MBA Wire Taps 280—Difficult personal story. 770 GMAT, off to MBB. Product manager at fintech unicorn.

Welcome back to another jam-packed episode of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast!  This week's show kicks off with some discussion the activity on MBA LiveWire, where a few interview invites continue to trickle out, but that part of the season is slowing to make way for news of admissions decisions. Speaking of decisions, this week, Duke / Fuqua, CMU / Tepper and Oxford / Said will be releasing admissions results - with other schools following suit over the course of the month. Beyond school updates, Graham highlighted an admissions tip that Clear Admit published on the topic of background checks of admitted candidates. Alex and Graham also discussed the new series of 'Real Humans Alumni', which last week featured an alum of LBS who is an entrepreneur and an alum from Chicago / Booth who is now at Microsoft. Graham then highlighted a careers-related article that shows how top MBA programs are concentrating more of their careers-related recruiting at four top employers: McKinsey, Bain, BCG and Amazon. Alex and Graham discussed not only the trend, but speculated as to whether or not it will persist.

As usual, this episode features three candidate profiles, sourced from ApplyWire entries:

This week's first candidate is applying next season, and has faced a truly difficult pathway to get to where they are today, working as an associate in asset management. Their work experience looks strong, although they have now been working for 11 years, which is well north of the average MBA student. They are very active in their community, helping at-risk youth. They still need to take the GMAT, but we hope they can perform very well, and target elite programs. This week's second candidate is a deferred enrollment candidate, currently completing their masters degree. They have an offer to work at MBB after graduation. They also started two businesses during their undergraduate experience, and have a super GMAT of 770. The final candidate for this week's WireTaps is from the Philippines and also has Canadian citizenship. They appear to have a strong career, they are currently a product manager at a fintech unicorn. Their GPA appears to be low on the US scale, but they graduated in the top 20% of their class. Their GMAT is 710, so slightly lower than the average of the programs they are targeting. Alex and Graham hope they give the test one more try.

This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by Dennis Crowley in Philadelphia, USA. Thanks to all of you who’ve been joining us!