MM PE Associate: MBA Programs beyond HSW
The consensus seems to be Harvard, Stanford and Wharton are the clear top 3 schools for PE professionals looking to return to the industry. Beyond these, is there a clear set of the next 2-3 schools to consider?
Employment reports suggest Booth and Columbia place the best into PE but not by a huge margin over other M7 schools. There's also a lot that these statistics leave out (e.g. what % of people coming from PE get jobs in PE, how does that differ for MF / UMM / MM students, how many jobs came thru campus recruiting vs. independently sourced, how much of the difference in placement is self selection vs. people trying and failing to return to PE, etc.)
Looking to hear from anyone who has insight into differences in recruiting and placement at these schools, or how anyone else from PE who applied to schools beyond HSW thought about their choices.
Related, I'm also curious how middle market PE candidates at HSW place back into PE (e.g. HBS might place 15% into PE but perhaps 90% of these are students who came from megafunds and as a MM candidate, you might actually have a better shot getting back into PE from a school like Booth where there's probably fewer GS -> KKR people running around).
Didn't find any threads explicitly discussing this but if anyone knows of any please point me to it. Thanks!
I am a MBA business schools">M7 graduate. I can assure you that if you have prior PE experience you'll have a strong shot of getting into PE regardless of which MBA business schools">M7 you attend. If you dont, it will be an uphill battle anywhere you go even HBS. More PE companies come to Harvard and Wharton's campus (than any other M7) for recruiting but as you can imagine those processes favor those who've done PE before.
Thanks for commenting. Can I pick your brain to learn more? If so, what about people interested in... - going upstream (mm to umm or umm to mf - assuming it’s campus recruiting based and networking before the formal process) - going to first time funds (assuming it’s networking based to get interviews as they won’t be coming to campus) - going internationally with no ties to the country (know the language and... network? Assuming the reps of a certain company (eg advent) aren’t recruiting for Paris offices out of HBS - a different focus - eg day you did all down-the-fairway industrials work and now want to do either a) something like telecom (relatively easier to pick up) or b) something hard to pick up, like energy or distressed. Possible to switch? How does that work?
Yes, at my school, I've seen all kinds. I saw people go upstream (this is limited though) but downstream is definitely common which also makes sense. First-time funds is also a common scenario although most ppl who explored this at my school were ex bankers or ex consultants with very limited PE experience (2-3 months before starting school).I should say that you generally go to a fund comparable to your last - so for instance if you worked in Madison Dearborn pre school, you're more likely to end up in a MDP type fund (by size). International locations were mostly open to ppl who had a cultural / linguistic link. For instance, if Cinven is looking to hire for Paris, it will definitely get someone who speaks French. All that said, switching out of the industry although not common is the very much feasible for the reasons you can imagine - ppl who have the PE / IB experience are sought by employers for their both hard and soft skills.
Disclaimer - the recruiting situation could be very diff at some other MBA business schools">M7
Thank you, very helpful!
Should also add that there are a lot of ex Audax folks who go to Tuck and are successful in getting into PE. Now Tuck is a great school but it surely is not the first school you think of which would attract guys who did pe at a top tier firm
Your experience sounds interesting, would you mind doing a post on how to get into MBA’s in the US from EU PE, and coming back to Europe for PE, assuming that is what you did?
I am in the process of sorting a few things out and once done am planning a AMA. This forum has given a lot to me. In the meantime, if you have any qs feel free to PM me. I worked in London in ibd and then a VC funded tech co. Where I was in an executive role. Used mba To transition into pe states side
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