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Sakky, I love ya man, but you're dodging the point here. I readily concede that networking is important to getting PE jobs; I readily concede that top PE firms are reluctant to hire MBAs (or anyone) without prior experience in the field.</p>
<p>All i'm trying to get you to believe is this: the next time someone asks whether a few years' experience is enough for getting top value out of an MBA, or whether they should wait longer, the answer should be "go as soon as you can get admitted to a top program", because there's no evidence of post-MBA compensation varying by pre-MBA experience quantity (though quality, certainly).</p>
<p>Here is the percentage of top MBAs who go into the PE world (VC or LBO), where previous experience and extensive networking is de rigeur:</p>
<p>HBS: 15%
Wharton: 8%
Stanford: 15%
Sloan: 6%
Kellogg: 5%
Columbia: 6%
Chicago: 6%
Tuck: 6%</p>
<p>For the 85-95% of MBA candidates who will not be accepting a job in those sectors of the financial industry, the salary data (from HBS and the Kellogg stats from calicartel) is a very good guide: basically, the quantity of experience doesn't matter.</p>
<p>If you're willing to concede that, then I'm willing to concede that for MBAs entering the PE world, quantity of experience is very likely to matter greatly in the bonuses shortly post-MBA. Fair?
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<p>No, I'm afraid I'm still not willing to agree with you completely, for like I said, salary is an unusually poor way to prove this hypothesis (in order words, its predictive power is extremely weak). Like I said, most manufacturing jobs have higher salaries than do investment banking jobs, but that hardly means that Ibanking actually pays better than manufacturing once all compensation is calculated. In fact, it's not even a close call. </p>
<p>Having said that, I do (and always have) agreed with you partially, in that even those with limited experience are still likely to benefit from a top MBA program as opposed to just staying in the workforce, if, for no other reason, most pre-MBA jobs are mediocre and hence simply don't teach you very much. Hence, that reason alone is good enough to attend an MBA program rather than trying to garner more (possibly useless) experience.</p>