Substituting Law School for MBA for Private Equity?
Hey all,
I made this thread over in the PE forum, but I wanted to get advice from this forum as well. I'm in a bit of a unique situation and was wondering if I could get any advice. I'm an IBD analyst headed into PE this summer at a MM shop. It seems like most associates at the firm are invited to come back after their MBAs (usually from Harvard/Stanford/Wharton). I applied to law school on a whim last year (I was planning on going if I didn't get into IBD) and I was accepted into Yale, Harvard and Stanford. I ended up deferring my admission at one of those schools for two years, but I'm not sure if I want to attend. Ideally, I'd like to get an MBA and continue the PE route, but I'm not super confident in my ability to get into a top program.
My question is, if I don't get into a top MBA program (HSW), would it be worth going to HLS or SLS over a school like Booth or Columbia? I have no idea how the PE firm feels about it, but from people I've spoken to, one of the major reasons they want you to get an MBA is for a) branding and, b) getting formal training to fill in any gaps in your business knowledge.
I think being at HLS or SLS would cover the first part, and both schools are very open with cross registering for MBA classes if I want to do so. Considering that I majored in finance in undergrad, I also feel like a lot of the material from MBA school would be repetitive and I would get a chance to learn something new in Law School. The main downside is the cost, which will be about $50k in tuition + opportunity cost (thankfully, I'll hopefully have enough saved up that debt won't be an issue). Also, if I don't have a chance to return to my firm post-MBA, how much more difficult would PE recruiting be? I've heard that most PE recruiting is done through networking, so the lack of b-school OCI doesn't hurt too much, but I'm not sure.
Thanks for any help!
If you're Harvard Law School and therefore you killed your LSAT, you're a lot more impressive than all non-M7 MBAs. Obvi try for MBA business schools ">M7 MBAs BC I can barely see why if the elite law schools accepted your the elite business schools would reject you, but you do have some nice options there. If you don't get into MBA business schools ">M7, go to Ivy Law: you'll beast into PE against most of the competition.
what kind of undergrad did you go to?
I did my undergrad in finance from a top undergrad business school (think Virginia, Berkeley, Michigan, Texas, NYU etc). The main reason I'm worried about MBA admissions is that they're so much more variable than law school admissions and, despite being similar in selectivity overall, are much more competitive within the finance/IBD/PE bucket. I think being a finance guy helped me out for law school admissions, but I'll be a dime a dozen when applying to business schools and I've heard of multiple GS/MS -> KKR/BX etc. guys getting summarily rejected from HBS and GSB. As unfortunate as it is to say, prestige is probably the most important factor determining what I do for grad school and in that vein, I thought that HLS or SLS might be better than a Booth or CBS (which are certainly great schools, but perhaps not right for me).
youre going to do great either way. cant go wrong with top law or MBA business schools ">m7
If you're doing the law school route, do Yale. It's considered better than H and S for law (not for MBA though).
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