pguard wrote:
Now that my app season is over, I'll revive this thread with my $0.02...
+5 kudos to pguard. Great post.
I agree with pguard that the value of the CFA designation will be realized in the recruiting season. Everyone and their mom going for IM will have “CFA Level I Candidate” listed on their resume. It’s easy to do; spend the $900 to register with the CFA Institute and sit for the June or December exam. For those interested in IM, you probably need to bite the bullet and do this, because everyone else trying to break into the field will have this on their resume and it will act as a brief talking point in the interview as well. The great thing about having earned the designation is having it in big@ss letters next to your name on your resume. For example:
ryguy904, CFASo when your resume is getting screened (let’s be honest-this is a 30 second process), recruiters will pay attention to this and respect you, no doubt. At the end of the day, it’s another network and another community that one becomes a member of. Whether one loves or loathes the CFA Charter, is irrelevant, there is a sense of immediate respect when a Charterholder crosses the path of another Charterholder. Most likely someone interviewing you for your internship or full-time job has the CFA or is at some stage of completing the program. What happens after that (i.e., how you do in an interview, present yourself, do your stock pitch, etc) will make or break you, but having the designation is a huge head start. My suspicion is this will be a big boost to getting on closed lists (or in the door for self-directed recruiting) for investment management opportunities. I'd also suspect that the reason that not as many people know whether or not it's an advantage for MBA recruiting, is because not many people have the Charter. (11,000 charterholders in NY, 4,500 in Boston, 3,400 in Chicago, and 2,800 in San Francisco, and in total about 100,000 across the globe---folks that
IS NOT a lot of people. For instance, there are ~350,000 CPA's in the United State alone).
In terms of the value it has during an admissions interview, it totally depends on who you interview with. When I interview with a Columbia alum who works in PE, he acknowledged it (without me saying anything), said it aligns well with my goals, and we moved on. That’s really the best you can hope for. For those in the know (like my CBS interviewer), there really wasn’t a reason to dwell on the CFA any further. And frankly, I’d rather dedicate my 30-45 minutes of interview time dedicated to my personal life, what I like to do for fun, or my interesting work experience, rather than how I studied by myself, did practice exams, and made flashcards for three six-hour exams over a three year period.
My Duke interviewer was a second year student and didn’t know what the designation was. This is inexcusable, in my opinion, but it’s not the end of the world. Moreover, there really isn’t anything that I could have done about this. Sure he said, “Is it like the CPA” and I wanted to sock him the face,
but in the end, it’s an uphill, losing battle trying to explain it. It’s also not really worth the time trying to extract value out of explaining the charter (or various levels one has completed). The person will just end up with some fuzzy image of some test that you took and wonder why you would even bother bringing this up in an interview.
In the end, if the interviewer (alum, adcom, etc.) knows what the CFA is, GREAT. If not, I think in hindsight, I would choose NOT to bring it up in an interview. I’d rather spend the three minutes discussing something else…
I also concur with pguard in that, generally speaking, it’s not really worth dedicating much wordcount in an essay. With the exception of my Darden app, the ONLY mention that I made went something like this:
“I will utilize my Corporate Finance experience and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation, along with the skills that I will gain from <insert school here>, to develop valuable investment strategies.”
(
I'll accept nominal royality fees of $75 per person who uses this line or any derivation of it in an essay. )
The Darden “Why MBA” essay question was a little different in that it asked for
pivotal decisions that I have made that led me to decide to pursue an MBA. Earning the designation was certainly one of them. However, I ended up only using three sentences (73 words out of 499 in the essay) to discuss the relevance of the CFA in my desire to earn an MBA.
On my essays last year, I put much more emphasis on the CFA designation. I called it out more in my essays, including the Chicago PowerPoint presentation. In the end, I think this was one (of several) mistake that I made as an unsuccessful applicant. Although I’m not going to go through an entire “how to write successful essays” spiel right now, I think that it is critical to be targeted in your essays. Think about it for a second…what was I demonstrating by discussing the CFA at length? That I could pass rigorous exams? That I can study on my own? That I have a solid understanding of finance fundamentals and the investment management process? Yeah, sure, I suppose. But in the scheme of things, I’m not really differentiating myself from hundreds of other applicants (that could all answer yes to one or more of these questions). I’m not telling adcom who I am as a person or selling them on why they need to accept me. When I strategized this year, I was very tactical in the stories that I told. Each sentence of every essay that I wrote needed to add value to my candidacy and the meaning of my story. I spent more time talking about my work experience (which in all honesty, is by far my biggest selling point).
Although I’m certainly proud of my accomplishment of earning the CFA Charter, it comes down to understanding the application process and the audience.
-ryguy