EP 51 | What Makes The Yale SOM Stand Out Among Top MBA Programs?

The Yale School of Management's mission is to educate leaders for business and society. How does this mission inform the program's approach to academics and community, and how else does the SOM differentiate itself from other top MBA programs? In the latest episode of the mbaMission podcast we welcome back Bruce DelMonico and Laurel Grodman, Assistant Deans for Admissions at the Yale SOM, to discuss the school's mission, its global approach, its integration with the broader Yale community, and how applicants can best engage with the program.

00:00 What makes the Yale SOM special
01:13 The Yale SOM mission 
09:10 The Yale SOM raw case method
12:48 Yale SOM's global approach
16:53 Community and teamwork at Yale SOM
20:34 The Yale SOM campus
23:53 Integration with Yale University 
25:24 The Yale alumni community 
30:07 How to engage with the SOM

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Chapters

• 0:00 What makes the Yale SOM special
• 1:13 The Yale SOM mission
• 9:10 The Yale SOM raw case method
• 12:48 Yale SOM's global approach
• 16:53 Community and teamwork at Yale SOM
• 20:34 The Yale SOM campus
• 23:53 Integration with Yale University
• 25:24 The Yale alumni community
• 30:07 How to engage with the SOM

Transcript

as far as I know no other program is using the same method of teaching Can you make that real for the applicant what is a raw case raw case is big and messy and involves a lot of different components What are some other ways that you think Yale really differentiates itself as an institution relative to others one thing I would point to is definitely our sort of global approach The vast majority of students will take at least one course outside of S Soom during the time they're there And there's actually no upper limit Your entire second year theoretically could be taken outside of SOM How does the Yale School of Management differentiate itself from many other top business schools in the United States and abroad what makes the Yale SOOM community so special and how can you as an applicant best engage with the Yale community today we're answering those questions and more with two people who know the school best assistant deans for admissions Bruce Del Monaco and Laurel Grodman Let's start by discussing how Yale defines its mission of business and society Thanks for joining us Bruce and Laurel An interesting thing about Yale to me at least is that there's this long heritage from prior to it being an MBA program that still kind of follows it today um the modeling business and society And I remember talking to you Bruce this is dating back at least dating us Dating us Yes Probably close to 15 years ago Okay At the first AAC uh um conference and I was talking to you about you know Yale being a nonprofit school and like that kind of reputation You said to me basically every school is a consulting school If you really think about it if you think about that plurality of of where individuals go after graduation you most schools either finance or consulting schools with the with the emphasis being on consulting I guess this long-winded question is does that heritage still inform the school today and how or is the Yale SOOM really a general management consulting finance school like most other programs i don't know if the if I can say yes in the sense that I think it's both I think the mission so the mission uh to educate leaders for business and society still informs and animates what we do in the classroom outside the classroom as graduates Um I think that said I think I think of it as kind of an and plus we we have you know the the strength consulting strengthen finance but then the the diversity of the other things that people are doing um I think are really really where kind of a lot of the magic is Um and I think even when um I think you've talked about this even even within consulting you know the diversity of what our students are doing it's not just so the the the big three but you know we have you know people going to bridgeband people doing so environmental consulting people doing education consulting so even within the consulting sphere um there's a broad diversity in terms of those outcomes so it so is it fair to say that that Yale is still still true to that heritage there's still a very strong ethos throughout the community and that that's something that is embraced as opposed to hey let's let's be like yes we can be balanced about it but that we are we are fundamentally still embracing that heritage I think so I think you know this founding mission just continues to become more and more relevant I think you know yell is about business and society when I think the and society part wasn't necessarily as cool in the business school space it was a little quirkier and I think in some ways the market has caught up to us I think the idea of impact and purpose is on a lot of candidates minds now and that's they want to enter environments and communities where that matters where it's about more than just the bottom line and I think that's just always been in our DNA and in our ethos and um and it it continues I think to animate everybody who comes to the program whether it's students or faculty or staff we were talking a little bit earlier I was remembering a conversation when our our I say new dean not so new anymore but our dean Kerwin Charles was new and he first came and was sort of doing a listening tour of students and alumni and faculty and staff and he asked everyone what does the mission mean to you and I remember being in a room of 15 or so people and going around and every single person had a slightly different take on it but there's something so soommy about that right everyone is is sort of again animated by this idea that it's a purpose- driven place that it's you know it's giving you the tools to solve society and business's big thorny challenges but everyone plugs into that into a slightly different way Do you want to learn more about your target business schools check out OnT on track by MBA Mission where we have in-depth modules on all the top business schools covering everything from what makes them unique to how to tackle the application essays and short answers and so much more You can also practice for interview and video questions all done on your schedule on demand We appreciate your dedication to our podcast and we want to offer you 30% off any