Hi Guys. I have a question here and need some advice on this. I am a qualified Chartered Accountant from South Africa (C.A. SA), and have CFA Level 1 as well as CAIA . I was an Equity Sales Trader at BNP Paribas and am now in Private Equity as an Investment Analyst. I would love to work in the USA at a hedge fund (Equity Long Short). My varsity marks were good till 2nd year, and am worried that will impact my application. Firstly, I want to do a Masters in Finance in the US or UK, and would like a list of those schools were GPA counts less, and 2nd i want to know if I stand a good chance of getting in anywhere, especially the good schools such as LSB, Imperial, Warwick, NYU Stern etc
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Firstly, how much work experience do you have (years)? More work experience will improve your application and if you have the equivalent of a UK 2:1 it should help quite a bit against candidates with a 1st but little to no experience. Secondly, the MSc Investment & Wealth is very Imperial College specific. If you're ok with general MFins the UK targets are LBS, LSE, Oxbridge, Imperial and Warwick, with Imperial and Warwick probably seen as lower than the rest. As for American schools, I can't speak and more experienced Americans on this forum will know more. Other good European unis are HEC Paris, Bocconi, ESADE, IE Madrid, HSG St. Gallen, Rotterdam School of Management and Copenhagen Business School. I'm sure there are others I haven't mentioned but this is a good list.
In general your experience should make up for the grades provided they are still pretty good.
Okay, so basically my CFA Level 1 and CAIA wont help at all. I have 5 years work experience. I do have a UK 2:1. The idea is that I also want a qualification which will assist me with gaining easy entrance into the UK and US market. I am also comfortable applying for other general MFins. I will look at the other varsities around Europe.
5 years is a lot for an MFin, have you considered an MBA?
I want to go into hedge funds as I mentioned,and I don't see the value it will give me. Is my thinking wrong? I haven't seen many equity long-short hedge fund jobs where an MBA helps
And based on your comment it doesn't look like 5 years would work against me.and please note that the 5 years I mentioned dont include my 3 years of articles I had to do in order to qualify as a C.A. (SA). Therefore my total years of work is 8 years.
Some MBAs are more financed based so perhaps look into those. On the other hand you can certainly apply to MFins but also look at Executive MFins - I know LSE has one so surely others do too.
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