Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, March 3, 2025. I. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, it's March. Like are we, are you seeing any signs of life or spring where you live?
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Springtime is just around the corner. Yeah, actually beautiful sunny day as we're recording today.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: So yes, yeah, the sun is shining in Paris too today and it's a welcome sight. So what's been going on with MBA admissions stuff?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we're still seeing a few schools releasing round two interview invites, those that tend to sort of trickle them out through the cycle. As we talked before we came on air, the large sort of batches of interview invites have ceased. At this point we're getting closer to the end of the cycle and actually next week Tepper sort of leads the way for, you know, amongst top schools releasing round two decisions. So we're going to start soon enough rolling into sort of what we call internally decision week. So that sort of two or three week period of sort of frenetic final decisions.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh that's always fun. And yeah, Livewire lights up and hopefully with a lot of acceptances. So we'll stay, stay tuned. One thing I wanted to say, we've been talking about this I guess a little bit on the show, but our NBA fair that we do annually is going to take place in May, on May 14th in Boston. It's actually going to be host by MIT Sloan in their beautiful, very modern new kind of business school building. If you want to sign up for this, you just go to bit ly. Bit ly mbafair 2025. And I will say if you live in Boston, this is kind of a no brainer, right? Come to the NBA fair, hang out with the Clear Admit team. And more importantly, they're going to be 24 business schools there. At least that's how many we have signed up thus far. And it's literally all the best schools. I mean I've, I don't think all these schools have been in the same place at one time in many, many years. So Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, all the top schools are going to be there. You know, Chicago, Kellogg, nyu, Columbia, you name the school, they're going to be there. So this is a big event and I would say, you know, even if you live in New York or Philadelphia or you know, geez, you know, get on a plane, come and, come and hang out, it's going to be a really worthwhile evening, meet all the schools we'll do panels so it should be a lot of fun. Alex.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, Kudos to the team for making this happen. I think it really says a lot for the clear admit sort of brand that we are able to bring the best schools together for a fair like this. And I know we're not the only folks that do fairs and lots, you know, GMAC and various others. But as you said, this calibre of school all together at one time is quite exceptional.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you go to that link that I gave bit ly mbafair 2025 you can see the full list of schools but it really is a who's who of the US kind of top 25 and I think London Business School is going to join us too. So it's a great group of schools. So check it out. Sign up space is going to be limited so you should sign up if you're hearing this and think you want to come.
Other than that Alex. So that's keeping me busy because we got a lot of planning on that front but we do continue to crank out a lot of content on the website. We just ran an admissions tip about how proceed if you end up waitlisted in round two. And I think the reason we round that is because there are already some people who have been waitlisted without interview but then there are others who you know sadly are going to end up on the waitlist when these decisions start rolling out, you know, during decision weeks.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: And that's an important distinction for folks to keep in mind. Right. So if your wait list before getting an interview invite you've got that additional hurdle to overcome that is sort of get that interview invite would be your next step. You can't go from waitlist without interview to admit so those folks do have more work to do. And then if you're wait listed after the interview then you are very close. Right. And this tip will give you plenty of guidance in terms of what you can then do in order to try to nudge yourself over the line.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah, agreed. And I think, you know, obviously we say this over and over again but when I. When you're waitlisted, regardless of the context like the first thing you need to do is some self reflection with regards to looking at your file and trying to figure out what the causes might be. But yeah, so read that tip. We also there's a video that goes with it I believe that you and I recorded Alex. So there, there's a lot of good advice on the site about waitlists in general. We Also continue to run a little bit of real humans content. So we ran an article that featured current students at Harvard Business.
We profiled a handful of them and you can read all about their experience. I did pull a couple of quotes. We talked to Sabrina, who's from Bakersfield, California. She's currently at HBS and she went to San Jose State for undergrad where she studied management Information systems. You're going to love this, Alex. Before coming to hbs, she worked at NASA in their supercomputing division and she also worked at a place called Panzura, which is a cloud database company. So pretty impressive background. And then we asked her to just tell us a fun fact.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Is she a rocket scientist?
[00:05:44] Speaker B: I don't know. I mean, she works for a rocket.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Company and it sounds like she's a scientist.
