[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond, and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, April 7, 2025. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, what's going on this week?
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Everything's very good, Graham. Springtime. Although a bit windy where I am.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, I was telling you just before we came on air, this is the 300th episode of Wiretaps. So, you know, we do interviews with admissions directors and things that are kind of side episodes, but for wiretaps, where we've been profiling candidates or talking about the decisions they're faced with, this is the 300th show. And so it's just a milestone. I wanted to mention it.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Brilliant. And what that means is we've been doing this show for nearly six years. Years. Because we haven't missed one week.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Because I'm a big fan of this notion of reliability. Right. So we've had to juggle a little bit sometimes to make sure we had a show in for some of the holiday weeks. But. But, yeah, that means we've been doing this for near nearly six years, Graham. We. What we need to do is look into the archives and look at the date for the first show, but I bet you it was around the back end of April. Yeah, 2000 and whatever. Six years ago that. 2018 or something.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Probably.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: No, maybe 1990.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. Over 800 candidates have been profiled on this show. And, yeah, to your point, like, we have never missed. And, I mean, I can recall one time I recorded an episode in a car parked in a McDonald's parking lot because I needed to get a WI fi signal in the south of Italy, and I couldn't turn on the air conditioning because it would ruin the. You know, would be too. The car would make too much noise for the mic, so. So I just remember sweating to death recording an episode with you. But anything for the show. You know, I always.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: You're painting a very vivid picture, Graham.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: All right, so the other thing I wanted to say, though, is I listened to a number of podcasts myself, and I realized that one thing we never do is we don't really tell people much about ourselves. And we did do special episodes, like, many moons ago, more than a year ago, where we kind of interviewed each other. But a couple of the shows I listened to, they always just say at the outset. So I thought I would just mention. Because we're getting new folks coming on to listen each week now that we head into maybe the beginning of a new season.
I just wanted to say people should know this, but you're a former admissions officer at Wharton. You also ran admissions at University of Delaware's MBA program where you earned your mba. And you're currently, as everyone probably knows, clear admits, community manager and podcast co host, but you also teach digital marketing for some top MBA programs. I think right now you're doing that for LBs, right?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah. London Business School, Imperial and Columbia.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Yeah. Excellent. So I just wanted people to have that background. And then for me, I met you when I was pursuing my MBA at Wharton and then I joined you in the admissions office when I graduated. We worked on some really cool projects and then you sent me off to travel for Wharton a little bit. You sent me to that, I don't know, that Scandinavian tour.
So lots of fun doing things for Wharton. And then I left and co founded clearadmit and eventually you came over to help. So I just want people to have that background as we dive in. Anyway. Yeah, I know a lot of people have been listening for a while and have picked up on those things little by little, but I think it's important to just give folks context.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: I must have liked you if you got the Scandinavia gig because that was definitely a highlight for me at Wharton.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Oh, yeah? Yeah. For some reason you were like, I can't go and I want to give this to you as a gift.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Oh, boy.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: It was great. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what's been happening over the last week on the MBA admissions front, because I know we had a bunch of M7 schools giving out decisions last week, including Wharton and some others, right?
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Wharton, Stanford. And we're recording this before the hopefully inevitable release of Sloan.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: So three real big hitters releasing decisions last week, which essentially wraps up what we call decision weeks. There are still some programs releasing decisions for round two or they're equivalent to round three or four. So this upcoming week, actually Ohio State, Fisher and Oxford said are releasing decisions, but the bulk of decisions now for that what we might call January round, because a couple of schools might consider that round three or whatever it might be, the decisions are out. So, you know, hopefully lots of folks listening have options and you know, for those that were in the season, not looking ahead to next season, have options now. So the. The challenge is to figure out now where to go. And that's why in this show, this time of year, we talk a little bit more about the decision wire entries versus the apply wire entries, which are much more relevant in the earlier cycle of the admission season.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And that'll flip as we get beyond all these decisions. But I will say for now, we just did run. It's a perfect moment to mention it. We ran an admissions tip on the site about. Well, it's called can you negotiate a scholarship? And so, yeah, for people who are getting their decisions and looking at financial aid and what kind of money they were given, if any, that's a really helpful tip. So read that on the site if you're trying to figure out how to negotiate and whether it's possible. It is in most instances, but there are a lot of criteria that go into it. So read that piece. It's important.
