In this week's MBA Admissions podcast we began by discussing the current state of the MBA admissions season. Last week, admissions decisions rolled out for several top MBA programs including Harvard, Stanford, UPenn / Wharton, MIT / Sloan and Northwestern / Kellogg. This upcoming week, USC / Marshall, Rice / Jones, Texas / McCombs, UNC / Kenan Flagler, Vanderbilt / Owen and Washington / Foster are scheduled to release their Round 1 decisions.

The next livestream AMA with Graham and Alex is scheduled for this Tuesday, December 16th; here’s the link to Clear Admit’s YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/cayoutubelive. Last week Clear Admit livestreamed its first Decision Day Watch Party. We scheduled this for December 10, when several top MBA programs were scheduled to release their Round 1 decisions. Several admissions officers joined us for the event, and it was a huge success.

Graham highlighted a recently published Financial Times 2025 ranking of European business schools that ranks institutions across multiple programs (MBA, MiM, EMBA, and Executive Education), rather than individual programs, which we thought was a strange approach.

Graham noted several admissions-related pieces of content recently published on Clear Admit. The first focuses on how to choose between MBA programs, once you have your offers. The second focuses on the dreaded wait list, and what steps can be taken. The third article looks at how candidates who didn’t get positive results can reflect. The final admissions-related piece focuses on MBA essay construction, which led to a conversation about how best to use Clear Admit’s AI Chat Bot.

Graham highlighted two Real Humans pieces spotlighting students from Chicago / Booth and Emory / Goizueta. We then discussed the recently published employment reports from Stanford and NYU / Stern.

Finally, Graham profiled a podcast that focuses on The Forté Foundation.

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

This week’s first MBA admissions candidate is from Brazil but now resides in Chicago. They are looking at the Booth part-time MBA program. A potential concern is their 313 GRE score.

This week’s second MBA applicant is working in research, looking at the impact of tech on young people. They reside in New York City and are only looking at Columbia and Stern.

This week’s final MBA candidate has a strong professional background, transitioning from investment banking to private equity. They have a 3.8 GPA and a 325 GRE score.

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!