Assessing Your Odds Of Getting In

Ms. Asset Management

• 700+ GMAT (expected)
• 3.57 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in financial mathematics and economics from a small private liberal arts school
• Work Experience totals three years in investment management, including a two-year rotational investment program for a blue chip asset management company (PIMCO, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Vanguard) after a year plus as an investment analyst
• Extracurricular involvement in NCAA Division II Varsity Track and Field all four years (team captain in senior year), played the violin for the university’s symphony, vice president of student investment fund. Currently mentor at-risk girls at a local middle school.
• Goal: To become a portfolio manager, specializing in institutional investment solutions, portfolio strategy and asset allocation
• “Looking into a part-time, two-year Masters in Applied Mathematics program to strengthen the quantitative skill set since there are not a lot of women that understand this side of finance. Would this help give my candidacy a boost, especially if I’ll be 27 when applying?”
• 25-year-old white female

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 35% to 40+%

Columbia: 40% to 50%

New York: 50+%

Chicago: 30% to 40+%

MIT: 30%

Berkeley: 40% to 50%

Duke: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Dunno, getting that applied math degree seems like a waste of time and money, you can take specialized courses like that after you get a full-time job and also take the most interesting applied math courses in some form as electives in business school your second year. If you went a place like MIT, you could pretty much turn the whole MBA experience into a quasi-applied math curriculum with a focus on exactly what you want to do.

More to the point, having an applied math degree won’t up your chances of admission to most of those programs because, well, it won’t. You already have taken more math as an undergraduate than most kids will take all their lives, and you have totally solid experience in doing exactly what you want to do—unless you want to join some rocket-science hedge fund, which you don’t.  To wit, your claim, that post MBA you want to “become a portfolio manager, specializing in institutional investment solutions, portfolio strategy and asset allocation.” Which is quanty, but not uber-quanty, although someone write in and correct me if I am wrong.

What you need is a solid GMAT score, 700+, and real solid on the Q side. If you get that, you should be solid at most places you mention.  Wharton and MIT take folks like you all the time, and so does HBS, where your NCAA Division II Varsity Track (team captain), violin for the university’s symphony, and mentoring at-risk girls at a local middle school always register.

You got a solid shot at HBS. Put it on your list. I don’t know why you are being so pessimistic and thinking you need another degree to dress up this solid work experience and 3.57 GPA (which is sorta average at top schools and you got a lot of extras). Just get a solid GMAT with an 85%+ on the Quant and you could be a real contender.