40 years ago a relatively small part of the population went on to study after high school, now it is the norm. Because having an undergrad is the norm, firms are having to get pickier on how they select their candidates. They do this by raising the minimum GPA, establishing dedicated recruitment campus, and starting to hire more Masters students for Analyst positions. In another 40 years you might need a Ph.D. to grab those elusive top paying jobs. Here is a road map on how to make the Masters choice today.
Motivation
If you are considering more education after graduating your business degree you need to settle on your motivation. Do you want to get a MSc to break into a top firm? Or do you want to work towards a Ph.D. and teach someday. Each path needs a masters, however each path needs a much different education, and its time to choose which path is right for you.
The GMAT
This was the achilles heal of my applications, I did not prep enough. If you are serious in pushing into a top b-school you need a GMAT score in the 700's with a balanced quant/verbal split. For most of us in North America, we have done the better part of the last 10 years with a calculator in our hands - the GMAT is all by hand. If you've been reading business publications like the economist then you've already prepped for the verbal, but if not, verbal scores are the slowest to improve. Buy a book, take a prep course, allocate 100 hours, do what you need to become 90th+ percentile.
The Search
When you have your GMAT and can ballpark your GPA you can start setting your sights on schools. Generally if you are anywhere in the median 80% you have a real shot at making it in. Use b-school ranking lists, and understand how they are calculated. Most ranking lists incorporate incoming GMAT scores, exit salary, and % students placed 90 days after graduation, but each has their own take.
If you are focusing on getting hired, it's these ranking lists you need to look at, along with asking / looking at who recruits on campus. If you know your dream job, may as well go to the school that they recruit from. If your looking for research heavy programs for a Ph.D. you'll need to follow an entirely different screening method that I don't know anything about.
Quantity or Quality
I chose to focus on only three schools and spend a lot of time tailoring each essay to exactly what the school was looking for. Some choose to do the scatter-shot approach which makes sense statistically but remember you need tailored on-line recommendation letters for all these schools. Make sure to apply to at least one school that is out of your league. When you get into all of your schools, the "what if" thought often nags at you a bit. Of course also have a backup school for the worst case scenario. I strongly recommend applying in the first round because that is where most of the scholarship money is handed out, and it works best with the "eager for success" story you're going to need to tell.
Your Brand
The nice thing about business schools is that they are businesses. When you graduate you are their product, and when you are applying you are their supply. Everything you need to know about how to tell your story to get in, you can get by thinking about what they want from you when you get out. Namely, they want you to get a great job that has a really high pay so that you can boost their rankings, give lots of money back to the school when you make it big, and help following graduates land at the same firm. So in the essay's interview ect, focus a lot on how the education at this school is going to allow you to achieve your dreams. Focus on the particulars of that school, what about it specifically will give you wings ect. Also talk a lot about what you can contribute to the class, b-school is all about team so you can't be to "me me me" when talking about your candidacy. You are already a business student so your landing potential is high, it's just communicating it all and showing the admissions team you're [school name] material.
Interview Prep
Besides the advice above I would practice the common questions a lot with willing profs and friends, especially if your not a great public speaker. A lot of applicants will publish the questions they received on-line, grab what you can, but know all the general ones too. The behavioral questions need to answered genuinely, talk with friends and family to flesh out your real strengths and weaknesses and think about your 'story' around them.
The cut above
Just like dating a real 'catch', getting into b-school is all about going the extra mile. By the time I had my offer I was engaged in about 8 different email conversations with different people in admissions and in the school, asking about different facets of the program and the post graduation opportunities. Don't be annoying, be eager. When the admissions team sits down and opens your file you want positive mind share with as many people as possible before they start going over the quant aspects of the application. I strongly believe that if you can get one person to fight for you, you're in, even if your GMAT and/or GPA was sub median 80%. Networking is really respected at b-school and using it to get into the program will just underline why you will likely score the great job when your actually enrolled.
If you can get a job you are happy with out of undergrad you're setting yourself up for the much more practiced approach of 3 years work experience then MBA. The MSc is a gamble on jumping the que a little bit, delaying real life one more year, and grabbing a top job away from a would be candidate at a top tier undergrad school. But with a CFA you likely won't need an MBA anyways so it's really just compressing the inevitable Masters into one year and getting it out of the way!
