Finance professionals make up a significant portion of the student body at many MBA programs. In this episode of The mbaMission Podcast, host Harold Simansky is joined by mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald and Senior MBA Admissions Consultant Julie-Anne Heafey to explore how applicants from investment banking, venture capital (VC), private equity (PE), equity research, credit, insurance, and other finance backgrounds can successfully differentiate themselves in the MBA admissions process.
From resume strategy and recommendation pitfalls to storytelling and school selection, this conversation unpacks how finance applicants can stand out at the top business schools in this crowded pool.
New episodes of The mbaMission Podcast are released every Tuesday on all major streaming platforms, with full video episodes available on mbaMission’s YouTube channel. Sign up for a free 30-minute consultation with Harold, Jeremy, Julie-Anne, or another member of mbaMission’s admissions team.
Table of Contents
- Finance Beyond Private Equity: Expanding the Conversation
- Comparative Competitiveness of PE Applicants
- Hidden Finance Strengths at Top MBA Programs
- Storytelling That Works: Creative Differentiation
- Recommendation Strategy for Finance Professionals
- Crafting Compelling Essays from Traditional Backgrounds
- Proving You Actually Need an MBA
Finance Beyond Private Equity: Expanding the Conversation
Harold Simansky: I mean, the reality for me is when I hear an applicant in finance applying to some of the top schools, I automatically think about PE or VC for the top applicants applying to the top schools. But I don’t think I’m thinking really holistically. Julie-Anne, what else do you see when you think about finance?
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, there are so many finance jobs beyond private equity and venture capital. I mean, those jobs have mushroomed since I went to business school. There weren’t nearly as many spots in those industries earlier. So they do take up a lot of the conversation today, and they’re a big part of the class at a lot of the really prestigious programs. But there are plenty of applicants who are working just in investment banking, who are working in equity research, who are working in investment management of some kind, insurance, underwriting, credit cards. All different things for finance. And so I feel like private equity gets all of the glory, but there are plenty of other people out there who might be applying who are wondering how to market themselves and how to make themselves stand out and show what’s great about them.
Jeremy Shinewald: One thing that’s funny is the PE people tend to say, “It’s so competitive for my cohort, and I’m never going to get in,” and the non-PE people tend to say, “I’m not in PE. I’m never going to get in.” And there’s room for the best PE applicants. They can’t have a class of all PE applicants. I had an applicant last year who spent his career in insurance and then insurance banking. Fascinating individual with really interesting, niche experience in this area, and he spent a lot of time thinking, “Maybe I don’t measure up,” and he absolutely did. He was able to talk about a depth of experience in a way that few others could. So I often think business school is surprisingly meritocratic. If you’ve done really well in credit cards or in asset management, there’s definitely room for you.
Harold Simansky: What’s really interesting for me is this notion that other industries actually provide you with a much broader set of skills. I have an insurance client right now who’s at one of the top business schools, and he started out as an estimator in the insurance industry. And if you don’t know what an estimator is, it’s the person who goes—after you smash your car—how much should the insurance [company] be giving you? And he started off at community college, estimator, and really had a great career at one of the top insurance companies. You can imagine what his experience is like versus [that of] a private equity candidate who, again, wonderful experience, by all means, but a fairly narrow experience. And I think that’s frequently where you see the difference in terms of one PE applicant versus another, or a PE applicant versus someone else in the world of finance.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, for insurance, I think that’s a really important point of view that they’re bringing to the table. I mean, look at what’s going on in the world in terms of climate and risk and things like that. And sometimes, insurance candidates will be bringing a view on a very important industry that’s underpinning a lot of other stuff going on in the business school classroom. So, I think that’s an important point of view to bring in.
