Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the clear Admit MBA admissions podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your wiretaps for Monday, June 10, 2024. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: So, what's the latest? I mean, I. Yeah, we just kind of curious to hear, are things still moving a lot with waitlists? Are we, you know?
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: What are you seeing on the wires on the site?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I mean, we're still seeing waitlist activity. Yeah. So this is going quite late into the sort of spring summer season.
Obviously, schools are now paring down to their summer waitlist status, so all schools will keep a few candidates on their waitlist over the summer to account for summer melt and various other things.
But we're probably seeing a little bit more movement on the wait list than we ordinarily would see this time of year, which is quite interesting. Graham?
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And just so for the layman summer melt, it refers to schools saying that the class melts away a bit because people disappear, they get to another program or plans change. And so that's why we in the admissions industry, we refer to that as melt when you lose some of the class that you thought you had locked in.
So, yeah, I agree with you, though. Things are kind of stood uncertain, and I sense that in talking to admissions officers who are, like, still trying to bring everything together, and we're hoping they might be taking a little break by now to get ready for next season. But, yeah, so I've been having interesting time because I actually spent some time in Berlin earlier this week. There was a meeting of some of the european leading european MBA programs. So I got to talk to a lot of schools there. And then next week, well, I guess it's maybe ten days from now, I'll be out in New Orleans at the annual GMAT conference, where a lot of the. The kind of global MBA programs gather together. It's the big industry conference of the year, so clear admit is always present there. We always do a little party. So. Yeah, so a lot of travel and a lot of conversations with business schools. And I don't know if you remember, but last year I was able to get a lot of, like, audio clips from schools. So I'm gonna try to do the same thing this year at the big GMAC conference. Get some. I was thinking we should get some schools to say, like, you know, when I do the dishes, I listen to the clear admit MBA podcast or, you know, my source for admissions news or these kind of, like, what do they call those like a spot radio spot kind of thing? We'll see if they're willing.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Good luck with that. Good luck with that. But no, I mean, those events are great. I just remember when I worked at Wharton and actually at the University of Delaware, I used to love the annual events, doing presentations, going out, networking with colleagues.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fun.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yeah, they were always great events.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'll be sure to report back in any kind of good tidbits that I pick up. But again, so things are still winding down on this cycle.
As you see from the refresh column we run every week on our website. We're trying to keep everyone abreast of the school deadlines for the next season, as well as essay topics as they come out. So we've been running that stuff of late. The other big news that I mentioned last week and is now public, so everyone knows, is if you go to bit ly, you can sign up bit ly summeressays and you can sign up for our summer webinar series about essay writing. And the way that we do it is we invite four or five schools to join us for each of these webinars. We do them every Wednesday starting July 10 for four Wednesdays in a row. These are hour long sessions. School admissions directors join us and we kind of pepper them with questions about their essay topics. And the list of schools is amazing. We've got Duke and lbs, insead, Wharton, Yale.
Gosh, I can't go. I think there's 20 schools on the list here. So it's Columbia. There are lots great, great MBA programs joining us and yeah, so that's gonna be fun. And you can sign up. I recommend signing up ASAP. These events usually we get lots of people for and so sign up, get on board. They're really good if you're starting to write essays and getting ready for the next cycle, because there's always a lot of good sort of insider advice that comes out in these sessions.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Any new questions you're going to pitch to these ad congrem?
