Which Schools?

[beweezy]

Hello. I am a white male from a state school in the southeast U.S. I earned a 4.0 overall GPA with a major in finance, worked at a regional investment bank in healthcare for 3 years, and now work at a publicly traded healthcare company doing M&A and strategy. I have earned my CFA (chartered financial analyst) designation and made a 720 (q47v43) on the GMAT (I'm taking it one last time). I have volunteer experience working for a child advocacy organization looking at state legislation etc.

I would like to shift my career into money management, at a hedge fund or mutual fund such as T.Rowe or Fidelity. What schools should I apply to? Would I stand a chance at Harvard or Stanford? Thanks!

[Bryant@VeritasPrep]

If your goal is money management, you should look at Chicago Booth, Columbia, NYU, Tuck, and Duke. You should have a shot at HBS or Stanford with your profile, but what you need to be doing is finding out where your target employers like to recruit. Take your targeted firms and try to get some inside contacts who can tell you where most of the employees of that firm go to b-school. In other words, "reverse engineer" your b-school by starting with the recruiters.

[beweezy]

Thanks a lot! Duke and Tuck are somewhat surprising to me - why are those good schools for money management? The employment reports seem to suggest they are no better than a Haas or Sloan. Thanks again - great advice.

[Bryant@VeritasPrep]

Sloan or Haas would be fine too. Campbell Harvey at Duke is world-known for market theory and they have a robust derviatives faculty. All the major firms recruit there. In the end, it's really all about what job opportunities will be there on the backend, so make sure you research top recruiters--you can often get this info from the career center in your target schools.