Showing posts with label gmat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gmat. Show all posts
Monday, October 18, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
How to make your 4th Year in a Finance Undergrad Count
So you've spent 3 years in your BComm and you've just started to get into the exciting stuff. You've cruised through your foundation accounting courses, and finally gotten through the marketing, ops man, and info tech courses that round out your BComm requirements. Now you get to finally get to the meat, advanced investments classes, fixed income, derivatives. Having just graduated, here's what I think makes the most powerful 4th year BComm if you want to move into a i-banking role, or back office investment role.
Lets start at the end of your 3rd year. Hopefully you've been very involved with finance and investment clubs so far, and have taken - and aced - every quant pre-req you could get your hands on. Also (unlike myself) hopefully you have interned at a firm and made a connection that will push your resume forward come September when Analyst recruiting starts. Either way at the end of your third year you need to strongly settle on your goals. What job do you actually want? Can you get it with a BCom education? Do you have a connection that will vouch for you come September - don't be fooled by those online applications, if you're shooting high enough they are merely a facade; all the hiring happens through personal recommendations. So line up your contacts, grab that internship and work your but off.
Even if you think you can get this job with an undergrad I'd hedge your bets. Take kaplans GMAT prep course in the evenings after-work during the summer and plan to write that ungodly demoralizing test sometime in September. Obviously if you've decided you want to be hard-core quant back office you're going to need a masters in financial engineering or financial economics and so you should be looking at either the GMAT or the GRE.
Come August start making your push for that September Analyst hire (they hire in September for a July start the following year). Reach out to your network and try applying to 5-10 of the top firms that hold your job of choice. Enroll in the CFA level one for a June test date and put it on your resume. If you've got the connections and/or the grades you'll get picked up, if not you're preparing for the +1 lap.
So assuming things didn't pan out, pour your heart into GMAT prep and try to grab a 700+ score. Then apply to an MSc program that will give you that added push (see previous post). Don't forget the extracurricular's; for me my GMAT was nothing to brag about but experience I had outside of class opened doors to the right MSc program. Finance specific stuff is a plus, especially research based. Get on a project with a prof, or your schools pension fund, and make it as quant heavy as possible. You want to be talking about modeling in your interview, not how you proof read some technical writing. Case competitions are good to hone public speaking, and they are usually a welcome break from the grind as they often involve travel.
If you can, line yourself up for 4th year Economics courses in modeling - Econometrics classes. These classes are often qualifying courses for Masters degrees in Economics and they are tough but extremely valuable. There is really only a couple of 'good' times to learn about heteroskedasticity, autocorrolation, GARSH models, unit roots parameters, and ridge regressions, and the leisurely pace of an undergrad class is one of them. Obviously knock yourself out with every finance course offered, and if you can stomach it, take intermediate accounting as well.
As the year trickles on apply for the November cycle of grad school apps and start plugging time into the CFA level 1. It will generally parallel your 4th year classes nicely but it takes a lot of time and to fail would unravel an important part of your whole brand package.
Looking like your hot shit to a firm is really all about momentum. Because many students - especially from mid teir schools - don't land in the September of their 4th year it's really easy to lose momentum when you know you're going to have a whole year between undergrad education and your eventual hire. If you can pack that time with as much finance as possible you'll A) commit mild social suicide amongst your non finance friends and B) look really hungry for a job, the hungrier the better in an employers eyes generally.
Lets start at the end of your 3rd year. Hopefully you've been very involved with finance and investment clubs so far, and have taken - and aced - every quant pre-req you could get your hands on. Also (unlike myself) hopefully you have interned at a firm and made a connection that will push your resume forward come September when Analyst recruiting starts. Either way at the end of your third year you need to strongly settle on your goals. What job do you actually want? Can you get it with a BCom education? Do you have a connection that will vouch for you come September - don't be fooled by those online applications, if you're shooting high enough they are merely a facade; all the hiring happens through personal recommendations. So line up your contacts, grab that internship and work your but off.
Even if you think you can get this job with an undergrad I'd hedge your bets. Take kaplans GMAT prep course in the evenings after-work during the summer and plan to write that ungodly demoralizing test sometime in September. Obviously if you've decided you want to be hard-core quant back office you're going to need a masters in financial engineering or financial economics and so you should be looking at either the GMAT or the GRE.
