i will be entering my last year of undergraduate school in the fall and plan to recieve my B.S. in electrical engineering next summer. i recently began looking into business school and MBA programs and have a question about the work experience required for admittance into top schools. i took the GMAT last week and my unoffical results were 750(Q49,V42) so academically speaking ill be competitive at the top tier.
As i analyze the numbers for some of the top programs in the country i see an average work experience of 4-6 years for admitted students however a small percentage of each admission class has little to no work experience. i am curious as to what it takes to be chosen as one of the few students directly from undergrad admitted to competitive schools.
Aside from my coursework, over the last 3 years i have taught myself the concepts behind technical and fundamental stock analysis and have been managing 401k investments for family members(19% ROIC last year
). i enjoy the game of wits that is the stock market and plan to focus on finance in grad school with a career goal of one day managing a hedge fund.Additionally, i plan to work with my signals and systems professor next year as we begin the early stages of design for his recent 100 million dollar grant from NASA. essentially we will be designing the communication systems that are going to be used on the next manned lunar missions. a position such as this usually is given to a master's student but the professor chose me due to my exceptional performance in his course
could extra curricular activities such as these help to offset the lack of real world W.E? what else could i do to improve my chances? are lower tier schools more or less likely to accept students directly from undergrad?
i appreciate any info you may have and thank you for taking the time to read this.
