MBA Wire Taps 400—Conflict zone work, Round 2 Strategy, Low GRE, retake decision

In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the activity on MBA LiveWire; several top MBA programs will be releasing their Round 1 decisions this week, including Harvard, UPenn / Wharton, Northwestern / Kellogg, MIT / Sloan, Dartmouth / Tuck, Berkeley / Haas, UVA / Darden, Duke / Fuqua, UCLA / Anderson, Georgetown / McDonough, UNC / Kenan Flagler, Notre Dame / Mendoza, Vanderbilt / Owen, Rice / Jones, Johns Hopkins / Carey and Arizona / Carey. Washington / Olin is releasing Round 2 decisions and Oxford / Said is releasing Stage 3 decisions.

Graham noted a recently published story on Clear Admit that focuses on four students at Dartmouth / Tuck who are focused on healthcare. Graham then highlighted two admissions tips, the first tip focuses on how to reflect on negative admissions results, and the second explores the role of the video essay in the admissions process.

We then discussed two Real Humans stories, focused on MBA students at UC Irvine / Merage and Berkeley / Haas.

Graham then presented the second career placement report of the season, from NYU / Stern. While overall, the placement statistics are in line with last season, one potentially troubling statistic is the lower percentage of students reporting accepting a job, three months from graduation. This is a stat we will be looking at closely for subsequent career reports.

For this week, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected three ApplyWire entries:

This week’s first MBA admissions candidate has a really interesting profile, which includes doing NGO work in conflict zones. We believe this is the type of candidate that top MBA programs really aspire to enroll. Their GPA is going to be slightly lower than the median for top MBA programs, but they have completed a masters degree and a calculus course, which helps compensate.

This week’s second MBA candidate is planning a second round strategy, based on the results from their Round 1 programs. They have received a few interview invites and are now considering whether to aim higher, or go with more safety programs.

The final MBA candidate is from Africa, has five years of work experience and a very decent GPA. But their GRE score is very low; we really hope they are able to prepare more and retake the test.

This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by the fabulous Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who’ve been joining us and please remember to rate and review this show wherever you listen!