This week’s show begins with a review of the upcoming MBA admissions deadlines for this week, including UVA / Darden, UCLA / Anderson, and Emory / Goizueta. Graham and Alex then turn their attention to the recent announcement of the departure of Kirsten Moss from Stanford (the Chad Losee departure from Harvard was not yet announced at the time that we recorded the podcast). These are indeed very interesting times. Graham highlighted the Adcom Q&A for IESE, while also noting their keen focus on purpose-driven business goals, including sustainability issues. Graham also highlighted the Real Humans stories recently published from Chicago / Booth and Indiana / Kelley. Alex and Graham then looked at the Michigan / Ross employment report, which showed some great numbers related to average salary increases. Graham then reviewed Yale SOM’s impressive class profile, which potentially suggests application volumes were down last season, especially among the U.S. applicant pool.
As usual, this episode breaks down three candidate profiles, sourced from ApplyWire:
First up, Alex selects a candidate from Nigeria with an outstanding GRE (338) and three years of work experience, who is targeting several programs, including eight in the first round. Because there seem to be more and more candidates from Nigeria, Alex and Graham wonder if they might be considered “over-represented” in the applicant pool, presenting some additional challenges. This week’s second candidate has decent numbers (720/3.54) with an engineering degree, working in the engineering domain. Alex and Graham think she will have good opportunities at top programs, as someone who may well be under-represented, and potentially has faced additional challenges as an engineer. Her involvement in setting up a women’s group at work suggests this might be the case. This week’s third profile review features an Indian candidate who’s career and undergrad has been undertaken in Canada. It sounds like their experience is quite technical, but includes some leadership, and they are not being overly ambitious for their target programs. That said, they are targeting round 2, and as someone who is potentially over-represented in the pool, Alex suggests retaking the GRE so as to boost their current score of 322.
Nigerian with 338 GRE
Female engineer, solid numbers
Indian in Canada
Happy listening!
Be sure to post to MBA ApplyWire, MBA DecisionWire or MBA RankingsWire if you’d like Graham and Alex to offer admissions advice.
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This episode was hosted by Graham Richmond and Alex Brown, and produced by Dennis Crowley. Thanks to all of you who’ve been joining us!
