tell us earlier on the show that Stanford's average GPA is ridiculous. So maybe Stanford again, I know Stanford really talks about this a lot. They worry sometimes that the numbers that they report do turn off some potentially really strong candidates.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: So I'll just remind folks of that because, yeah, their numbers are ridiculously high, but if you don't apply, you just don't know. Right, so maybe take a flyer in round two if that's the case.
But yeah, they're a sponsored candidate, that probably sends a pretty strong signal. Presumably they've done well at work showing impact and growth. So I like their out of work stuff. I like their ridiculously high GMAT. I like their goals.
I think that this person should end up in an M Seven program. Graham I mean, obviously relying on good execution of their candidacy and so forth, but yeah, they don't have any safety schools in their list of target programs. I will recognize that.
But yeah, overall I think a strong candidate.
[00:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, and these candidates are I mean, I never met a Career Services officer that didn't love these candidates. Right, because it's like one less student to take care of because they already have a job post MBA. So there is room in any top MBA program for some sponsored candidates, especially those sponsored by big companies like PwC, where looks good on the Career Services report kind of thing.
I don't know that they need a safety. I mean, the numbers are high, as you say.
Is the 35 a tick or two below where some of their target schools sit? Sure, but a 760 is way above. So I think they hit all the marks with numbers and, as you say, sound like an interesting person. They're giving back to their community. They're fostering dogs. This person just seems like a really qualified candidate. And so as long as they execute on their applications, I also will say I'm interested in their goals. I think that it's not just consulting. Consulting. They really have a kind of industry focus, which we often talk about, so life sciences and biotech and they have a plan for the long term. So I think this person could add I'm hoping that they applied to the Wharton Healthcare Management Program. And I know one of the things I didn't mention is that Steve Thompson over at Kellogg, who we interviewed for the website, he spoke a lot about healthcare at Kellogg and how it's a major strength, which we often mention alongside Wharton and Duke and stuff. So I feel know those are two programs that could really be excellent for this person. They may end up choosing to go to Harvard or MIT, the other two on their list, but those two are really notable for their healthcare offerings. And so if this person's serious about it, makes a lot of sense. I will say Boston's a great market to be in, though, for, you know, they're not going to go wrong with any of these fours. My guess, they just need to get into one of them.
[00:33:42] Speaker B: You would argue that this is a smart application strategy or a smart set of target.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Based on their goals, I think mean.
[00:33:54] Speaker A: I guess if they were playing things a bit more conservatively, they might have added a school that's out of the M seven or something, and that's particularly strong in healthcare.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: So that would be either Fuqua or Ross. Yeah, I would say with these types of goals. Right, yeah.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: But I think where they sit now, if they did apply in the first round, they can kind of see how things go and then add in round two. So I don't actually know. Did they say which round they're applying in? I don't think they did. Did they?
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think so.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So in any event, we'll see how it turns out. But I do want to thank them for sharing their profile and wish them the best of luck. Alex, that's it. You did a great job, as always, picking out some cool candidates to discuss. All quite different this week, which was really interesting for me. And yeah, we'll be back next week. I'm going to be on the road in the US all next week, so we'll find a time to record, but it should be fun and we'll figure it out.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah, brilliant. Safe travels, Graham, and stay safe, everyone. Take care.