Come August start making your push for that September Analyst hire (they hire in September for a July start the following year). Reach out to your network and try applying to 5-10 of the top firms that hold your job of choice. Enroll in the CFA level one for a June test date and put it on your resume. If you've got the connections and/or the grades you'll get picked up, if not you're preparing for the +1 lap.
So assuming things didn't pan out, pour your heart into GMAT prep and try to grab a 700+ score. Then apply to an MSc program that will give you that added push (see previous post). Don't forget the extracurricular's; for me my GMAT was nothing to brag about but experience I had outside of class opened doors to the right MSc program. Finance specific stuff is a plus, especially research based. Get on a project with a prof, or your schools pension fund, and make it as quant heavy as possible. You want to be talking about modeling in your interview, not how you proof read some technical writing. Case competitions are good to hone public speaking, and they are usually a welcome break from the grind as they often involve travel.
If you can, line yourself up for 4th year Economics courses in modeling - Econometrics classes. These classes are often qualifying courses for Masters degrees in Economics and they are tough but extremely valuable. There is really only a couple of 'good' times to learn about heteroskedasticity, autocorrolation, GARSH models, unit roots parameters, and ridge regressions, and the leisurely pace of an undergrad class is one of them. Obviously knock yourself out with every finance course offered, and if you can stomach it, take intermediate accounting as well.
As the year trickles on apply for the November cycle of grad school apps and start plugging time into the CFA level 1. It will generally parallel your 4th year classes nicely but it takes a lot of time and to fail would unravel an important part of your whole brand package.
Looking like your hot shit to a firm is really all about momentum. Because many students - especially from mid teir schools - don't land in the September of their 4th year it's really easy to lose momentum when you know you're going to have a whole year between undergrad education and your eventual hire. If you can pack that time with as much finance as possible you'll A) commit mild social suicide amongst your non finance friends and B) look really hungry for a job, the hungrier the better in an employers eyes generally.
The MSc for the Undergraduate Business Graduate
Sometimes a business student comes out of their undergrad and finds that all the golden doors of the private sector remain closed. As they bang their fists, and think indignantly that they have jumped through the hoops, passed the tests, and achieved the grade - why aren't the best employers hiring me?
Maybe its the economy, we are in the bottom of the trough and they aren't hiring anybody. Maybe today's BComm is yesterday's high school diploma and we all need to upgrade to masters and PhD's before the job market opens. Maybe you aren't supposed to work high finance after your undergrad but instead toil away in high tech or at a rental car desk. Perhaps although your school taught you enough to walk the talk, it failed to line up that all important recruitment meeting in your 4th year.
Regardless of what happened, top students seem to do one of 3 things. They upgrade their degree with a specialized masters degree, lower their sights and get ready to plug some time at a mid level job, or take the whole situation as a sign to enjoy their youth and go to Europe. I went to school.
The trouble with choosing to go to school is you need to make the choice in the summer between 3rd and 4th year so you can prep for the GMAT. Unfortunately I had decided to finally get a real summer job and load up on experience, and so instead of spending my days in the sun with clients I needed to plug some serious hours into an internship. Drop 2 classes of TAing on top, plus weekend work with the old employer and there's no time to chug GMAT math questions. So for 3 weeks in September I ignored my classes and plowed as much time as I could into relearning how to do high school math by hand. This hack-kneed self prep only set me up for one thing - dissapointment. So when November came along I slapped my 660 GMAT score on my applications and readied myself for top 20-30 b-schools.
I figured because I had paid attention during my undergrad I should be painfully well equipped for the material offered - these programs pull 80% of their students from non-BComm backgrounds after-all. So although getting top education is a priority, it's not the number 1 issue; I needed a school with brand.
The top tranche usually don't offer MSc degrees and they require 3+ years of work experience. So even without a 700+ GMAT score I'm not going to LSE unless I want to be a financial engineer. So after trimming down to schools that even offered degrees for students straight from undergrad I needed to look for a school that A)was known as a very strong Finance school and B)was a recruitment center for capital market analyst positions in the top firms. I need a stamp on my head that says "high quality | employable", maybe one of these schools could give me that.
