In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season, with interview invites continuing to roll out. This week, Georgetown / McDonough is scheduled to release its Early Action decisions and Cornell / Johnson is scheduled to release its Round 1 interview invites. We also anticipate that MIT / Sloan will release its Round 1 interview invites.

We then had a discussion on the H1-B visa situation, concluding that US MBA graduates residing in the USA may now be at an advantage, over those who apply for the visa from their home country. This is an ongoing and impactful situation for top MBA candidates.

Graham highlighted next week’s events being hosted by Clear Admit, concluding a series focused on MBA programs in different regions of the United States. Signups for all these events are here, https://www.clearadmit.com/events Graham also highlighted our next livestream AMA, which is scheduled for today, Monday, October 27; here’s the link to Clear Admit’s YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/cayoutubelive.

Graham noted two recently published admissions tips. The first focuses on Wharton’s Team-Based Interview; Wharton released its interview invites for Round 1 last week. The second focuses on developing a target program list, helpful for those applying in Round 2.  He also shared a peek at some comments from a first year MBA student at Duke / Fuqua, as part of our ongoing Real Humans series.

We then reviewed the Berkeley / Haas Class of 2026 profile, and the NYU / Stern Class of 2026 profile. Both declared slightly smaller class sizes, and a higher proportion of international students in the class.

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

This week’s first MBA admissions candidate applied in Round 1 to a few programs and is now considering their Round 2 strategy. They have progressed from an analyst role to a product management role.

This week’s second MBA applicant is an investment banking analyst in the digital infrastructure domain. They have a 320 GRE, and we really hope they retake the test.

The final MBA candidate is from Mexico and has a 685 GMAT score. Their overall profile does look strong, and they want to do investment banking in the short term, post MBA.

This episode was recorded in Saratoga Springs, New York 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!