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Well, the big thing that I've been talking to a lot of schools about is what kind of questions can bring about the most genuine that is not written by chat GPT responses. So a lot of these genuine generic like what do you want to do and what's your career plan? Why do you want an MBA? Those are maybe more susceptible to these kind of chat, GPT, et cetera, but I don't know. We'll see. I'll be curious to hear what the topics are, because by the time we run the sessions, which start in about a month, the schools should know what their essay topics are, et cetera. So we'll see.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Very good. Very good.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Other than that, we've had a bunch of stuff come across the website. As always, we did a really good admissions tip about making your list of business schools. So how many schools should you apply to? How do you pick those schools, et cetera? So you should read that if you're in the midst of planning applications. And then we caught up with three alumni from top MBA programs who are working at really cool companies. So we caught up with Shane from Chicago, Booth, who's at BCG working as a consultant. And Shane's an interesting case, just because he was in the Navy for like ten years before going to business school. And we asked him, why Booth, like, what factored, you know, what was the reason that you picked Booth? And he said that Booth support veterans was a huge differentiator that put it at the top of his list. He said, thanks to unparalleled financial support for veterans, due to the generous support from alumnus Eric Gleacher, the Harper Family foundation, and the school's participation in the yellow ribbon program, a huge portion of the financial burden of business school was lifted, enabling more veterans the opportunity to succeed. Additionally, the armed forces group at Booth does a great job of building community support, recruiting and fostering mentorship for veterans of all nations militaries. And he said, at the end of the day, I went to business school to get my first role in the private sector. And booth track record in post MBA job placement, particularly consulting, was a huge motivation to apply and attend. So, you know, I actually, I didn't. I wasn't aware of all the financial support that they provide at Booth to military folks. So that was kind of interesting to read.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah, no, brilliant. And obviously, this candidate is following the well trodden path of military going to top business schools to then start their career. Their private sector career in consulting.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: So, yeah, no, very good.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like it worked out. And then we also heard from Olivia, who went to Emory guise, graduated back in 2020. So has been out in the workforce for several years now. Works at bank of America as a vice president of investment banking and originally from Georgia and had done finance related work prior to business school. And we just asked her, what piece of advice do you wish you'd been given during your MBA? And she said, go to the extracurricular events, go on the student trips, make those memories. You have two years. It flies by and you will regret it if you sit on the sidelines. So that was a nice short quote from her I thought was really powerful, though.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's always that balance, isn't it? Balance the academic work with the extracurricular activity, which is where you will form, forge those relationships and those memories, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, no, it's great feedback.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Then the last one we talked to was Harshita, who is a UC Irvine grad, class of 23. So recent grad works at Amazon as a senior product manager, originally from India, and had worked as a software engineer before coming to the US. She got her MBA and now is over at Amazon. And this was kind of interesting. We just asked, what about your MBA experience prepared you for your current career at Amazon? And she said, Mirage, which is the name of UC Irvine's business school. Mirage's emphasis on leadership for a digitally driven world reflects on its meticulously designed curriculum that granted me access to cutting edge academic content, which now benefits me and my role at Amazon. So she said, despite lacking a background in data science, I can confidently engage with data scientists in my team, thanks to the machine learning courses I took. And product management demands a highly entrepreneurial mindset, which I developed through courses like lean startup and new venture management. So she just goes through a list here, which I won't read all of it, but there's a list of all these different things that she was either required to do or that were on offer at UC Irvine that really, she thinks helped her in this role of kind of pivoting into becoming a product manager. So very cool and just nice to kind of hear. Schools seem to be, I mean, I love this about business school, but they seem to rapidly be redesigning and pivoting and adding bells and whistles to their curricula that, like about machine learning or whatever you might need to know to be able to excel, especially in tech and especially a school in California that's placing a lot of it grads there. So that makes sense.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think if you're going to be an effective leader, you really have to understand the full domain of your sort of area of impact. And if that includes the tech aspect, which for many folks, it will do now. Yeah, go learn r. Yeah, exactly. Rstudio. Go learn python. I mean, even though we're told now that these genai tools are going to replace all software engineers, there's real value in learning, I think the code itself, the language, I should say.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Because even if you're going to manage an AI tool that's writing that code for you. It's nice to know a little bit about what underlies it all. The last thing we did is we checked in. We had a student from Stern write one of our Fridays from the frontlines columns. And it basically is a column about something called Stern Solutions, which is this experiential learning offering that Stern has. And in this case, it was about social enterprise incubation in India. And so the students in this project were challenged to explore new ways to support the creation, development, and growth of community owned businesses in India. So that was a cool kind of experiential project out of stern. You can read more about that on the site. Alex, as always, if people want to write to you or me, they can just write to infoleeadmit.com dot, use the subject line wiretaps. I don't have anything else. Do you want to get into this week's three candidates for our kind of discussion?
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Let's kick on.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one.
So this first candidate, it's an apply wire entry that you picked, Alex, and they have one school on the target list, and that school is insead. They want to start in 2025. So they're going to be applying now. They had been working in what they describe as banking tech. So, you know, technology and software, probably for the banking industry. They want to pivot into consulting. They mentioned accenture, Carney, Bain, Booz Allen, BCG, Ernst and Young, Deloitte and PwC as the kind of desired targets. They took the GMat, the new version. They got a 705. For those of you who don't yet know, like me, what a 705 means on the new test versus the old, that's actually a very high score. It's like a 750. So very high percentile, percentile type score. And they had a 3.3 gpa in undergrad. They actually have a lot of work experience. They have almost ten years of work experience. They would love to land in Europe or the Middle east after business school. And they do say in their note that they're actually in their thirties, a lot of international experience and languages. Previx experience, as I said, was in banking tech and transformation projects with some early stage tech startup experience as well. And they mentioned that, you know, they want to do consulting, but they want to specialize, ideally in kind of the fintech domain. Like, they'd love to be able to advise companies in that space. And, Alex, you asked them a question about, are you only targeting insead. And you also asked them where they're based currently and their answers were yes, I'm only targeting INSEAD and they're based in South Korea right now, but we don't believe they're from there. What do you make of this candidate and where do you think they are from? Because they didn't tell us where they're from originally.
