In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the flurry of activity on LiveWire relating to R1 decision releases for a number of top schools.  This upcoming week will continue to be busy with UNC / Kenan Flagler, Northwestern / Kellogg, Oxford Said, UPenn / Wharton, UCLA / Anderson, Texas / McCombs and Washington / Foster all scheduled to release Round 1 decisions.

Graham highlighted two Real Humans pieces from Clear Admit, focused on IESE and Vanderbilt / Owen. We then discussed the recently published MBA class of 2025 profile from Columbia, and three employment reports, from Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth / Tuck. The profile of recruiters at Harvard and Stanford is different from other “M7” programs, with more focus on buy-side financial services, and less focus on consulting.

Graham also highlighted an Adcom Q&A from Yale SOM, as well as a topical admissions tip that was published last week: how to handle rejections from top MBA programs.

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 very interesting profile, and it appears that she also has really strong leadership experiences. She applied in Round 1, and has received interview invites. Her one clear weakness is a 305 GRE score.

This week’s second MBA candidate has some pretty amazing entrepreneurial experience from West Africa; they helped start a budget airline. They still need to take the GMAT, which is a potential concern. They are targeting some of the more unique programs like Stanford’s one year MSx program, and the Sloan Fellows Program at MIT.

The final MBA candidate for this week is an engineer who is targeting next season for their MBA applications. Their combination of a 690 GMAT (with a relatively low quant score) and 3.0 GPA is a little concerning. We are hoping they are able to boost the GMAT, even if only a little.

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!