How much weight does the firm you worked at have on B-School admissions? All other factors aside, does working at a boutique/no-name bank or small PE firm (MM/EB/BB?
Is a T15 possible from a no-name bank or a tiny PE firm?
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There are a host of different background in the school profiles. I doubt that having working at a small shop will limit you all that much.
Here is Ross's School profile: https://michiganross.umich.edu/graduate/full-time-mba/admissions/class-…
only 26% come from consulting (does't define what this is A.K.A if it includes accounting it might be inflated) and 16% come from finance. I find it hard to believe that all this comes directly from top BB's.
bump
No one here knows for sure- there are smaller PE firms that are prestigious/well-known (ie started by some former MF partner) send people to top MBAs and there are no-name funds that put up bad returns and have bad placement. Look up the firm you are looking at on LinkedIn and look at the tombstones. If they have sent people to HBS and other T7 MBAs, chances are you have a good shot. If they've only ever sent people to not as prestigious MBA programs, that can give you a good idea of what to expect. Obviously it is a case by case thing and you aren't going to have an identical profile to anyone else, but you can usually get a sense of the type of MBAs people are landing at.
Also, getting in to any b-school really isn't that hard if you have a PE job and decent grades and GMATs, its getting into a good b-school that's difficult. If you're goal is just to get any MBA, that shouldn't be too hard. If you want a T25 MBA, that's a little tougher, T7 is pretty tough, and if you're H/S/W or bust then it's going to be tough, even for the most competitive applicants. All depends where you want to end up.
It is a factor, but it's not the only factor. The "big names" tend to get the "best" people. However smaller shops may give more opportunity for you to stand out and grow. Your challenge to show that you've taken advantage of that opportunity. A small PE shop shouldn't keep you out of a top MBA program if everything else aligns.
should be doable at non H/S MBA business schools">M7/T9 assuming GPA/GMAT are where they need to be
Anecdotally, non-brand PE is tough at H/S, generally fine for MBA business schools">M7/T10. PE is still tough to get into and as long as the firm is doing well and the experience is good enough to talk about for an MBA application then it should be fine. I think it's important to note how small/no-name. A fundless sponsor is different than a successful non-brand name $500M firm.
I'd say banking is similar, maybe a little weaker given that PE tends to have more of a cache than banking, but still the same. If you're at a less well known, but reputable MM bank and are doing typical IB transactions, then you'll still have a good shot at the top schools. If you're at a super regional, single office firm that does "business advisory" work for sub $5M family businesses and are only doing a deal or two a year then it's going to be tougher.
Bump, decent discussion. I’m on the no-name -> small but established PE fund path so very curious to hear from some post-MBA monkeys.
Part of me feels at a disadvantage but the other part of me knows that there are more levers that can be pulled during an application process (essays, GMAT, interviews, recs) which could help. There are also some folks from my UG (quite a small # candidly but nevertheless) who went into Corp fin or marketing roles out of college at places where this forum wouldn’t consider “prestigious” or generally competitive, that are currently in H/S/W MBA programs. Without knowing anything else, I would assume that they were able to craft their story really well and clearly communicate why them, why XYZ MBA, etc. Gives me some hope for sure.
This is anecdotal, so i don’t have definitive data to support this theory:
Undergraduate institute plays a much greater role in MBA decisions than people realize. I know people who went to HBS from LMM PE funds and it is almost always the case that they went to very strong undergrad universities. Those of us that went to lower tier universities were all rejected, regardless of 750+ GMAT scores, very high GPAs, and identical work histories.
Outside of H/S, the rest of the top universities seem to have no problem accepting us though. All of my colleagues in the LMM never had a problem getting into at least 1 of Booth / Kellogg / Wharton / Columbia / MIT (100% acceptance rate to at least one). That said, looking across my classmates at Booth, nearly everyone went to a prestigious university. I was definitely in the minority going to what would be classified on this forum as a “non target.”
Finally, one last thing to consider: Those reviewing your MBA application don’t necessarily know whether your fund is killing it or not. They also don’t know whether you worked on good deals or not. These things are far more valuable when recruiting for PE than applying to business school.
Just based off of what you've seen, what's typically a good GMAT score for someone with an Ivy+ undergrad and BB/EB background applying to H/S?
I took the GMAT this past year as a senior and am just wondering if I'll need to retake it before applying in a few years (hopefully as a PE associate somewhere). I understand there are many other levers to an application but just wanted to get a sense of what the standards are for these places.
BTW, big fan of your posts, thanks for all you contribute on here.
I'd say 740+ given average H/S scores are around 735 or so
As depressing as it sounds, there really isn’t a GMAT score that can differentiate an Ivy undergrad with BB/EB experience from the other H/S applicants. Similar to what Frank Slaughtery says, I think you really want to be in the 750+ range to not be a disadvantage to your future PE peer group. From what I’ve seen, this group has no shortage of people in the 750 range as they tend to pull the average up at H/S.
Non-prestigious undergrad here. I'm at a decent IB and want to maximize my chances of W/B. Would it be better to go for LMM PE or would I be better of doing Corporate at a brand name firm or something different to avoid getting lumped with all the PE folks with more prestigious funds and schools? (Assume MF and MM PE are not options)
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