Wire Taps 250—319 GRE, Round 1 vs Round 2. Apply this year or next year? African entrepreneur

Summary: This week's show kicks off with a short “celebration” of the 250th episode of Clear Admit’s podcast. Over 3+ years we’ve had 264,000 listens, with listeners tuning in from nearly every corner of the globe! Alex then discussed this week’s upcoming deadlines, which include Harvard, UPenn / Wharton, UVA / Darden and Duke / Fuqua. Graham highlighted the Real Humans piece recently published for Michigan / Ross MBA students, and your hosts discussed the value of these pieces for understanding fit for each of these programs. Graham also highlighted the Adcom Q&As from Vanderbilt / Owen and Rice. Graham then reviewed NYU / Stern’s recently released MBA student class profile. Some very interesting numbers, in terms of applications, admits and class size. Graham also highlighted two recent news stories regarding Harvard’s new needs-based scholarship commitment, and a gift received by Emory / Goizueta to help fund scholarships. Finally, Graham alerted listeners to the upcoming essay workshop series, which includes three events on September 14 (Berkeley / Haas, Yale SOM, Chicago / Booth, Cornell / Johnson), September 21 and September 28. Signups are here: https://bit.ly/clearadmitfall As usual, this episode tackled three profile reviews, drawn from recent ApplyWire entries. First up, Alex chooses a female engineer with five years of experience and a passion for sports. Her post-MBA goals make sense, and there’s a lot to like in the overall profile - but the GRE is 319. This might be enough for her dream target school (Duke/Fuqua) but Alex and Graham debate the notion of her delaying applications to Round 2 and taking one more shot at pushing the score up a few points. This week's second candidate appears to have a very strong profile coupled with great numbers (328/3.73). They are weighing whether to apply this season or next season, and we strongly encourage a few applications for this season. Our final candidate is from North Africa,  and is somewhat of a non-traditional entrepreneur. At 33, they are going to be older than their classmates, but the biggest concern is their undergraduate GPA. We suggest some remedial work, but do think they might have what it takes for some of the European programs they are targeting. This episode was produced and engineered by Dennis Crowley in historic Philadelphia. It was recorded in Paris, France and Cornwall, England. Thanks for reading this far, and for tuning in!