MBA Profile Evaluation: Fuqua/Kellogg/Johnson
I'm currently a student in a specialized masters program at a top 15 business school (Fuqua/Northwestern/Johnson) looking to work in asset management. Opportunities have been really difficult to come by out of my program given that a lot of firms won't consider me in the analyst bucket since I'm not in UG and I'm unable to apply to associate jobs since I'm not in an MBA program. This along with positive feedback from employers regarding my existing work experiences has made me consider enrolling into an Accelerated MBA at Fuqua, Kellogg, or Johnson if accepted for next year.
My profile is as follows and I'd appreciate any insights or feedback that any of you could provide.
Education: UG at non target state school (3.4 GPA) and 3.6 GPA in masters program (anticipating that its going to rise to 3.7-3.8 when our fall grades post)
Work Experience: 16 months in IB internships working on Mezzanine Debt transactions (Boutique) and in DCM (MM and BB), 12 months tech consulting, and 14 months interning at a Debt Fund (worked 9 months for them full time before being asked onto stay on part time while in my masters program but FT won't be a possibility unless someone leaves which is unlikely).
EC's: Athlete (UG), UG Thesis (Strategy Proposal and Analysis of the Autonomous Vehicle Division at $200 billion tech company where I worked directly with their C-Suite Executives), Founded a mildly successful non-profit that invests in developing countries, Project Manager for Social Impact club where I'm managing a team of 5 (Master's), and Leadership position within student government (Master's).
Other: URM (LGBT and Female)
Here are some additional insights into my thought process regarding pursuing an Accelerated MBA.
Structured Recruiting and Relevant Experience:
Given that I'm stuck in the middle between UG and MBA's I believe that by enrolling in an MBA I'll be back in a bucket where employers know where to place me when recruiting. Additionally, having previously worked in finance I believe that I have an advantage in interviews and compare favorably to career switchers. Most of the people that I've seen get associate jobs in the MBA program at my current school don't have great work experience, particularly impressive backgrounds, and have less direct finance experience than I do which makes me think that getting an associate job is doable.
Lifestyle Factors and Opportunity Cost:
I believe that enrolling in an Accelerated MBA program makes sense for me not only from a career perspective but from a lifestyle perspective as well. I'm turning 27 later this year and would be turning 28 shortly after graduating with an MBA if I enrolled next Fall. I believe that this is relevant because doing an MBA now from my perspective has a lower opportunity cost than coming back to school in 4-5 years at 31-32 and graduating at 33-34.
At that point in my career I would only be interested in M7 programs, specifically Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton. Booth, MIT, and Columbia also interest me but to a lesser extent and I'm not sure how much having an MBA from there would really add value to my career when compared to having an MBA from Duke/Northwestern/Cornell. Therefore, I'm thinking that waiting 4-5 years to do an MBA for in all honesty a legitimate shot at Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton is just not worth it given how competitive it is to get in. In my opinion graduating with a top 15 MBA from a school like Duke/Northwestern/Cornell is not going to end up limiting me in my career. Opportunities at places like Pershing Square and Tiger Cub's may be closed off as a result but I'm okay with that as the likelihood of me getting those kinds of jobs even if I got into Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton would be incredibly low.
Degree and Network:
If I were to graduate with an Accelerated MBA the degree is the same as the two year MBA degree given that my curriculum is identical to the 1st year of the Daytime MBA program (we take the same courses and have the same professors). Therefore, for example if I stayed at my current program and enrolled in the Accelerated MBA I would not have to put Accelerated MBA on my resume and could put Duke/Northwestern/Cornell MBA Class of 2023. Additionally, given that I'm currently attending the business school I have a strong network of contacts across my program and the MBA program. Therefore, if I were to stay on for an additional year I really wouldn't be missing out on much in terms of the network that MBA students gain by enrolling in the 2 year program.
If I were to go to make the switch to either of the other two programs I would be more worried about the relationships I could build in a year, however those schools have stronger finance pipelines than my current school does which is why I'm considering them.
Summer Internship:
If I enroll in an Accelerated MBA program I won't be able to do a summer internship, however I've been asked to stay on at my debt fund throughout the summer. I believe that this will look good to prospective employers as I continue to recruit next fall for associate jobs and explain that a FT offer wasn't in the cards unless somebody were to leave which I can't count on.
Kellogg is an M7 and its 1Y program is still pretty competitive to get into (a lot of sponsored MBB as well as IB/PE folks looking to switch firms) - I think you would need more comprehensive work experience (i.e. not internships) + be at least near the mean gmat (~730) to be competitive. I'm not super familiar with the 1-year programs at Johnson/Fuqua, but I assume you would need better work experience for those programs as well.
