Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

Hello, I was wondering if I could get my profile evaluated.

Work Experience:

- current employment: 2 years as a buy-side fixed income credit analyst at a Korean life insurance firm, providing fixed-income and macroeconomic research for in-house purposes

- previous employment: 3 years in the Korean Air Force (commissioned officer), main tasks include translation, between Korean forces and foreign forces/government/companies, etc., for weapon procurement program management and air show planning and coordination

Scores:

- 740 GMAT (V40, Q50, AWA 6.0, IR 8)

- 3.65 GPA from a liberal arts college in US

Other Information:

- passed CFA level 3 exam, FRM part 1 exam

- Korean born and raised, but went to a US high school and college

- avid golfer (played competitively in high school and college)

Reasons for MBA:

- wish to transition out of conservative insurance firm asset management and into private equity/venture capital

- have no academic background in business management, and feel managerial/operational knowledge is necessary in order to work in PE/VC

I'm looking at Stanford, HBS, Wharton, Columbia, Sloan, and LBS. What would be my chances of getting into those schools? Am I aiming too high? What are my obvious weaknesses? All tips and pointers would be appreciated. Thank you.

Sang

Given your strong academics, GMAT score and interesting background (can draw leadership experience, quantitative proficiency, etc. from it) you are competitive for all your schools, although recognize that HBS and Stanford are long shots for most applicants.

You might not strategically wish to state PE/VC goals, without having prior PE/VC, I-banking or even management consulting experience, due to the competitiveness of that application group.

Good luck,

MBAPrepAdvantage wrote:Given your strong academics, GMAT score and interesting background (can draw leadership experience, quantitative proficiency, etc. from it) you are competitive for all your schools, although recognize that HBS and Stanford are long shots for most applicants.

You might not strategically wish to state PE/VC goals, without having prior PE/VC, I-banking or even management consulting experience, due to the competitiveness of that application group.

Good luck,

Thank you Mr. Cohan,

If it's not too much to ask, could you suggest some alternative goals I could use that might be more strategically successful, given my background and target schools?

Sang

I would suggest you consider broader goals within Investment Management. Here is a list of post-MBA programs and companies in the space (https://www.mbaprepadvantage.com/blog/mb ... anagement/). On the right side-bar are some other MBA Career Resources.

Then cross-reference the list of companies and positions with those at your target MBA schools by looking at the respective employment reports and other career-related pages.

I hope this helps.