New to forum/wanting a career change

I was in a similar boat, but older. I was working in BO as a CPA and was considering the CFA vs the MBA. The biggest con for the MBA was the cost, but that can be mitigated by crushing the GMAT and getting some scholarship money. Ultimately, I ended up pursuing the MBA and broke into banking with several options available. Breaking into IB at the age of 26 without relevant prior experience will be extremely difficult. Without going the MBA route, you would only be eligible for analyst programs that hire almost exclusively from a handful of target schools and lateral hires are at a minimum working as a CPA at the Big 4 in TAS.

The MBA path is expensive, but it's a straightforward proven path to break into IB. Plus, you'll come in as an associate making great money. Total comp for an A1 is north of $300K, so any student loans could be paid off quickly (less than 5 years). I'm paying off $200K in loans in ~2 years. Additionally, a handful of students I graduated with completed 1 or 2 parts of the CFA while in school, so it's still doable to come out with both the CFA / MBA if you're that interested in becoming a CFA. Ultimately, the CFA doesn't really have much use in traditional IB, my classmates that pursued the CFA while in their MBA program were almost exclusively trying to work at asset managers.

That value proposition for a T15 MBA comes from the network you're able to build and a second shot at campus recruiting. Finance is very much a business based on personal relationships, and having a vast alumni network and close camaraderie with your cohort will go a long way for recruiting and sourcing business. 

Of course, there are other fields of finance that don't require an MBA to break in with. RE is HOT right now and hiring more junior positions than ever before. I got in through purely networking after being late the the finance ball game (realized I hated accounting after my Junior year internship).

It implies that you outscore 95-98% of candidates. If your goal is a top MBA and you aren't a phenomenal standardized test taker, give yourself as much time as possible to prep. 

fwiw there are plenty of good schools in my area, university of florida warrington cob, rollins college crummer cob. stetson cob. Would i just be wasting my time with these programs, even if they do have placement in firms such as GS? (i looked a bit more into rollins and they appear to be the best for IB/high finance placement, but obviously not a good as an M7)

I’m going to be brutally honest, this response makes it seem like you don’t know what you’re getting into.

Here’s the truth: the IB business model is based on a pyramidal human capital structure that is held up by an army of young mercenaries with nothing to lose and slavish devotion to the cause. Many of them wash out jaded and tired after 2 years, and many fewer hang on, mostly because they were cut out for it from the beginning personality-wise (read: proud professionals, tireless work ethic, high degree of social poise and quick reaction time, very nuanced sense of interpersonal politics, etc) and not because they worked meaningfully harder than the ones who wash out. By the time any of these young bankers have things to worry about other than their bonus and promotion (eg family, property), they are senior enough (and valuable enough) to make claims like “but my house is already in florida”.

I think you think that your work ethic is enough to take you far and I am here to tell you about a lot of deserving kids that worked with me or for me and who got invited to leave after two years of 80-100 hour weeks. They weren’t even bad, they just weren’t that good by the exceptionally brutal yardstick of this industry. Working like an animal at the beginning is table stakes. It is an apprenticeship business where the whole point is that you bend over backwards and enrich your boss at great personal cost so that someday he makes you into himself on the way out the door. Your role as an apprentice is to be useful and easy to interface with, not to justify why you should be weighed evenly against a Stanford grad with no wife and a rental apartment just because you didn’t come from privilege and you already have a mortgage. Who gives a fuck? That’s a bad fit for the role. I’m not trying to be callous I’m trying to impress upon you that anything you do to hurt your case is going to count against you because you’re already starting behind the starting line and whatever hard work means to you 100% won’t cover it up because that’s just normal around these parts. There’s a reason analysts/MBA assos in this business are predominantly young and untethered. It’s because the demands of this job for someone who is going to do it long term are really, really, high, and at a junior level they just cannot coexist with the limitations that middle age adults face without unreasonable levels of sacrifice that make it just not worth it. Know that the bank is going to squeeze you hard for a few years and you’re going to have to become seriously hard to replace before you start getting to play cards that have fuck all to do with your preferences. Choose wisely.

These firms have pipelines that work for acquiring junior talent. Its frankly a waste of time for them to attempt find people outside of these pools given that their system already serves all their needs. That's why it's entirely on you to try to get in to the industry and not on them to find you.

 Not to mention, Target schools prove both motivation and capability (with exceptions) and firms don't have to worry too much about confirming these traits.

Would echo other posters who have outlined the difficulty in transitioning into an analyst program. Associate programs would be the most logical path forward unless you care to work at a local boutique (which, notwithstanding some of the prestige-whoring children on this forum, is a perfectly respectable career choice).

To your point more directly: You would do well to consider the heuristics firms use. The non-target success stories on this forum would tell you that firms certainly do recognize thekind of "hustle" you possess. However, when presented with an MBA from a no-name school and an MBA from a brand-name school (T15), they will almost always select the latter because that person has demonstrated an ability to check so many boxes that a firm need not perform super-extensive due diligence on you.

Folks here are counseling you to pursue this path because it offers much greater certainty. It would be very cool to see you succeed in recruiting from Stetson into a front-office role, and you should definitely rub it in our collective face if you do (we would deserve it!). But the path you are proposing reduces certainty (to sub 1% levels); humans are naturally risk-averse, all the more so within this most neurotic of worlds (and forums). Please bear in mind that you can learn from others, even those on the "golden path."

In summary, what makes you an attractive candidate to a bank is (1) the hard work you seem willing to take on and, importantly, (2) the ability to move up within the ranks and sell M&A work or debt products etc. (1) is table stakes. (2) is nearly impossible to assess, so the banks rely on your ability to navigate the complex process of getting into a top school as a de-facto selection mechanism. Hopefully this is helpful to you. Please do bear in mind that there are many lucrative and fulfilling careers outside of finance ("sweaty" entrepreneurship is one that tempts me nearly every day). Finally, you would do well to get that chip off of your shoulder. While an underdog mentality will inevitably help drive you, projecting it upon others (bear in mind that mid-senior folks in finance can read people very well) will do you a disservice in recruiting and in your career.