We also, Alex, have. I should just do our usual plugs here. We've got a whole bunch of events in May and people have started signing up in droves. I mean, we have a series of four webinars that we run in May, May 6th, 7th and then May 2021. You can sign up for those events at bit ly appoverview25. And basically these are sessions. I'm going to sit down each time we have like four or five schools join and we pepper them with questions about their application process. It's a great primer if you've just kind of, you know, dipping your toe in on the next admission cycle. And we have all the top schools. There are 20 schools joining us over the course of those four sessions, including Stanford and Wharton, Harvard, et cetera. So come on out for that. That'll be fun. And if you happen to be anywhere within spitting distance of Boston in the middle of May, on May 14, we're doing our big MBA fair. It's an annual event. Again, about 25 schools attending that all the top programs will do pan. There'll be a fair, there'll be food, alumni there from schools and lots of networking. So it should be a lot of fun. And you can sign up for that at bit ly mbafair 2025. So that's. Those are kind of the events, Alex. I'm really looking forward to it. Starting to do things like, you know, pick out the, the menus and the food and, and, you know, audio, you know, dealing with audio stuff. Our friend Dennis, who's our podcast producer, is going to help us in Boston with audio for our panel. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely fantastic. And again, this is only the second year we've done an in person, live event. And I just think it's a really good testament to, you know, Clear Admit as a brand. The school support for Clear Admit, since we've got, you know, essentially all the top 20, 25 programs in attendance, bar maybe one.
I think it's fantastic. And kudos to everyone on the team for making that happen. I can't take any credit SAT in Cornwall, but this is absolute. Absolutely.
It effectively just shows the school's respect for the work that Clearitment does.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that was gonna be my next point, which is we would be nothing without the schools who are coming. And I know some of them listen to this show. So I really, I mean, it really is great to have all these schools joining us. Yeah, it should be a lot of fun. And you know, last year it was really interesting. We did it in Chicago and there were people showing up. This one guy came from Vancouver, somebody else from la. So it is kind of a destination MBA fair. I mean, if you want to hit all the schools at once, it's a great thing to do because rarely do these fairs have all the schools. So any event, we should move on. I did want to say we ran an interesting piece in our Fridays from the Frontline series, which is usually these posts we do on Fridays which are directly written by current students in MBA programs. And so this comes from a woman named Francesca, who's a current LBS student. She's graduating this spring and she took us kind of behind the scenes of the 25th annual Equal Conference, which is Europe's. It's like a student led conference on gender equity. And she had worked at Procter and Gamble, she's currently at LBs and she just sort of talks through how she ended up at LBs. And I guess she leads the Women in Business club there and was the co host for this big conference that they did. So you can read about that on the website.
We also continued, Alex, to connect with graduates of MBA programs. And so I want to just share a few profiles with you. We had this woman named Christina who graduated from wharton back in 22. She's now at Pfizer as a senior manager. She hails from Staten Island, New York, went to Dartmouth as an undergrad and studied neuroscience. Previously, as you might expect, she'd worked in life sciences strategy consulting and then went off to business school and now is at Pfizer. And this was kind of interesting. We asked her, why did you go to Wharton? What factors were sort of figuring most prominently in your decision about where to go? And she says, I was drawn to Wharton because of the healthcare management program and leadership development opportunities. Wharton has one of the most reputable and established healthcare programs. I'm grateful I had the opportunity to not only deepen my healthcare expertise, but also to form lasting relationships with peers and alumni across the industry.
And she gets into some details about, apparently there's like a karaoke tradition within the healthcare cohort at Wharton. But she, she just talks a lot about how she really bonded with that cohort of students who were healthcare management majors. And then she also says, additionally, I believe a unique advantage of business school is the dedicated time to focus on self reflection and leadership development. I appreciated being able to take classes about career planning and leadership as well as participate in programs like Wharton's leadership Fellows, which allowed me to further develop and strengthen my soft skills as a growing leader. So that's Christina at Wharton. Alex, you had a front row seat at Wharton and probably saw that healthcare cohort come in through, you know, each year. Any thoughts?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I assume Junekin is still marshaling them in and yeah, doing all that good stuff, but yeah, no, Wharton is renowned for its healthcare management program and it's the only program at Wharton that does have a slightly different admissions process than the sort of, you know, all the other majors comes through, you know, directly through the admissions office and so forth. I just love the fact that, what did you say her major was? Neuroscience.
