[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, December 2, 2024. Are you looking for an MBA program where you'll be more than just a number? Vanderbilt business offers a personalized learning experience to help each stud reach their unique career goals. Whether you're looking to switch careers entirely or accelerate the path you're on, the Vanderbilt MBA program will provide you with the individual support you need to propel your career forward. Vanderbilt is currently waiving their $200 application fee for MBA Wiretaps listeners. To learn more about the Vanderbilt MBA program and to claim your application fee waiver, Visit Business Vanderbilt. Edu ClearAdmit. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going this week?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Very good, thank you, Graham.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: I can't believe it's December. Before we get into what's happening in the MBA admissions world, I wanted to ask you, did you do anything for Thanksgiving? I know you lived in the US for such a long time that maybe you still celebrate a little bit, but I know you're in the UK now, so anything special or just kind of enjoyed some downtime recording a podcast?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Graham.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I know, yes, we are recording this podcast on Thanksgiving because it was the day that worked best for us, and it's kind of quiet, so. But yeah, I love Thanksgiving. It is one of the things I miss the most about living abroad.
Funny story, when I first moved here, I called my grandmother. It was one of the first years, and I couldn't go to the US to hang out with her for Thanksgiving. And she was accustomed to that. We would all get together and that sort of thing. And she said, well, she was kind of annoyed that I wasn't there. And she says, all right, well, what are they doing over there in France for Thanksgiving? And I said, well, they don't. They're not doing anything. It's a regular day. They don't celebrate Thanksgiving. And she said, how dare they?
And I was, you know, I mean, she had not traveled the world necessarily, so, you know, and I think she was kind of half joking. But in any event, I always think of that story when I think of Thanksgiving and being here in France. So there you have it.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: And I totally agree, it is a fantastic holiday. So I do miss the Thanksgiving celebration.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Mm. Well, I guess in the spirit of all that, I do want to express some gratitude to everyone who tunes into this show. And I hope everyone had a safe and healthy and happy Thanksgiving.
So. But, Alex, I know what everyone's really waiting for and that is decision weeks for round one applications. And I believe that this week now is the first of our big kind of decision weeks, right?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So lots of programs beginning to release their round one decision. So this upcoming week, it's Tepper, Gozetta, Carol, Stanford Booth, Yale, Ross, Terry and Johnson amongst the top schools releasing their round one decisions. And INSEAD is actually releasing interview invites for round two, folks. So there should be a lot of activity on livewire next week.
This week.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: I should say yes, this week. Yeah. And also so it's going to be a busy week. I mean, the other thing is this week we'll stay kind of tuned for all that. And I can't wait to see. I'm hoping that everyone gets good news.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: And then just to be clear, these are scheduled release dates for the schools. A lot of schools, unlike interview invites, a lot of schools will actually call candidates prior to their schedule date. So for instance, Stanford in prior years will start calling its candidates two or three days ahead of that date.
So it's not as straightforward as interview invites because you don't get called for an interview invite over the phone. But they like to use the phone to offer the good news for the admissions decisions. They're starting to cultivate the relationship with their admitted candidates through that phone call. So it might even be that it occurred started beginning on Friday of last week. We don't know. We're recording, as we said, on Thanksgiving Day last week. So, yeah, it's going to be an exciting week and just best of luck for everyone that's applied in the first round that's going to be waiting for some of these decisions.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And answer your phone if you see a number that you don't necessarily recognize, you might want to answer it this week.
In other news, on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, we're doing webinars. These are for Masters in Management programs. And so on Wednesday at noon or, sorry, Tuesday at noon, we're going to sit down with Duke, Emery and Notre Dame. On Wednesday at noon, we're going to sit down with Carnegie Mellon, Chicago Booth, Georgetown, Indiana and Michigan. And you can still sign up for these Masters in Management events. Definitely targeting people with limited to no work experience. So college students or current grad school students. And you can sign up at bit ly camim24. So join us for those webinars. Alex, you were talking earlier about decisions and that sort of thing, and we've actually run some admissions tips around this in the last couple of weeks here. Actually, I think over the last 10 days. So the first one we did was this tip around choosing between business schools. So hopefully that's a problem that a lot of our listeners have if you get into a couple and you need to make that decision.