[00:05:49] Speaker B: Yeah, super computing, which just sounds, I mean, what a great thing to have on your resume. So she we asked. One of the questions we ask in these interviews is tell us a fun fact about yourself that didn't get included in your application. And I picked this out because I hope you appreciate this. I picked this for you. So we asked her what was her fun fact and she said, I played soccer alongside or, sorry, I played football alongside Lionel Messi for a week as a Division 1 soccer player and team captain in college, I was lucky enough to be part of the 2016 Copa America tournament when my university hosted Argentina, Chile and Colombia at our facilities. Whenever they needed an extra player or support during practices, we jumped in to help sharing the field with some of the world's best players. So that sounds like fun.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah. No. What a great experience.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So to keep things more MBA oriented, I did pull another quote. We did ask her, like, what's one thing that you would change or do differently as part of the application process? And she chimed in and said there are actually two things I would do differently. The first, she said I would take the GMAT or GRE immediately after undergrad. So it might be too late for some of our listeners, but if you are a younger listener, that's pretty good advice. She said preparing for these exams while managing a demanding full time job several years out of school was incredibly challenging and starting earlier would have made the process much smoother. And then the other thing she said relates also to the test. She said, before diving into test prep, I would recommend taking a diagnostic practice test for both the GRE and the GMAT to determine which exam aligns better with your strengths. So that's some advice from Sabrina, who's a First year at hbs, pretty cool stuff and I think very relevant now.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Really, really good advice. The only counter to point to that, I would say is because we've heard this before, I think maybe from a real humans quote, is the effort that you have to put in to prepare and take the GMAT or gre, if you're doing it close to the admissions timeline, actually yields benefit in terms of just preparing you mentally for the mba, you know, some of those first classes. So.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yes. You're going to be better prepared to take this test straight out of undergrad, there's no doubt about that. But the effort that you make during the admissions process might actually yield some benefit too.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. It helped me to get back into the kind of math routine that I had ignored since high school, essentially. So. No, it was useful in that regard. We did also we ran a couple more real numbers pieces speaking of the tests. So one of the real numbers pieces that we ran was just an article that the average or in some cases median GMAT scores across all the top schools. Do you want to take a guess as to which school or schools have the highest average or median GMAT score and what it is?
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Well, we're talking the traditional scores. Right. So this is irrelevant information for most people that are taking the new test.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Still the old scale.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Well, not irrelevant. They're then going to have to convert their score. So the article does include a means to do that. But which school would have the highest? I'm thinking maybe Haas, maybe Stanford. Yeah, sort of.
I would go. Those two schools would be in the top five anyway.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: So I noted the top two. And so Harvard has a 740 median GMAT. And Stanford, they don't always all do apples. Apple, Stanford has a 738 average. So again, they. Some of them don't published both. But that's. Yeah. So we're in the ballpark there. And you're right, the schools are still reporting on the old scale. Yeah.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Next season they have to report on the new scale.
At least all the folks that take the GMAT before applying will have only taken the new GMAT test. Now, I understand the traditional scores last for five years, so we'll see how they report next season. But I'll be very glad once we're over this hump and we're only using the new GMAT scores.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And just so you know, I think that that 738, 740 is roughly 700 on the new test. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: But I make this point as you know, as we. I'm not saying we struggled, but we. I mean, with our admissions bot, you put in your GMAT score and say, is it competitive for M7? Well, the bot has to. To do some magic in the background to figure out is that the new score or the old score and then convert into whichever score and then run it against the concordance table. So our magician that designed the bot has done some magic to make all that happen, but it's been a big headache.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: So let's get onto this new score.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Totally. The other real numbers piece we ran was just percentage of international students. And I was curious, do you have any sense, like, what do you think the highest percentage. You don't have to give me the school name because you'll never guess, but what, what do you think is the upper end?
[00:11:04] Speaker A: No, no, no, but I would, I, I would. So here we're probably Talking about top 20, top 25. How many schools are we are on these lists?