If you're already at one of these schools for your masters, then maybe admissions would be more lenient. My advice would be to grind it out for an entry level job and get a couple years of experience before applying to MBA programs
I appreciate you getting back to me and for offering your perspective. I'm currently at Fuqua/Johnson and have been told that I've been admitted to the Accelerated MBA for next year. I'm still waiting to hear back on scholarship money, but given that I received a 50% merit scholarship to attend my program I'm expecting to receive at least some money due to my performance in the classroom and involvement in the business school community.
My preference is to grind it out for entry level jobs and then apply to M7 programs in a few years. What concerns me though is that I won't be able to land something that is necessarily a stepping stone to what I want to do, challenging enough to satisfy me intellectually, or that would be good enough experience to make me competitive enough for M7 programs in 4-5 years. I'm just kind of at a loss for how to move forward after networking with more than 100 people over the last 12 months (continuing to average 4-5 calls/week), working on the buyside 20 hours a week while in school, getting good enough grades (3.6 GPA), and having multiple leadership positions within the business school. I feel like I've maximized a lot of what I can do but the opportunities just aren't presenting themselves despite all of the work I've put in. To this point the only companies reaching out to me are ops or non profits you've never heard of offering $40k salaries, which aren't even worth considering. Given that its almost January I'm not convinced that the opportunities that come available before May will be much better.
I should also add that a friend of mine just signed a $200k associate offer (150 base/40k bonus/10k sign on) at a BB. His experience prior to enrolling at Kellogg/Johnson was selling life insurance for 12 months and having 2 summer internships in the BO at regional insurance companies (less than 2 years overall WE). He didn't network and cold applied on handshake for the job. If I were to enroll in an Accelerated MBA I wouldn't expect to receive a $200k comp package, but its situations like that and others that I've seen within my business school that make me think that I could land something solid out of it that my current program won't offer because of its lack of structured recruiting.
What was your conclusion / recommendation to C Suite on your UG Thesis? Is the $200B company private or public?
The company is public and the recommendation was centered around ways in which the company could leverage its position to be able to store and translate the data being collected by autonomous cars to monetize it. I got to learn a ton about the parts of cars and look at granular things like identifying the sensors that were present in a car and how they collected data. Overall, it was a great project and I learned a ton about the space.
That is quite incredible... almost so much that if I were interviewing you I would not really believe you.
Not sure who the public $200B company is but General Motors is $90B market cap and $150B Enterprise Value and their AV Company (Cruise) was recently valued at about $50B... you number would imply that you were working with the C Suite of a Fortune 100... Also saying that you were "advising" the c suite as an undergrad from no name state school with a slightly above average GPA seems a bit far out there.
I think everybody exaggerates a little in their MBA apps but this one is just too far out there.
This is a little hard to follow, but let me get this straight.
You're at a masters program of sorts (MSF? MiM?) at Johnson or Fuqua (sounds like Johnson). You wanted AM but that didn't pan out. You have a string of various internships but no real solid years long WE, and you have some cool undergrad stuff. Now you're looking at next steps. You view yourself as stuck between MBA/UG and are having a hard time recruiting. You're also 27 (so your cool UG stuff is irrelevant), you're also older than most masters students and near par in age with MBAs. You're also not at a traditional target masters program, like Vandy or MIT.
One option is a 1 year accelerated MBA at Johnson/Fuqua, then recruit for an IB associate role, but you're not able to do the associate internship.
Another option is to find a full time job after your masters degree.
My advice is to NOT go for the accelerated MBA program and push for a full time job.
Most ppl who do these accelerated MBAs are foreign PhDs or masters types who want to transition to the US. Banks typically do not hire these ppl because they don't fall into the normal 2 year hiring process.
There is no greater way to be stuck between UG/MBA roles then doing an MBA with limited WE. I believe you need a non-internship full time job for at least 2 years after this masters degree program. At that point you can reevaluate. I get that you'll be older at that point.
Not having solid WE with only internships / short WE and a strange MBA/masters mashup raises so many red flags for any IB recruiter. Such as, maybe the person wasn't serious enough to get a full time job? Or perhaps that person got bored and kept moving around? It doesn't matter if these questions are right or wrong, but what matters is they will come up.
If you do the accelerated MBA, you're going to find yourself stuck deeper in the too experienced for UG hires / too inexperienced for MBA hires.