On the kind of flip side, we also have five tips for making the best of the wait list. And that is a useful tip. Hopefully doesn't apply to everybody, but if you are on a waitlist, it's definitely something you should be reading. And then for those of our listeners who are more focused on round two, we ran a couple of tips. We have one about how to make a kind of optimal list of target schools that you should be applying to, and another about recommendation letters and choosing the right folks to support you as you kind of navigate this. So a lot of admissions advice coming on the website these days, given that we're sort of in between sort of round one and round two now.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And we'll also have plenty of folks that had a round one strategy that will now be retargeting and refocusing on round two because either they'll be aiming for their sort of moonshot because they got good decisions in round one, or they're having to readjust and maybe target a slightly lower tier or something like that. So, yeah, lots of opportunity in round two, whether you were in round one or not.
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Totally, yeah. The other thing we did on the site is we caught up with again, we continue to catch up with students at leading business schools. This week we caught up with students at UCLA and I'll just share one. I mean, they're a batch of them, right? But we talked, talked with krit, who was originally from Bangkok, Thailand, actually went to. I'm going to say this wrong probably, but Chulalongkorn University, which I know is one of the most famous universities in Thailand and had worked in health tech as well as with some startups before business school. And so we asked KRIT what is one thing you would change or do differently about the application process. And KRIT said, I would learn more about the life side of an mba. I think that some of us forget to realize that we're actually here for two years at least, and that that dictates everything during our two years like the program we choose. I'm lucky that I ended up in a city that I really enjoy. The lifestyle, people and weather. Yes, the weather here is perfect all year round and I can't imagine myself dealing with rain, heat or even snow now.
So Crit very happy to have landed in Los Angeles but also wishes that, you know, maybe he'd done a little more research into kind of life in the. You know, I guess I'd sort of under calculated that, but ended up sounding pretty happy with where. Where he landed.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: I could not agree more with this sentiment because quite frankly it's going to completely alter the rest of your life. But that two year experience is still a significant chunk of your life, right?
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: So you want to be somewhere that you're going to be thrilled to be and then you'll make the most out of the MBA program experience. If you're fighting the sleet in the snow and you are a somebody that prefers the 70 degrees every day of the year type weather, it probably wouldn't be such a great two year experience.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fair. The other school that we caught up with students from is University of Washington Foster in Seattle and staying in Southeast Asia. I want to focus on a woman named Mai. She's from Ho Chi Minh Vietnam originally, but went to SUNY Buffalo for undergrad and studied commodity trading. She actually worked as a a sugar trader for a time before coming to business school. And we said to her, what is one thing that you would absolutely do again as part of your application process? And may. Is it may or may? I think it's may. She said, I think it's a must to spend time on understanding your own story to connect all the dots between my past experiences and future goals. Even if you're making a big career shift post mba, there's value in everything you've done. Also consider doing a pre MBA internship to gain experience in a new industry. For example, after getting my admission, I interned at an AI tech startup where I learned a lot about product development and go to market strategies. So don't stress too much about not having direct experience. There's always a way to build it. So that's what Mae had to say and she's at Foster and seems to be having a good time so far.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Yeah, again, absolutely fantastic. I mean really, the application process is a tremendous time for deep introspection and really understanding your story and your narrative and your desires and your goals etc so that you can make the right decision on schools to target and maximizing your opportunity in admissions anyway. But having that opportunity for that deep level of introspection is brilliant.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I also, I just love the idea that everything you've done in the past has value and brings something into your candidacy and so you shouldn't sort of, even if you're making a career pivot like she's saying, don't ignore what you've done today because there could be some nice threads that, you know, you can weave across, you know, the past and the present, the future.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: And our admissions book, we talk about developing your personal inventory. So it's that same sort of idea, right?
[00:10:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Really map out everything that you've done?
[00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah, totally. And actually, I mean, just as a plug, like the book that you wrote, Alex, and that I helped edit is it's on the
[email protected] and it's free if you're a registered user. So just grab it if you haven't read it. It was written in a way. Alex, I know you always talk about this, but you wrote it in a way that it's like an evenings read. Like it's not meant to be something that takes you a month to get through. But I think it's really well done. So definitely, I hope that everyone listening to the show has downloaded it and read it at some point because it'll help you get into business school for sure.
One last thing, Alex, before we can kind of get into our candidates this week, is that the first school out of the gate with career placement stats? It was uva Darden. So I'm going to give you the stats and some context and then I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. So the first thing they shared is that there were 326 out of the 341 grads in the class of 2024 that were seeking full time employment. Okay. And so by three months post graduation, 93% of those students had received at least one job offer and 90% had accepted a job offer. That number on the three months you know, had an offer last year was 96%. So just a little bit less this year. The median salary is $175,000. That's actually the same as last year. And the signing bonus if students received one on average was 34 and a thousand dollars.
