I’m 24 and have just completed all three CFA exams this june.
My bachelor degree is computer engineering from the top school in my country. I worked as a system analyst in software house for 20 months. After that I switched to work in the bank as a senior mutual fund product manager in January this year.
My main responsibility is product development (in short, selecting the fund to distribute). In my opinion, I am doing well in my job as I am entrusted to be a main driver to develop the key things in mutual fund selling agent business such as improving risk appetite questionnaire and developing fund selection framework, doing the preliminary research and writing requirement for asset allocation tool project. By the way, the result is I manage to IPO about twenty funds year to date. This is the preparation for the asset allocation tool (before I join, the volume comes from sale push and no asset allocation advice provided to customer except the wealthy one) as it broadens the asset classes invested by mutual funds offered by my bank.
Now I am deciding what I should do to advance in my career. Should I continue working and get charterholdership after I have four years experience or I should try to apply for business school (preferably top ranked schools)
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance
Ps. now, my goal is to try and learn as many things as possible now so that I can figure out what I really want to do, therefore, I am quite open to any field of work relating to investment.
If being on AF has taught me anything, it’s either go to a top 4 target school in US and network your butt off…or forget about it. Don’t take my word for it though.
24 is a bit on the young side for an MBA. The typicali student at Harvard has four years experience. I would finish up the work experience to earn the Charter, then consider an MBA (although your oppotyunity costs will be significantly higher at that point).
Not at all. If anything 24 is arguably on the old side to start thinking about applying to Harvard.
It’s too late now to be applying for a fall 2015 start, so by fall 2016 presumaby you’ll be 26, which is I believe the AVERAGE age of candidates accepted to Harvard’s MBA program.
To sum up, I should try for top school (i.e. Harvard, Stndford and Wharton). The fastest class that I will be able to apply is Fall 2016. At that time I will have around 2 and a half year experience in fianace industry.
By the way, any other advice or opinion is still welcome. Thanks in advance.
I have applied to all these programs, and all I can say is that if you are an international applicant working in financial services industry, odds are staked against you, specially if you are from a top college. Forst of all, you might think that you have a great going career in general, but adcoms might not have same opinion, because you might very well be an underachiever compared to your peers, that’s what they care about. For these three colleges, you are in race against your peers who went to McKinsey, BCG, Bain or BB Front Office IB & PE. Secondly, don’t compare yourself with American applicants, because as an international applicant, you are fighting for a place in 30-40% of seats while you are competing with the cream of the cream of rest of the world. In fact, the slot that you are fighting for is much lesser than 30-40%, because MBA from these colleges is in huge demand in ultra wealthy and powerful families (industrialists, CEOs, top ranking govt officials, etc etc) in developing countries, and MBA adcoms just love such backgrounds, many of these seats go to such aplicants.
So my advice is to be realistic, specially if you not a girl. The competition you are facing is much much more than what people here will tell you, AF is not a right place to be seeking valuable advice on B-School admissions for international applicant unless you want to live on a delusion that admission in these colleges is achiveable with a less than perfect history and everything else than these three colleges is useless. Search linkedin, do some research, and you will find out. Also, don’t rush into applying, life becomes difficult if you are dinged once, it’ll be harder to get in the next time, apply only when you think you are best prepared.
You can very well target other colleges, and other colleges too can very well put you in a great career track in finance. Top tier IB and PEs recruit from many schools outside these three. I have talked to many people who did MBA from colleges like Duke, UCLA, NYU, UT, even UNC, and they got what they dreamed of. Search in your network or go to linkedin, and just talk to people who have done MBA and now living the career that you want.
Most importantly, forget any advice you recieved from AF regarding MBA admissions and placements, and go to the right forums.
What you’re missing is that all “international applicants” aren’t lumped together.
Perhaps all Indian/Pakistani/etc applicants are lumped together and have to compete with each other.
However, I believe that a candidate from Thailand would have a much easier time being admitted, as they would not be lumped into the over-represented desi group, and rather would be seen as adding diversity to the class.
B-Schools DO look for diversity and I am not denying that, but that doesn’t make it easier for internationals. Let’ just take a logical approach rather then bunching random facts togather.
