This week's show begins with a review of the upcoming MBA admissions deadlines for this week, including UVA / Darden, UCLA / Anderson, and Emory / Goizueta. Graham and Alex then turn their attention to the recent announcement of the departure of Kirsten Moss from Stanford (the Chad Losee departure from Harvard was not yet announced at the time that we recorded the podcast). These are indeed very interesting times. Graham highlighted the Adcom Q&A for IESE, while also noting their keen focus on purpose-driven business goals, including sustainability issues. Graham also highlighted the Real Humans stories recently published from Chicago / Booth and Indiana / Kelley. Your hosts then look at the Michigan / Ross employment report, which showed some great numbers related to average salary increases. Graham also shares Yale SOM’s class profile, which further suggests application volumes were down last season, especially among the U.S. applicant pool.

As usual, this episode breaks down three candidate profiles, sourced from ApplyWire:

First up, Alex selects a candidate from Nigeria with an outstanding GRE (338) and three years of work experience, who is targeting several programs, including eight in the first round. Because there seem to be more and more candidates from Nigeria, Alex and Graham wonder if they might be considered “over-represented” in the applicant pool, presenting some additional challenges. This week's second candidate has decent numbers (720/3.54) with an engineering degree, working in the engineering domain. Alex and Graham think she will have good opportunities at top programs, as someone who may well be under-represented, and potentially has faced additional challenges as an engineer. Her involvement in setting up a women’s group at work suggests this might be the case. This week's third profile review features an Indian candidate who’s career and undergrad has been undertaken in Canada. It sounds like their experience is quite technical, but includes some leadership, and they are not being overly ambitious for their target programs. That said, they are targeting round 2, and as someone who is potentially over-represented in the pool, Alex suggests they should consider retaking the GRE so as to boost their current score of 322.

This episode was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. It was produced and engineered by Dennis Crowley in rain-soaked Philadelphia. Thanks so much for tuning in and please remember to tell friends about the show!