[00:12:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I can't really speculate where they're from, but actually this is a really interesting candidate. We don't typically recommend candidates only apply to one school.
Maybe for this candidate, apply to one school in the first round, see if you're successful, but then have a backup strategy for subsequent rounds if they're from an over represented market. So if they're India origin, for example, maybe they want to seek out a second school to target in the first round just to sort of have that comfort of a bit of a backup. But that all said, their profile does really sort of look strong for inSead.
Now as you said, they've got a great GMAT.
They've got, I mean they've got a three. Three GPA. We don't really know so much about that. That might actually be a highly ranked GPA because presumably they didn't graduate from the US.
So we have to know a little bit more about that. But let's assume that's a good GPA.
It looks like their work experience is strong.
Looks like they've done some interesting things. International experience, like you say, banking tech transformation projects, which is absolutely what a lot of people are working on these days as we're either transferring, doing digital transformation or sustainability transformation or whatever the transformation is at this point as we switch to the next post industrial revolution, whatever it all is these days.
But I reckon that their work experience is really strong. Graham. I think schools will like that. And I think their post MBA plan makes great sense going into consulting, focusing on fintech. So Fintech has been their sort of industry and so forth.
They've done some sports in, in terms of extra stuff. Maybe that's not completely outstanding, but, but nevertheless they're probably a pretty decent human being.
So I. And you know, the nine and a half years of experience, so they're at the long end of the spectrum. But INSEAD is a one year programme like the majority of the top, top MBA programs in the, in Europe.
And obviously London business school is an exception there. But for a slightly older candidate, one year MBA program makes sense. Average age at INSI is probably a little bit older than the more traditional candidates. That are pursuing mbas in the top us program. So Lotz to me says that this is probably going to be a strong INSEAD candidate. Just be nice for them to have another program in mind in that first round.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I mean, two things come to my mind. Number one, when it comes to other programs, there are a handful of other one year offerings that might be well suited here. We talk a lot about them sometimes, IMD being one, or Cambridge, Oxford. There are other one year mbas in Europe that would help this person land in Europe. Or the Middle East. Post MBA. If memory serves, NYU now has a one year MBA offering in the Middle east too. Right? So there are possibilities and they may want to cast a slightly wider net. I don't know why, but I love to play detective. And I was kind of just trying to figure out where is this person originally from? Because that may shape things too. Because if I were to tell you this is an indian male engineer who happens to be in South Korea now and has worked in different markets and has kind of an engineering background or something, I might say, okay, numbers are still pretty good, but they better apply in the first round because they're going to be overrepresented. And so if that's the case, and I don't know if this person's tuning in, then, yeah, they should apply early and get that. Get that out of the way, just because I don't want them to be fighting for a spot as an overrepresented candidate. And then the only other thing I was wondering that we don't have information on here, unless I miss something, is just outside activities. Anything else that makes this person tick that might make them stand out in some way? It sounds like they have some language skills and have had some interesting international experiences work wise. But I was wondering what else is to this candidate? Do they have any other. Or interests or hobbies?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, sports.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so they did say somewhere, yeah.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: They'Re involved in some sports competitions, ran a sports club in their undergraduate and would do so again at business school.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Okay, so sports. Yeah. So I guess, I mean, again, it's just hard to know. I mean, I wish I had a little more information, but I do agree with you that, you know, the career, I mean, it all makes sense, like what they want to do. And the numbers are good. So it just. It always makes me nervous when someone has one, just one school on the target list. You just never know. So I would encourage them to cast a slight wider net, but, yeah, otherwise they might end up at INSEAD, and I hope that they do. That'd be best of luck to them. Yeah.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: All right, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two.
So our second candidate this week has nine schools on the target list, and those schools are Berkeley, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Kellogg, Stanford, Chicago, Booth, Wharton, and Yale.
This person is looking to start next fall. They fall 25, I should say. They are currently a product manager, and they want to get into tech or venture capital after business school. They also have a 705 on the GMAT, which is again, like a 750 on the older test. So very good score, 3.34 gpA, which is solid five years of work experience.
Located in the midwest.