[00:10:55] Speaker A: Yeah, Dartmouth.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: So she's like a brain scientist and now getting her MBA at Wharton or completed her MBA at Wharton working at Pfizer. I mean, who knows what she's up to now, but just sounds like a really impressive set of credentials.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And her interview, if you read the piece on the site, I encourage anyone interested in Wharton or healthcare to go read it. She had a lot of great insight. I couldn't share them all here.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: She knows how the brain works, Brian.
That's like.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go.
We then connected with Shen who graduated from OSU Fisher in 23. So he's a couple years out. He's working at Deloitte as a senior consultant and he is from a town. This is going to be hard for me to say, but he's from a town called Sihan Xi A N. I'm not really sure where that is in China, but it's a town in China. He went to OSU for undergrad as well. So the Ohio State University undergrad where he was an aviation major. And then I guess after college he went and worked as an operations specialist and a reconnaissance scout for the US army for three years and then now is, you know, finished business school and off at Deloitte and we Just asked him, were there any surprises regarding your employer's current employer's recruiting process? Because we know people tuning in are always wondering, how do you get these jobs? What's the. What's the interview process like? And he said, one surprise was how much emphasis was placed on structured thinking and executive presence, even beyond case performance. While technical problem solving was critical, the ability to articulate insights clearly and navigate ambiguity was equally important. And he goes on from there. But basically he was really struck by, you know, I mean, this makes sense because I guess if you're working at Deloitte as a consultant, you got to be able to convince CEOs and higher ups that you know what, you know what you're talking about and really, you know, be very articulate. So, yeah, that was interesting to hear from him.
[00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes absolutely perfect sense. There's no point in having someone that's smart as a rocket scientist that can't communicate their stuff.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Right?
[00:13:03] Speaker B: Totally. So absolutely fantastic insight. But, yeah, no, it makes perfect sense to me.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And then the last person we caught up with is a woman named Erin. She graduated from Chicago, Booth, recently back in 24, and she's working at Nike as a strategy lead. She hails from Los Angeles, California, and attended Davidson College in North Carolina. I'm actually going to be there next week for work. And she was an English major but an Econ minor and worked in tech, had a couple of different roles in tech and also for a company called Huron Consulting, which is a big higher ed consulting company.
We asked her, what piece of advice do you wish you had been given during your mba? And she said, in my last class at Booth, I read Clayton Christensen's essay titled How Will youl Measure youe Life? During that last class, my professor took us all through an exercise where we had to think about what success looks like for our lives, both personally and professionally. For me, it was easy to articulate what I wanted professionally. To be fulfilled, to be challenged, and to provide for my family. Yet it was hard to do the same for what I wanted out of life personally, beyond a great relationship with my family and friends. We were then asked, who are the people in our lives that we tell good things and bad things to? And as a follow up, asked if we had invested enough time in those relationships. Business school is a whirlwind. It's easy to get sucked into a bubble, disconnect from reality, and cut off the lifeline to the before world. My advice to incoming MBAs would be, remember your relationships. You will make new ones. In school that will be easier to maintain. But know the people who keep you grounded and who can offer reprieve from the microcosmic world that is B school. Remember, business school is all about building network and community and investing in those relationships. Life is measured based on the impact you have on the community around you. And call your mom.
So that was Aaron's advice, which I know is very long, but I thought was really touching and interesting.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Yeah. Who knew Clayton Christensen did more than just write innovators dilemma.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. No, but I think it is easy when you go to business school and this is maybe particularly relevant for me. I went to business school in the city I had already been living in. So there was this temptation to I could just dive into Wharton and ignore everyone that I'd met before and just kind of live this sort of separate life. But I did stay in contact with friends locally and I think it was worth it because I'm still in touch with them today. So, yeah, it's an interesting point.
Anyway, enough said. We've been getting a lot of emails recently, which is great. I try to write back to everyone.
So you can write to
[email protected] use the subject line wiretaps. We'll try to answer any questions you have. But otherwise, Alex, I guess we need to move on and start talking about this week's candidates.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Let's kick on.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: All right, so this is wiretaps candidate number one.
