MBA Wire Taps 291—Law school or MBA? Naval pilot, great numbers. GRE jumps from 302 to 337.

Alex and Graham are back with another episode of WireTaps, kicking things off with a rundown of the latest activity on LiveWire - which includes wait list decisions and final decisions from Round 3. Alex mentioned that this upcoming week should feature final decisions coming out for USC / Marshall, IESE, UCLA / Anderson, Oxford / Said, MIT / Sloan, Yale SOM and Washington / Foster. Graham highlighted four Real Humans Alumni stories: an Indiana / Kelley grad at Apple, a Cornell / Johnson grad at Bain, a Foster grad at Accenture and a Stanford grad at Bain. Graham then highlighted a recently published admissions tip on reapplying.

This episode also featured an interesting discussion about the impact of ChatGPT (and other generative AI tools) on the admissions process, and how this might change admissions policies in the future. Graham then highlighted the MBA admissions event series that Clear Admit is hosting in May, which continues this Wednesday with CMU / Tepper, NYU / Stern, Michigan / Ross, Yale SOM and Dartmouth / Tuck. This series offers admissions overviews from each of the programs.  Event signup is here: https://bit.ly/cambaevents

As always, this episode features three candidate profile reviews (all sourced from ApplyWire entries this week):

WireTaps candidate #1 is a military candidate (special ops) who already has a deferred offer at a top 6 law program, and is debating whether it makes sense to stay the course or consider pivoting and applying to top tier MBA programs. Alex and Graham discussed some of those opportunities, and also whether or not this applicant should retake the GRE. Their current score is 326, but they achieved this without any preparation... This week's second candidate is also from the military (a naval helicopter pilot) and has fantastic numbers. Their one concern is the relative lack of extra curricular/volunteer activities. Alex and Graham discussed why the adcom is generally more flexible in this regard, for military candidates. (Both of these military candidates look like they belong at top tier MBA programs!) Wiretaps candidate #3 is from Nigeria and is reapplying to several programs for next season. They have improved their GRE score from 302 to 337, which is an incredible jump! Alex and Graham really think this will certainly help, because their other potential area of weakness was their relatively lower GPA. Their work experience and extra activities sound very interesting.

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