My opinion is that you should take a practice GMAT (iirc there are some on the official website) to get an idea of your score. If it's good enough for where you want to go with margin of error, don't worry about it too much more. If not, buy the official book, and maybe a couple of the prep books. Focus on the areas in which you are weak, remembering that verbal is weighted something like 4 times more than quantitative.* Take as many practice tests as possible, and try to put as much pressure on yourself during them as you can (eg, have a significant other ask you your score afterwards) to make them realistic.

What's your story, Albino? If you're staying in IN, I imagine you already have an established career and an MBA is just a way to move into management?


*I think I scored 98 or 99 percentile on verbal, and something like 78% on quant (a huge disappointment) yet still scored 97th percentile overall.

i'm pretty sure there are more applicants, but i haven't doublechecked.

it's pretty hard. if you read my post about the GMAT, you might get a sense. An anecdote: probably my two closest friends from Rice who have applied recently both applied to Harvard/Wharton/Stanford/Dartmouth with a 740 GMAT and good resumes. One was an engineer turned quickly promoted consultant. The other was a consultant turned PE fund analyst. Both got rejected at all 4.

And hey, Wyly got his MBA at Mich St. He's definitely been very successful up until 2 days ago!

What was the door you wanted to jump through that made you get an MBA?

Not sure. A friend/acquaintance just got his M.Acc there and found an acct job immediately. A few other folks I know did JD/MBAs and were unimpressed by the business school classes they took. My impression is that they have a reasonably good local alumni network, so if you are diligent in pursuing that network then you can achieve good outcomes. On the other hand, if you passively participate in oncampus interviews, then you'll probably be disappointed. It's not like McKinsey, BCG, Goldman Sachs or any PE/VC/hedge fund interviews there.

All I knew going in was that I wanted to work in investments and the markets in a non-sales capacity. So I majored in finance and once there started to discover the options market which I fell in love with. Then I landed a job as an options market maker with a firm recruiting MBAs.

I have been trading ever since and never has anything come up that required MBA knowledge but the MBA got me where I wanted to go.

I feel like a pure MBA in finance will help you get into the business if you don't have any experience in it yet. You can start as an associate for most i-banks with an MBA. If you are more quantitative, I would really suggest getting a financial mathematics degree as those are the most highly desirable students now on Wall Street. If you want to do trading get that FM, don't just get a pure finance degree.

Good luck

I bought a GMAT prep book, havent looked at it much though.

I need to stay in Indiana because I have a daughter and her mother and I are no longer together so I would be leaving her here if I left.

I spent the first 3 years of my career as an Internal Auditor for a major Health Insurance company, then 2 and a half years with a Big 4 accounting firm as a Business Risk Consultant (basically outsourced Internal Audit and SOX services) and the last 2 years with a regional CPA firm. I've passed the CPA exam and would like to move into more of a Finance role to work my way up to being a CFO/Controller depending on the size of the company

Oh and I should mention that I went to a smaller private university, so I think going to a bigger school like IU or Purdue would help boost my resume as most people outside of Indianapolis have never even heard of where I went to school (although its grown exponentially since I graduated).

I am applying to Rice for Fall 2011. High 600's and decent background.

I know the MBA process can be a mixed bag. I know two wharton grads with sub 630 gmat's and a few UT grads with 740 plus. All comes down to story.

This can't possibly be true. The seemingly mixed weighted is because people rarely do good on both sections of the test, hence why your overall score is not an average of your two percentiles. It's funny though, we probably had the same exact scores, I was 99% verbal, 78% quant for a 740 overall. I would be worried about my low quant score if not for the fact that my job and background is numbers-heavy.

you might be right. it's been a few years since i took the test, and i've only just started to prepare again.

interestingly, I emailed a friend with my GMAT musings which I posted here. He took a stance pretty similar to Black Mamba's, because he and his wife just graduated from Harvard and MIT with GMATs less than 740.

lozcolbert

no clue how to check pm's

strangely, it doesn't show up in my sentbox, so i can't copy and paste.

Basically, just what I've asked some other people: why an MBA and if so, why Rice? Also, have you thought about the UT MBA in Houston on weekends or is Rice the only place you're applying?

One of my biggest regrets in life was not getting a power/gas trading job when I graduated from Rice. Afterwards when I tried, I was rejected by HR as I was neither oncampus recruiting or an experienced hire. Never could figure out why they couldn't just treat me as if I was an undergrad since I'd only been out of school a year or two. I should've tried harder to network into the job...

I want to put my career on a different path and have been trying to without a MBA. However, the only jobs I am suited for are trading jobs at difference firms hence MBA. I have thought about UT-Houston and it is not in line with my end goals. I am only applying to Rice.

It is a pretty tough hiring cycle and I got in with an investment bank via analyst hiring. Most places are pretty set on their hiring practices and dont move away from it ; for better or worse.

so what are your end goals?

i may -- though most likely won't -- end up looking at energy trading jobs post-MBA, and it's 100% ridiculous to me that the easiest way to get an interview is to spend $100k+ on an MBA.

nattygass...can you explain why UH was not in line with your goals?

I am looking to do a part time MBA through my company and UH has kind of stuck out as having this option available/

investment banking, power origination, etc etc

maybe we are not interviewing for the same kind of jobs

i have not met a UH mba in the jobs I want, only Rice, UT and Ivy League kids

you should. Lots of investment banks are hiring again and street comp has gone up quite a bit but still not at 2007 levels.

I-banks have definitely picked up hiring, my Sales and Trading class is 68 people but 18 are quant only.

thats great. we went from hiring 2/1/0/5 in my group in 2007/2008/2009/2010

Are you looking to do a full time MBA or a part time?

what exactly does "quant only" mean? if you could pm me more info about this (what bank, etc) i'd appreciate it

Loz,

I flunked Level II of the CFA, which I'm guessing you did too because of the lack of posting in the thread. But I'm hoping CAIA Level II will help redeem myself. How has your studying been going for that assuming you're sitting in a month?
Also anybody know how the CFA/CAIA is looked upon by the top MBA programs? I've seen top resume books and a lot of the candidates have some progress through these.

good call, I failed...although i passed lev1 last year and didn't keep posting in that thread. i am taking caia level 2 in a month (9/22) but haven't gotten the books yet.

as far as MBA programs go, i think the fact that you've passed level 1 is the only thing that matters because it shows that you've actually entered the program, not just paid the fee so you can stick it on your MBA app. they can't (and wouldn't bother anyway) verify with CFA any details, unless i'm mistaken, so no one is going to ask. Your avg member of an admissions cmte won't give you any more points for being a lev3 candidate than a lev2 candidate, imo. i guess it could come up in an interview, but even then i sorta doubt it, and i'd just have an explication prepared.

edit: i guess i should probably mention that the above paragraph is pretty much just speculation in case it wasn't clear enough. still i feel pretty confident in it.

OP, in you're 1st post you mentioned applying to the top 10 plus 1 other school. I would narrow the list to 3 or 4. Writing essays for 10 applications will take forever and make you insane, plus it would be tough to do that many quality applications.