[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm Graham Richmond and this is your Wiretaps for Monday, April 28, 2025. I'm joined by Alex Brown from Cornwall, England. Alex, how are things going?
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Very good, thank you, Graeme. So how was your quick holiday?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I had a quick holiday down in the south of France. Lots of fun, hiking, etc. The weather cooperated which was really great. But yeah, so back, back and recharged. Busy, busy months ahead here with Clear Admit activities and you know, the annual GMAC conference. But there's just always a lot that happens at this time of year so I needed that kind of quick refresh.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Very nice, very nice.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: So what's going on in the world of NBA admissions? I mean, lots of weightless chatter and round three stuff, right?
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, look, quite a lot of round three stuff. I mean last week Keenan, Flagler and Tapper were scheduled to release decisions for round three. But this upcoming week we've got McCombs, Darden, Kelly, Johns Hopkins, Kerry Tuck, Ross, Terry Mendoza, Insead and Owen all scheduled to release decisions. So be quite active next week.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: In terms of those final decisions for round three. So as, as we've said on a number of occasions, it's a much more condensed round.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm noticing, and you'll hear this later in the show because I saw you picked a couple of apply wire entries. I'm noticing that we're, you know, we're also starting to get some folks in our orbit here who are, you know, really targeting next year. And so the, you know, we're kind this mix of round three wait list stuff but also those folks who are nicely out in front and preparing to apply in the coming cycle. So yeah, it's a good time of year for that stuff.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: So speaking of how I said I'm going to be really busy over the next couple of months here, we've got a crazy May. We keep talking about it on the show but I'll mention again that we're doing four virtual events in the month of May. May 6th and 7th are the first two and those are going to be some fun events. So on May 6th I'm going to sit down with admissions directors from Dartmouth, Duke, Insead, London Business School and Michigan Ross and we'll have kind of a discussion around just how their application process works, some questions and also we'll do a lot of kind of myth busting and just sort of explaining how the admissions process works. And then the next day, May 7, I'm sitting down with admissions directors from Tepper, Cornell, Harvard Business School, NYU Stern and Emory. So those are the first two. There are two more later in the month. I'll give you the schools on those later, but so four virtual events. You can sign up for them. Bit ly app overview 25. So these are usually super popular. I noticed Mike on our team has been sharing the signups data and it's, it's pretty crazy. A lot of people have already signed up for these, so it should be fun.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yeah. More than 300 for the first event.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, and I'm sure that's going to go way up between now and then too. We usually get a thousand people, so yeah, it's going to be fun. The other thing is that, as we've been saying, we're doing our in person event in Boston, that's on May 14th. It's a Wednesday evening. We're doing a big MBA fair, 24 schools panels, I've confirmed had a great discussion with the woman who heads recruiting at Bain. They're going to be there. We'll do a panel about consulting. We're going to have a panel about how to finance the MBA and then a lot of panels on very specific admissions stuff. And I've just been putting together the roster of the schools that are going to take part in the panels and that's looking fantastic too. So come on out. It's a great way to meet alumni, to chat with admissions directors. And again, these schools are never in the same place at once at one fair. So this is a big event and yeah, come on out if you can. Bit ly MBAFair 2025. It's in Boston, hosted at MIT Sloan. Should be a lot of fun.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: I think it's absolutely fantastic. And like you say, getting all the top schools in one room, I don't think that occurs in the MBA admissions fair world anymore.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: No, it doesn't. So we're excited about that. The other thing is that we, speaking of top schools, like, we, you know, we kind of keep an ey on career placements and I know there's a lot of chatter in Reddit and you know, you know, how, how good is the MBA at placing people? And Elliot on our team kind of spends a lot of his time looking at career placements and he just compiled an article about finance placements. He had done so for consulting a couple weeks back, you may recall. And so I wanted to share some sort of figures with you, Alex. I mean, you know, he looked specifically at, you know, kind of buy side Stuff. So, you know, private equity, venture capital, investment management. And you know, on that side of house there are three schools that really dominate. Do you want to guess what they are? You probably know.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, just to be clear, buy side is the sort of the top end of the jobs, you know, for finance. Right. So it's going to be Harvard, Stanford and Wharton.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So 30% Harvard, 29% Stanford, 19% in terms of the percentage of their folks looking for work going into those kinds of roles. So big, big numbers. And it's a testament, I think, to these programs competitive advantage in delivering strong buy side finance job placement. There's some other schools that do well too. I mean Columbia, MIT, both at like 13%. And then you have Booth, Haas, Yale and Kellogg kind of rounding it out. So a lot of M7 schools in that group, which isn't surprising. What's also interesting though is if you look at the raw numbers, Harvard sent 163 of their grads into these buy side type finance roles. Wharton 108. Columbia in third place with 76 grads, and then Stanford with 58. So it's important to look at both the percentages and the raw numbers because there's obviously a nice network that starts to get created when you send lots of people into these roles year after year.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: Yeah, no, great point. I mean, obviously Stanford's an elite program. Absolutely fantastic. But it is a smaller program.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Right, exactly. Yeah. And then, you know, it just, it sort of coincides with another piece that we wrote on the site about finance placements more generally. As part of our real Numbers series, we just looked at like which schools send the most grads into finance and that would include investment banking as well as these buy side type jobs in venture capital, private equity, investment management. So who do you think, if you had to give me. Do you think you can take a guess at the kind of, what's the school that sends the most, the highest percentage of its graduates into any and all finance related roles?