So our first candidate comes from an apply wire entry. This person's got 14 schools on the target list. They are kind of all over the map. You know, we've got Columbia, Duke, but then some schools in Europe like Esade, ESA, INSEAD, LBs, back to the U.S. she's got, you know, or he has MIT, NYU, Penn State, UChicago, UCLA, Wharton, Yale. So a lot of different schools. This is a woman, actually. She says in the comments here, looking to start in 26. Have been working in banking and technology. Actually works for one of the largest banks in Latin America. This person's based in Brazil. They want to return to Brazil, ideally after business school. They have a. She has a 710 on the GMAT and a 3.1 GPA. Seven years of work experience. And she says, I'm a 29 year old black Brazilian woman, civil engineer, attended the oldest civil engineering school in Brazil with a full scholarship and have been working with data since 2015. Now coordinating a data team at the biggest Latin American bank working to study for the TOEFL, improve English, etc. And really wants to get a top tier MBA to improve leadership skills and learn with different people from different backgrounds. She points out she's been working at the Same company since 2017, so definitely looking to expand her horizons. Alex, what do you think? There's a lot of schools here on the list. We've got some numbers that are, you know, they're not jumping off the page. 3, 1, 7, 10. What do you make of her profile?
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is absolutely a fantastic candidate, quite honestly, in terms of, you know, raw potential.
Looks like really interesting work experience, you know, or strong work experience, I should say.
My, my sort of, you know, you're exactly right. The school selection is literally all over the map. But to me that's also a little bit sort of, you know, early in the process, time to sort of narrow that, you know, set of schools down a little bit and so forth. So, you know, as we get closer to, you know, she's applying next season or whatever it is, as we get close to that time, she should have narrowed down that list. And some of that then will depend on her post MBA goals, I think, and we talked about this before coming on air, she really needs to articulate those more effectively and so forth. So, you know, obviously she's talked more about the sort of softer skills and so forth. She wants to get out of a top MBA program, but, you know, what is the career in the short term and the long term going to look like coming out of an mba? I think that's really important as well as geographically honing in on where they want to be post MBA in the short run and the long run. And if she can spend some time at this juncture really honing in on those big questions that will help her then really identify. All right, is it a European based program, is it a US based program, is it east coast, west coast and so on and so forth to allow her to optimize her opportunities and so forth. I'd like to see what the spread like. She's got a GMAT of 710, which may be slightly below average for the very best schools, but it'd be nice to see whether it's heavily skewed to quant versus verbal. She says that she's sort of prepping more to improve the TOEFL to improve her English. So I'm just a bit concerned that that GMAT might also be a little bit imbalanced and whether there's some value once she's improved the verbal aspect of her profile to go back, retake the GMAT benefit. From that and boost that score just a little bit. That might be something for them to do. But you know, their undergrad, top civil engineering program, they were on a full scholarship, so there must be a good reason for that.
And you know, then transitioning and running data for a big bank. So she's done some interesting things. Graham. Don't really know much about her outside of work, sort of interests and so forth, but I think there's some raw potential here.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And it is early. There's time, I think. Yeah. Knowing the breakdown on the GMAT and maybe doing a retake if needed could help. I mean, getting a strong score on the TOEFL will be smart as well, so. Yeah, I agree with you. A lot of interesting potential. I think we also should point out that attending prestigious civil engineering school In Brazil with a 3:1 may not really be as low as a 3:1 sounds because in the US everyone's got a 3.5 or above.
There's a lot of grade inflation and I don't know that that's the case in Brazil. So the admissions team would be taking that into account just as they take into account the differences in test scoring and things across the globe. There are just different markets that do better on some of these tests.
I think anything's in play. But I love to know, as you say, more about the career plan, more about, you know, the outside activities and, you know, honing this so that, you know, she can then narrow the school targets and figure out is it Europe, is it the US and if so, where in the US Et cetera. So because she did say she wants to work in tech and then comma, commercial banking after business school. So those are two, two different things. Unless it's sort of the intersection of the two. But either way, yeah, it would be good to identify some companies and, and targets.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Maybe she should go all in on investment banking. I mean, you know, she, I, I think there's a lot of potential here. She needs to figure that side of it out anyway.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Totally. Anyway, I want to thank her for sharing her profile. Hopefully this advice starts to put her on a path to, you know, she's got time, so there's still, still a lot to do, but I think things could work out well. Let's move on though, and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two.
So our second candidate this week, you chose a decision wire entry and this person has quite the, quite the dilemma. They, they applied to a whole bunch of schools. I'm not going to list them all because they, I Believe have run the table with maybe one exception. So they. This person got into Chicago, Booth with a $20,000 a year scholarship.
They also got into Duke with 60K, Michigan with 50, Kellogg with 55, Notre Dame with a full scholarship, Wharton but with no money. Darden with a full scholarship. And Washington University, Olin with a full scholarship. This person starting school this fall, wants to work in consulting. That's the main target.