OnTrack subscription Use the code MBAMP pod to get 30% off any ONTTRA subscription Check it out at ontrack.mmbbam mission.com How can you make that real for the app for the applicant who will become a student one day if you're a student what are you getting in at the at the LSOM that kind of expresses this mission um or manifests this mission through activities courses whatever it might be Yeah I think it's kind of multiple layers I think you the the academic experience that the integrated integrated curriculum when you look at the way the courses are taught the core curriculum is taught um the in a in a very different way a lot of the same material is taught that you would get at other business schools but the way that it is um reoriented the way that we're pulling in from different disciplines it's not just business concepts but political science sociology psychology medicine law the environment all those different disciplines you know faculty from different parts of the university are coming in to to team teach so I think that that academic experience uh and the the way that the material is oriented along stakeholder perspectives as opposed to being just kind of functionally discreet silos So I think that's part of it I think yeah outside the classroom um the way the experience is structured um especially the integration to the larger Yale community I think when you come to Yale when you come to Yale I think that's very meaningful the entire university tries to be as as navigable as possible and so it's not just um you know S Soom that tries to reach out to the rest of the university but when you come to S Soom you'll be you can take classes elsewhere but you'll have students from other parts of the university taking classes at S Soom um in the swim classroom you will um you know uh you know out you know in terms of clubs and conferences u that you know where I think we have a healthcare conference coming up for example and that is led by and and run by SOM students along with students from the medical school uh and the and public health and the nursing school and and our EMBA students who are also doing the public health track So um you size city for example which is about um the center for innovative thinking at Yale um and that is a kind of a hub like it's a maker space but it's also an innovation hub and you can um you know students from across the university yell college law school medical school engineering elsewhere all coming together and I think that that's that that sort of really broad-minded interdisiplinary way of thinking um is indicative of and is representative of that that mission for business business and society and I the way that the academic experience is structured with the way the the co-curricular experience is structured really I think does kind of elevate that Right I could give you an example of how it worked in practice for me I think this is it's so intentional how all of this is put together It sounds like there's just so much opportunity and maybe we're just throwing spaghetti at the wall But I think it really is cleverly constructed to reflect how postmbba jobs exist nowadays I think there was a point in time decades ago where you entered a particular role within an organization You pretty much were in that functional specialty for years and years before you had any kind of general management oversight or interdisciplinary exposure And that's just not the way of it anymore Most of our students are coming into the program having already been sort of thrown into the fire and and exposed to kind of multiple complex problems across many um dimensions And so I worked at Unilver um after graduating from S Soom and I was a marketer I worked in brand management But most of the problems that I was was solving were not strictly speaking marketing problems I had to think about in fact I worked very closely with factories and the communities in which those factories operated and how the decisions we were making at the plant level had broader implications you know for the towns and the communities that those factories operated in We worked on sustainability initiatives That wasn't strictly speaking a marketing question but thinking about how do we change our packaging to make it more sustainable and what are the cost implications for that what are the transportation implications and so I very quickly saw that even though I called myself a marketer in a sense I was a general manager pretty much from day one after graduating from an MBA program And that's where I think Yale's really intentional interdisciplinary approach starts to hit And and I think we're we're here also to talk about differentiation I think that that dovtales nicely with a point of major differentiation for Yale which uses its raw cases which as far as I know no other program is using the same method of teaching Can you make that real for the applicant what is a raw case sure So I mean it's hard to define a raw case without the the counterpoint which is a cooked case which is sort of your traditional business school case which we also produce and use But so a traditional cook case is usually told from the point of view of a protagonist of a particular story or situation And it lays out in a pretty linear fashion what a you know a discrete chain of events look like and it's a great tool to allow a class to focus in on a particular problem or a particular concept So it's helpful in that sense By contrast a raw case is big and messy and involves a lot of different components there It is versus a cookase which theoretically could be printed out and sort of portable A raw case spans multimedia So it's they're all entirely based online and there will be interviews with primary you know participants in the situation There will be financial statements There'll be media clippings and you know and and all sorts of components thrown in there and nobody's telling you what is useful or what is not useful to the problems that you're trying to solve It is like your job in in real life where you have to sift through a lot of information and identify what are the relevant pieces sometimes contradictory pieces that I need to sift through to figure out whatever the particular you know problem it is that the class is focused on And the really cool thing about it is they're so kind of big and immersive you can actually look at the same case from multiple different perspectives So occasionally