MBA Direction & Advice

Good day everyone. I used to come to this website a lot as an undergraduate mostly because I wanted to transfer and secondly because I was interested in med school. This community brought me some great advice and I ended up transferring into my target university after one year (and scrapped the idea of med school). I’m hoping that I can get the same input from you guys.

Fast forward to today and my situation. I ended up graduating from university with an A.B. in economics in 2015 and have since been working at a boutique investment bank (won’t disclose but we’ve been on insanely large deals). I’m currently a 2nd year with 6 more months until I have to decide to stay for my 3rd year (and MAYBE get promoted) or move on to other opportunities.

I’m trying to decide whether this is an ideal time for me to apply to business school or if I should just go ahead and start recruiting elsewhere. My rational being if I do decide to stay on as a third-year at my current job, there’s a chance I may not get a promotion and I default have to go to business school to stay in industry (not likely to promote a 3rd analyst to associate as they’ll question why not promoted from within). The likely scenario is that I do get promoted but then I have to always worry about promotions due to degree hierarchy and whatnot. If I decide to attend b school now I can get a 2 year break and clear my head.

So, from an objective point of view what do you guys think of my profile?

Cumulative GPA: 3.4
Target School GPA: 3.1

  • I was a transfer student and I admit my gpa took a dive. I joined a frat (lol) and got really involved in the community. I know in med school and whatnot they look at cumulative GPA but they do put a weight on your last attended school. Target school has prestige factor so I’d like to attend a similar business school. How do you think the GPA fluctuation will affect me?

GMAT: haven’t taken as of yet but i’m thinking at least a 760-769. I’m hoping to break 770 but I’m just not sure about the time I’ll have to allot to it unless I start soon.

Work Experience: 1.5 years, 2 when I finish up. I’ll spend the gap year traveling as I didn’t get to do that like I wanted right out of undergrad. I like the competitive atmosphere of banking, but it drains you of your youth so this is a huge incentive for me.

On the other hand, I don’t have much work experience in years. I can definitely attest to seeing some crazy things in business as I’ve got to work hands-on with most of my MDs being such a lean firm. I’ve had to make a lot of decisions because my boss turned his phone off at 3am and the presentation had to go out (luckily everything went ok, this could have cost me my job) go out by 5am PST.

So, any objective advice is appreciated. Sorry for the long post - currently sitting here waiting on some more work to come in and am fantasizing about beaches and palm trees.

thx