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Highest percentage. I would go for Stern.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: No, it's, it's this interesting. It's Cornell Johnson with 42%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we've got Harvard with 39%, Wharton and Stanford tied with 37%. And then Columbia and Stern are tied at 36%, followed by Booth. And there's one European school with a really decent percentage of finance jobs that I wouldn't have guessed. Do you want to take a guess at that one?
[00:07:16] Speaker A: So it's not LBs.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: No.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Huh.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: And it's not insead either.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: No, I'll let you tell me.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: So It's Oxford sends 32% of their grads into these finance jobs. So. Yeah, interesting.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: Very good.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So lots of finance. If you're into finance, go read these articles on the site because they're really useful in terms of breaking things down. And, you know, and again, I think it just goes to show that you can't just look at a ranking and you can't even just look at, oh, this school sends a lot of people into finance. You need to think about, like, what is the job you want? Do you want to be a banker? An investment banker? Well, then, you know, Johnson, Stern, Booth, Columbia. I mean, there's certain schools that are really good. If you want to work in private equity, it might be a different set of schools. Right. So you really have to get more granular to understand the right fit for you.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Other stuff we've been doing, Alex, is we ran a couple of admissions tips. One, I guess both would be for people maybe targeting next year. The first is about pre MBA coursework that you could do, I guess either to get ready to start business school in the fall or in most instances, to sort of bolster your transcripts and your application materials to show that you're really a great candidate and competent at all things kind of quantitative. So that's an article we put up and I think you had helped with that or originally were really pushing for us to kind of do that summary.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And it's really, really important, especially for those with more of a liberal arts sort of background or like you say, if they need to do a little bit of transcri repair and so forth. So it's great to have a strong test score, but academics is slightly different. Right. It shows commitment over a period of time, etc. Etc. So, yeah. So yeah. And again, it just gets you in that sort of mindset of getting ready to excel in that first quarter.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I remember being really bitter when I applied to business school and I had my art history degree, liberal arts background, and I had to go and take accounting and statistics at night while I was working just to kind of bolster that part of my, you know, candidacy. And I remember like, oh, this is such a pain. I've got. I'm juggling work, I'm writing my applications, taking these classes. But boy, was I glad when I arrived at Wharton for kind of boot camp and to get ready for the program, because if I hadn't had those courses and that sort of, I mean, for me, it wasn't, I can't even call it a refresh. It was kind of just the first time getting exposure to accounting. And you know, by the time I hit Wharton, I was really ready as a result of that stuff. So, yeah, can't recommend these courses enough. It's really useful. It not only helps your chance of getting in, but it helps you be ready.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: So before we talk about this week's candidates, Alex, there's just one more thing and that is that we continue to profile alumni of these top MBA programs working at interesting companies. And so I just wanted to give you a couple of those. We talked with Nick, who's a Berkeley Haas grad. He graduated recently in 24 and he is an associate at Morgan Stanley.