Jeremy Shinewald: I think what you’re really saying is, yeah, you need to be able to share the breadth of your story. I think if you get too into the weeds on underwriting or, I don’t know, some portfolio management technique for asset management or whatever it might be, and you lose the broader narrative about theoretically learning to adjust underwriting standards in Florida after a major storm and learning to think long term about climate and insurance and issues of fairness to clients and—I’m making it up. Suddenly, you’ve got a much broader story—to your point—where there are a lot of different dimensions to your decision-making, your experience that you’ve got for the class.
Harold Simansky: I mean, listen, we’re right now in San Francisco, not that far from Lake Tahoe, big fires at Lake Tahoe. At that point, a lot of places could not get fire insurance. Can you imagine having a piece of property in Lake Tahoe and you can’t get fire insurance? What does that mean? Well, the whole real estate construction in Lake Tahoe is starting to really cave in. Also, all of the ancillary industries around that become driven by the fact that you couldn’t get insurance, or they start looking at risk much differently.
Julie-Anne Heafey: I think what Jeremy was hitting on before was also just the jargon of it all. All those big picture things that you’re talking about are really important to bring in. But I think that’s true for almost any finance area. If you’re in equity research, you’re maybe covering something like financial institutions. That can get very technical very quickly. If you are in investment banking, are you in high yield? That’s going to be something that’s difficult to translate for the lay reader who’s in the admissions office. So I think that is a really good point, that these things are really important to other industries, like you were saying, Harold, but also deals with jargon sometimes.
Jeremy Shinewald: The average admissions officer has no sense of what your equity research into industrial companies means. You’ve got to be able to tell your story in a fairly plain way and make it really relatable. Not every equity research individual is going to be covering Apple or, I don’t know, some other consumer stock or technology stock that we all know. And so you’ve got to get to the point where—we always say, “the grandmother test,” like, if you were going to tell your grandmother about what you do at the office, you wouldn’t say, “I’m looking at ratios to understand the differences between investments in industrial paints companies.” You would make it far more human than that. I think that’s a good lesson for anyone, whether you’re in finance or consulting or anything. The admissions committee is, generally speaking, looking for your understanding of how you’ve been an impact player, not specifically how you’ve executed minor tasks. And sometimes, people get lost in that, or their resumes get lost in that—resumes that are just laden with jargon and numbers. It’s not like you can’t get in, you’re just missing an opportunity to share critical information with someone.
Julie-Anne Heafey: It’s like translating a different language, for sure.
Harold Simansky: That’s right. I always like clients—and I think [I’ve had] very good success with clients—who are coming from the credit side. We always think about investment banking as sort of M&A [mergers and acquisitions]. But at the same point, when it comes to being a finance candidate, again, there are nuances in finance. There’s niche in finance. And honestly, the credit side of things has really exploded. You want the credit guy in the classroom, because he’s talking a completely different language than basically anybody else talking about finance.
Jeremy Shinewald: Yeah, right. So let’s talk about the percentage of a typical class that comes from finance. The largest number outgoing is usually consulting, followed by finance. The largest incoming is often consulting in most schools, kind of balanced with finance.
Comparative Competitiveness of PE Applicants
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, financial services can be the biggest one in some schools. Some schools will break it out, right? At Harvard, you’ll see VC and PE are a certain percentage of the class, it’s 16%. And then the rest of the bucket is 10% of the class. So all those different areas are fighting for space within that group. Whereas Columbia will just say, “Hey, our financial services, including PE, including VC, including everybody, is about 30% of the class.” So some schools will break it out, others won’t, and you’ll see varying percentages of the class, depending on what you’re doing.
Harold Simansky: Which actually begs the question, if I’m a private equity applicant, what does my acceptance rate look like versus [that of] someone coming out of more traditional investment banking or asset management? Is their success substantially better than [that of] someone else coming from the financial service world?