different courses will actually use the same case and you'll look at it through the lens of of one of the courses and then all of a sudden you'll switch to the other one You'll be like "Oh I wasn't really paying attention to that particular set of information but now I see where it's relevant and maybe it's even made me change my mind about that first question that I answered." So again much more reflective of how you encounter challenges in your real life jobs where you don't just sort of have everything sewn up at the end of the day Yeah I mean maybe this is beyond the perview of our discussion but that's okay I I I think of that as being very much the future of education I I think that you know today's students are not they've got a lot of media coming their way they've got a lot of information and they're maybe not quite as good like me not quite as good as as as sitting still and just kind of reading for an extended period of time or listening for an extended period of time So I think I think this kind of many inputs many information sources is really is really quite forwardlooking and I think uh I think it'll it's not that it needs to gain traction Clearly it has But um I I think that it'll it'll only increase in in popularity with time just for you know not supposed to play favorites but I think this is a great way of learning Yeah And and I think I think one aspect of that too it is you know as Laurel said it's it's really teaching our students a skill that will serve them well It's a critical skill for them to have after they graduate in terms of how to understand information how to absorb information how to make sense of incomplete facts or conflicting facts Um in the cook cases you know our our case writing team Yan Elish who leads our case writing team came from HBS was a case writer there and he basically said the way raw cases are created he take they do all the same research they would do for a cooked case but then for a cooked case they would distill it all down and kind of give it to the students And for raw case they just give that all that research to the students And then the students have to make sense of it And I think that's really really important Right So okay So we've got we've got our raw cases we've got our integrated curriculum uh what are some other ways that you think Yale really differentiates itself as an institution relative to others yeah I think one thing I would point to is definitely our sort of global approach You know a lot of uh business schools especially US business schools aim to be global in nature And I think um for them it tends to be you know you know semester long exchange program or it tends to happen on the more on the EMBA level than on the full-time MBA level But you know about a decade ago um YSOM created this global network for advanced management which now has its own it's it's its own life It's its own thing Um but the idea was to connect you know roughly 30 top business schools from around the globe and create opportunities for students from those schools to interact on a peer-to-peer basis And there are global network weeks or virtual global classes There are other opportunities in addition to semester long exchanges and and other things to really connect uh those students from those 30 schools with each other And the idea is you know we aspire to be a global school and we want our our students even if they're working in a very local um sort of role um to understand the different forces exist around the world and how businesses and other organizations operate differently in different contexts And so that's a critical part of our education But I think creating a platform creating opportunities for our students to have those unique experiences I think really informs what the uh the Yellow Swam kind of education is about So is that that global network is that something that people have to opt into is it baked into the experience is it uh is it something that um that becomes an opportunity at certain points can you do it from day one there's actually a global studies requirement So every student has to have at least one deep global engagement during the time they're at S Soom Um which is funny to kind of call it a requirement because I think it tends to be a highlight of of people's academic experience and and one that they would want to opt into anyway But the global network serves as the platform for a number of those opportunities So there are international experience trips which are actually coming up in probably a week or two over spring break where you take a half semester long course and it culminates in a trip to one of I think it's probably eight or nine different geographies led by a professor and you meet with local politicians and business leaders and really get sort of immersed in that in that culture Um there are global network weeks which take place in the various global network schools usually in an area of that school's faculty expertise And the really neat thing there is you're sitting in a classroom with you know maybe three or four other Yale students but with a truly kind of global classroom among you uh from all of the different uh global network schools there So those are a couple of the opportunities Um one other thing which I I have to be honest I I don't know if it's been phased out but just maybe a demonstration of how preent this idea was that global engagement sort of is the future Um a course called global virtual teams I don't know if if you know if it still exists I think it's it's not in the uh spring of the core but it's elsewhere So global virtual teams pre- pandemic seemed like this really oddball thing So it was it put together uh a group of students in these little kind of pods of you know an S Soom student and students from some of the other global network schools They basically had a week or two to work through a project um and navigate all the differences of time zones and how do you meet when you're not in the same physical location stuff that sounds ridiculous now that we've now that we're you know five or six years later Um and we all have to do this all the time but how preent it was to recognize that being able to interact in those sorts of teams and get things done across space and time and cultural differences and all of those kinds of things I think has become more of the bread and butter of our Zoom lives now right yeah Although as someone who's still has 