What Jobs Are Best for HBS/SBS?

Just to put your question into perspective. Imagine an HBS or SGB incoming class comprised exclusively of McK and GS analysts? Do you think the program would boast of its platform to learn from students of different backgrounds and stripes? If you're in finance, you're bucketed against students of the same stripe for admissions purposes. Now clearly, within each practice area, there are star companies that AdCom look very favorably at. I would say that the buck stops there however. A star analyst at a middle market boutique hailing from a non-target school with a sound track record of leadership and involvement trumps your "pedigreed" (read: Ivy league grad) GS analyst that comes across as an average Joe anytime. I think this article is good food for thought. http://managementconsulted.com/business-consulting/mba-business-school-…

1) dumb question. for too many reasons to list. 2) gsb. not sbs. not sgb.

The company name will only give you an early start (i.e. enough to make others at least pay more attention to your application: 31.4159265% more attention to be exact). To summarize above poster, YOU -- the individual person -- need to complete the rest of the race.

Someone said this to me that was pretty good about b school admissions. When the time comes to apply, make a space on your resume put in which ever school your applying to and if "fits in" with the rest of your resume you'll probably have a good shot.

^Lol I guess I'm going to Harvard then because it looks damn great on my resume.

But really, isn't the McKinsey bred 3.7 undergrad 770 GMAT going to always trump 95% of the other applicants, and 90% of the other applicants with similar stats?

HBS - MMM McKinsey, Military, Morman

KKR

And what if you are the McK analyst with a 3.7 gpa and a 760? I'm personally very nervous about HBS even with those stats...

It is a stupid question... but I'll tell you what you'd like to hear anyways. If you were building a resume just to get into business school, the following would be SOME of your top options: (and I'm skipping undergrad, since I'm assuming you're already in college and can't decide now to go to princeton)

The best:

1. Military Experience
2. Top Management Consulting firms (McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group)
3. Top Private Equity firms and hedge funds (Blackstone, TPG, Carlyle Group, KKR, Bain Capital, Citadel, Renaissance Technologies, D.E. Shaw, etc.)
4. Super-hot tech companies (apple, google, facebook)

The Second Best

1. Top investment banks (Goldman, Morgan Stanely, JP Morgan, etc...)
2. Economic consulting firms and second tier management consulting firms (Cornerstone, Booz, Wyman, etc.)
3. Respected fortune 500 programs (P&G, IBM, Microsoft, GE / GE Capital, etc.)
4. Teach for America

If you can do any of these things internationally, and show that you have a more "global perspective" (in standard business school nomenclature) that will help your cause too..

but it's much more complicated than that.

newtofinance, please go look up the definition of "holistic." Every business school uses this term to describe the approach they take when analyzing each applicant.

You're looking at the entire b-school application process in the wrong way. When you ask the question "What jobs are best for getting into top business schools," you're basing your thinking off a ceteris parabis assumption, i.e. you're assuming all of the accomplishments of other applicants are equal to your accomplishments (GPA, ugrad attended, etc.). In other words, the only instance in which a certain job would win you entry to a top b-school over another candidate, theoretically, is if the other applicant's stats are all exactly equal to your own stats.

Example: Assuming there are 2 candidates to HBS next year with the exact same GPA, ugrad attended, volunteer work, essay quality, etc., then working at Goldman Sachs will definitely get you in over somebody that has worked at WalMart. The critical point is that no two applicants are the same and this situation would never occur!!!!

good luck

I know this is an older thread, but as someone who has actually been through a top b-school (not HBS, GSB level, but still very good) and who now works at one of the big three consulting firms (and therefore reads lots of MBA resumes) I'd like to add my 2 cents. I my opinion, previous work experience is the primary criteria used to sort applicants amongst the top 20 or so schools. There is also a significant positive bias for work experience in elite client services roles (MC, IB, PE, HF, etc.) vs. operating roles (F500 other than corp dev, entrepreneurship, sales), and then another even more substantial bias against technical roles (engineering, IT, the sciences).

Academically, the students at the top 15-20 schools are not highly differentiated. Median GMAT at Stanford is 720, median GMAT at Carnegie Mellon is 700. There is similar clustering with GPA's. Lots of Ivy undergrads, lots of top state schools, lots of top LACs across all of the top 15-20. If I were to take the resume books my firm receives from each b-school and pull out only the education sections I would literally not be able to tell which school was which.

With the experience section its a totally different story. When I look at a resume book from Cornell I see lots of people with technology consulting, F500 corp finance, Big 4 accounting, engineering, and similar backgrounds. When I look at the resume book from HBS almost everyone (literally 80%+) has MC, IB, buyside, or military experience. When I pull out the Sloan resume book I see something in between: a smattering of MBB & BB IB, lots of MM IB and tier 2 MC, F500 corp. dev. guys, and only a few manager level Big 4 accountants or technology consultants.

In my opinion there is a huge difference in admissions probability at HBS/Stanford between a 3.7 Ivy/750 GMAT/McKinsey guy and 3.7 Ivy/750/engineer guy. The McKinsey guy will more likely then not be spending 2 years in Cambridge, while the engineering guy will more likely then not be spending two years in Ithaca.