Jeremy Shinewald: Yeah, the admissions committees are sort of loath to offer specifics of that. But I think you’re talking about probably a more competitive group or a larger number of people coming from those areas, but also maybe a larger percentage of the class. So you said, I think, Harvard’s 16%. I think Stanford’s probably pretty similar. Wharton might be like 13% coming from private equity. Sometimes they bundle together PE, VC, investment management, hedge funds. But I bet you there are more applicants per spot for those. I can’t say this definitively, but again, it could be like a bit of the tail wagging the dog with that one. Sometimes, people in those places are up and out of those environments, whereas you might not be up and out of the environment in equity research. So there might be fewer applicants, and it’s hard to kind of put game theory on that one. But I think the important thing for applicants, they [the schools] don’t have quotas. If you’re a good applicant, you’re a good applicant. There’s going to be room for an applicant in lending, for example, which I think people tend not to think of as that glamorous. If you’re an impact player in lending, there’s room for you.
Harold Simansky: If you’re coming out of the private equity world, where there are going to be a lot of applicants, you have to do a really good application. And at the end of the day, I don’t want this to be a commercial, but if you have any questions about this, by all means, talk to me, talk to Jeremy, talk to Julie-Anne, spend 30 minutes on the phone with us. But the reality is if you are coming from one of these worlds, private equity, venture capital, you really have to distinguish yourself in a way that maybe other folks don’t. I mean, if someone’s coming out of insurance, there’s going to be five, right? There are going to be five applicants in insurance. If there’s going to be 75, 100, whatever it is, PE people, then why are you different from that other person? Why does it make sense for you? And you really have to articulate that.
Jeremy Shinewald: I want to jump in for one second and say one of my favorite clients said to me that he was watching our podcast, and he had no idea that you could actually work with us. He said there’s this phenomenon where people believe that people who are on TV are sort of not part of this world, or on your computer screen. So Julie-Anne’s a real person. You can call her for a free consultation, and you can have that half hour with her or with Harold or with me. That gets me away from your question, but nonetheless, I think it’s important to note that we are real humans who are accessible in what we do.
Harold Simansky: Well, in many ways, what I’m saying is a truism. You have to do a really good application, and you have to remember that some guy or some woman who’s just one cubicle over, they’re trying to also do a really good application. Although your resumes look quite similar if you’re working at the same firm doing the same thing, you have to distinguish yourself, and there’s really no way around it.
Hidden Finance Strengths at Top MBA Programs
Jeremy Shinewald: So let’s talk about some of the programs that I think maybe sometimes aren’t—like, I think finance applicants tend to be people who are extremely driven, gunning for the top schools that are typically associated with finance: Columbia, Wharton. I think even Harvard. You don’t think finance, but people who are interested in financial experience are obviously gunning for Harvard and Stanford. If you’re an investment banker, NYU [Stern] is actually the program that has the highest percentage of individuals with banking experience coming into the program and tends to do an excellent job placing people in banking as well.
Harold Simansky: I’m going to put in a commercial for Cornell. The Cornell Investment Banking Immersion program is really fantastic, and you will get an investment banking job coming out of Cornell. They’ll make sure of it.
Jeremy Shinewald: And Yale [School of Management], I would say. People don’t think of Yale in terms of finance. I’m not going to invoke stereotypes that Yale’s trying to get rid of, so I’m not going to mention what they’ve historically been known for, but they’ve got a Nobel laureate at Yale who called the bubble in 2009—I’m talking about Schiller, of course, who right now, I believe, is calling a bubble as well. The Case–Schiller Index is as high as it’s ever been right now. Someone who was interested in mortgage finance and housing markets and the behavior of bubbles. Yes, Booth has many Nobel laureates as well. I’m the one introducing Nobel laureates and then saying you shouldn’t pay attention to that. But I mean, just the idea that there’s a lot of effective research going on in some of these environments that isn’t only going on at, let’s say, Wharton or whatever it is. I mean, one of my dearest friends went to Kellogg and has had a very significant career as the CFO of a major, multibillion dollar company for many years. It’s not like Kellogg neglected to teach him finances because people associate it with other things.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, I think a lot of these other programs are overlooked, but they might have special things depending on what your goals are. Yale launched an asset management institute in 2023. You can do a dual degree for that if you’re really interested in learning about investing, or you can just take classes there. I mean, one of the things about Yale is you can take classes in any of its schools anywhere on its campus. And so even if you just want to check it out and you’re in the regular MBA program, that’s a great opportunity. I think other schools that come to mind that people don’t think of, you just touched on Kellogg. I mean, you can get a fully funded MBA if you are applying with a finance background there as one of their finance fellows. That’s pretty attractive. I mean, if you’re in finance, you understand the value of that.