5 years and has trouble getting the Zoom audio right like that those kinds of issues never go out of style You should have taken global virtual I think you would have been set I always say zoom is is what it's two buttons and I still get them wrong 80% of the time Is the audio i think there's at least three Yeah you're muted You're muted I I think we're we're we're touching upon in talking with the you know the global teams and and the global network Um you know just a a fairly distinct community at you know at at Yale and a community that's that's that's very much punctuated by teamwork I mean can you again sort of make that real make that anecdotal for the for the applicant to to the individual who knows nothing but is keeps hearing the buzzword of team or the buzzword of community What does that mean at Yale at the S Soom I think teams are are very both intentional and spontaneous in a way at S Soom So the intentional part comes the class is broken up into five cohorts of I should be able to do the math in my head probably 75 or so a pop Um and those groups are somewhat intentionally constructed to be something of a microcosm of a whole So you have different representation of backgrounds and educational experiences and all those sorts of things within each of those groups And then within there you have a learning team which is also determined by outside forces and again meant to bring people in with different skill sets So not everyone was an undergrad finance major and not everyone you know worked in consulting beforehand but to have again a little bit of a sprinkling of of different backgrounds and interests coming together And you work through all of your your core you know classes with that learning team And you have to learn not only through the um you know the problem sets or the subject matter that you're engaging in but you have to learn how to work together you have to learn how to get things done with this group of people that you didn't necessarily select yourself but those end up becoming very very you know tight groups for the most part Um and and people that for better or worse you've gotten through a really rigorous curriculum from you know how many countless hours of problem sets solved and and so on So that's one of the more sort of intentional kind of teamworking experiences But there's so many that come together organically whether it's just people that you you know happen to study with frequently or through the clubs and the sort of affinity based kind of connections that people make And so not surprisingly people come to S Soom like to join and be involved and and contribute to their community And so I think these these teams take on maybe an more amorphous structure in some of those areas You know you mentioned the healthcare conference That's an incredibly you know large and robust team and I'm sure sub teams working together within the school management with the other schools that are involved in it across Yale and you know have to again make make decisions as as peers and partners and and you know navigate in that way It happens at Sci City Center for those who are doing entrepreneurial work across the university So I think that you know the core experience in the classroom is the more um you know designed and developed one but lots of teamwork throughout but I would say even in the even in the classroom so obviously there are the learning teams there are the co-curricular experiences the first class you take at S Soom is called managing groups and teams so you start orientation even within orientation before the rest of the curriculum starts that's the first class you take and it's about learning how to be a good team leader be a good team member and that leads that that that kind kicks off the leadership curriculum and you have the course like interpersonal dynamics and others that kind of teach you and even within the core curriculum the course called the workforce which used to be called employee we were talking about this but has been kind of kind of re relabeled and I think reoriented a little bit and it's one of those stakeholder perspectives um that that gets at you know being being within a team and how how that plays out and in some ways communities are communities are are are abstract and their own thing but in some ways they can be shaped by by design and by space And Gail has this absolutely phenomenal campus I mean can you talk about the role the campus plays in the experience like it's it's kind of sounds superficial at times big like the building but but but I mean there's design for a reason and it's such a spectacular space Can you just share how it influences the community experience yeah Uh I mean maybe I'll start because I experienced the old SO building which was wonderful and charming for our our little close-knit community but we had vastly outgrown it even by the time I was there And so I got to sort of experience that shift from the old to the new And in addition to it just being kind of larger in scale I think it just it it suits the needs of the school so well and suits the sort of the ethos of the school So the thing that's is most striking to me is that it's it's glass right so there's glass everywhere and you it the it's very modern which is different from a lot of the buildings that sort of old school Yale but the one thing it holds in common with many many Yale buildings is it has this beautiful internal courtyard And so it's surrounded by glass and you could be on one side of the courtyard and look across and you can see your friends studying up there You could see your professor walking down there and said "Oh I need to catch up with them." whatever it might be It's this idea of transparency right there it's not of these it isn't sort of things happening in darkness and in you know cramp quarter It's just it absorbs the community around it It's light and airy and um and I think it's just it's an inspiring place to study and again it facilitates connections because you you'd be surprised how much time you just sort of sit back and start staring around in those glass rooms We some we call some of them the fishbowls because they just seem like fishbowls but kind of encourages connection I think having that sort of sense of transparency and light Yeah And I think there were actually echoes too of the previous campus It was it was charming is a nice euphemism for like you know shabby diplomatic It was