They did a couple years in tech consulting, technical consulting, and then three years in product management in the clean tech domain. And in that role, those three years, they've actually had two promotions, and they currently manage two, I guess two pm's, they say. So they're. Yeah, so they have some management experience. A couple other tidbits on this candidate. Academically, they studied. They went to a liberal arts college. So a little bit of a non traditional background in that regard, although they did complete MBA mail to help show their quantitative readiness when it comes to business school, extracurriculars wise.
They're running in a marathon. They love running. They also do some volunteer work with an organization for disadvantaged children. And again, they want to do product management or strategy at a big tech company.
They're also kind of interested in clean tech vc. Maybe that relates to their current role, which is in clean tech. So what do you make of this candidate, Alex? Because they. I mean, aside from they have nine schools instead of one, the numbers are, of course, quite similar to the first candidate this week.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, one thing I find quite interesting about this candidate, Graham, is coming from a liberal arts background and being a product manager, actually now also managing product managers. When I think of a product manager, sort of, especially in the sort of tech space, and they're in clean tech, I think of an engineer.
So I'm a bit curious about how they managed to, you know, engage their career in as a product manager from a liberal arts background, which you would be more familiar with, Graham, obviously, having a liberal arts background yourself. So I thought that was quite interesting.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I wonder how they. They must. I mean, it all probably comes down to that first job out of college. Like, how did they get that job? That was maybe, you know, they mentioned it was like technical consulting, but. Yeah, it is interesting to me.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So something slightly unorthodox about that. That could really be a strong piece of the profile. I reckon they've probably done very well in their career, and again, they're sort of now managing others, so. And obviously working in the clean tech space is very good stuff, so they'll get lots of plus points for all that.
I think, quite honestly, I think there's a lot to like here. You know, they're coming from the midwest. They've done a little bit of extracurricular stuff. They say running a marathon like everyone else. Well, depend, you know, I suppose everyone can complete a marathon, but can people actually run a marathon that takes a little bit more whatever?
[00:20:54] Speaker A: And, yeah, it's just because I think in the MBA application pool, it's like there are a lot of people who say, oh, I run marathons. You know, so I think that's what they're referring to.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, no, I guess they did. I ran a marathon once, Graham, and I tell you when I finished that, I was like, never, ever again. And I've stuck to that. It was the worst experience of my life. And obviously, I've never had to birth children, but I can imagine there's a parallel in terms of the agony that you go through for the last 610 miles, which was my experience in New York many years ago. Anyway, back to, back to Michelle, they also do volunteer work for disadvantaged children, which I really like. I mean, obviously, if they're doing that once a month for an hour, that's, you know, that's trivial. It doesn't matter. But if it's something about which they're really, actually passionate and there's a reason for that, and they're sort of really quite involved in that, I think that that, again, would play very well in admission. Agrees, and they're probably just quite a nice individual again, which is really important.
So, yeah, I think they just narrowed their target school list down a little bit, but they look like a candidate that's going to be appealing to some of the top programs. Right.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: And we know the fact that they took MBA math to sort of demonstrate.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: That just shows not only is it useful for their candidacy, but it shows to me that they're someone who's, who's really clearly planning for this process and is out in front. So I think that's great. I will say I would like for the clean tech angle in their application to be pushed to the fore. Like, I really think, you know. Yeah, front and center because it's a differentiator. And there are a lot of candidates, I think, who are like, oh, I want to work in sustainability or clean tech, and they have no background in that other than maybe a hobby or something. And so here's someone with legitimate experience in the domain who presumably would be an interesting voice to have in the classroom. And so if they can talk about wanting to work in tech or vc, but with that specific angle, I think that would make sense. And my suspicion is that tech or even consulting related to clean tech would be smart. I think VC might be a little harder, although it depends on the school that they go to. But in any event, very interesting candidacy. I do want to thank them for sharing their profile. And also, I mean, I never would have known that we would learn by talking about this candidate that you had never given birth to any children, Alex. So, you know, this is.
So I hope this person does well. And, yeah, we'll go on from here. Let's talk about our wiretaps. Candidate number three.
So the third candidate this week also has nine schools on the target list. And Alex, you made a good point earlier that at this time of year, people tend to have a longer list and then they narrow it down. So for this person, those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Tuck, Duke, Harvard, Michigan, MIT, Wharton and Uva Darden. Now, this candidate, who also wants to start in the fall of 25, is currently or their pre MBA career. They list as medical doctor. They're from Nigeria. And they want to pivot. They want to get into consulting. And they mentioned accenture, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, McKinsey and pwc.
