Mega PE fund associate getting into HBS?
I am living in london and am 26. Have been working for a year now as an associate for a mega private equity fund (KKR, Bain, Blackstone, etc), but not in the deal team. I work directly for the CEO, CIO and other exec comm members on strategy / corp dev / modelling work.
Prior to this I was working as a strategy consultant in the M&A team (commercial DD for PE clients) for 2 years. I have a 3.7 GPA from Oxford University in Economics and spent a summer at Goldman Sachs as an intern. No gmat score yet.
Extracirricular: Governor on the board of a London private school (setting up business plan and chairing the finance sub-committee), set up a university society, elected as college treasurer.
I am planning to apply to HBS, Wharton, Chicago and MIT to enable a career on the deal team in a PE fund in Europe.
What are my chances of getting into HBS and what are the main drawbacks of the application?
I am no expert but I don't see why you can't get into HBS or other top schools. Your numbers are good, you went to a great undergrad and you have good brands on your resume.
If what you are doing is working at a place like KKR Capstone, then as long as you have a good story you should be set. Heck working at a KKR Captsone-esque place and working with C-level execs might actually be better than the number crunching monkeys at the same funds. You have actually seen how company works at a strategic/operational level and you have seen how a CxO thinks by working with him/her. Compared to a number crunching monkey IMHO you are probably in a better shape.
Infact if you can get a recommendation from the C-level execs with whom you worked, your case just became that much stronger. Honestly, if I were in your place I wouldn't accept anything less than HBS/Stanford/INSEAD.
Just as an aside, why aren't you considering LBS/Insead if you want a career in Europe? Wouldn't their alumnis be in prominent positions at European PE firms? HBS/Stanford/Wharton are obviously awesome and have deep ties in PE worldwide. But are Chicago/MIT networks really that deep in European PE? Wouldn't being in Europe help you with networking? I am just really curious.
PS: I interviewed for a similar position at non-megafund PE holding company a couple of months ago. I was in a technical engineering role and had gotten the interviews through sheer networking. Got rejected. Dang :(. I still hate myself for that. /end bitching.
You are competitive at all of those schools but it will ultimately come down to your GMAT and essay execution as you seemed to have checked the boxes in the other required categories (undergrad, GPA, work experiences/progression, ECs, etc.). I would put you at 40% for HBS, 50-60% for Wharton, and 70% for Chicago and probably around 65% for MIT. Again, the whole application process is a total crap shoot. Good luck. Make sure you get at least a 700 on the GMAT with 80% on math and verbal.
These stats are just based on years of research and personal experience with peers.
Ok what on earth does having a 40% shot at HBS mean? Or 65% shot at MIT mean? How do you even come up with these numbers?
Not personally saying anything against you it's just that I get really annoyed when I see someone say "you have x% shot at HBS". So if he applies 10 times, will he get in 4 times? How on earth do YOU know that?
Just because people throw around numbers doesn't mean that those numbers actually mean anything. Especially when that guy Sandy Kriesberg does it. He just pulls numbers out of his ass it seems.
I much prefer a system of "strong", "competitive","reach/stretch", "you're out of your fuckin mind" ratings.
On that scale IMHO OP is probably competitive to strong at the schools he mentioned.
You should have a reasonable shot of getting into the schools you listed - even HBS. As a prior poster mentioned, it comes down to how well you do on your GMAT (700+ and ideally 720+) as well as putting together a strong set of applications, and interviewing well. Good luck
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