wellarned Yeah Well wororn They were these stately kind of very Ivy League mansions Uh but but they were they were not well suited for the purpose But there was one feature of it you which I'm sure you recall the hall of mirrors Um which is from a design perspective horrible because it was this like this choke point that required everybody to walk past So between classes everybody was running into each other and it was called the hall of mirrors because one wall was an actual mirror Um but the thing is it did foster community cuz everybody saw everybody else You were able to it was kind of a good congregation point And actually as we were doing because I remember so years ago when we were doing focus groups for and Norman Foster and his team were were were asking students and staff and faculty what they wanted um from the new building and almost universally the hall of mirrors was referred to as as a positive even though from a design standpoint it was not a positive and I think that's part of what I think what the building tries to capture is that sense of community and the sense of being in a place seeing each other the transparency the visibility you can look across the building see people you know meet people and I think that's an important part of the experience I think it's also very open to the rest of Yale So we have a really good cafe and cafeteria Food brings people together right so I think people even not from the S Soom community make it a destination and that's where you know a lot of interaction happens It's a good opportunity to go back to the previous conversation about how how the S Soom is integrated into the into the community you know do you have any any stats on the percentage let's say of students in the S Soom who take classes elsewhere is it you know is it 30 is it 80 just to give people a sense it's definitely the majority It fluctuates yeartoear but the the vast majority of students will take at least one course outside of S Soom during the time they're there And there's actually no upper limit Your entire second year theoretically could be taken uh outside of S Soom I don't think that happens all that frequently but people really do take advantage of it And at every school you can imagine It's not as though the I think the most popular kind of department to take courses in right now is computer science which sort of makes sense I think people want to be able to speak the language even if they themselves are not going to be a software developer Um but people take classes at the law school the school of drama the school of the environment public health really all all reaches of of Yale Um and we do have a fair number of joint degree students as well I think we have at this point nine maybe 10 um joint degree programs across Yale and you know probably about 10% of our our students are engaged in that So that naturally brings some connection in as well We call the the walls of of our glass walls of S Soom porus because there's a lot of opportunity for people to come in and out and having people from the other schools at Yale sitting in on the Yale SOM classes is really nice too because it brings a different perspective Another community we haven't talked to yet is the just the the alumni community How how does how does how does the SOM engage its alumni how active are they i mean again these are sort of these are always abstract things for applicants They're hard to be they're hard to make tangible Is there a way to make that tangible i I have an example Um so I actually spent my first four years working at S Soom in our career development office And so I worked with with students on um you know how to how to conduct a job search how to source information about opportunities that you might be interested in And I remember I would always give the advice to the students I spoke to don't send you know outreach emails to 10 S Soom alums on a Monday because probably eight of them are going to get back to you within the next two days and then the other two were like on vacation and we'll get back to you next week and you're going to have to manage all of that follow-up You don't have time to have 10 informational interviews within within a week So you know pace yourself a little bit But I I feel like that's telling of sort of the S Soom alum ethos It's a group that are very very involved giving back in all kinds of ways whether it's informational interviews with students or coming back to be speakers in you know in a professor's classroom or we have very active alumni board of adviserss We have one on the west coast and in China and Mexico um who are deeply invested in sort of the the future of the school And so you know S Soom's a relatively young school and it's a relatively small school which is not you know not in favor of numbers but I feel like the group makes up for it in sort of enthusiasm and passion And then beyond that there's the Yale University alumni group which is you know a little bit of one step removed but I I I find that our students have enormous success in that outreach as well under sort of the umbrella of of one Yale And that's a that's an alumni group that spans you know the globe in pretty much any industry that you can think of right yeah And I think that I mean obviously that manifests itself in lots of different ways and obviously most notably probably on the on the recruiting front but I even you know it's very that that larger Yale network I remember a few years ago being down in Mexico City and um having dinner with a few of our S Soom alumni and they invited some others to the dinner and it was you know a couple Y law grads a couple med school grads some Yale college grads There were you know about a dozen of us around the table and all like incredibly impressive alumni but like they were just they were all it was just the Yale connection and they were allorked to each other because of that connection You know what got me thinking remember when we went to that Yield event this has got to be like seven or eight years ago in New York with Tom Wolf With Tom Wolf Exactly Tom Wolf in his white suit just showed up He just showed up He lived in the building He's like I just came down to say hi Wow He didn't he didn't RSVP He was just like Tom Wolf does an RSVP We should have been like I'm sorry Were you invited are you interested in an MBA unbelievable Uh that's really something That that completely threw me off No