The average salary this year is $163,710. And I share that because last year the average was $167,899. So a few thousand dollars less on the average, but the median stayed the same.
Nearly 60% of students secured their post graduation role through internships. And overall, almost 80% of grads secured jobs through Darden Resources. So working with career services and stuff, Alex, the last thing I want to give you before I get your sort of thoughts is we've got both the industry and regional placements for Darden. So 42.5% of the graduating class went into consulting, 26.5% into financial services, 8.8% into tech, about 5% into healthcare, and nearly 4% into retail. Those numbers are a little different from last year. So consulting dropped a few points. Financial services, very steady. Tech was down, used to be about 11%, and now it's down to 8.8%. Healthcare is up and retail is up both just slightly. In terms of the regional placements, they sent the largest group into the Northeast. That's 28.6%, but that's down. It was 33% last year. They did send almost 27% into the mid Atlantic region of the United States. And that's up. Actually, it used to be just 23%. So that's kind of. I think those two have kind of balanced each other out. The other areas are pretty similar. They'd sent 13% into the south, almost 13% to the Southwest. That's up a tick. They sent 8.2% out to the West Coast. That's down from 11%. And they sent six and a half percent into the Midwest, also down just slightly. And 96% of their graduates are working in the USA. So that's all the numbers. I know it's a lot, Alex from Darden, but any thoughts on this high level?
[00:14:32] Speaker B: I'd say kudos to Darden and its career placement office. I think they've done a tremendous job with these stats in what I would have considered to be quite difficult market conditions. We will see as other programs roll out there, career management, placement stats. But quite frankly, Graham, I think these are really strong.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, nothing's really jumping out at me. I mean, the numbers are up and down here or there, but very strong. Overall, you fully expected consulting to pull back a little bit, which it did.
Yeah. I mean, fewer candidates going into tech and then fewer to the West Coast. So that fits. Right. And they're, you know, they're sending people a little bit closer to home than they have in the past, but it's. Yeah, I mean, the biggest number that jumps out at me is 96% have stayed to work in the US and you know that the class probably had at least 30, 40% international, so very cool people are landing jobs in the States. And that's the function of the degree for a lot of those folks.
So we'll see as more of these come out. I know everyone's anxious for us to talk about this week's candidates. I have two very small housekeeping Things One is that we're going to run a podcast later this week that I recorded with Erin Nixon, who's the admissions director at Stanford gsb, also a grad of the school. I had a lovely conversation with her. I can't wait for everyone to hear that. So stay tuned for that. And then we did get an email. Alex, I know we always ask for these. We love when people write us. And so we got this great email from this guy named Richard. And Richard writes, good morning, hope you're well. Graham and Alex, good morning, hope you're all well. Just wanted to reach out and thank you both for the weekly podcast.
And he goes on to say that, that it's been not only an amazing resource, but just an entertaining thing to listen to as I work through my own applications this cycle. There's an objectivity that both of you bring to profiles you read, but you also humanize the candidates. I think in a way you both probably embody in an abbreviated version what the holistic review process actually looks like at most schools. From a fan, keep on doing what you do. Best regards, Richard. So I just want to really thank Richard. I mean, it really warms the heart to get these kinds of emails. And yeah, thanks much for writing. I always wonder if people are even listening. So it's, it's nice to get the occasional email like that.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Don't you have the stats on people listening, Graham?
[00:16:59] Speaker A: I know, but you know, it's just, they're just numbers and now there's actually. I know there's a person listening, which is cool.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: No, no, that, that is very, very kind of Richard to make those remarks. So, yeah, very, absolutely brilliant. Yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: And I will say, I mean, when we started doing this, that was what we set out to do to get. Let listeners be kind of a fly on the wall for the types of conversations that admissions officers have when looking at a. And I recognize that on this show we can't get as in depth by like reading people's essays or something. But this should give you a flavor of how schools look at things and the trade offs that exist in the different components of a candidacy. So. Yeah, I'm really glad to hear that. Seems to be hitting home.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: And if any ADCOM are listening, you can give us feedback on how far off track we're getting because it has been a few years since we were in those admissions committee meetings.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: But nevertheless, I think things, you know, the fundamentals of what makes a great candidacy stay the same.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: How they are, you know, how they play out now In a changed world, we recognize that can shift a little bit, but the fundamentals will always remain the same.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Well, you know, you say that I just had coffee on Monday, so a week ago with an admissions dean at a top School, an M7 school, and she was saying how she thinks the advice on our website is just absolutely, absolutely fantastic. So I was happy to hear that because you do wonder like you're saying, like it's been a little while, et cetera. But yeah, we try to keep our ear to the ground and adjust with the times.