[00:11:13] Speaker B: No, this is more like top 50. It's like sort of the schools we cover.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: So it's top 50. So, so yeah, it'll, it'll be. Schools in the top 40.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Will have a higher percentage of international students. No doubt in my mind. And it'll be around 50% and maybe even more.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So this is crazy, but Babson College, who have an MBA program, the Olin, they claim 85% international students, which just blew my mind. But they're really an outlier. Most of these schools are more than 50%. Hopkins carry has 60% and that's the next highest.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So, I mean, frankly speaking, the smaller programs, how do they fill their class size? Dipping deeper into the international pool is a way to do it. I mean, I hate to say that, but I mean, obviously I've been in the industry lots of years and kind of understand the dynamic. Top programs, even with larger class sizes, are probably going to steer around that 30%.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it varies from school to school, but it's. Yeah. 30 to 50, you know, but it's. You know, the other thing that's interesting is you do have a couple of schools on the bottom end. So like Minnesota, University of Minnesota, Carlson is 18% and University of Florida Warrington is 16%. So I think some of it also depends on maybe where these are located. It's unclear to me, like, what's driving this, but there's this big range. I just thought it was fascinating looking at these charts.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: So I'm not sure too many international students want to Live in Minnesota. Not. Not there's anything wrong with Minnesota, but it's going to be quite cold in the.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Very cold. Yeah. Great city. I love Minneapolis, though.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that thesis doesn't work for Florida because obviously that's the opposite end of the spectrum. So I have no idea what drives that.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. Anyway, one last thing with respect to numbers is UT Austin, McCombs published their career report. And so as we've done on past shows, I'll just give you the numbers, get your take, and then after that we can move in and talk about our candidates for this week. But here we go. For McCombs, they had 221 graduates this past year. Class 24. 184 of those grads were seeking employment. So that's 83% of the class were seeking. Now, last year, the class was actually quite a bit larger. They had 271 students last year and 239 of them were seeking, which is 88%. So bigger class and a higher percentage seeking last year. Anyway, we'll take. Take that for what it's worth in terms of the how the outcomes turned out. Of Those people seeking, 86% received a job offer within three months of graduation.
That was a little bit higher last year. It was 90%. So they lost a little bit there. 85% of those seeking had accepted positions within three months and that was 89% last year. So again, a tick down there, the reported average base salary for the class was 150,000. That's slightly off from last year. Bonus was 31,000. Again, slightly off. I think it was like 32 last year. So similar numbers there in terms of the industries that people went into. They sent 30% of the class.
Well, of those seeking into consulting. That number's down from 43% last year. They sent 22% into tech. That's up from 15. Alex, that might dovetail with some of what you've been saying about tech. In Texas, they sent 17% to finance. That's up 1% from last year. They sent 6% into energy, also up 1 percentage point. And they sent 5% into retail, which was not one of the top areas last year. So I don't have data for that last year. In terms of where people landed geographically, 66% landed in the Southwest, which as you might imagine, includes Texas. That number is pretty much unchanged. It was 68% last year. They sent 14% to the West Coast. That's actually up from 6.7. They sent 8% to the Northeast. That's down from 13.4%. They sent 4% to the Mid Atlantic, which wasn't one of the top categories last year. So I don't have data on that. So that's obviously up.
They sent 4% to the south, pretty much unchanged. And they sent 3% to the Midwest. That's down from 5% last year. What do you make of these stats, Alex?
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah, they make perfect sense relative to what we've seen with other top programs and so forth. So, you know, there are definitely recruiting headwinds they're all facing. So that's, we see that in, in some of the numbers that you highlighted. But. But yeah, no, it doesn't. Not surprising at all. That uptick in tech is really interesting.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: And maybe something I talked about briefly on the show last week or the week before, but we're seeing lots of, lots of businesses moving out of Delaware or California and going to Texas. So that maybe plays well for Macomb. So certainly they're bucking the trend on that tech number because most other programs have seen a shrink in consulting and in tech and some rise in financial services. So they bought that trend a little bit. That consulting number is down quite considerably. But we've seen that with a lot of other top programs.
[00:16:38] Speaker B: Right, right. Yeah. So yeah, I guess it bodes well for the likes of, you know, McCombs, but probably also Rice and SMU and you know, these other schools there with good MBA programs. So in any event, so that, that's, I keep saying that's the last career report. I don't even know at this point, but I feel like we've gone through the lion's share of them.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: I do think that's the outline.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yes, but we'll see. Obviously if you want to reach out to Al or me, you can write us at infoearadmit.com, use the subject line wiretaps. We do have a special podcast that's going to air. I think it'll air tomorrow if you're listening to this on Monday, but it'll be out shortly after this episode where I interview the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies who's currently getting a part time executive MBA at Wharton. It was a really fun conversation so stay tuned for that. You can find it in the feed here where you're listening now. Alex, anything?
[00:17:29] Speaker A: And just to be clear, he's getting an executive mba, right? Not a part time mba.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah, he's sorry. The way the executive MBA at Wharton works is it's done on a part time basis, but yes. Yeah, he's in Wharton's EMBA program. Yeah, absolutely. So, anything else before we talk about this week's candidates?
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Let's kick on.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: All right, so this is WireTaps. Candidate number one.
