Handicapping Your MBA Odds: Mr. Second MBA, Ms. Woman In Tech, Mr. PE, Mr. Investment Analyst

Mr. Investment Analyst Bound For Hedging

 

• 760 GMAT (Q 50/V 44/AWA 6/IR 8)
• 3.6 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in finance from a large state school
• Work experience includes two years at a bulge bracket bank as a back office financial analyst and two years (current) at a boutique fund as an investment analyst
• Extracurricular involvement as a volunteer for Big Brothers, Big Sisters and a local church, a tutor for people taking the U.S. citizenship exam, and a mentor for alumni
• Goal: To transition to fund management for a hedge fund or mutual fund
• 25-year-old Asian American male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20% to 30%

Wharton: 30% to 40%

Columbia (early decision): 50%+

NYU: 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: CBS Early Decision will go for this story, and especially the 760 (they like 760s no matter what the race or national origin of the test taker is!). And you seem just their finance type.

Ditto for NYU Stern, although you may have to give them added security that you are not just using them for safety, which you are. I would hold off applying there until you hear back from Columbia.

Wharton takes guys like you depending on execution and not flunking the group grope interview.

HBS is a maybe, depending on luck, solid execution, etc. They get lots of applications from guys like you, many with better pedigrees and similar stats (although a 760 GMAT is sorta rare, to HBS 730-740 ain’t much different than 760– that is NOT true at Wharton, MIT, Columbia. That’s my informed guess, although I cannot cite peer reviewed articles and double blind experiments and data sets to prove it. Also HBS might appreciate the “work your way out of the back room story.”

Getting into Columbia ED and then going to Wharton or HBS down the road is an expensive proposition, about $6,000 I think (the amount you need to deposit at Columbia to RSVP the early decision).

Good luck and hire me for your HBS mock interview, if it comes to that!