He went to undergrad at Berkeley, studied econ and had been working as a consultant before business school at Ernst and Young, kind of management consulting stuff. But then he's pivoted into this associate role at Morgan Stanley and he's doing tech investment banking. And we asked him what is one thing you would absolutely do again as part of the job search. And he said, Haas does an incredible job of providing support to students pursuing investment banking through career center sponsored events and by employing industry experts. Scheduling weekly meetings with the industry experts was critical to my recruiting process and helped immensely in refining my technical skills, sharpening my interview strategy, and navigating the nuances of different banks and teams. The career experts deep industry knowledge and connections provided invaluable insight into what top firms look for in candidates. And the coaching they gave me developed a polished, confident approach that I could use in networking and interviews. And this goes on and on. I mean, Nick elaborates and he talks a lot about how the network in the valley of Haas alums working in banking, but specifically in tech investment banking is really great. The reason I mention this is because here we just talked earlier in the show about finance jobs and we weren't really mentioning Haas as one of those top schools for banking or something. But you know, again, when you get in, when you pull back the kind of covers and get a little bit under the, you know, sort of into the weeds, you can see that some of these schools have powerful networks in very specific areas. And it would make sense that, you know, Haas would have these kind of ties into sort of tech investment banking.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, makes absolutely perfect sense. And great to see all the resources Haas, you know, puts in play for those folks. I mean, that was going to be my question when you said they work at Morgan Stanley. Is that in the Valley. And I assume. Assume the answer is absolutely yes.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So in San Francisco. Yes. So, yeah. So that's. That was our first real human alum that we caught up with. We also caught up with Diego, who is a Rice grad out of Houston. He works for a company called Energy Re and is an M and A and investments associate there. My understanding is that Energy Re is a kind of M and A shop that focuses on renewables. And he's been there for a couple years now because he graduated, I guess, in 23. He basically went to undergrad at Missouri University, studied petroleum engineering and had been working at Shell for like five years in oil and gas and then has used the MBA to pivot over to kind of M and A and in the renewable side of things. So really interesting. And we just said, what's one thing that you might change or do differently as part of the job search? And Diego said, I'd stress less and trust the process.
Opportunities come together when they're meant to. At the same time, I'd invest more in MBA friendships. The job will come, but those relationships last a lifetime and shape your career in unexpected ways. So that's Diego's advice to those in business school looking for jobs.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: It's great advice, especially when you can do it. You can provide that advice in hindsight.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, no. But I think it is true. The relationships you build in business school are just so critical and, yeah, it's really fulfilling. So our last real human alum that we caught up with is.
And I'm going to have trouble pronouncing this first name, but I'm going to give it a shot. Pratibha and Pratiba is a Washington Foster grad from the class of 23 and is currently working as a senior product manager at Amazon Pratipe Health from Delhi, India, and had gone to school in India majoring in electronics and communication engineering, but had also after that worked as a tech consultant and an engineer, done some work with Deloitte and Accenture, and then went off to Foster and has landed this role at Amazon as a senior product manager. Been there for a couple years now. And we asked, what's one piece of advice do you wish you'd been given while you were pursuing your mba? And here's the quote. It's a ride. Don't forget to take a moment for yourself. Slow down and breathe the MBA German. The MBA journey can be intense and it's easy to get caught up in everything, but taking the time to recharge is just as important as the work you're doing. So that was the advice there, I think. Also good advice.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I love hearing these. I mean, obviously hindsight's 20 20, but it's always nice hearing what alums have to say.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: So before we talk about this week's candidates, I did want to remind people they can email
[email protected] use the subject line wiretaps. We will write you back. And obviously, if you can, please tell a friend, family member, anyone you know at work who might enjoy this podcast, we could definitely use reviews, ratings. So please remember to do so. Alex, anything else on your mind this week before we get into the candidates?
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Let's kick on.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: All right, so this is WireTaps candidate number one.
Our first candidate this week has seven schools on the target list. And this is from an apply wire entry. And this person is thinking about applying to Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, nyu, Stanford, Chicago and Wharton. They want to start in the fall of 26. And they have been working as an investment banking and corporate development, I guess. Well, the more working in investment banking and corporate development in both the real estate and energy sectors. They would like to get into either banking, well, I guess stay in banking or work in private equity after business school. And they have a bunch of companies on the list. It's a pretty long list, but it's got a lot of the usual suspects from bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman and then some of those, you know, Carlisle, Blackstone, TPG, KKR type shops as well. They have a 675 on the GMAT. They had a 3.8 undergraduate GPA, six years of experience thus far. This is a Peruvian who is living and working in Chile and wants to land in the US after business school. And this is a female candidate. She says, I'm an experienced woman working primarily in Latin American markets, but looking for US Market market exposure and, you know, wants to sort of pivot into maybe investments in private equity in the US in the longer run. So, Alex, you had some back and forth with this candidate. Any thoughts on, you know, the level of competitiveness? And there was also a question that this person asked, I believe, about was it a gap in employment? Right. So take us through.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, quite honestly, I think this is a really good profile overall.