I get that the full time MBAs you see have mediocre WE and you're probably smarter than then, but for a bank to hire an associate they are investing in them. It's going to be hard for a bank to hire an IB associate with no real WE but a string of internships and this strange masters/1yr MBA mash up. They're not going to view your background as traditional enough and will worry you will skip ship once you get bored.
Can you convert your debt fund internship to a full time job? That would probably be your best bet at this point. If you can do so and stay there for a few years, you'll have a very solid CV and great elevator pitch for future roles or MBA programs.
No one wants to hire complicated CV stories, they want easy hires with straight fwd experience...you need to drastically de-complicate your story. Getting 2-3 solid years of WE after this degree will definitely de-complicate your CV.
Best of luck.
I appreciate you taking the time to offer your perspective. I'm currently a student in the MPS at Johnson/MMS at Fuqua and your analysis is spot on regarding my situation.
Unfortunately, I can't convert my position at the debt fund into a full time job. They've got 250-350 MM AUM and 4 investment professionals that are all in their late 30's and early 40's. If I were to be brought in an already small pie would get cut up even more. I've been told that if someone were to leave that I would be able to join full time, but that looks highly unlikely given that everyone has been at the firm for the last 15-20 years and have solid comp + work life balance. What I have been told is that I can stay on and intern for them essentially for however long I want. This doesn't sound bad in principle but I'm afraid that it could be 9-12 months before I have the opportunity to land something solid and during that time that would be another year where I really don't have any concrete WE that would allow me to progress in my career. If I did this as well I would also be living with my parents and family, which is a toxic and bad situation.
I'm also worried that it would be like my situation coming out of UG where I turned down a FT offer in IB at Citi/JPM in order to pursue buyside gigs at debt funds. I got far along in all of the interviews I received, however continued to get passed over for more experienced hires. After 9 months of pounding the pavement I could see pretty clearly that it wasn't going to be in the cards for me and rather than taking a BO job thought that tech consulting would be a better landing spot. I ended up leaving after a year because I didn't find the work all that challenging and had the opportunity to intern on the buyside before rebranding in a specialized masters program at a much better institution than my UG.
What I'm getting at is that I'm afraid of failure and having to take a job again that is unrelated to what I want to do or in the BO out of necessity. This would make it look like I don't know what I want to do even more though that's never been the case. I've always known what I wanted to do but have just struggled to land those opportunities and feel as if I'm in a situation where I can't win at the moment or in the near future.
You need a career reset and CV de-complication.
I'm very sorry you experienced all of this career turbulence. The good thing is you're fairly young and can definitely turn things around.
I would forget about these 1 year MBAs. They aren't going to get you a career reset and will push you deeper into the realm of too experienced for an UG/not enough experience for an MBA that you're seeing today.
My strong suggestion is to take a job for 2 - 3 years. You need some solid experience and to be trained. You have only random jobs/internships and the concern from anyone who hires is, you have never been properly trained. The only thing worse than an untrained junior, is a poorly trained junior.
If I were in your shoes, right now I would sign up for the 1st level of the CFA. Study hard for that test and push to get any ER job you can find. Spend 2 - 3 years in that role, master that sector, then do a T10 MBA. With a solid GMAT/GRE, 2 - 3 years of good WE and a CFA charter you should be set up for either a T10 or M7 MBA after. The other option at that point is to move directly to the buyside, which can be done.
You need to de-complicate your CV. Getting 2 - 3 years of solid WE after this masters will help, ideally the WE is in a field you like. An ER career can help you get to the full time buyside role you want. If not an ER job, a BB corporate banking would be fine too. But you need career stability on your CV and proper training. You probably graduate in May, so there's enough time to take/pass CFA 1 and push for a good full time job.
My concern with this masters you're in is it doesn't give you the stamp of approval that a more recognized masters like MIT or Vandy will give you. Hence my suggestion for the CFA.
We all make mistakes in our career. The important part is how we bounce back from them. Happy to be a sounding board for any questions you have. Feel free to DM me anytime.
Best of luck!
Your profile would be spot on (URM LGBT female included) if your WE said you had worked at 1 or 2 companies for a few years. You replied to another poster with a long explanation of why none of those internships went full time, but honestly having 3 different internships/jobs at or around 1 year is a little sketchy to adcoms. You don't get the opportunity to give the long explanation to them. You're 3-4 years out of UG, they are going to want to see more consistent work experience and ideally a promotion or two.
Graduating MBA at 33 is not an issue at all. If you go now, you might get into MBA but companies hiring out of it will run away at your lack of work experience. Go work somewhere for a few years (it might not be AM but I'm sure you will land something better than BO) and then revisit MBA.
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