preMBA dilemma

Hi, CDers

Nice to meet you all on this message board to which the same career aspiration has brought us together and it is a privilege to join this information platform and share with these ambitious spirits. Since I am pretty new to here, thought I should introduce myself a little bit first.

I have been holding the strong propensity for top business school for a long time since I never officially hold a business degree from a top school. I am currently doing my MS degree in one of US Big Tens (but China undergraduate) and finishing up this May. I have no “official” full time w/e, just a few full time internship and one of them in bulge bracket IBD and another one in local Venture Capital. My career aspiration so far is still on Banking or Management Consulting, unfortunately, there is currently no outstanding opportunity for me on either side.

I am very eager to leverage on these top business schools to get myself out of this awkward situation and extend my career plan since IB and MC firms both rely so much on campus recruiting. Big Tens are apparently not their target schools.

Right now I am facing the dilemma of fulfilling my w/e which is one of the most important drivers of getting into MBA. There are some opportunities in US Fortune 500s, but none of them are even close to consulting, not to mention banking. One is ok, business analyst serves for internal consulting function. Others are some quantitative positions such as marketing analyst or statistical analysis which are really lukewarm and cold-faced from my own career perspective. Also some opportunities back in China, one is a boutique investment consulting firm, serving as the corporate finance advisory connection between midsized firms seeking for external financing and PE or other capital resources. Another one is the big four renowned IT consulting firm, but the position is on strategy and management consulting. The third one is one of the state-owned commercial banks, function still unknown and under negotiation, might be placed in HK though.

Personally, I prefer those positions in China especially the investment consulting and corporate finance advisory one since they are close to my career planning further down the road and I could possibly leverage those w/e  on my MBA application and most importantly, post-MBA job hunting. But the compensation is kind of mediocre even being converted to $ one for one.

My questions are

1. US or China? Which w/e would be weighted more favorable by MBA admission committee? The compensation issue is not on top of my concerns, if that is the case, The China ones would have been immediately turned off.

2. Within US and China, which opportunity I should rank highest?

3. How important is the w/e to MBA application and post-MBA job hunting especially on IB and MC? Is it possible of getting in top MBA with less than 2 year w/e?

I would try contributing to this board to my best knowledge especially I have done some thinking on Banking/MC. Bearing the slogan of CD in mind, chase your dream and grab it eventually!

question 1 and 2 are the same

question 3 is simple to answer: yes! It's possible to get in top MBA with less than 2 year w/e,there always happen in the recruitment in most famous B-schools every year.and I have even heared a guy who only 20 years old who got addmission from wharton without any w/e.But his backgroud which maybe include education , natural influence , characteristic ,and leadship or something else like that should be very strong for sure which can impress the school deeply in advance.So the chance is there, if you think you are strong enough please go for it.If don't, you need something to complement your application that we called w/e.And I think that's why you wan to ask the question 1 and 2.From the some quetion with two different ,we can find that you know the key card to your MBA dream definitely.

question 1 and 2 is the same whose solution is depending on you.Your choice is between "One is ok, business analyst serves for internal consulting function"and"one is a boutique investment consulting firm, serving as the corporate finance advisory connection between midsized firms seeking for external financing and PE or other capital resources.".I think this problem can not be take into consideration in very simple way.Combination with  all the aspects such as payment ,location , nationality ,jod description ,family elements ,appropriateness of adaption to your own life plan and career plan is a wise chioce.But remember that MBA is not all the content in your life.So from personal suggestion ,you should make that decesion with comprehensive consideration.If I were you I will choose US.It will do good to your application in US which means there is no need for you to compete with the apllication from China which is high competitive and low erollment rate in these years unless your background is strong enough.In addition,in us opportuntis are much more than that in china.Maybe you have green card,maybe you have your wife in US,maybe family,maybe girl friend......too many risks

No matter what choice you make ,please remember do not give up or loss confidence. You are lucky than thousands of people in this world .What you should do is to ultilize it thoroughly in your job and application in next few years.

Hope the balderdash above will do your help......

以下是引用gonghao在2006-3-21 13:24:00的发言：

question 1 and 2 are the same

question 3 is simple to answer: yes! It's possible to get in top MBA with less than 2 year w/e,there always happen in the recruitment in most famous B-schools every year.and I have even heared a guy who only 20 years old who got addmission from wharton without any w/e.But his backgroud which maybe include education , natural influence , characteristic ,and leadship or something else like that should be very strong for sure which can impress the school deeply in advance.So the chance is there, if you think you are strong enough please go for it.If don't, you need something to complement your application that we called w/e.And I think that's why you wan to ask the question 1 and 2.From the some quetion with two different ,we can find that you know the key card to your MBA dream definitely.

question 1 and 2 is the same whose solution is depending on you.Your choice is between "One is ok, business analyst serves for internal consulting function"and"one is a boutique investment consulting firm, serving as the corporate finance advisory connection between midsized firms seeking for external financing and PE or other capital resources.".I think this problem can not be take into consideration in very simple way.Combination with  all the aspects such as payment ,location , nationality ,jod description ,family elements ,appropriateness of adaption to your own life plan and career plan is a wise chioce.But remember that MBA is not all the content in your life.So from personal suggestion ,you should make that decesion with comprehensive consideration.If I were you I will choose US.It will do good to your application in US which means there is no need for you to compete with the apllication from China which is high competitive and low erollment rate in these years unless your background is strong enough.In addition,in us opportuntis are much more than that in china.Maybe you have green card,maybe you have your wife in US,maybe family,maybe girl friend......too many risks

No matter what choice you make ,please remember do not give up or loss confidence. You are lucky than thousands of people in this world .What you should do is to ultilize it thoroughly in your job and application in next few years.

Hope the balderdash above will do your help......

Thank you very much for the input! That's certainly not the balderdash you were humble about. I guess I should revise my second question a little bit, certainly, there are always some outliers out there. I know a VP I once worked with, a white male, only 25, got his under and MBA from Wharton in 5 years, sort of 4+1 and squeezed into one bulge bracket IBD as associate. This never happen before and probably won’t happen again even for white males. As an Asian, who is highly discriminated in Wall Street IBD, that kind of career path would be the wildest part of a daydream.

I mean, statistically, how many short-term w/e candidates would be even considered by committee? What are other possible aspects I should work on to go around the shortage?

Fortunately, for question 1, the scenario has been made pretty straightforward by me. I will NOT consider any of the elements and “risk” you mentioned except my interests on the job functionality and industry in nature and of course, the leveragability of w/e on MBA application and job hunting afterwards. Believe it or not, the career aspiration is pretty much my whole life now even it once perplexed me a lot and caused series of misfortunes, but I can still manage to give up many aspects of life for that career goal except healthiness and integrity. Would that make my case simply?

From your description, it looks like there are some sort of quota on admission of US and China applicants. I believe the statistics here won’t strike too much a bell considered the much larger applicants pool from China. My weakest link on my application package would be the w/e, except that, I am pretty comfortable presenting myself in either US or China. The key issue is, I can’t get into what I want in the foreseeable future even I have figured that out long time ago. MBA seems the only way out for my current situation and I don’t want to waste too much time before that.

Thanks again.