Six years of work experience looks like a really strong GPA.675 on the GMAT, which I assume translates into about a 710, 720 GMAT score on the traditional scale.
So you know, and they do some work, do some activities outside of work, you know, with supporting Peruvian women artisans that focused on poverty alleviation and those sorts of areas.
So a lot will rest on the actual quality, I think of their work experience, the impact, the growth etc and you know, that needs to be backed up then by really strong recommendations and so forth. But assuming all that's in place, I would imagine if they are able to target the first round they, they're going to be a strong candidate. I mean they are quite top heavy in their target schools but that might be the right approach for a candidate like this. They do have a gap in employment of 5 months I think it was, which combined transitioning from one country to another, taking a bit of additional time out I think for their family and so forth. And I think because they have six years of experience and presuming this gap wasn't, you know, the last couple of months, I think they can be quite frank and just explain it in the optional essay and it should be, I, I imagine the, the ADCOM will be very sort of fine with it. Yeah, but yeah, they're gonna, they, they will need to explain it. You can't just avoid, you know, a gap. They will, it will be noted in your work history and so on and so forth. So yeah, explain the gap. I did have one additional comment whether they, they, it was worth them considering retaking the GMAT if they thought they could push it up, you know, 10 or 20 additional points. It's already a very decent score, especially from South America which doesn't have that same sort of test taking culture. But nevertheless, if there is any scope for improvement, nudging up the GMAT score a bit might be worthwhile. Especially because they're really targeting the best of the best.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean sometimes that can also influence scholarship dollars. Although I did, I did just take a peek. 675 is really like a 727 30. So they're very close to the averages at these top schools. But you're right, I mean if they, if they could boost it even further, they would put themselves in play for, well, obviously greater odds of acceptance but also maybe more scholarship dollars. So I like this candidacy though. I think it's, you know, I mean there are a lot of things, I mean a Peruvian working in Chile, you know, that's not something you see every day, at least not in the MBA application process. And then I'm not as worried about the gaps as you say. As long as they explain that gap or if it's Gaps. It's hard to tell from the language here, but I think at minimum, just owning the time that you're weren't working, I mean, they have six years worth of experience that they can fall back on. So the fact that there's a handful of months where they weren't working, I'm not so worried about. But, yeah, this is an interesting candidate. And the only thing I said to you before we kind of came on air is I wondered. You mentioned they have a kind of top heavy list. You know, sort of they're applying to the M7. Right. And I, you know, and they added Stern to that group. And I think I would argue that they might want to look at Cornell as well for reasons that we discussed earlier on the show in terms of the percentage of candidates going into finance, that program strengthen investment banking. So they may want to think about throwing them on the list as well. It would balance things a bit. And anyway, that's my take on that.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: And who would you swap out?
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. It's tricky, right. But I think, you know, when you look at this list of schools that they have, you know, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, these are all programs that send a lot of folks into finance. NYU as well, Booth. The one that does stand out is Kellogg. They're on the list here. And, you know, they have a great finance department, but if you're just looking at the numbers, they're sending less people into that domain. So that might be one.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: But in any event. Yeah. So I think they could also, you know, apply to the best of the best in the first round and see where the chips fall and whether they need to cast a wider net or not.
No.
Yeah. So I do want to thank her for sharing her profile. Hopefully this is helpful as she continues to kind of get things into gear for application this coming fall. Let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number two, our second candidate this week also comes from an apply wire entry. And. And they have. This person has six schools on the target list, and those schools are Columbia, Cornell, nyu, Chicago, Booth, Wharton, and Yale. This person is also looking to apply to start in the fall of 26. They have been working as a management consultant at least for the last couple of years.
And it sounds like they also did some regional Eastern European investment banking and PE work. They are hoping to get into investment banking after business school. And they mentioned bank of America, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and a bunch of other common targets for I banking. They have a fantastic GRE score of 330. Their GPA is a 3.0. We'll get into that in a moment. And they have five years of work experience, they're currently located in UAE and they want to land in New York. They also mentioned that they were born and grew up in Central Asia and they don't say which country but they say think Kazakhstan, Tajikistan or Turkmenistan. So one of those places is where they're originally from. But they've landed in the UAE and are working there.