They have a GRE score of 333, which is, again, we've had a lot of really good test scores on this week's show. Their GPA is a 3.6. They only have a couple years of work experience. And they explain that that's because of the fact that they spent eight years in medical school, which they mentioned shouldn't normally take that long, but because of union strikes and Covid their medical school career, which, you know, I believe in Nigeria's combined with undergrad, it just took longer than it should have or than it would have ordinarily. And they said they were worked for one year as a physician. They also have a year where they led, which is their current role, where they're leading a solar energy company. And then they had a lot of side gigs. They ran a digital agency while they were in medical school serving local and international clients.
They've done some kind of extracurriculars, gotten some awards for that. And they just mentioned they want to get a global business education to be able to solve problems for large scale enterprises. And they think that also tapping into an international network would be great. They want to work in management consulting, as I said, for the short and medium term and then long term goal would be to build a company or join one at an executive level. So Alex, what do you make of this? A doctor from Nigeria, probably a little bit older because of the, you know, maybe they're 30 or something, I don't know. But what do you make of this candidacy?
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah, they need to sort themselves out a little bit, I reckon this is a super smart guy. Yeah, super smart person. I don't know. Yeah, we don't know their gender. Super smart. Probably. Whatever they put their hand to, they've done they found quite easy, obviously, you know, test score says that, but, you know, they've committed to a medical career and then after a year of being a physician, they're like, you know what? Not interested anymore. I'm going to go off and run a solar energy company. Yeah, like I don't get that. So that needs to be really well explained and so that transition.
And I think they'll also need to explain why now makes perfect sense to go to business school and how this all ties then to their long term goals, short term and long term goals.
Because I think if they do a really good job in their sort of narrative and explain all the stuff, they could come across as being a super interesting candidate. But if they don't explain it.
Yeah, they could be disregarded quite quickly as someone that just doesn't have any focus and is, you know, just looking for an pivot sort of thing. And maybe a top MBA from the US will open up doors. Who knows which door they want to open. They don't want to come across as that candidate. They want to come across as a candidate that's now got a deliberate plan and has all this sort of real raw intelligence and smarts and experience to bring to the table. So I think on the one hand I could really like this candidate and on the other hand I could not. So it really depends how they articulate their profile grain.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree because I was, you know, on the one hand you say, wow, doctor from Nigeria, really good numbers. I mean, gosh, you know, but then limited work experience because they spent so long in med school and then why did they go to med school?
Whereas if this person's profile was one of, they're currently a doctor and they say, you know what I just realized I'm really interested in biotech and healthcare and solving some of the big global problems around healthcare. And I witnessed firsthand what Covid did to even me completing my degree. And I want to do management type work around healthcare, then I would say, okay, wow. But, yeah, here they're kind of running a solar energy company. They want to get into consulting, and they don't really talk about healthcare or anything related to health and their goals. So, yeah, I agree. They could be potentially viewed as being a bit scattered or not really knowing what they want. So as long as they can solve that. And what's amazing about that is, unlike someone with, like, a really low gpA, it's actually pretty easy to sort out. I mean, well, or at least come up with a plan. You know, you don't always necessarily follow the plan when you get to business school. People's minds change. But, yeah, it shouldn't be so hard for them to kind of reshape or think through what it is that they want to do and come up with their pitch, because I think they clearly understand the benefits of getting a global business education from the network to the classroom stuff, and how it's going to help them achieve bigger, better things. So they just need to put together a plan that suggests they have a really good head on their shoulders and that everything's kind of been part of a plan, that this pivot is a little more palatable.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: I think that's exactly right. And if their plan in their long run is to return to Africa, I think that's quite, quite advantageous, too, because a candidate like this that has all the smarts and potential for impact is going to have a higher potential for impact on the continent of Africa than they would in the US, where there's a whole load of people of similar sort of ideal or whatever. So I'd like to see their long term goal, them returning to Nigeria.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that would be interesting to just know that they have plans to kind of impact where they're from, et cetera. Because you're right, the story we more often hear is someone leaves a country that's maybe still developing and they want to. They kind of go to the US and stay and obviously make a lot of money. But it's. Yeah, so it would be interesting if their goals. I mean, they should state that if their goals involve a return to Africa, that would be interesting.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Right? Exactly.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: In any event, so, yeah, thanks for picking these out, Alex, great test scores this week, but also three really different candidates. So really good stuff as always. We'll be back in one week's. Time. And I think in one week's time, I'll be able to give you a report on what it was like to see the Phillies play the Mets in London. So I'm going to the baseball over the weekend. So I'll give you a report on that. And, yeah, maybe.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Honestly, Graham, I don't need a report.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: I know you hate baseball.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Don't swear this. Enjoy it.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Maybe some of our listeners are just dying to know. So we'll see.
[00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:29] Speaker A: Excellent. All right, well, thanks, Alex. I'll see you next week.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: All right, brilliant. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.
