Please evaluate my profile

[ShannonW367]

Hi, I would appreciate if you can evaluate my profile and offer some advice on how I can improve my chances of being admitted by one of the top MBA schools.

I m a 27 years old Chinese female working in Hong Kong. I m working as a senior associate in the equity capital markets department in a boutique investment bank. I have almost three years of experience in investment banking, in which two of those years I was working as a corporate finance analyst involved mainly in executions of initial public offerings deals. After staying two years in that firm, and having experienced burnouts from pulling many all-nighters, I switched to a new field in investment banking, with less long hours and more client facing opportunities. I have also been given a better title as well as pay in the current job.

My background is a bit unusual. My major was psychology for my Bachelor degree in a non-Ivy-league US state school. My GPA was good though, scoring 3.85. My first job was an institutional sales in a European research house, servicing mainly buyside investors. Through networking, I met my second employee who hired me as an analyst in their corporate finance department and trained me from ground up.

I have not taken GMAT yet - understood I might need to get at least 700 to be eligible to apply for top school given my weaker academic qualifications. I m working towards getting minimum 750. Hopefully I can do it.

My spoken English is fluent, as well as my native Cantonese and Mandarin. However, having attempted several GMAT verbal questions, I found that I still need more work to blush up my English, especially grammar.

My Quant is okay so far, getting on average 80/100 from the practice tests/ exercises.

As for recommendation letters, a few bosses and clients who are alumni of top business schools are willing to help me with that; I hope that would greatly improve my chances.

Many people do MBA in the hope of getting into investment banking, as their original field is probably not related to finance.

My question is, while I m already in investment banking, should I still pursue an MBA?

My ultimate goal is to get into private equity and seems my resume is not as impressive as other candidates who already have a degree from top schools. Would a top MBA degree help me land my dream job in PE?

And would my weak academic background proved me to be less competitive than those who were graduated from say Yale/ Harvard for their bachelor degree?

Thanks!

[mbaMissionKate]

Hi there!

Your work experience sounds very strong, and I like that you networked your way to a boutique firm and that you've had progression in your title and responsibilities.

To answer your questions...yes, I definitely think an MBA will still be useful to you. Plenty of people use the MBA to switch from a field like investment banking to something like strategy consulting, or PE. So that is definitely doable, though I understand requires a significant amount of networking once you're on campus (which it sounds like you're good at!). You should also check out our PE career primer here: https://shop.mbamission.com/products/pr ... eer-primer

On your academic background, I'm not too worried about that. Your overall GPA is very high. Plus it's great that you studied in the US. You've also proven you can manage quantitative work by working in banking, so I don't think they'll see the Psychology background as a challenge (fellow Psych major here by the way). Are there applicants who will have gone to more prestigious schools? Yes. But it's hard to compare apples to apples with undergrad background so schools will consider the full picture of your application.

Getting a strong GMAT score is definitely important for you. At least 700+, ideally 730+ if you want to target top US schools. You may find working with a GMAT tutor could help you to learn strategies for attacking those verbal questions. Sometimes just regular reading of English newspapers/media can help a lot too!

Best of luck, and keep us posted with any further questions.
Kate

Hi, I would appreciate if you can evaluate my profile and offer some advice on how I can improve my chances of being admitted by one of the top MBA schools.

I m a 27 years old Chinese female working in Hong Kong. I m working as a senior associate in the equity capital markets department in a boutique investment bank. I have almost three years of experience in investment banking, in which two of those years I was working as a corporate finance analyst involved mainly in executions of initial public offerings deals. After staying two years in that firm, and having experienced burnouts from pulling many all-nighters, I switched to a new field in investment banking, with less long hours and more client facing opportunities. I have also been given a better title as well as pay in the current job.

My background is a bit unusual. My major was psychology for my Bachelor degree in a non-Ivy-league US state school. My GPA was good though, scoring 3.85. My first job was an institutional sales in a European research house, servicing mainly buyside investors. Through networking, I met my second employee who hired me as an analyst in their corporate finance department and trained me from ground up.

I have not taken GMAT yet - understood I might need to get at least 700 to be eligible to apply for top school given my weaker academic qualifications. I m working towards getting minimum 750. Hopefully I can do it.

My spoken English is fluent, as well as my native Cantonese and Mandarin. However, having attempted several GMAT verbal questions, I found that I still need more work to blush up my English, especially grammar.

My Quant is okay so far, getting on average 80/100 from the practice tests/ exercises.

As for recommendation letters, a few bosses and clients who are alumni of top business schools are willing to help me with that; I hope that would greatly improve my chances.

Many people do MBA in the hope of getting into investment banking, as their original field is probably not related to finance.

My question is, while I m already in investment banking, should I still pursue an MBA?

My ultimate goal is to get into private equity and seems my resume is not as impressive as other candidates who already have a degree from top schools. Would a top MBA degree help me land my dream job in PE?

And would my weak academic background proved me to be less competitive than those who were graduated from say Yale/ Harvard for their bachelor degree?

Thanks!