Our first candidate this week has eight schools on the target list. And those schools are Berkeley, Duke, Emory, Michigan, Kellogg, Chicago, Wharton, and UT Austin, McCombs. They're starting school in the fall of 26, so they've got a little time. They're going to be applying next fall. This person has an interesting career. They spent eight years working in the military, US Special Operations. They then have done since then, five years as a financial advisor. So an interesting mix of kind of, you know, military and corporate sort of experience.
Post mba, they're thinking about consulting. They mentioned Bain and Deloitte as possible targets. Their GRE score is a 315.
Their undergraduate GPA is a 3.7. And as I said, they have a total of 13 years of experience across the military. And in that financial advisor role, they want to land in Chicago after business school. And they mentioned in the notes that throughout their time in the army, they were steadily promoted. They have also had the successful financial advising career with notable institutions. They're now currently with a more of a startup firm.
They, you know, indicate that they currently, you know, they serve clients and the average kind of assets that the clients have is one and a half million dollars. So they're, you know, do a lot of money management, but they want to change their career. They talk about the monotony of their current job and they feel like consulting might offer some new challenges, but they don't. They're not really exactly sure of what they want to do. There's a little bit of fuzziness there. So, Alex, you, you know, you left this person a comment, so I'm curious to hear what you think about their candidacy. And, you know, I mean, this is someone with more work experience than we normally would see. And. Yeah, just. So what do you. What do you make of them?
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I really like this candidate. I like the honesty. Quite frankly. They're bored at work. Right. They've done really well, I think, through the Army, Special Ops, getting the right promotions, etc. Etc. So they've probably got a really good military profile. But rather than going straight to the NBA, leaving the military, which is what we see with a lot of military candidates, they transitioned into the private sector. And again, they're probably doing very well, but they just find their works just a little bit sort of mundane and et cetera, et Cetera. So now they want to sort of remake themselves and use the MBA to sort of, you know, leverage everything that they've done but then pivot. And I can completely understand that. And you know, consulting does sound like a natural short term goal and they should stick potentially with that. But I'd love to see more of a longer term vision.
I think as an older candidate, which they are, one of the things that the ADCOM is going to be quite conscious of is just making sure those goals have real clarity. Now they're not applying until next season, so they've got time to think that through.
But I think if they could really determine and identify a longer term vision that they're passionate about and then sort of backtrack to that short term goal, et cetera, that would be really helpful. I do think they also need to retake the GRE at 315.
That's going to be lower than average of the very top programs that will be really viable for going into Chicago. So again, they've got time, they've got a 3.7 GPA, they're doing a lot of financial work, modeling or whatever it might be. So I imagine that 315 is not fully representative. Right. So they have to deliver on their best GRE score. So if they retake the gre, if they really identify clarity amongst their goals as an older candidate, really focusing on that, why now, etc. Etc. Which I think they can do.
And you know, we had this conversation called Came on Air. Maybe the, some other elements of their profile they need to address in terms of extracurriculars, other hobbies and interests. I do think they can present a really compelling profile, Graham, but they've just got to sort of iron out some of these kinks.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. I mean I really. The background's pretty fascinating and they've already made the transition from military to kind of civilian work. And so there's a lot to like, as you would say, and the GPA strong. But I really balk at the gre. I need them to spend the next few months, whether you maybe it's a tutor or a class, whatever they need to do, get that score up into the range of the top schools that they're targeting. If they want to land in Chicago, I mean they really need to put that focus on the Kellogg's and the, you know, Chicago booths and Michigan Ross, you know, Indiana Kelly's not on their list, but that would be another one that, you know, does pretty well in the Chicago area in terms of placements. So.
And those schools, you know, are really good schools and have high average scores, so they, they should boost. And I would say because they're an older candidate, that test score becomes like sort of the only recent evidence of academic kind of ability. And that's why there's some importance attached to it. So I would recommend they do that and as you say, flesh out the goals. I'm sure they can make a compelling case for a set of goals. And yeah, you and I talked before we came on air about how. Well, what does this person's extracurricular profile look like? Obviously, when they're in the military, I don't expect them to have had much, but. But you know, they've been out for five years now and so hopefully they have some things they do that keep them sort of interesting and that would map to involvement on campus when they get into one of these schools.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Very good.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Yeah. So I want to thank them for sharing their profile. Let's move on though, and talk about WireTaps. Candidate number two.
