Wire Taps 259—Military candidate, dings at Harvard and Wharton. Waitlisted last season, waiting this season. Stanford or bust?

Published: October 31, 2022 by Alex Brown

Happy Halloween! This week’s podcast starts off with a truly spooky tale about the “Infamous HBS 119″…a story that didn’t end well for MBA applicants back in 2005. On more of an upbeat note, Alex and Graham congratulated Stanford GSB alum, Rishi Sunak, on his new role of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Activity on MBA LiveWire was very busy last week with many candidates reporting interview invites including UPenn / Wharton and MIT / Sloan candidates – Alex and Graham mentioned that they anticipate the same for this upcoming week. Graham then highlighted the new Real Humans pieces from UMD / Smith, UGA / Terry, IMD and UNC / Kenan Flagler. Graham also highlighted the Adcom Q&A from Emory / Goizueta as well as its employment report. Emory has a terrific average starting salary ($165k) which is likely tied to the school’s sending 55% of graduates to consulting. 66% of their students remain in the Southern region of the United States, making it a very strong program for that area. Graham and Alex also discussed MIT / Sloan’s Class of 2024 profile. The profile, itself, is very good, but the class size appears to have dropped quite considerably, leading your hosts to believe that they also experienced a drop in applications. Graham also highlighted Clear Admit’s upcoming Deferred Enrolment event; signups are here: https://bit.ly/defermba

As usual, this episode features three candidate profile reviews, taken from ApplyWire entries:

First up, Alex choses a military candidate, with nine years of experience who has unfortunately been rejected in Round 1 by Harvard and Wharton (without interviews). While Alex and Graham understand this is a tough start to the process, they believe there is a spot for this candidate among the top programs with his remaining applications in Round 1. If Round 2 is needed, Alex and Graham think he should still target M7 and top-16 programs. This week’s second candidate is an Indian national, with strong tech and operations experience in the United States. He also has strong numbers and was waitlisted last season at several top programs. He reapplied to the same in Round 1 this season, and there is everything to suggest they may have better news this time out. The third candidate profile featured this week only targeted Stanford in Round 1, and has received an interview invite. He is very focused on the online video gaming industry and wondering whether any other top programs would be suitable, if he is not successful with Stanford.

Military candidate, dings at Harvard and Wharton

Waitlisted last season, waiting this season