How to Position Myself Over Next 4 Years
I will graduate from a non-target (~150 ranked school) with a double major in finance and accounting this semester and will be joining a middle market investment bank in June. I am heavily involved and I will have around a 3.75 gpa when I graduate. In addition, I scored a 730 on the GMAT earlier last month.
I am targeting business school in 4-5 years, depending on how my career goes. I interested in a top 10 business school and am concerned about my somewhat generic background (asian male in finance). Do you all have any suggestions on what steps I can take over the next four years to really help my application stand out from the pile? I've gone ahead and listed some more specific questions below but I would appreciate any general suggestions as well.
1) Would PE after two years be viewed more favorably by business schools or is high-finance all essentially the same to them? I am worried because I quite enjoyed my SA stint and could potentially see myself looking for the analyst -> associate promotion.
2) Do they expect me to have substantial community service over the next couple years? I am all for volunteer work but it seems like I would be hard-pressed to make a weekly commitment given the poor work-life balance.
3) Can I balance community service with charitable donations? I know it's not the same, but if I can only log 50-60 hours a year, would decent sized donations ($10,000 - $15,000 a year) be recognized by business schools?
Thank you for your time.
*** warning, playing the race card here ***
You're up against a shit ton of model minority Asian-Americans at the top b-schools: Ivy/equivalent, top tier firms, monster GPAs/GMATs, extracurriculars related to education blah blah blah
You won't have the blue chip credentials to compete with them. Even if you get into KKR 3-4 years from now, that's one blue chip data point compared to other Asian-Americans with 3-4 data points (Harvard, Goldman, Silverlake, etc - or at least 1 more data point than you'll have). So you need to be different, which means:
Get out of finance after your 2nd year. Go buck wild. Don't play it safe like your Asian parents would like you to do. Go to Africa. Peace Corps. Work at a talent agency in Los Angeles. Join a non-profit. Start a business. Do something that would horrify the risk-averse Asian immigrant parents out there.
If you chicken out and play it safe after your analyst stint (i.e. PE, corp dev, anything corporate, etc) and you have time outside of work, do something different. Not tutoring kids, or some cliche thing that every Asian-American seems to default to because of a lack of imagination (tutoring, college alumni orgs, etc). Start a fucking band. Get involved politically. Or social activism in the LGBT community, immigration activism, etc. Basically anything that would horrify Asian immigrant parents (yes it's a theme, because they tend to want the safe route - so you can end up just like them: financially comfortable but uninspired and dead inside).
This isn't just about b-school admissions (although defying model minority stereotypes certainly helps), but for your own sake. If you want to "position yourself" - take a fucking risk and do something bold that your other Asian-American peers won't do. Don't limit yourself to PE or finance.
Want to stand out? Stop limiting yourself to the Asian model minority stereotype of checking off the fucking boxes as a way to get ahead, and forge your own path that is unique to you. Stop being a cookie cutter Asian finance applicant (PE, HF, IM, VC, IBD, etc it don't matter). Not sure if you'll do so, but I'm writing this to any other Asian-American kid out there reading this: give the model minority archetype the middle finger.
This isn't unique to Asian-Americans, but it seems to be more acute amongst Asian-Americans who seem to be more willing to play by a set of rules that change just as they try harder to conform to them.
And in my experience, yes, the more you defy that model minority bullshit, the more interesting of a b-school candidate you are for these b-schools. Because there's a shit ton of Asian-Americans with perfect everything that will get rejected precisely for wanting to be what they feel the gatekeepers want them to be.
This. Have some fun and enjoy your life. Stop worrying about the next big thing. Do what YOU are interested in. If you want to learn how to box, do it. Enjoy skiing? Take some trips. I guarantee you having an interesting personal life is way more likely to generate interest in your candidacy from an adcom than just checking the box of ( X GPA), (X firm), etc.
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