Mr. Management Consultant & Sports Author

My favorite part of your profile is under your Big Life Wins. You “managed” to publish a business strategy research paper as an engineer and won an award! That means you have the strategy chops in addition to your technical skills. Your GMAT score is below the average for Kellogg but not completely out of the question. GPA is a concern, and might be helped by a higher GMAT or GRE score. Your sports blog experience is intriguing and could set you apart from other applicants. PE could be a big jump for you, but your background, combined with an MBA experience at the right school, could lead you in other career directions. Let us know if you would like to discuss different possibilities on your road to MBA school.

Your impressive work experience renders you imminently employable in a broad range of industries immediately post-MBA, but PE will not likely be an option immediately after MBA and the AdCom will know this. Your strategic positioning (i.e., what you want to do post-MBA in the immediate, mid-term and long-term and how your prior experience + MBA qualifies you to achieve your goals) is one of the most important parts of your application and, given your competitive demographic, you’ll have to nail strategic positioning in order to gain acceptance.
One of the missteps that could sink an otherwise very competitive application like yours is espousing a professional goal that is unlikely to be achievable, because the AdCom wants to be assured that you will land a great job in a field you will be thrilled to enter and will do well there. AdComs want to admit people who WILL GET JOBS – good jobs – immediately post-MBA that will bump their average compensation and employment 3 months after graduation numbers, as these are two metrics that weigh heavily from a rankings perspective. Improving rankings from agencies like US News and World report, the Economist, Forbes, etc. is an incredibly important goal for AdComs. PE recruiters in MBA programs are vanishingly few. Those who do land buy-side jobs immediately post-MBA usually have buy-side experience PRIOR to MBA OR they have bulge-bracket IB M&A experience (usually both of these).
Do I think you could thrive in PE? Absolutely, but probably not immediately post-MBA. You are absolutely smart enough and accomplished enough to succeed on the buy-side post-MBA, but you will probably not get this job as you don’t’t (yet) have the finance chops PE recruiters seek. Therefore, it would be more prudent to espouse an IB M&A Associate role immediately post-MBA and for your summer internship with the intention of moving to PE as a medium-term goal. You are imminently qualified for IB and there are MANY MORE of these IB Associate roles to be had than PE roles for newly-minted MBAs. Alternatively, if your boutique sponsors, a temporary return to consulting life post-MBA would make for a water-tight (and likely debt-free!) career arc. Nobody has prestigious employment more locked-down than a sponsored consultant. Keep in mind that your strategic positioning *needs to optimize your chance of getting accepted.* Nobody is going to hold you to the vision you espouse in your application. You could espouse an interest in IB and recruit successfully for PE once you get to school. You could espouse a desire to return to your consulting firm which is sponsoring your MBA, only to defect (and repay your employer’s tuition, obviously) to found a start-up (this often happens with sponsored candidates while in MBA, actually!).
You have some interesting and differentiating ECs with the sports obsession, but your candidacy would be better served if you can find a way to weave these outside-of-work interests into your future career arc or contributions to student life. For instance, might you seek to recruit for an IB analyst position in the media, entertainment and telecom space? Do you target schools that have club sports that you could contribute to or lead? Could you cover undergraduate athletics for the student paper, utilizing your sportswriting prowess? These will enable you to position your long-standing passions as value-adds to the community and your professional potential, rather than mere solitary hobbyist pursuits.