bonethugnhominy wrote:
Thanks, Osborne! I'm definitely excited about the possibilities @ Booth, but I'm still not 100% which area of finance I am going to pursue.
Is PE a total pipedream with no IB/PE experience and sub-750 GMAT score? Would my CFA charter be of any use?
Between IBD and Sec Div, I'm leaning towards trading, but still am not totally sure. The reason for this is that I've never been on the IBD side, and thus have no real point of comparison.
Not being an expert at this, I think that the chances of going into PE directly are slim. I know a guy who did it relatively quickly, but his deal was this: pre-MBA, he was an entrepreneur (well-connected). Then he went to Chicago/CBS/Kellogg, and did one year of bulge-bracket investment banking. He then leveraged his contact list (not American, he went back to his region of origin) to get into a PE firm after only one year of banking.
I suppose that if your pre-MBA experience is suitable, and you already have connections, then you may, if you're good enough at the networking, manage to find a position with a summer internship in IBD, or only a year or two of IBD full-time. A guy I know who runs a PE fund told me to "get in touch" once I figure out what I want to do next, so I suppose he values my current skill-set, though I don't know if me-current-plus-MBA is enough for him to want to hire me.
Does that give you (sample size of one!) at least something to go by?