So our second candidate has eight schools on the target list and those schools are Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, Kellogg, Stanford and ucla. And this person's actually trying to start this coming fall and they submitted applications in round two. So they're kind of this unusual in that they're posting an apply wire entry after they've sort of got everything in. They've been working in technology before business school and they're thinking about consulting afterwards. And they mentioned Bain and BCG. Their GMAT score is a 704 5. That's on the GMAT, the current GMAT. And I looked it up. That equates to about a 750 on the old scale. So very strong score, 8.23 GPA out of 10. This candidate, as you can tell from that GPA, is from India.
They have six and a half years of work experience and essentially you had a little bit of dialogue with them and they revealed the fact that they'd applied to these schools in round two and that they'd gotten interview invites from Stanford, Kellogg, Duke, Ross, Cornell, UCLA and Tuck. So doing very well with interview invitations. Especially that Stanford invite is, you know, pretty indicative of a strong candidacy. But Alex, what do you make of this profile?
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, obviously their numbers are really strong. We don't actually know too much about their work experience. They work six and a half years in tech, so again, presumably they've got to show and have shown sort of impact and growth through that six and a half years as well as Then you know, outside of work, doing interesting things. And as you said, they've got an interview invite at Stanford. So I think that's really indicative of a very strong profile because general advice, if this person was coming to us in the middle of the summer, it would be do what you can to get into round one as potentially an overrepresented profile.
Round one might make things slightly more accessible because, you know, many of these top programs have already interviewed and admitted candidates with reasonably similar and very strong profiles. So there are additional challenges in round two for a profile like this. But. But absolutely, if they've got an interview invite at Stanford, that's really indicative of a strong overall profile. I'm curious why they haven't yet got an interview invite at Johnson or Tepper, which is releasing decisions next week. So that's a little bit curious.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Oh, they mentioned, they mentioned. I think Cornell did invite them, but yeah, they're right, they don't mention Tepper. But yeah, they mentioned Cornell as inviting them. So, so that's.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: My notes are inaccurate about that.
But yeah, I mean, hopefully they're successful at at least a couple of these programs once they convert those interviews and we'll see a decision wire entry.
But if for some reason they're not successful, I think the quickest fix is just make sure they're in round one next season.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, I expect good things. I'm sure with all these interviews they should be able to convert. But you're right, there's a lot of like, I mean, we don't know enough about this candidate. I'm assuming they have interesting extracurriculars. I assuming that their goals are maybe a bit more developed than just, I want to do consulting at Bayner bcg. They must have some specificity in there in order to be getting these interviews. So, yeah, I wish them the best of luck. Hopefully they're preparing and executing well on the interviews because, you know, I will, I will say, as you point out, in round one, these schools admitted a lot of people with a similar background. There's no doubt. And so, you know, you gotta, you gotta make the cut. Gotta have good interviews. So I want to wish this person the best of luck and as you say, hopefully they'll share their results with a decision wire entry on the site in a few weeks here. So we'll see how it turns out.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Very good. And folks are probably asking, well, why did you feature this guy? If we don't have a lot, a lot of information, I'll just say, please, we need a few more Apply wire.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. This is like a quiet, a quiet week. Yeah. But still, I think it's interesting just in that you see someone who's overrepresented doing pretty well within interview invites, at least so far. So that's a good sign. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three.
So our last candidate this week comes from a decision wire entry. This person applied to LBs, Kellogg and Wharton. They're trying to start school in the fall and they ran the table. They got into all three schools. They even got some scholarship dollars. They got £40,000 at LBs, they got $70,000 at Kellogg, which is like a half tuition scholarship. Wharton did not give them any funding. This person had a 321 on the GRE and a 3.89 undergraduate GPA, so very strong undergrad. GRE is a little lower than you would expect for some of these top schools. But they, you know, got these offers, so can't complain. They're located in New York and they went to Penn undergrad. And so they're torn right now between Wharton and Kellogg. They seem to be, I guess they're not interested in LBS at this stage now that they got into those two.
They mentioned in the notes that they're in marketing in New York, but they want to shift to either consulting or private equity.
The first choice, I think would be to switch to pe. Well, the first question they're wondering, could they switch to PE at either school without first doing investment banking? And the second question they're asking is, would Wharton really increase the chances that much to give up Kellogg and the money that comes with Kellogg? And they say, ideally, I want to be in New York, but I know Kellogg has starting send. Has started sending more people here. So Alex, this is an interesting quandary and we, you know, there are a number of folks who reply to this post. So I'm kind of curious what you make of the comments that this candidate received and what you think they should do.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'm not convinced that Kellogg is the right choice here. I know that's what our colleague suggested and so forth. And it was based on two reasons. One, Kellogg offered more money and it's only between Kellogg and Wharton. They've determined not to take up the LBS offer and so Kellogg gave them a scholarship. So that makes Kellogg more attractive financially.
