Does anyone have any experience, personal or observed, on any candidates that have taken the above path, and successfully entered H / S / W? It's very unorthodox, but was trying to collect any data points.
I'm assuming this is a fairly unusual case, especially since the MBA isn't really necessary, but for personal and professional reasons both, it's something I wanted to get more insight into.
Can anyone speak to chances, if they've seen this before, how adcoms view such candidates, etc.?
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Admission into H/S/W is often a crap shoot with many highly qualified candidates being rejected annually and work experience is only one piece of the puzzle. With that said, if you landed a job at a BB IB, MF PE, and a highly regarded HF we can at least generate the following assumptions:
1) You went to a highly competitive undergrad and obtained a respectable (if not stellar) GPA 2) You have enough interpersonal skills and intellectual horsepower to make it through rounds of MF recruiting 3) You are well-branded and well-trained 4) You have a solid network and likely 1 or 2 mentors who will go to bat for you and write great recs 5) You have a 700+ GMAT score (based on SAT and academic performance)
If you provide a compelling set of essays regarding "why b-school", get solid recs, and appear well-rounded you would obsessively be competitive at all of those schools but no one is a lock.
Understand this, BB IB and MF act as gatekeepers so each level you move up you are essentially branded and given a stamp of approval. You worked at Goldman (check), you moved on to Apollo (check), etc.
I realize this is not really answering the question asked, but if you have this background, why would you ever want to go to business school?
At this point, you've developed an incredible network through three high-caliber jobs, you're making a great paycheck, and you're working in a field that is much more of a "career choice". More importantly, the majority of hedge funds would never ask you to get an MBA. I just don't see the logic in interrupting the incredible career trajectory you're already on.
@junkbondswap - thanks for the insight & vote of confidence. I'm just wondering if I will end up appearing 'odd' or "unusual' in any sense, and if there's any way to ally that concern or address / sidestep it in my application. I guess we'll see, hopefully someone else will have an actual observed experience to share...
@NorthSider - I'm getting that question a LOT from my friends and peers. Not to pump it up but the comment above is right - I've been through the grinder in terms of school, recruiting, working, drew the right hands, and played my cards right, in addition to working really hard. That being said - it sounds incredibly stupid and wasteful, but the 2-year break is looking more and more attractive every day….
I made the rather stupid mistake of jumping straight from getting grinded out at my PE job (during which, by the way, my hours / lifestyle were materially worse than banking – if that gives you any context) and going directly to a hedge fund right away with no down time in between. Not sure if you’re aware, but most HF recruiting processes take months, and many don’t take them as seriously until the end of their PE stint, which generally yields a brief window of time where people hang out and just recruit, or at least broker some down time in between jobs. I was very fortunate to meet a fund that needed someone ASAP and liked me a lot, and recruited me within 2-3 weeks, contingent on me starting right away.
Something else I didn’t fully appreciate was the abrupt change in culture / lifestyle / interaction going from PE to HF. The hedge fund lifestyle is incredibly routine based. There are rarely any intense deadlines to chase. You walk in early, you keep your head down, do your own analysis, keep an eye on the market, and then clock out for the day. Everyone works from 7AM to 8PM or so. You will likely sit on a trading floor with people on the phone around you 24/7. But the teams are very small and everyone else is much older than you. You will sit down with your PM anywhere from once a day to once a week, reviewing the few items discussed last time – which means you will rarely talk at all during the day unless you’re on the phone doing diligence (i.e. speaking to an advisor / consultant / manager / etc.)
In contrast, when I was in PE, I was talking to my teams & advisors CONSTANTLY, people would stop by my cube to chat and waste time, I had two classes of associates, people my age, to commiserate with and be friends with. It’s only made worse given that I work at a credit shop (longer hold periods, more stable) based in Connecticut (office park in the suburbs and can’t move). The commute is annoying to say the least. It sounds very petty given the career options I have available to me, but I realized that, with my personality, I needed a more collegial, social environment, needed project oriented work that is more of a stop and go / dynamic, and more goal oriented, working toward getting something DONE, even if it means worse hours at times.
So despite climbing the “rainmaker’s path” or whatever of top school -> BBIB -> MFPE -> HF, I think I want out and am gauging my options. 1) I really need a break because I am burnt out, and 2) I’m sick of working for other people, so maybe I’ll go build or join a business where I can make an impact and sculpt the world as I see fit. Definitely not just going to blindly try and cash in on this VC bubble, but perhaps build a tangible business where I have equity dollars invested and can build wealth while finding a career I enjoy – even if it might mean less aggregate dollars. The money doesn't even matter to me that much anymore; after a certain point, I’m not built that way – and I need that reset switch. Plus, worst comes to worst, as hyper-competitive as HF recruiting is coming out of MBA, I figure I will have a huge leg up on everyone else because I’ve already done it, and can land back here if I had to use Plan B.
Anyway, let this be a lesson to anyone that reads this – blaze your own trail, and do it as soon as you recognize that you should. You’re only lying to yourself and postponing the inevitable. But for those that stick it out, I hope that you love making money more than I do, and you’ll all do great.
Sooo..... is there anyone else that has a response to my original question?
