MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 2457
Given Kudos: 2
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Re: Profile Evaluation
[#permalink]
17 Aug 2009, 22:40
To be blunt, your chances at the schools you listed are basically nil with that GMAT score. You realistically need at least a 680 to stay afloat (what saves you is your high GPA). Do whatever you can to boost that GMAT on the retake.
Other top schools with a strong alumni base in finance are Yale, Cornell, NYU.
Also, the three career paths you mentioned (porfolio mgmt, private equity, venture capital) require not only completely different skill sets, but attract completely different kinds of personalities. The only thing these paths have in common is that there is the potential to make a lot of money.
Portfolio mgmt attracts those who love following the financial markets, picking stocks, and so forth. Their work is primarily in publicly traded securities as passive investors - which is why they attract those who love financial markets moreso than the nitty gritty operations within a company. It's a "finance geek" job, so to speak - those who love to run numbers. People who love to trade, buy and sell, etc.
Private equity is deal driven. It attracts people who are deal junkies - who love putting together deals. They sit on boards, and take an active approach to managing their portfolio companies. If you've got a short attention span, then this job isn't for you - because you (or your underlings if you're the partner) will probably evaluate 20 or 30 potential deals in a year, and maybe do 1-2 deals a year (and sometimes zero). And once you do the deal, you take an active role on the board and hope to sell the company 5-10 years down the road (usually M&A, not an IPO or follow on offering). This is a job built on patience, and really understanding how to work with C-level executives at the Board level - dealing with politics, mgmt recruiting, and so forth. It's not really a "finance" job -- the only "finance" is structuring the deal itself - the rest is more mgmt oriented and FUNDRAISING (going hat in hand to your LPs and asking for money -- and having to answer to the LPs). As a result, it's a job built for those who are connected and enjoy a career that is built on relationships.
Venture capital is even less "finance" than the other two. It has nothing to do with picking stocks, financial markets, or finance. You're investing in startup companies - where their financials are so simple even a high school kid can understand it (and if a 10-person startup has a complicated balance sheet with deferred pension/tax liabilities, a complicated depreciation schedule for its hard assets, etc. - there's something wrong). Since VC invests primarily in software/hardware technology startups or biotech firms (in fact, 95%+ are in either of these categories, and once in a while they may invest in some "startup" clothing line or a microbrewery - but probably for the free beer) -- these companies literally consist of 5-20 guys/gals in an office with computers/phones (i.e. all of which is leased). Their financials aren't complicated, and the VCs sell out long before they get super complicated (even a 300-1,000 person software company isn't that complicated financially - their balance sheet consists of cash, invoices to customers, bills they owe to vendors, and maybe some computers or servers they actually bought - it's hardly GE, AT&T, or some big industrial company). As such, VC is about recruiting execs to these startups, sitting on the board, and understanding the overall technology trends and what business models work (i.e. it's not about finance, it's about understanding the *business* of technology). That's why a lot of the *successful* VCs tend to have been ex-entrepreneurs and ex-execs at large tech firms or those who have been in VC since the early 1990s or earlier. And yes, many of them happen to have technical or engineering educational backgrounds.