In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the upcoming Round 1 deadlines for this week.  Dartmouth / Tuck, MIT / Sloan, Oxford / Said and Duke / Fuqua all have their Round 1 MBA application deadlines; we are also seeing Round 1 interview invites for Northwestern Kellogg and Yale SOM on MBA LiveWire.

Graham highlighted our final Essay Insights series, which runs on Wednesday of this week, with UPenn / Wharton, Yale SOM, UVA / Darden and Michigan / Ross; these events are very popular and bring together the leading MBA programs to talk about their admissions essay topics. Signups are here: https://bit.ly/cafallessays

Graham then shared some tidbits from a recently published Adcom Q&A from Washington / Foster and discussed a recent admissions tip, published on Clear Admit, which addresses how not to compare MBA programs in admissions essays. We then discussed the recently published BusinessWeek ranking of MBA programs, and some of our misgivings about these rankings. That said, well done to Stanford GSB for topping the list this year.

Our final discussion centered on NYU / Stern’s recent announcement of a new MBA program and campus in Abu Dhabi. This one year MBA program will have a heavy focus on the Middle East and North Africa regions.

As usual, for the candidate profile review portion of the show, Alex selected three ApplyWire entries:

This week’s first MBA admissions candidate is a female candidate from India who has extensive work experience in the non-profit sector. She has a little concern about her academic profile, and how that might limit her opportunities for target programs. While her GRE is decent at 325, her GPA is a slightly weaker 3.28, (but she does have some mitigating circumstances that can help address the lower grades).

This week’s second MBA candidate is from the Marine Corps, and has outstanding numbers; A GRE score of 336 and a GPA of 3.91. They are targeting the best MBA programs, and we think that they should be, assuming a strong pre-MBA career in the Marines.

The final MBA candidate is doing really interesting work in the area of digital trust. They are also an advocate for digital trust and freedom of expression in their home country. We think this type of work profile will stand out. Their numbers are also very strong, with a 3.7 GPA and a 329 GRE score.

This episode was recorded in Cornwall, England and Paris, France. It was produced and engineered in the City of Brotherly Love by Dennis Crowley. Please remember to rate and review this podcast wherever you listen and to 'stay safe everybody'