If you could do anything for 2-4 years with a fallback plan what would you do? - B School Deferral Period
If you had a get-out-of-jail free card what would you do with it?
I'm currently working at a BB IB (GS/JPM/MS) and have deferred admittance to a top B School (HBS/GSB/Wharton) and am unsure of what the best way to use my deferral period is. I feel like B School is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card/fallback plan to do something I wouldn't normally have the optionality to do. I'm honestly hating IB and think this could be a great time to take some risk. I don't have any great idea for a startup but have a craving for something early-stage or more operational. Have thought about making a transition into growth equity but even that seems pretty risk averse.
If anyone else is in a similar position or has any advice I'm all ears.
TL;DR: working in IB but hate it, have deferral to top B school and want to try something new but don't know where to start
I'm only a senior in college (incoming AN1 at one of the banks u listed) so take with a pinch of salt. But if I didn't like IB and had the def MBA I would consider something I'm more passionate about. I know u said u don't have startup ideas but I would personally go the startup route in an area I am passionate about outside of work (sports music etc ) and run it as a passion project (i.e. not with making money as the goal)
That way you are enjoying what you do and will inevitably learn a shit ton of skills through trial and error you could use in ur future endeavors past B-school (whether its finance, C-Suite, consulting, starting another firm) etc
If you are passionate about something you will inevitably want to succeed, have a higher chance of succession, and enjoy the process.
Worse case scenario you learned a lot about running a business and about an industry you are passionate about
Best case scenario you just created a successful business you love
Having had a buddy get into a 2+2 two and then defer, I have a couple of general thoughts on how I would use my time. First of all, I would extend the deferral from 2 years to 3 and maybe even 4 if you can swing it. In my opinion, you get the most out of business school if you're somewhere in between 26-30. Any younger and you don't really know what you want to do, so you can't appropriately use B-School to help with that and you don't have enough experience to contribute or participate that much. You'll also just feel young amongst your peers, having a little more life experience will make it more fun.
After that, I would try and give a little though as to what types of paths you might want to pursue post B-School and think about if there's anything you want/need to do beforehand to get a leg up. The thing I have in mind is PE/VC/HF. Even at an HSW, if you don't have buyside experience prior to entering school, it's going to be very hard to exit into a good firm. If you want to keep that door open, it sounds like you should spend at least a year or two as an Associate somewhere. That's really the only industry I can think of that requires prior experience.
Last thing, think about what you want to do with your life, what excites you? Maybe you just want to chill for a year or so, maybe you want to work internationally and live abroad, I know some of my friends have gotten really into Web3 and are spending a lot of time there, you could start something if you feel passionately about it, or just join a startup for a bit and see how that goes. You could even just take a remote year and travel a bunch. I'd bucket the time into the work experiences you want to get, in your case it might be Banking/PE and then some of the life experiences you might want to have as well and try to balance those.
What are your friends doing in Web3? I have a couple of buddies chasing the same thing but it all seems to revolve around creating virtual items/NFTs for the metaverse. lol
Some are looking for investing roles for others, it's using getting really into a specific ecosystem and going deep on that. For example, Solana and Polkadot are getting big, so it would be really understanding what roles those technologies play and then diving into specific projects associated with that blockchain. As far as roles go, it's like working for a startup, so startegy, biz dev, etc. No one really knows much about Web3 yet, so if you're passionate about it, that goes pretty far.
I would join a startup myself. YC has a matchmaking program they launched recently.
Sorry to change topic but could you share some of your stats that helped you getting in?
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