Top notch post. +1.
Sensible down to earth post, not adding much value here but I agree with the plan B of falling back to high finance, the story should be reasonably pitched and the experience is valuable and sought after. If you get a top MBA you'll further enhance the brand and diversify contacts, which will help with your entrepreneurship
My 1 cent for what it's worth.
werdwerd
Your self-awareness is really commendable.
I'm sorry you had such a rough culture transition; I've been through the same and anyone who doesn't know what it's like working 70+ a week and flipping ends of the spectrum from open and collegial to closed and academic just won't get how loud it silently screams in your ears. Also sorry to hear you didn't get a chance to unplug and regroup between roles. That's such a critical step many people overlook by inattentiveness; in your case it seems like you knew how helpful it would be but simply couldn't catch a break in terms of timing.
For your original questions, I'd point you to a comment I made recently in another thread where someone asked whether it was possible to move between elite funds from private to public markets roles. For the life of me I don't know how to hyperlink on this forum, so apologies for the ugly link. http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/activist-hedge-fund-and-pe#commen…
My takeaway is that yes, anyone who fits junkbondswap's rubric of [top undergrad + top grades + top banking + top buy-side role + top GMAT + top recommendations] will have no trouble getting into a great business school. Your only trick will be explaining to the ad-com why you want to go there and why now.If you can execute on that, there is no reason why HBS or GSB would not want you. I'm sure you know this: their only job is to accept very smart, hardworking, successful people who would without a doubt go on to achieve massive success both personally and professionally, run them through a factory, and instill a sense of indebtedness in the candidate to the institution for somehow making them successful.
You've already outperformed everyone else who's been admitted. Seriously. By your work experience alone, you are head-and-shoulders above the pack. Focus on telling your story, demonstrate the same self-awareness you've done in that last lengthy comment you posted, and make sure your recommendations come from people who know you. (They can really add color to your application in a way you'd struggle to when writing in the first-person; it doesn't matter that you fed them the material, it simply sounds more authentic when written by someone else.)
Above all, don't get concerned about being the 'finance guy' during application season. You're not competing with the Teach For America kid, the Bain kid, or the World Bank to White House Fellowship girl. You're bucketed, meaning the ad-com is comparing you only to other finance guys. You should stand out; again, few people proceed from elite banking to elite PE to elite HF as smoothly as you. That number is probably between one to two dozen per year.
I'd recommend you dive into the GMAT right now. You want to apply R1 to both HBS and GSB, so that gives you six months from today. If you fail this year around, it probably boils down to a poor job selling your story or their perception that you aren't well-rounded (as if someone working at what sounds like Apollo has the time to be on two non-profit boards ...). You can fix whichever potential issue it was (and hopefully neither) and reapply next year.
Once you're in, you can focus on identifying and pursuing whatever next step you're most excited by. I wrote another comment earlier tonight on VC that I'll link below. The other thing I'd be most interested in if I were graduating an MBA program right now is a search fund. I'll also add a link to a hefty white paper from GSB on search funds that's fairly recent (2013).
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/lesser-known-mba-career-options-l… http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Search%20Fund…
Good luck, brother.
2 IBD + 2 Megafund + Elite HF (Originally Posted: 02/27/2011)
Since the allure of megafunds is such a popular topic on here... I'm wondering what the exit ops post megafund look like. Everyone knows you can either go HBS/Stanford or lateral... but where do people lateral to? I've heard that megafund associates choosing not to go to b-school usually end up going to a HF, namely some of the top HFs and tiger cub funds talked about on here from time to time... Soros, Paulson, Perry, Pershing Square, Greenlight... to name a few. I've also read this in a few PE guides, not sure which ones.
So my first question is to those who are informed of the above 2+2+HF route... please share your knowledge.
Second question is anyone know what comp is like for a Pre-MBA Megafund associate lateraling to one of these elite hedge funds? I've heard in the past that many analysts from top group at targets for elite HF and PE firms have made the choice to go the HF route over PE because "the lure of making $500K a year was too much to resist". Those were in the golden days though mind you. But still. That would lead me to believe post-MF comp at some of these elite HFs are in the 500-700K range.
Third, for all the talk about why go to megafund, I think everything discussed above is a pretty good reason.
KFC usually
most HFs vast majority of pay goes to the guy at the top. no one is getting 400k+ without being a PM
really? my impression was that PMs make much more than that - at least $4-5m. so if a PM makes that much, and I think that's on the lower end of the scale for top performing HFs, why cant an associate pull 600-800k?
This is definitely not true. I know for fact that CIG analysts can EASILY make 1-2.5m based on their alphatracker alone. PMs can make 10m+...the above is a bullshit comment. And no one cares about small HFs so don't say thats what you meant.
You have no clue what you're talking about. I'd probably guess that $400K all-in is a the bare minimum comp for a megafund associate exiting to an elite HF.
Interested in this as well.
Elite Hedge Funds after doing PE is the new PE.
so this would 4-5 years out of university?
Why does this surprise you guys? You can make 300-400K in consulting in your late 20s. You can definitely make more than twice as much at a top notch hedge fund.
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