So anyway, should we move on though and talk about our candidates for this week?
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Let's kick on.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one.
Our first candidate has just two schools on the target list. Those schools are Columbia and nyu. You this candidate is a woman. She says she's a woman of color and a product manager at a major streaming service. Has three years of experience thus far. Her GPA is a 3.57 and located in New York. And indicates in the notes here and stuff that she didn't initially plan on pursuing an mba, but her career trajectory has kind of naturally led her in that direction due to rapid career growth. She's currently preparing for the GMAT and has a target score of 655 or higher. So that makes some sense. And then just kind of wondering, she says, as a non traditional candidate, you know, working in media, entertainment, etcetera, are there any potential red flags in my profile and are there any other programs that she should consider? So Alex, let's answer those questions.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it is a really interesting question and actually this does seem like a strong profile overall, I would say. But as a non traditional candidate, there's probably going to be a bit more scrutiny on the test score and the quant profile of the candidate. Right. Because you want to make sure that as you're bringing in less traditional candidates, they will thrive in the academic environment to make the most, most of the NBA experience. So getting the target GMAT score will be important. Making sure that the quant aspect of that GMAT score is strong will be important. Maybe even pursuing something like MBA math just to shore up that aspect of the profile would be showing sort of initiative on the part of the candidates, some level of self awareness, et cetera, et cetera. I mean the fact that she's, you know, a product manager for probably a high growth streaming type business and if she can get really strong recommendations and she shows that impact and growth at work, I mean this to me, Graham looks Like a really, really potentially a really strong profile overall, as long as she can dot the I's and cross the T's on the quant aspects of her candidacy. Yeah, she's targeting the obvious targets, being in New York, looking at media and entertainment. But as we talked about before coming on air, if she does really assure the MBA admissions of her quant profile, maybe also look at Wharton and Harvard. Why not?
[00:21:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Two things. One, if I were reading her file, I'd look at her undergraduate transcript and just see, where did she study? What did she study? Is there any evidence of quantitative ability?
And then, as you said, scrutinize the test score because she's coming from a kind of media and entertainment less traditional profile. But when I see this candidacy, I'm really rooting. I mean, underrepresented female candidates. It cool industry, great voice to have in the classroom. And so, yeah, I think if the test goes well, this should be opening. There should be a lot of doors opened. And as you point out, we talked about, oh, why not apply to like, Wharton and Harvard as well? Both are great schools. Both have active media and entertainment clubs. I recognize the benefits of being in New York too, with Stern and Columbia, but those are already on her list and she's asking us, are there any others? So I would consider those two. The other two that come to my mind, but I don't know what her appetite for this is. Would be UCLA and usc, because what better place to study than Los Angeles if you're thinking about a career in media and entertainment? I mean, it's really New York and la. Right. So those are the other schools that come to mind. But I think some of this depends on. Yeah, how do things go with the test and that sort of thing. Because she may be pivoting in one direction or another based on that school.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: The only thing we don't know with this candidate that I know you asked, but I don't know if we got, did not get a response yet, was just outside activities, you know, like, are there other things that she's doing that, you know, make her interesting, et cetera, because schools value that as well. So hopefully she has some things that she does outside of work that can add some color to her candidacy. But I'm sure she'll be. Sounds like, you know, get the test done and maybe take MBA math and she should be in good shape.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, couldn't agree more. But you make a great point. Outside of activities could really add to this profile. And yeah, again, I think there's with a really strong test score as we talked about, and maybe a little bit of additional work there, she should have some great options.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: Yeah, totally agree. All right, well, I want to thank her for sharing her profile. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two.
