Pre-MBA jobs

luckynum7:

Question: Why would you be pursuing an MBA if you were the 1st, 2nd, 4th, or 8th?

DurbanDiMangus:

Captk. Wrong on all fronts. Esp relating to me (buyside hf event driven) and relevance of this question. Thanks for the rant - highly entertaining as always. Would be great to get other opinions.

My opinion is Captk is right. There is no formula to getting into bschool, just ask some of the recent applicants on WSO...or go look at Business Weeks MBA rankings and check out the GMAT scores and GPAs. You will see some elite MBA programs that have mid 600 GMAT scores listed...for their 80% range...which means that a few people even score less than a mid 600 and still got accepted. Same situation with GPAs. It's all about the person. The only thing you can do is score as high as possible so you don't automatically get dinged for being "unqualified".

Regards

bcbunker1:

im ron burgundy?

Cartwright:

GD these threads need to be burned alive. CaptK is right. The job you have before MBA is a tiny ass hair on a wart on your ass of the admissions process. Recs, What you did (not where you did it or your title, but rather your performance and progression), why you don't want to do it, why mba, why here, why now +gmat...that's the formula. I'm just going to copy and paste that 10x a day. Everyone thinks their question is different. It's not. And an MBA is pointless if you are going with the anticipation of learning some wonderful truth. You think they teach DCF and NPV differently at Wharton and South Dakota State? They don't. You go for the network, and access to jobs you would not other have access to. Don't kid yourself.

Fucking Incredible. Did you read my post?

It was 73 words. I clearly said imagine candidates attributes are identical, with their only differentiating characteristic being pre-MBA jobs, thus requiring an adcom to distinguish solely on pre-MBA employment. Very easy concept, feel free to provide an answer.

I never said this was a thread about formulaic answers, nor did I talk of "anticipation of learning some wonderful truth", or refute other attributes to successful candidacy. The ridiculous Wharton vs. South Dakota point (wtf) - I did not purport the superiority of one program versus another in my original post, or whether one needs to go for anything other than the valuable and leverage-able networking, but thanks for the useless diatribe anyways.

The post is highly relevant. Pre-MBA employment is a defining characteristic: based on a candidate's position achieved much can be understood about performance and progression since undergrad.

Consulting and brand management are pretty typical backgrounds in B-school, along with the traditional IB+PE backgrounds. Some people are probably a lot more knowledgeable on this but I would think working for a boutique VC would sound the most interesting for an adcom (and sounds the most interesting period to be honest).

What about consulting? It's a good way to see different things (I think) and usually pretty good for b-school.

I'm trying to understand your reasoning: you've been spending too much time in school, so now you want to go back to school?

How old are you? Why do you want an MBA so badly?

Holla, I'm 27. Also with regards to your question(and UFO's), is there a reason I shouldn't? Its true I've been in academia a while, but I learned a different skillset than business school would provide (e.g. those of a quant) But I don't want to be formulating theories and models all day (why I left the phd, among others) so an mba seems to make sense. Also I would be in a position to be exposed to great opportunities, internships, and careers only accesible to MBAs. At least thats my perception. Thanks for everyone's input

UFO thats exactly the problem. I don't have enough experience to know, so I'm thinking an MBA makes the most sense if I want to explore what else is out there. What do you think?

Think about GoodBread's point regarding working in VC.

Is there any way you can get involved with portfolio companies? This would be a great position to see different things.

UFO can you pm me? Kingfalcon, that doesn't make sense since I thought a lot of people go to business school precisely to try different things and switch careers. How can you know if you want to do something if you've never done it before? Do most people really follow through with the story they initially make on their application?

Ehh, there's a bit of time to explore but not a ton. It's going to depend on what you want to do. If you think you want to do consulting it's not mandatory that you have a consulting internship the summer before full-time recruiting starts (there are more consulting positions available for full-time than there are for internships anyways). If you want to go into banking there is almost no full-time recruiting and you'll have needed to do a banking internship the summer prior to recruiting for full-time (and have gotten the offer). The reason why everyone is telling you that you need an idea of what you want to do (or at least a game plan) is because recruiting starts within several weeks of your first term. You cannot go to events for every type of industry since they are often held during conflicting times in different locations. You have to make choices because for some industries you need to be at every single event they host (it's like hazing). As for what to do before applying to business school...I say take whatever job you want. Doing something you love and can excel at is better than trying to craft a career path that you think will appeal to an admissions committee. People come from all types of backgrounds so there isn't a set path you need to take to be admitted. Best of luck!

Thank you ReluctantMBA! And thank you schumpeter, goodbread and holla for the great advice.  I think I'm going to go for research at a boutique vc and use the mba to move to a larger fund.  I'm sorry if this has been covered elsewhere in the forums, but say you exit out of bschool in a financial services job (banking, PE, hedge funds) are you basically stuck in the finance sector for the rest of your life?

Haha. Mobile and apps are all the craze nowdays...kind of reminiscent of the dot-com bubble. Thanks for the info duff

Pretty unhelpful comment, as applying won't give any real answers to these questions.

The answer I have heard is "yes", but it varies greatly depending on the specific schools in question. Some love finance guys(Columbia is an example), others love military officers (UVA, Duke is what I've been told) and yet other school like people with international experience....the list is endless.

You'd be better off asking on a forum where more admissions consultants can be found.

I never understand purpose of this kind of question. If everyone says commercial bank background is totally a joke from bschool admission prospective, would you give up MBA business schools">M7 application and apply to univ of phoenix?

Anyway, I have some time to kill so I will try to answer your question seriously. You are absolutely wrong. Finance and consulting are not more prestigious than other industries because prestige only matters within industry. Start pm/engineers at Google/Facebook are at same tiers as GS TMT/Mega PE kids. That being said, within finance, investment bank is indeed more prestigious than commercial bank (only to certain extent). Roles within commercial banks are very different. Some management trainee programs in commercial bank place into MBA very well. IMO, prestigious company + prestigious role > normal company + prestigious role > prestigious company + normal role.

Sorry to say it, but pretty stupid question. B-schools like to build well-rounded classes, which means people from banking, corp fin, consulting, supply chain, marketing, etc. They want people who do what they love, not people who do what gives them the best chances to get into school.. then what's the point? Got to do something when you get out of the MBA program. If you take a job based off what "tier" you believe it is in with regards to MBA admissions, you're doing yourself a HUGE disservice.