Back Office to Middle Office and next steps

Hey WFH Monkeys,

Been a long time lurker and have found this site to be very helpful in at least opening my eyes wider to the challenging and competitive nature of this industry. A little background on me, went to a school no one has likely heard of, by no means an impressive GPA, but managed to get experience in portfolio/fund accounting/administration. I eventually moved from an administrator to an asset manager in a BO capacity and have transitioned into more of a MO capacity (risk/compliance/analytics/reporting). My end goal is to get into credit research internally (FO externally), but there is obviously no guarantee (I've had discussions with my manager and other Investment Team folks ). Considering a majority of the research group are former IB folks, it just makes it that much more challenging.

A few things to note, I feel like I've built rather 'genuine/organic' relationships internally which include a majority of the Investment Team, and have 'visibility' to the PMs, Senior Team, C-suite -it's a pretty flat structure. I really like the firm, culture, and my team but have been recently approached by an interesting opportunity a senior MO role in the PE space. Now, I constantly keep my eyes open on interesting opportunities that I believe can help advance my career, and this one honestly does that. This opportunity would include at least a 20% raise, title bump, shift in asset class (MM/Credit > PE), which I think would complement my current experience, and here is the kicker - they pay 100% tuition. Now ideally, if I were to take this role, I'd take advantage of this tuition reimbursement and would pursue an MBA program (M7), but it's still rather open-ended on whether I'd get accepted or not. However, there have been many folks that have pursued these MBA programs at this new firm which leads me to believe I may have a substantially better chance getting accepted (since they pour money into these programs - foot in the door?)

My idea is, whether I'm able to make it forward into a FO capacity or not, I should continue to progress in my career and this appears to be a great ticket. Also, if I were able to make this transition and ultimately secure a spot in one of these MBA programs (M7-Midwest), I feel that'd give me substantial leverage to move into a FO capacity whether it's internally or externally.

I'd be curious to hear some thoughts/ideas/anecdotes.

Thank you again to the community and this platform for the plethora of valuable and useful information.

-1st time poster