So our, our second candidate today has nine schools on the target list. And those schools are Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, mit, nyu, Stanford, Chicago, Wharton and Yale. This person's been working in government affairs at a tech startup and they're thinking about either consulting or tech after business school. And so they list all the usual suspects. You know, the Fang companies and MBB Consulting, they have a 770 on the GMAT and they have a 3.4 undergrad GPA. They had, I guess to this point they've had, I want to say, yeah, they've had two years. Right. Of work experience, but they're planning on applying next fall, if I'm understanding this correctly. So this is a 26 year old female. They also have won a number of kind of awards and honors. They were president of multiple clubs while an undergrad. They won a national level language award. So there's a lot of kind of feathers in this candidate's cap.
But you. Yeah, I know that you had some dialogue with this person. So walk us through what you think here.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, again, I think this is potentially a fantastic candidate. They're a little earlier in their career, but they're planning to apply next season, by which time they'll have three years of experience. I'm just a little bit curious about three years of experience. They'll be 27. So there seems like a bit of a gap after their undergrad in terms of what they were doing at that point.
But nevertheless, during their work experience, they look like they've had impact, they've had growth, et cetera, et cetera. They've got a ridiculously high my GMAT score and so forth. So, yeah, I think again, this is potentially a really strong candidate. Graham.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah, and she mentioned she's originally, I guess, from New York, but has been working out in the Bay Area at like a unicorn startup and helped to double total revenue. So it sounds like some interesting experience despite only two years to date. But they'll have, you know, she'll have three by the time she applies or. Sorry, by the time she. Is that right? By the time she applies. Yeah. So she wants to apply next cycle. I mean, to me, this candidate, I mean, she has her ducks in a row. I mean, she's got good work Experience, great, great test score, solid gpa, and it sounds like a number of outside activities, so. Yeah, I mean, do anything. I mean, there are nine schools on the target list. I think she's going to have to narrow that down. You know, it would be hard to apply to nine, but.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, but the answer to that is quite simple. Target two or three in the first round or maybe three or four and make those the top three or four that she's truly interested in. And if she doesn't get a great result out of those three or four, then target the remainder in round two. She's not going to be overrepresented. So applying in round two would be perfectly fine.
So I would just really go all in on the Reach programs or whatever in the first round.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker B: And I would imagine she'll get options right out of that.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I know you and I talked about, oh, what about applying right now in round two with just the two years of work experience? I mean, amazing numbers, seems like pretty good work experience. But we both kind of agreed that, you know what, wait for round one next year, get that additional experience. It'll, it'll pay off. And there doesn't seem to be any big rush.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, unless she wants to take a flyer on Stanford.
But, you know, that's all I would think about for this season. It's like, again, go for the moonshot, but don't like, over, overdo it.
The main target will be next season.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: But, you know, maybe in that, what means most to me and why there's some real revelation in that essay for Stanford and they decide to take a bet on her because of all the, you know, the potential that the application reeks of. So.
But, but other than that, I, I wouldn't apply to all nine schools this season and get in one or two and go off to business school this season because I don't think her profile will be optimized this season is my point.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. It's funny, you reminded me. I, I had a nice talk when I, when I had Erin from Stanford on the podcast, which will air later this week. What was fun about talking about what matters most to you and why is that? She had to, you know, not only does she read that essay now, but had to write that essay because she went to Stanford. Right. So it was just kind of interesting hearing her perspective. So. But yeah, this candidate has, yeah, I think a lot of great attributes and should stay the course. But as you say, if they want to take a flyer it would be maybe just one school in round two here. So I want to thank her for sharing her background and wish her best of luck as she starts to work on applications. Let's move on, though, and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three. Three.
So our final candidate for this week has seven schools that they're targeting and does want to start next fall. They've got Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Emory, nyu, UNC and Yale on the target list. This person's been working in consulting, I believe, at a Big four firm.
And they have, you know, I think they'd studied economic and statistics. They're a CFA chart holder, charter holder, and they passed all three levels on the first attempt for that exam.
They have a GRE score of 323, GPA is a 3.32. They have 7 years of work experience, and they did reveal to us that they are actually 32 years old in the comments here. They're thinking of pivoting from that Big four kind of consulting role over to investment bank. And so they mention a number of targets, including bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Goldman and JP Morgan Chase.
This candidate also shared the fact that they are based in Ghana and they did ask some questions. I mean, they mentioned they do a lot of outside activities, etc. And we can get into that. But the big question they asked us was, will being 32 have an effect on the attractiveness of their candidacy?
And so, Alex, I wanted to ask you that because what do you think of this candidacy? But especially their age, and I know there was some sleuthing you were trying to do based on the age and the number of years of work experience.