Is also interested in maybe TAC as well, but. But it's consulting for now. GRE score was a 332 and a GPA 3.81. So really good numbers. No surprise that this person not only got into a lot of these schools, but has some substantial financial aid offering. Now, they did mention. Still waiting to hear back from MIT Sloan. I presume they will, by the time this episode airs, they will have heard and I suspect they will get in.
And they also say, I live in Chicago and want to stay. I would love to minimize my loans.
Booth is my dream school, followed by Kellogg would really love to get more money from Booth. And Kellogg went to UVA undergrad. And don't love the idea of going back for my mba. Any advice?
So, you know, I know you and Elliot both chimed in on this. What's your, what's your take here, Alex?
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, and let's just be completely transparent. This person emailed us, too.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: And I wrote back. Yeah, yeah, we provided some guidance over the email that I will say that they were selected for wiretaps before that email came through. So that is coincidental to some degree that we're talking about this. But, I mean, quite honestly, Graham, I think, you know, they want to be in Chicago. Right.
And, and they want to be in Chicago long term. So that puts a heavy advantage, I think, on Kellogg and Booth. Absolutely. And, and there's, there's a, there's a bit of a scholarship differential between the two. And I recognize that, you know, for different folks, that that's more meaningful than for other folks. Right. Depends on your, your ability to, to, to, to finance and so on and so forth. But they, you know, I, I think they want consulting. Right. So to me, it's Kellogg. And I think, you know, they can, you know, go through the process of attending the sort of the welcome weekends, et cetera, et cetera. But these are both really good programs for consulting. They're both, you know, in the same tier.
But, you know, I think Kellogg really does very well in this domain, and they're offering, is offering that little bit more Money. And I would just think in the back of their mind and we haven't talked about this and I don't think we provided this type of guidance, but go to Wharton's welcome weekend too and just sense check that it's Kellogg versus Wharton in my book.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's an interesting dilemma. And actually in the email I wrote to this person, I mean they disclosed also that they did undergrad at UVA and are not interested in going back. They didn't really like living in Charlottesville and they would want to be in Chicago short and long. So they're ruling that out. Even though you could say, wow, someone wants to work in consulting. Free ride at Darden, a great school for case method and for getting people ready for consulting. But in light of this person's specific situation, the 55k a year from Kellogg looks pretty attractive. Obviously they're probably going to end up with offers at mit. They have an offer at Wharton, but there's no money and money is important for this person. They don't really want to go into a lot of debt. And so yeah, for me, Kellogg does jump out. Kellogg's strong in both consulting and tech. This person has a non traditional background as well. So I think, you know, Kellogg's a program that's going to lend itself well. It's highly curated and you know, I think there's a really good core curriculum that's going to usher someone, you know, into the kind of business world. This person comes from a non traditional background. So yeah, it feels like Kellogg to me. I mean I, I, it does sound like they're hoping to get, they're hoping to get more money than the 55k, but I think it's 55 a year if I remember correctly. Yeah, so I, I don't know. That's a lot of money already. And it know these are, if you're going to work in consulting at mbb, you can pay off your loans. Like you really, you'll be able to very quickly pay off the loans. So yeah, but this is an interesting dilemma.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: So you're not guarding them to, to even go to Wharton's welcome weekend or anything like that? No distraction. Go to Kellogg.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: I mean I, I would go to the Kellogg and Chicago welcome events. I don't know, I mean Wharton, I mean they're gonna have to fly out to Philly and it sounds like the no money thing is sort of a deal breaker. And I believe Wharton doesn't negotiate either. So it's not like they can go to Wharton and say from Kellogg.
Yeah. It's tricky, but I, Yeah, I feel like given they want to be in Chicago, I mean, I, I think, yeah, it comes down to the two big, big M7 schools that are in that market and one of them's given her a lot more money. So.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: Interesting. We're suggesting Wharton. No.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Oh, boy. Anyway. Yeah. So that's. Anyway, really appreciate this person reaching out both on email and posting here. Yeah.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: I mean, I guess my point is just behind the scenes, I mean, Wharton is considered just in a tear slightly above.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Correct. Yeah.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: So just factor that in mind. I mean, sometimes our advice doesn't necessarily take into the, the, the notion of the tiers as much as sometimes it should. And what does it, what does the tier mean? It means you're going to be surrounded by a slightly better on aggregate caliber of students and alums. Yeah. Yeah. Not on the individual level, you'll find some extraordinary people at Kellogg, but on aggregate, the quality of folks will be just a tad higher when the school is in a higher tier.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was part of the reason in the email I wrote, I was like, look, yes, they're free rides at Notre Dame and Washington University, Olin. But you do start to get into a different.
