Mr. Brolic Bro

Hi Mr. Brolic Bro,
This is Debbie Choy, Senior Consultant at mbaMission. In my 8 years of working with clients, I do not see many candidates from the Sports Management field. This is a great point of differentiation for you. The caveat is of course that you need to explain to the Admissions Committee (AdCom) why you’d like to pivot into banking. It helps that you majored in Finance in undergrad and had worked at an insurance company before. Be sure to tie in these experiences to build a case for how you can pivot successfully into banking. Also, if you have talked to any contacts in banking, or identified specific firms you’d like to work at, it would be helpful to mention these in your application. Showing AdCom that you’ve done some legwork to research and network will help alleviate any potential concerns they might have about your ability to make the pivot. Additionally, consider retaking the GRE to boost your score, which is a little below the average at Stern. My estimate of your chances are based on your current stats, but if you’re able to get your GRE up, I think your odds would improve. Wishing you the best in your application journey.

Hi, it’s Jennifer Jackson from Stratus Admissions. It’s not often that I see applicants who are football coaches! How interesting and different. I think that combined with your finance degree as well as being from an under-represented demographic will all be helpful to you. Your challenge will be to explain why you need the MBA to reach your goals, so be crystal clear what you want to do in the short- and long-term. I recommend being specific about the type of firm and name a couple to give adcom an idea of size/global scope etc. Perhaps not the top of the top also. Some firms will want to see GMATs instead of GREs so if you stick with the GRE don’t name one of those firms. Your major in finance will help you tell the story about wanting to return to your interest in that area after a sojourn in sports management. It might be intriguing to talk about wanting a finance role in a sports organization rather than a bank too. Stern is not crazed about scores so I think you can be competitive there but it would be better to try to raise it a bit. Stern loves quirky candidates so your different background may be a perfect fit!