Hi, I graduated last year with a BBA Finance at UofT. Had a mild existential crisis in my fourth year and a back injury from my first power lifting meet—ended up with few Cs in last year Finance courses. Finance is not the major concern right now since I’m a Asian single child I get all financial support I need to pursue what I want. Took a gap year from that point, went through recovery, met my gf, studied hard for CFA lv2 and crushed the exam. I looked up for master of finance programs in states that require some econometric/math/statistic courses, and I only need 4 courses to meet the minimum pre-requisite requirement for the programs.
Assuming I passed lv2, study hard and get all As in those econometric/math courses, plus some sports-related extracurricular activities and pull a good story out of my rehab challenges, minus being Asian, what chance can I get here for the Yale, MIT, Stanford levels school?
You haven’t posted any stats, it sounds like you don’t have enough work experience for an MBA, and then you start talking about MFin. Which is it? What is your career goal anyway?
MBA admissions is more about work experience than academics. Those programs want people who are coming from entry level jobs at top tier companies, as this already shows that the applicants are on a path to success. You should develop your early career first, to show that you belong in such a program. Some people do go straight from undergraduate programs to Harvard MBA or something, but they are usually children of tycoons or have some other special characteristic.
Top20 MBA is not that tough to get in actually…USUALLY say, UCLA or sometimes even USC is even good enough to land you a front office role…Plenty of folks from forgotten Midwestern undergrads with audit or ops background or FP&A background land top MBAs all thanks to diversity…You wouldn’t want 10 clones of you in the same room, you’d all miss the outside the box solution is the idea of diversity in these schools; schools don’t want 100% of their students with FO roles at Goldman…They want the BO, the auditors, CPAs, financial advisors, techies, etc in the room. MBA is not about textbooks and lectures, it’s about debates and presentations.
I have seen audit dudes and tax dudes who went all the way to manager level at their firms then get into full time NYU or CBS and turned their career around 180 degrees and went to work for Google Capital in M&A or for a PE fund doing acquisitions…
Now, if you land say USC MBA, you’re not going to Google Capital without contacts, however you will be some research analyst guy at LA based investment mgmt firm. Then after a few years there you could possibly apply to Google Capital…maybe your alum from USC works there…
Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I haven’t started any formal work yet and the decision to go back to school in a hope that this will lead to something is more like a mental comfort to convince myself—I know there are lots of broke grad students out there looking for entry-level jobs with no career goal in mind, I simply hope by going to a new environment will lead to new changes that I don’t see happening right now. All I know is I need to leave the comfort zone I’m in right now and find new challanges in life.
That sounds like a plan, a head start is all I need. Career resources, networking opportunities, co-op experiences are what I need from the MBA program (why else people take the MBA programs anyway?). I just don’t want to be the guy in mid 30s stuck in VP for year, afraid of changes, loss all the ambitions and has family crisis.
If so, Toronto is ranked #1 in Canada and top20 in the world according The Economist, and US News…I’ve seen a few UofT grads and all of them seem to be doing just fine whether in the US or Canada…