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's a bit of a puzzle to me, because they're 32, they have seven years of experience, so basic math would say they started work at 25. They don't have a master's degree. So I'm kind of curious what else they've been doing.
So obviously as an adcom, you want to know the full picture and they'll take that into account. Being 32 in of itself isn't something that disqualifies candidates from the admissions process. But as an older candidate, if you're at the longer end of the spectrum, you're a bit of an outlier. Then you've got to recognize that the why now aspect of that profile is going to be important to heighten as well as showing fit for the programs that you're targeting so that you show that you will fully engage. You really understand the full experience of the MBA program and how you'll contribute, etc. Etc. So that's kind of where you, how you've got to approach it being a slightly older candidate. But I would really want to know what else they've been doing. So 32 and seven years of experience I don't think quite adds up. Yeah, so I'd want to know more about that. It does look like that they've done well at work, they're now in a manager role, etc, etc, and it looks like they do, you know, a good amount of sort of volunteer work and extracurricular type experience outside of work. So that looks quite good too, I think.
But their numbers don't really pop off the page. So I'm a little bit concerned about the overall profile.
So I'd like to see something that really helps them stand out just a little bit more, especially as they're targeting pretty good programs overall. But they want to get into investment banking, so they need to target more of the elite programs. Johnson's not on their list, so maybe they should be looking at Johnson. Yeah, as maybe a bit of a reach or a target program because they want to go into investment banking. But I mean, overall I think this is a decent profile. I'd like to know a little bit more about why, you know, this difference between seven years of experience and 32. And yeah, they can overcome the fact that they're 32. No doubt in my mind. As long as they tackle the why now now as well as showing fit.
[00:32:55] Speaker A: Yeah, my guess is they graduated from university at 2122 and probably did something for a few years that maybe has nothing to do with their, you know, career in a big four auditing or, you know, consulting firm. So yeah, we can find out. I do think that, you know, you're right. The thing that jumps out at me is that the numbers are not, well, as you say, they didn't jump off the page. Right. So 323 green, 3.3 GPA. They're both perfectly acceptable numbers. But when the candidate's older and is targeting pretty high caliber institutions, you kind of wonder if, you know, it's going to be a slam dunk type thing or not. And I think they do have a range of admissions difficulty across the schools that they're targeting. You could argue that it's probably easier to get into UNC than it is to get into, I don't know, Colombia or something. So they have a little bit of a range here.
But I did wonder, like you're saying they want to get into banking, so they kind of need to be looking at the schools that have those pathways and UNC does, obviously, Columbia and Stern do.
I think it's a great idea to add Cornell into the mix because Cornell will sit in the middle of the pack of the schools that they're targeting and they probably need to cast a wide net is my guess.
And obviously Cornell has a great track record with investment banking placements, so, yeah, I think it's that I kind of wonder how many times it took the GRE and whether they. I don't know, maybe they think they could get a 330 instead of a 3. 323. Because that would make a big difference.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So we don't. We don't know if they took it more than once, especially if they did so well in the CFA exams. You know, you'd think that maybe they have a knack for it. And I see that they've done some CFA exam coaching and tutoring classes for candidates, so they obviously are probably a good test taker. So, in any event, just something to think about. I'm glad they're applying to a wide range of schools because it's not an obvious. It's a little unclear as to what's going to happen based on these issues, but, yeah, I do want to wish them the best of luck. Any other thoughts on this one?
[00:35:00] Speaker B: No. I mean, I think we've hit the nail on the head. Like you say, they're an older candidate, so they've got to do some things about that. But also there's nothing that really jumps out out to really sort of shout, all right, this is a great profile.
[00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: If they did come back with a 330 GRE, then, yes, that would sort of change, alter the conversation a little bit.
[00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the other thing I would say is, as an older candidate, the best thing you can do, aside from demonstrating that you're ready to be back in the classroom, etc, with good numbers, but is to show a real intention to be involved in clubs and campus activities so that you. You're, you know, not going to be viewed as someone who's just showing up to get the degree and get out with the job.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: That. Yeah, that's my point about showing fit.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: I mean, that's really important for older candidates.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Totally. Yeah. So in event I want to wish them the best of luck. Alex, thanks for picking these candidates out. And, boy, next week we'll have a lot to talk about with all these decisions coming fast and furious. So let's. Let's connect next week and do this again.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Look forward to it. Stay safe, everyone. Take care. Care.