Internationals fight for a place in approx 35% (31% for wharton, 44% for Stanford, and 35% from Harvard) of seats at these schools. B-Schools do have a sort-of quota for a continent/subcontinent, so when you consider what quota they might be having for Asia, it is approx 14% taking Harvard as proxy. Diversity also means diversity of experience and gender. Approx 9% of class has Financial Services background, and males consists of only 60% of the class. So if you combine these, you realize that approx 0.8% of class consists of Asian dudes with Financial Services background. These three colleges have a total intake of roughly 2200 students each year, and that means, roughly 18 seats are availble for males working in financial services in whole asia, just 18 seats. Even if these colleges have a quota for thailand, you can fairly assume that it wouldn’t be more than 10% of the whole asian pool and that means OP needs to be in top 2-3 candidates in his country who have similiar background as his. On top of everything, add another bias towards people who are coming from affluent background or personally know alumni who can vouch for them. So, all I am saying is to be realistic.
If he would have been from Sierra Leone, he might have had much higher chance of being in top 2-3, but Thialand is not so bad. Financial Services in general attracts the most competitive people everywhere and I would assume that you’ll be able to easily find 10-15 people in Financial services industry in Thailand, who had done everything from their birth to their B-School application perfectly, which includes a steller GMAT score, graduation from top college, high grades, community involvement, extracurriculars, awards, promotions, and self written recommendations. So, OP needs to be truthful to himself first if he is applying to these schools, does he believe that he has a Resume which is really the best of best one among his peers? If yes, then he should confidently go for it, if no, then he should be truthful to that fact that he needs to do something really impressive to stand out and beat everyone else or it would be just a waste of effort and money. I am not saying it’s impossible, but it’s extremely difficult, and being realistic and thinking about what to do might be a better course of action than being delusional and wasting time and effort.
It’s a MYTH that being an international applicant can, in any way, make it easier to get admitted to these programs. A similiar applicant from US would be fighting for a place in 80-100 seats. There’s some room in 80-100 seats to add condiments to transform an otherwise not so perfect Resume to a unique story, but when it comes to being in top 2-3, it’s hard to overshadow perfection in quantitative factors.
There’s just one advice I would like to give to OP: it’s a life changing decision, so do proper research, and evaluate all the options you have. Target top 20, not just top 3. I don’t think there is anyone here who has done MBA from top 20 B-school, who can give you the right perspective. Seek advice from people who have done it, and to do that you will have to come out of your comfort zone and contact people you don’t know and get them to give you valuable advice. You will feel awkard and uncomfortable at first but after some time when you’ll get the hang of it, it’ll become very easy. H/S/W are not the end of the world for a great career in banking, and whoever tells you the opposite has very limited idea about what he is talking about.
Are you kidding? There are Hundreds of folks on AnalystForum that have MBAs from Chicago, Northwestern, MIT, Columbia, Duke, Berkeley, Cornell, Michigan, NYU, etc.
INSEAD is a great school but whatever be the reported rankings, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would ditch US top 10 or top 15 admit for INSEAD. If you want to compare the profiles of student, I think a better comparision set for INSEAD would be 10th-20th ranked B-school in US. It’s not that difficult to get into, partly because people just prefer US. I have not really met anyone for whom it’s anything more than a backup school. I even know people who ditched INSEAD for ISB and IIM, but that’s partly beacuse of economic conditions in Europe. Although not easy, but INSEAD is realistic and achieveable goal if you put in some effort to polish your Resume even if you don’t have great work experience or a degree from a top college. I know many people who were selected at INSEAD, even if they had “average” resumes as compared to their peers. It certainly prefers people with international experience, and it does have a preference for candidates coming from rich and well connected families, but I’ll leave it to you to do further research. But, whatever you do, never take advice regarding B-School admissions from a female, because she won’t be able to give your right perspective, and when I say that, I am not being sexist. Females, irrespective of race and geography, are a minority, and their selection criteria is much different.
There might be, but I think there aren’t, atleast in this thread. I used to be a regular at AF quite sometime back, and that time I did see a few, just a few, people from top B-Schools, but times may have changed and I may be wrong in my opinion because I haven’t yet witnessed that change here yet or they might not be hanging around these sections. Although, if there are many, I urge them to come here and give some valuable advice to OP here, and I’ll be glad to be proved wrong in my opinion. All I want is that OP (or anyone) should not be thrown into delusion about the career choice as important as this. Unqualified and random free advice can be, although unintentionally, detrimental to someone career or life, and that’s what we need to consider if we want to have this community serve the real purpose of helping each other in improving our lives. Giving advice is a great thing that gives the puropse to any community, but when the advice is for a life changing decision, the advice should come with a disclaimer that it’s an opinion or observation rather than experience.
I think you should rather be contacting people and taking to them one on one, and it’s very simple: find them, and contact them.
Initially I thought that she couldn’t be serious, but I am visiting AF after some 2-3 years, so I thought, maybe, things might have changed, who knows :P.