The acceptance rate's much higher. The caliber of student is going to be slightly different. I mean, that's. Not to talk trash about these schools, but I mean, it's just the facts are the facts. Terms of. When you look at ranking and admissions difficulty, et cetera. So in any event, I think this person's really fortunate to have a bunch of great offers.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: I mean, that's my point. This person looks like they've got great options. They're great. Obviously a super NBA candidate, and we can assume Sloan comes in too, and so forth. But I just think they want to have one more look at Wharton just, Just for the fact that they. Wharton is in that slightly higher tier, but it does look like Kellogg is a really good option.
[00:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: To. And especially Chicago if they, you know, they, they know exactly where they want to be.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: All right, So I want to thank her for sharing. Let's move on, though. We have one more candidate. Let's talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three.
So our third candidate this week is another decision wire entry. Another person with a dilemma. They applied to Indiana, Kelley, Michigan, Ross, Notre Dame, Darden and Washington University, and they ended up with offers. They got into Kelley, full tuition scholarship. They got into Ross with 30K.
They got into Notre Dame again with a full tuition scholarship. No money from Darden and they got into Washington University Olin again with a full scholarship. So lots of full scholarships. They want to work in consulting or potentially a leadership development program. This person's starting school in the fall. They're located in Chicago. They had a 3.77 GPA as an undergrad. And here's what they said. They said, I am torn on where to go. My ideal post MBA role is to join a leader development program in Chicago. I'm torn between Ross and Kelley. At Kelley, I received a full Dean's fellowship scholarship. Kelly places well in Chicago and has great employment report numbers. However, Ross is extremely prestigious and excels at general management.
So. Yeah, so they're kind of narrowing it to Ross and Kelly. And just to remind everyone, in case you have already forgotten, Kelly's a full scholarship. Ross is 30K.
So. Yeah. What do you think this person should do?
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this is slightly different and interesting again, because I think because they want to do a leadership development program rather than.
Or that's their priority versus, let's say MBB consulting, which sounds like consulting's their backup option. But if they, you know, if they're going all in on leadership development programs and if they can, you know, scrutinize Kelly in that career report and maybe, you know, quiz admissions and alums and so on and so forth to feel confident that Kelly can provide them access to leadership development programs in Chicago, which is exactly their goal. I think this might be a case where a free ride at a school that's a couple of tiers below makes good sense.
I mean, I get that Ross, again, the aggregate student quality is going to be a little bit higher. The access to opportunity is going to be a little bit greater. But I think once you've gotten into a leadership development program, then it's going to be really up to you as an individual to perform really super well, etc. Etc. And climb the management ladder at that particular organization. And if you feel confident you can do that coming out of Kelly, that free ride is really compelling. Graham.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And it's, you know, it is a school. We've actually done a. I did a podcast many moons ago with the head of career services there and we even have done one more recently. And they. It's a school with a real focus on career development from, like the day that you're admitted to the program.
And so, you know, if this person. And they have these ties to leadership development programs, a lot of the big corporations in the Midwest, Chicago being a popular, you know, know, place For. For grads to land. So I can understand it. I mean, it's a full tuition scholarship, and, yes, they're a tier or so below Michigan, Ross. But it's. Yeah, it's. It's an interesting dilemma. I mean, I think, given this person's goals, if they really want a leadership development program, what I would do is go and talk to Kelly about which programs they're typically placing people into. And, yeah, do the due diligence. Attend welcome events at both schools and see what they think. But I hear you. I mean, you can make a compelling case for the free. You know, it's a free MBA from Kel.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, if they. If their number one goal was consulting, my advice would be different.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Especially if it was, you know, MBB consulting or something. Yeah, right. Yeah.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: So in any event, yeah, this is a good, good dilemma to have. And these. Both of these candidates this week on these decision wire posts, really, you know, running. Practically running the table with their acceptances and then getting all these free rides, which is there's money out there to be had. And I think I will note, though, that, you know, in both cases, both candidates have really pretty. Pretty stellar GPAs. So those marks pay off down the road. So when you're thinking about, you know, if you're tuning in as a college student, you know, do your homework, get, Get. Get a good gpa. It never hurts.
Exactly. All right, Alex, thanks for picking these out. We'll record another one next week. Our 301st wiretaps episode. But it's been a wild ride. Six years, as you say, and it's. Yeah, let's keep it going.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: There.