And they went to Penn undergrad. So going to Kellogg would give them a fresh sort of network to dip into.
I'm not sure that second point really makes a lot of impact.
I Think if they go to Wharton and you've had this experience, Graham, obviously a graduate of Wharton, you make relationships with your classmates and the same when you go to Kellogg, rather than necessarily strong relationships and ties with those that went five years before and five years after, et cetera, et cetera.
And I think just having that direct relationship and access directly to the network at Wharton is still very compelling even if you went to Penn undergrad. So my point is I wouldn't use that as a decision factor.
Now, fair enough. If the money and Kellogg being cheap and giving the scholarship is an important factor for the candidate, then I get that. But I wouldn't worry about the fact that they're a pan undergrad in this. Now, will Wharton give them a leg up in terms of providing them more potential access to MBB and to private equity? I think the answer is yes. I mean, they're in a tier above.
And also the quality of the network is just a little bit stronger, et cetera, et cetera.
And maybe their familiarity, you know, coming from Penn is actually a benefit. Right. Going back to Wharton, hitting the ground running. Not, not. And anyway, I'm more inclined, quite frankly, Graham, to suggest that, that Wharton might actually be the better option. And if they choose Kellogg, it's for the scholarship alone.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, so ordinarily I would call you a homer because you worked at Wharton and you know, and I'm, I, you know, I went to Wharton, so we have this bias, maybe that baked in. But I made a little list here and I thought, okay, let's look at geography. They want to be in New York. Right. So I think, you know, Wharton probably wins that battle. I mean, kind of hands down. I mean, you have, you're an hour and 10 minutes on the Amtrak to get into Manhattan for interviews, et cetera. So. And they place the Wharton network in New York City is vast. Right. And yes, Kellogg sends people to New York too. But I'm just saying, if you had to pick a school that's going to have a bigger network, it's obviously going to be Wharton there. And then I looked at, well, what about private equity? And the data bears out that Wharton's much stronger there too. In fact, when it comes to breaking into private equity, the list of schools is very short that really enables that. So I think that goes to Wharton too. When it comes to MBB placements, I would actually call it a toss up. I think both Kellogg and Wharton do a very good job of placing people. Of course, we should note that those Jobs are harder to come by in this current economy. So that's something to keep in mind when it comes to the broad global network. I think Wharton has a larger network, a more international network. And as you say, yes, this person's double dipping, but it's really who you meet in the program, the caliber of those individuals and these people that become friends for life. So, yeah, now the area that Kellogg wins hands down, is money. I mean, they're giving them $70,000, which is nothing to scoff at. Although I, you know, you could make the argument that if you're going to go work at McKinsey for a few years and then jump into private equity, that $70,000 may not be the most important thing, you know, 10 years from now. So, yeah, this is an interesting dilemma. And I think, you know, I'm hearing from the candidate, they're kind of like, oh, I should just go to Kellogg that way. It's a new network and it's a, you know, a new thing, and I'm getting the money. But I'm hoping that we've raised at least, you know, some issues that they should consider as they kind of go through this, because it's not an obvious.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Choice, and they say, no, it's not an obvious choice. It's interesting. Our colleague Elliot basically felt, you know, push them toward the Kellogg choice because Elliott's premise was more on that double dipping. But Elliot's also a big fan of having no regrets in the decision. And I think if they choose Kellogg, they may always wonder, would Wharton have been better? If they choose Wharton, I don't think they'd have that same nagging in the back of their mind in terms of potential for regret. So, I mean, I'm a huge fan of Kellogg. Don't get me wrong. I just think in this case, the cards stack a little bit more toward Wharton.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to the Canada, and they're saying, I want to live in New York and I want to work in private equity.
Those are factors that we can't ignore.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: And even going to Wharton, transitioning to private equity is going to be very difficult, but it's still more viable than likely it would be coming from Kellogg.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Agreed. Yeah. So, anyway, lot to sort of consider here. Best of luck to this candidate. As they figure it all out, obviously, they're going to land on their feet one way or the other. So I want to thank them for sharing their dilemma with us. And Alex, we've done it again. We spent about 30 plus minutes talking about all things MBA admissions. And, yeah, thanks for picking out these candidates. And, yeah, stay tuned. We'll be back next week with another episode.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Very good. Good luck, everyone. Stay saf.
