Sooner or Later

Hello,

I find myself in a bit of a bind and I am hopeful that folks here can offer me some good advice.

I am 26 years old and currently work at one of the top power merchant companies. I used to be an analyst in Origination, but now, after some restructuring within the company, I find myself working in an increasingly quantitative role where I am starting to pick up programming skills and gain greater understanding of derivatives and logic underlying their pricing and their use for hedging/speculation. However, after 2 years of doing this job I find my opportunities for advancement and growth diminishing in an increasingly bureaucratized environment and frankly am looking for a way out.

My first thought is to go to business school hoping that I can move into an investment banking energy group at one of more prestigious banks. I have a 3.6-3.7 GPA from a top 10 undergrad school, so I reckon that I should be able to aim for CBS/Booth/Tuck/Duke. One issue that I have is the question of when to go to bschool. I understand that at this point the sooner the better would probably be the case, however, due to certain family circumstances, I will only be able to exit labor force in about 2.5 years...meaning, that I will get to apply when I am ~29 and graduate at ~ 31. I am afraid that at that point I will be too old to enter investment banking and will have to go back to merchant power making the whole endeavor pointless.

Would moving my schedule one year and entering the program when I am 28 rather than 29 make any difference? Would I be better off just sticking with merchant power for now and trying to move to oil/nat gas? I like quant work, but I am no PhD in math/statistics so I will never quite be at that level. On the other hand, I will have a much better understanding of power markets than someone who just did a 2-4 year stint in an energy group at a BB which is what I am hoping to use to break into IB.

Any helpful advice, insight, experience would be greatly appreciated.