JD/MBA trying to break into PE
Currently at Harvard/Stanford -- super interested in doing PE work, especially on the distressed debt/restructuring side of things. However, I did not do investment banking or PE before grad school. Instead, I worked at an F500 company on the M&A team covering strategy and operations. I've had some people suggest to me that I should pursue investment banking or management consulting out of grad school as a stepping stone, but I'm wondering if anybody thinks it's possible to break into PE out of Harvard/Stanford with a JD/MBA + relevant coursework + WE listed above? Advice/thoughts?
To be brief, I think it's very doable. You're at one of the two schools in a tier of their own when it comes to the combined four-year program, and you have fairly relevant technical experience from your prior role. I don't know what year you are, but you could probably make it by with internships.
If you're in the summer between your second and third year right now, tough; you only have one internship left to work with (and you want to convert that one to a job ideally). If you're one year earlier and looking at starting your second year of school in a month, it should be easier.
Get a banking or internship (which should be cake given who and where you are). Try for a place like Blackstone Restructuring (which is going into the new PJT), Moelis, etc. i.e. a firm with a strong reputation as a pure-play advisory shop, not one that wins deals by the strength of its balance sheet (BAML, JPM, Citi, etc.).
In your next summer, go for a buy-side internship at a place like WL Ross or another distressed/special situations fund. All the big distressed funds like Apollo, Centerbridge, Cerberus, Anchorage, etc. don't take summer associates. They hire exclusively from the name-brand banking programs (MS M&A, Blackstone M&A and R&R, Moelis, GS, etc.).
Again, if you have only one summer to work with, it'll be tougher. A ton of it will ultimately come down to networking. You're at the right place to make it happen. The rest is on you: preparation, determination, and effort.
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"Operations" in a PE context originally meant business executives with a track record of performance in the industry. So, besides consulting, you'll see firms bring on 'senior advisers' or 'operating partners' who have several decades of experience in a particular industry and can source deals, sit on boards, consult the C-suite of portfolio companies, or even parachute in directly as (sometimes not so) temporary executives.
I can't speak to your second point with too much specificity since I haven't worked in distressed buyout.
Thanks APAE, I really appreciate the descriptive info. To answer your question I am going to have to go with naive, that is why I was asking you questions in the first place. Thanks for telling me there is no guarantee for the application process and associate position because I didn't already know that.
Northwestern does not require the LSAT for the joint program as I stated in my post.
PE firm of choice was a slight on the specificity of my plan. (granted it is hard to read sarcasm)
Your response did not add any information, paid no attention to detail, set a negative tone to this thread, and has now produced unproductive conversation.
You are slowing the world down you stupid. little. bitch.
You're correct, it's really hard to read tone over the Internet. That's why I didn't attack you, I simply explained that it was hard to see whether you did or did not mean to come across as conceited, then gave three short facts to substantiate how hard it would be to attain each step towards your goal.
I'm aware Northwestern doesn't require the LSAT for the JD/MBA; incidentally, that's one of the three reasons why it isn't considered in the same "tier" as the heavyweights like Harvard and Stanford (and the next best: Penn and Columbia). The other two are the fact that it isn't an Ivy League school (snobbery and prestige whoring will never die) and that it is a three-year program rather than the classic four-year model (note: Columbia falls in the same boat).
I didn't intend to set a negative tone; you misread it and ended up doing that yourself, ironically making the same mistake you accused me of by failing to read my tone. I haven't down-voted your post since I prefer to save my bananas to reward the rare Certified Users who come on here to provide meaningful content, but it looks like a few others thought strongly enough to do so.
it's going to be extremely tough. You're competing against people from the same school as you with prior PE experience. Best bet is to go ibanking, maybe focus on a distressed debt or restructuring bank and then network like hell to make the jump to the buyside. Otherwise, you can go to a small, unstructured fund but even that's tough.
Thank you for the feedback and the insights -- I know it's an uphill battle and am hustling as much as possible at this time.
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