Military officer to top MBA - I know how it sounds
Hello fellow monkeys,
Summary: Current (almost) CPA with goal of 3 year active duty officer ->top mba-> BB IB See relevant questions towards the bottom of the post.
Profile: Super non-target undergrad - D2 basketball scholarship - ~1 year experience as Tax associate at non-B4 National CPA firm
I have been a long time observer, but this is my first post. As the title suggests, I am seriously considering joining the military as an officer with one of the reasons being, getting into a top mba program->BB banking. HOWEVER, THIS IS NOT MY ONLY MOTIVE.
I do not feel the need to defend my reasons for joining, but in an effort to keep this a constructive thread I’ll list a few.
1) Same ole Rah-Rah I love USA - I grew up next to one of the largest military bases in the country and encountered a lot of our service men/women. They are truly impressive and I have always admired them. I have always considered serving just ended up playing ball in school instead. However, I do feel a sense of duty and need to serve my country in some capacity. I think everyone has a duty to protect everything so many have worked so hard to build.
2) Personal growth - I think the service has a lot to offer in this department. The experiences, travel, and people you encounter are unmatched.
3) Professional growth - I think this is self explanatory. I cannot think of another career where in your first year you are responsible for managing 15-40 people. Again- unmatched.
4) And again the selfishly paid MBA and other benefits that come along with service. I realize this isn’t the best reason and will probably hear it in the comments. I sincerely hope it doesn’t offend anyone who has actually served, but it’s a real reason and plenty enlist for the same reason but undergrad.
A little bit about myself - currently working at a National non-B4 accounting firm. All 4 parts passed and about a year from experience requirement to be licensed CPA.
Only problem is I hate Public accounting (surprising I know). Got into it in school because it helped me make sense of how business works and seemed somewhat interesting, but always leaned more towards finance classes.
I always had a dream of working in banking but went to a SUPER non-target because of a basketball scholarship (NCAA D2, but came out debt free) and ended up at a non-target CPA firm in the TAX department with hopes of working in our TAS branch during off season. I have built a relationship and done some ad-hoc projects for them, but nothing major. Because of our size and culture it is hard but not impossible to work across service lines.
I won’t be able to stick it out in tax, it’s literally looking at last years work papers and filling in boxes. Mind numbing. I also don’t think this experience will be enough for top 15 MBA especially since I’m not even B4.
Free advice - Tax sucks. Like seriously don’t do it under any circumstances.
Now to get to my actual reason for posting:
The way I see it, from a career standpoint I don’t have much to lose by joining.
I currently make ~60k and O1 salary plus BAH is comparable.
Officer route has the mba light at the end of the tunnel which is likely unobtainable via Tax.
I won’t be exposed to the same level of leadership in my firm EVER. I’d have once in a lifetime experiences. And I get my mba PAID for. I’m hoping someone can prove me wrong here. Am I losing anything on the backend? (ignoring life-threatening risks of serving because I understand and accept those - I also understand and accept the life style changes)
How will my civilian experience paired with my military experience play with M7 to top 15?
Does officer experience really give you an upper hand in admissions?
How will banks or management consulting firms view my prior CPA experience? Pro, con, indifferent?
Have you ever heard of anyone working for a few years then joining as an officer or taking a similar route? How did it pan out for them?
Is my break in business/finance experience during service an issue?
Writing this on my phone after a few so be gentle with grammar/spelling.
Hey Wolfofwallstreet97, I swear if I had a silver banana for every lonely thread I posted too I'd be richer than @compbanker ...
You're welcome.
I'm a transitioning Army officer so I can speak to some aspects but not all. The source of this info is by talking to tons of people who have gotten out and gotten MBAs as well as my experience in the Army. First I would not say it's particularly common for people to come in later than usual and then not stay in for at least 7-9 years, but that's because they didn't like the civilian world at all. Next, while the vet thing goes a long way in admissions, I think it's generally overstated. Remember that a huge percentage of the military officers who get out and get MBAs right away are service academy grads. Service academies are great schools and are frequently seen as equivalent to an Ivy by admissions folks, which skews the numbers somewhat. So while it will help, it won't guarantee you admission. The easy way to quantify it is that you generally get a 20-30 point buffer on the GMAT - so if the average is 730 then you just need a 700.
Also remember that your experience will vary tremendously based on what branch of service you go into and what you do within that branch. I'm an infantry officer and my experience had very little in common with my peers from college who were signal officers in signal units. If they were a submarine officer in the navy or something like that then the only thing we have in common is haircuts and a uniform. No matter what you do, you will be working in a wildly different environment than anything else in business. There are directly translatable soft skills, but you will be well behind your peers in terms of hard skills or industry knowledge. You'll be minimum 5 years out of the game in that regard (3 year minimum contract and 2 years b school).
Lastly, if you tell anyone that you are joining the military just to get into a top MBA program they will rightly think you are a selfish douchebag. So I would keep that part to yourself. It's cool if that's your plan but there's already a stigma against people getting out that I wouldn't exacerbate. The GI Bill was created to help servicemembers get an education, reintegrate, as well as maintain the armed forces as a premier method of social mobility, but there are tons of other ways to get money for school. I would approach this with "I want to join the military, will it hurt my career in the longterm" instead of asking how you can use it to get ahead.
All that said, more power to you if you want to serve. An honest call to public service is something to be commended. But it's pretty tough to lead from a position of selfishness.
First of all thanks for your service and I really appreciate the feed back. Yeah I figured the way I worded it on here would not be the best way to present myself when I’m actually serving.
I really do know how it sounds, but in all honesty I do want to serve. I should have been more articulate - but at the same time there are some selfish aspects and career concerns.
I’ve been leaning towards Army or Air Force. Air Force is only recruiting for pilots until next year so Army I think is looking more attractive.
As someone who has served as an officer, how competitive was OTS in Army? Would someone with my profile be competitive assuming mediocre PT and above average test scores?
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply. I commissioned through ROTC so I can't speak to specifics of Army OCS. In terms of getting accepted to OCS, your GPA will matter a lot. Once you're there, PT will make a big difference as it's one of the few clearly objective discriminators between candidates. Look up the ACFT and start training for that. In general, though, competitiveness is determined by what your branch of choice is. In ROTC, infantry, aviation, and intel were the most competitive. If you wanted to be chem, it really didn't matter what your score was. OCS is a special circumstance where they get the last choice of branches after all of USMA and ROTC have branched, so you could get unlucky and your OCS class may have zero slots for your choice branch. At the end of the day once you're done being a PL all the LT jobs in the Army are mostly the same. I'm biased, but I think that combat arms tends to develop their junior officers the best and you'll get the "traditional" leadership experience that many join the Army to get.
To answer your questions:
How will my civilian experience paired with my military experience play with M7 to top 15? Yes. Military and civilian experience is a strong combination in MBA admissions.
Does officer experience really give you an upper hand in admissions? It definitely is an advantage for many of the reasons it's attractive to you.
How will banks or management consulting firms view my prior CPA experience? Pro, con, indifferent?
I'd say a slight plus. It shows you can read financial statements and know the language of business. That's a plus.
Is my break in business/finance experience during service an issue?
not as long as you do some interesting things in the military.
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