Hello
Stacy Blackman,
I wanted to thank you for taking the time to review my profile. I will be applying for a full time MBA program for August of 2013.
I would like to go to graduate school for Investment Management and Corporate Finance, with the idea of being either a Financial Analyst or to manage money in the stock market (and both would work well with each other.)
I have the following in mind:
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Cal-Berkeley
MIT (Kind of don't think this one will happen though)
University of Washington.
For starters, here are my stats:
Statistics: 25 White Male
GPA: 3.43 GPA from the University of San Francisco with a double major in Accounting and Finance, while being selected for their Honors Cohort Program. The program has a higher emphasis on case studies, teamwork, and leadership, and the teacher's based their program on their own MBA curriculum. We were held to the standards of Master students while being Undergraduates.
GMAT: 660. Took it for the first time today and may take it again, however I currently live in Montana and it is a 2 1/2 hour drive one way to get to the testing facility, which is a huge deterrent for me.
Work Experience: 3 years as a Financial Representative with John Hancock. I worked in John Hancock's top advisor's private firm, and learned from him directly. While I was at the firm, I specialized my practice in working with Domestic Partners and same sex couples to help them mitigate the inequalities with marriage laws in the United States. I gave several presentations on the topic around the Bay Area, and received very positive feedback from my work. One person informed me that my presentation motivated him to speak to his Congress representative about the issue. I also worked very well with businesses and professional entities.
Extra Curricular: While in school I founded and led the Undergraduate Business Council, which consisted of undergraduate representatives from each class and major to meet once a month and discuss ways in which we thought the school of business could improve. We would share those ideas with the Dean and director of the undergraduate program. I was awarded the Dean's service award for my work.
Also, I worked at several prestigious institutions while an undergraduate. One of them was SNP Communications, a communications consulting firm in the Bay Area that was hired by Fortune 500 companies to teach their executive professional public speaking and communication skills. This gave me the ability to give the presentations that I discussed above.
Currently, I am the Financial Manager and serve on the Board of Directors for AIDS Outreach in Montana. Our goal is to educate the Montana community to reduce further infections from HIV. We also strive to create and maintain a positive and safe community for young gay men in the Bozeman area to congregate and feel safe while joining the community. This currently does not happen as the community does not feel safe meeting under the pretense of being gay. We are working to change that.
Letters of Rec: I have two letters of Recommendation for my school choices. One is from my former boss for him to discuss my ability with financial products as well as my success at the firm. The other is from one of my top clients (whom I did his personal planning as well as his business), a founder and partner of his Law Firm who does Corporate law for clients such as Oracle and Apple.
Any advice you guys have for me would be much appreciated.
Thank you for the help.