They said that they had a lot of extracurricular activities when they were an undergrad and even in the early, you know, couple of years of their career. But that situation since then, most of their extracurriculars have been kind of work related where they're doing like, you know, mentorship stuff or trainings and things. So they wanted to get our take on that. What do you, what do you make of this candidacy, Alex?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean obviously the one unknown to us is the quality of their undergraduate experience.
So they report a 3.0 GPA, which, you know, if that was in the US and so forth, we would be inclined to think that, that, that's on the lower end of the spectrum, right, vis a vis average GPAs for top schools. But it's not a US GPA. I'm fairly sure of that. It's probably converted from a GPA whether it's from the, you know, Central Asia or wherever they studied. So we need to have a better handle on the rigor of their undergraduate work as well as, you know, how, how did they perform within that rigor in terms of top of their class, etc. Etc. Obviously the 330 GRE is very strong, so that's a really positive signal and that helps, there's no doubt about that. But getting more clarity on the GPA is going to be really, really important.
Five years work experience hits the marker. So again, the quality of that experience is going to really be the measures, growth, impact, supported again by strong recommendations. So they need to make sure that they can illustrate all that effectively through their essays, through their recommendations and then hopefully through their interviewing and so forth.
And yeah, the outside activities is another platform for them to show a little bit more about who they are, how well rounded they are, how they sort of impact others, etc. Etc. So it looks like it's something that they were involved in quite extensively in undergrad. That's very good as well as the beginning of their career. Now a lot of that sort of gone inward into the work experience, sort of getting more Involved in mentorship and so forth. And I think that's fine. And they can highlight that, no doubt. But maybe we need to know a little bit more about what they're passionate about outside of work. Right. Yeah, maybe there's something there that can really help just round everything out because again, there's potential here and obviously a 330 GRE is an outstanding score. So.
So I would imagine a lot of this other stuff is in place and yeah, they. Hopefully they can put together really strong candidacy.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, I mean, this is interesting because given we don't have complete data, as you point out. Right. But when you say, wow, high test score, low gpa, but probably went to school in Central Asia somewhere. And so I just. I have this association with a lot of those universities as being quite challenging and rigorous and there being no grade inflation. So. Yeah. So I think obviously it'd be great to know more there. Maybe they've converted to a 3.0. I have no idea. So they might want to provide some context as they apply. You know, they might write that classic kind of little optional note about, you know, oh, my GPA 3.0 actually was. I was in. In the top 10% of my class. And I think my results on the test should indicate where I am academically, something to that effect. But yeah. I also do agree with you, though, that this person, while interesting being from Central Asia, working in uae, could be even more interesting if we learn that they have some kind of, I don't know, not wacky, but just out of the box, outside activities or interests or things that they do for fun or in an organized way or not. I mean, are they a runner or do they. I don't know. I can't think of anything. Do they like French film? Do they make sushi? Do they like cooking? You know, like, whatever. It might be just something to, as you say, lend some color to their candidacy, but they're. Yeah, potentially this is a great candidate. It's just hard to know without all the facts in place.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Maybe they could be a guitarist in a rock band growing.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Or a horse rider. Yes, exactly. All right, so in any event, I do want to thank them for sharing their profile, but I think hopefully we've underlined this issue around the gpa that they'll at least they'll now know that they need to explain that or kind of add more. More information there. But in any event, let's move on and talk about wiretaps. Candidate number three.
So our final candidate, this Week comes from a decision wire entry and we've been, you know, profiling a lot of these over the last few weeks. But Alex, this person's undecided and it's a really interesting dilemma. Right. They applied to Tepper, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, MIT and nyu. Okay. And they got into Tepper with a scholarship. They did not disclose how much that scholarship was. They were rejected at Michigan and then all the other schools, mit, Tuck, nyu, Duke and Cornell have put them on the wait list in almost all instances. That's after interview. In the case of Cornell it was, they didn't have an interview interview, they were waitlisted right away. So they're on all these wait lists, they have an acceptance at Tepper and they're wondering what to do. In fact, this person says, I am an Indian female software engineer with three years of experience and I'm evaluating if I should go for Tepper this year or try for higher ranked school next year since I've had multiple wait lists and view that as a positive sign. And just to give you a little more background, this person has a 685 on the GMAT which if you're keeping square at home is like a 74730 at worst. And they, you know, want to work in consulting or maybe tech after business school. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of career plan. And I wondered what you thought of this. I mean it's an interesting question. You do you take the bird in hand with, with Tepper, do you play the weightless or do you just throw it, you know, throw in the towel and regroup and apply next year to all these schools again?