that that's great Those those are the impromptu aneotes that make that make a podcast work Is there any particular you know really strong pocket of alums you mentioned Mexico City Is there are you like people would be surprised to know that we have I'm making it up you know 200 alums in Mexico City whatever it is Is there some place that like you're like "Wow we've we've got a stronghold in there that that's maybe disproportionate." I would actually say the west coast might be the surprise because you think of you know I think there's still somewhat of a regional kind of thought process that happens with uh with business school selection and which I think is becoming more and more moot now that so much recruiting happens virtually anyway but there's always been a really strong presence on the west coast um for S Soom alums and this is a nice example maybe even beyond the s Soom sort of alumni group but um media and entertainment when you think about the Yale university network there There are so many people who come from all sorts of different disciplines in the area of media and entertainment There's a really kind of powerful group out there called Yale and Hollywood It's actually powerful It's actually there They It's a It's a large group and a lot of people from screenwriters all the way through people on the more business side of media and entertainment But that's that's kind of a group hosted out of Yale College But if you are a you know an MBA student interested in media and entertainment you're always going to be in the minority of whatever school you're in But that's where having I think a really powerful broader network within Yale really helps So and then obviously lots of people on the West Coast interested in tech as well Right Right Okay So we've talked about about mission and differentiation and community I guess the last question the most obvious question is how can an applicant engage with this community in a meaningful way yeah I think there are lots of different ways to do that Um obviously um we have as an admissions office we've tried to create um an environment where you could reach out to students We have our student ambassadors on our website um who are available to speak about their experience at Yosum and they're kind of identified by their backgrounds their interests So if you can find someone who kind of aligns with what you're interested in doing or where you're coming from Um our student clubs are very accessible uh and always willing to kind of share what they're doing We as an admissions office I've also created lots of opportunities events uh you know especially virtually um student panels um I I do an office hours um so you can connect with me to the extent not not so much you know no connect with me um we have Q&A sessions um again sort of student you I think I mentioned student panels other other formats to to get to know more about what the school is about you can obviously also come to campus if you happen to be in the area although there's no obligation to do that and it's not going to advantage or disav you in the in the admissions process if you if you do come or don't come summer socials winter socials So our our students like to show off the school as well So when they go home whether it's for winter break or summer break they hold you know socials and you probably know better than I do how many cities across the world really and that's an opportunity a much less formal setting to get to know you know off books what some of our students are up to Yeah I have to learn to not say my last question because there's always another question but you I think you said something that's important that that that we accentuate which is I it used to be sort of old orthodoxy like yeah if you're interested in school you've got to go visit you got to show your interest and you're saying hey that that may not be like that may not be true anymore I'm sure you're happy to see people but you don't feel like people necessarily there are enough other avenues for people to get to know the school that you feel like they can do that without putting their feet on the ground Yeah definitely Definitely I don't think and we feel like I mean well we can talk about this but you know a good bit of what we do in the admissions process is try to think about what's fair and what what what will not advantage or disadvantage different individuals and different groups and so only it's expensive it's timeconuming it's it's difficult to come to campus um and or even come to an inerson event around the globe and so and there's so many especially postco there's so many opportunities to do that virtually and so um it's we really do feel like um whatever you you it should be for you for your for your purposes for your information gathering for your knowledge and not not anything for us or for for you know to satisfy some some sort I don't know some some hidden requirement that we have we actually a number of years ago we used to not by design but just sort of in the mass of information that we would see when reading an application we would see someone's sort of visit history or interaction history and we just made the choice at some point to just eliminate it from the view of anyone who's who's in you know interacting with an application because it's just irrelevant and rather than even have the risk of it kind of seeping in and making a difference So we truly do not see what someone has done to you know interact with the school that's it's really entirely for candidates's benefit So we hope you know we hope that they find it engaging when they do that but we don't know whether you did it or not Okay Awesome Well thanks so much for uh for sharing uh all these anecdotes and stories and uh personal experiences about the community the space the raw case the so much more Um this was really a lot of fun and very informative for all the applicants who are who are watching Thanks so much guys Thank you Thank you If you want to be one of our success stories sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team Since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application that is not a sales call but rather your first session with one of us for free We can give you a profile evaluation answer specific questions about the process review your resume talk about your school choices and so much more Sign up at mbammission.com/cconult We look forward to working with