BComm-Finance students don't do a Masters of Science in Finance to learn finance, they do it to get a job. And it works out perfectly. You enter this one year super accelerated program in the summer. While acing the foundation finance courses though August, you network your butt off with anyone you can pull a phone call from through your family, undergrad network, and newly established grad network. September recruitment opens up for Analysts and Associates; they usually hire Analysts first. Now you are pushing your b-school tooled up resume that says MSF instead of BCOMM to analyst jobs that typically go to the top undergrad students from the top universities. Better yet, because its September you get to drop that first quarter 3.9 GPA onto to the page. You look like a rock-star candidate; Masters student from a high quality finance school that is rocking great grades and is willing to start out as an Analyst. What they don't know is that your grades are so high because all the general arts students are learning finance for the first time, pulling down the curve, and you are answering all of their interview questions with know-how you learned in your 4th year M&A class. So early in the degree you're really the mid-level BComm grad they wouldn't look at twice disguised as Ivy caliber talent.
Not everyone approaches it this way, in fact most MS students land in the direct hire cycle in the spring. A lucky few with work experience can spin their MS like an MBA and grab associate positions, and some extend their 1 year program to 1.5 years to do an internship in the summer. But I'm convinced the best route is to tackle the market as a super-undergrad candidate. If you can land the top job the year at school refining your quant skills will be more than worth it, and you still leave the door open for an MBA later on.
Maybe its the economy, we are in the bottom of the trough and they aren't hiring anybody. Maybe today's BComm is yesterday's high school diploma and we all need to upgrade to masters and PhD's before the job market opens. Maybe you aren't supposed to work high finance after your undergrad but instead toil away in high tech or at a rental car desk. Perhaps although your school taught you enough to walk the talk, it failed to line up that all important recruitment meeting in your 4th year.
Regardless of what happened, top students seem to do one of 3 things. They upgrade their degree with a specialized masters degree, lower their sights and get ready to plug some time at a mid level job, or take the whole situation as a sign to enjoy their youth and go to Europe. I went to school.
The trouble with choosing to go to school is you need to make the choice in the summer between 3rd and 4th year so you can prep for the GMAT. Unfortunately I had decided to finally get a real summer job and load up on experience, and so instead of spending my days in the sun with clients I needed to plug some serious hours into an internship. Drop 2 classes of TAing on top, plus weekend work with the old employer and there's no time to chug GMAT math questions. So for 3 weeks in September I ignored my classes and plowed as much time as I could into relearning how to do high school math by hand. This hack-kneed self prep only set me up for one thing - dissapointment. So when November came along I slapped my 660 GMAT score on my applications and readied myself for top 20-30 b-schools.
I figured because I had paid attention during my undergrad I should be painfully well equipped for the material offered - these programs pull 80% of their students from non-BComm backgrounds after-all. So although getting top education is a priority, it's not the number 1 issue; I needed a school with brand.
The top tranche usually don't offer MSc degrees and they require 3+ years of work experience. So even without a 700+ GMAT score I'm not going to LSE unless I want to be a financial engineer. So after trimming down to schools that even offered degrees for students straight from undergrad I needed to look for a school that A)was known as a very strong Finance school and B)was a recruitment center for capital market analyst positions in the top firms. I need a stamp on my head that says "high quality | employable", maybe one of these schools could give me that.
BComm-Finance students don't do a Masters of Science in Finance to learn finance, they do it to get a job. And it works out perfectly. You enter this one year super accelerated program in the summer. While acing the foundation finance courses though August, you network your butt off with anyone you can pull a phone call from through your family, undergrad network, and newly established grad network. September recruitment opens up for Analysts and Associates; they usually hire Analysts first. Now you are pushing your b-school tooled up resume that says MSF instead of BCOMM to analyst jobs that typically go to the top undergrad students from the top universities. Better yet, because its September you get to drop that first quarter 3.9 GPA onto to the page. You look like a rock-star candidate; Masters student from a high quality finance school that is rocking great grades and is willing to start out as an Analyst. What they don't know is that your grades are so high because all the general arts students are learning finance for the first time, pulling down the curve, and you are answering all of their interview questions with know-how you learned in your 4th year M&A class. So early in the degree you're really the mid-level BComm grad they wouldn't look at twice disguised as Ivy caliber talent.
Not everyone approaches it this way, in fact most MS students land in the direct hire cycle in the spring. A lucky few with work experience can spin their MS like an MBA and grab associate positions, and some extend their 1 year program to 1.5 years to do an internship in the summer. But I'm convinced the best route is to tackle the market as a super-undergrad candidate. If you can land the top job the year at school refining your quant skills will be more than worth it, and you still leave the door open for an MBA later on.
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