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, obviously she still got to hear from the waitlist this season.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: And there will be some time constraint on that. Right. She's an international student, so I presume at some point in the reasonably near future she'd need to have all that sorted out.
So if she gets off the wait list of one of these top, top schools, then I think that that answers her question and she should attend. That said, I think TEP is still a very good option and there's some risk in coming back as a reapplicant. Right? I mean, for some reason she might not actually improve her set of options. Right.
But you would imagine that she could in as much as she's got three years of work experience. So an additional year for next season should elevate her profile, hopefully, you know, a bit more interesting experience, bit more responsibility, more leadership, etc. Etc. And you can make the same argument for whatever she does outside of work and so forth. So, so the. Probably because she's earlier in her career has more scope for that improvement.
But, but you know, by waiting that additional year, she is delaying starting the MBA and graduating and moving into a presumably a higher level role. Delaying all that by a year. And that has some costs and consequences to it.
So, so she'd need to factor that in too.
So, so yeah, I don't think it's straightforward. The other thing that I, I would probably want to know is did she apply round one this season or round two?
Because potentially you could argue, well, if she was put on a load of wait lists, having applied in round one, it's going to be a little bit more challenging this season. She'll come back in round one. But if she applied only in round two this season, maybe by focusing on round one as a reapplicant, she might get ahead of the game a little bit more and get some more straight admit options.
So there's a few things to factor. I mean, but I don't want to dismiss the fact that I think she's got a pretty good option already. But there's no doubt if you get an M7 admit versus a TEPA admit, the opportunities are going to be increased. It doesn't mean, say you will necessarily have a better career, but your opportunities and access will certainly increase.
The downside is you're delaying everything a year.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Right, Exactly. Yeah.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: And there's risk. Right. You might not get admitted next year anyway.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know, obviously Tepper's a great school and if she goes in knowing that she wants to work in consulting and goes full out, I mean, she has Carney, you know, a bunch of firms on her list, Bain, BCG, McKinsey, et cetera. So you know, it, you can make it happen for sure. I mean, these schools are all sending lots of people into consulting and actually Tepper does a good job sending people into tech, which is another area that she's interested in. But yeah, you're right. I mean, I think the thing for me that struck me is, is if she's on the waitlist at Tuck, Sloan, Duke, all these schools, that she just needs to be playing the wait list. I mean, I feel like to some extent reading her comments, it was sort of like, well, I'm on the waitlist at these schools, so I'm either going to go to Tepper or I'll have to reapply. And I'm like, I think you might get in to one of those schools off the waitlist. So my view would be figure out what you need to do, what you're allowed to do with each of these schools and do, you know, come up with your waitlist strategy and get active on it. I will say I looked into this before we came on air. I realized that if she matriculates or goes through the process with Tepper and gets her visa. So let's say she tells Tepper, yes, puts the deposit down, starts the visa process, you can transfer a visa. So if for some reason in July she gets into Sloan or some other school and decides that she wants to go there, it's not so hard. Like, it doesn't start the process over for a visa. So if you have the visa for school A and you get into school B, there's a whole process to switch the school. So. And it's not. It's not. Not cumbersome. And it doesn't mean you're starting over. So that's just one thing I wanted to keep in mind too.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's great advice.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So in any event, it's an interesting. I would love to know, like, what's landed her on all the wait lists. Is it the interview? Is it just that, you know, only three years of experience, so a little bit light in that regard?
Hard to say, I guess. Or is it just maybe over representation? There are plenty of people with kind of software engineering background applying from India. Who knows? But yeah, for some reason, everyone's kind of keeping her in the holding, you know, in a holding pattern. So it is what it is.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: I mean, if she had six years of experience, I would say go now, go to Tepper.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: But the fact that she has three years of experience does suggest there may be more scope for improvement in the overall profile for next season. But, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. That might, like you say, that might be why she's on the wait list anyway.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So in any event, I want to thank her for sharing this dilemma. My main advice is go after these wait lists. Don't. Don't just assume that you're in purgatory. Like you can shape how things, you know, how things turn out by being proactive on these lists. So in any event, Alex, thanks for picking out these candidates. It's exciting to be talking about all these apply wire entries now for people for next year and. Yeah, just appreciate you doing this and we'll do it next week if you're around.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Very good. Stay safe, everyone. Take care there.