Jeremy Shinewald: And you mentioned asset management. I think again, people might think of Booth. Effectively, the efficient market theory was created there, and Booth is named after a leader in the finance field. Texas McCombs has a massive student-run investment fund. Darden has one that’s I think over $20 million. I actually was one of the fund managers when I was at Darden. It’s grown significantly since we left it in minor positions. Nothing to do with us, nothing at all. I think it’s now over $20 million in both those schools. I think Cornell has a hedge fund you can run, the Cayuga Fund. So I think there are really significant opportunities in these schools.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Ross has more student-run investment funds than any other school. It’s like trivia that a lot of people wouldn’t realize.
Jeremy Shinewald: And Michigan Ross also has, I believe, a real estate fund where you can make real estate investments. And that’s another form of finance. Real estate is basically finance.
Harold Simansky: Yeah. And in our podcast with Dawna Levenson, the dean of MBA admissions at MIT [Sloan], we asked her, “What else should MIT really be known for?” And she said finance. And that, I think, speaks to the fact that they’re in Boston, huge number of money management firms, huge number of people go to places like Wellington, State Street. Talking about student-run investment funds, just a couple of years ago, I guess, Yale started the first social impact student investment fund. And that truly is unique. I think it really speaks to the time of using a for-profit model, investing in for-profit companies that are really doing some great things and having impact really beyond the world of business.
Jeremy Shinewald: We already talked about jargon a little bit, but some of the other challenges I think applicants face is maybe—especially when you come from banking—that your resume is the first impression, that map that they pick up and kind of get that immediate reaction to what you’re doing. And I think from a very practical perspective, one of the things that you have to do to differentiate yourself is de-emphasize work. Not that your work isn’t important, but if you’re coming from investment banking, if you’re coming from equity research, hopefully, you have a strong community profile, hopefully, you have a strong personal profile. And that’s not something you can just create on your resume, but hopefully, you’re able to tell a story that has more breadth. Because if you’re coming from—or from private equity, even though we’re not talking about private equity today—if you’re coming from the same background as a competitive pool or from a drier background at times like underwriting, let’s say, trying to give yourself a little bit of personality outside of work, you start to separate yourself from other like applicants.
I always say to applicants, “Who would you accept? You have two underwriters with similar scores. Would you accept the one who knocked the cover off the ball at work and got a promotion? Or the one who knocked the cover off the ball at work, got a promotion, and then went out and literally helped kids knock the cover off the ball coaching baseball for a couple of seasons?” It’s not a massive difference, but one is showing on a relative basis he’s got a stronger internal motor, maybe has some other skills, some other ability to relate. So I think it’s really important for finance applicants to think about building the rest of their profile from the beginning. You can’t just show up, call Julie-Anne for a free consultation, and say, “I’m applying in two weeks or in two months or three months. What do I do now to differentiate?”
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, where do I start? You have to pull out what you’re already doing. I think that’s a big thing, that people have resumes for their industries and they know the keywords that they need to use or they know the deal lists that they need to show. “I have to show this volume of deals that I’ve been working on.” But when the MBA admissions committee is evaluating your resume, that doesn’t tell them what you did within those deals. You have to kind of pull things out. So if you’re in investment banking, you’re not just going to show this deal list, you’re going to show the whys and hows. How did you change the valuation? How did you work with people to market this? How did you find something that others had overlooked? Those are the things that you need to be showing. If you’re doing research—I worked in equity research when I started out, and it’s not just about the number of companies that you’re covering, but what’s the impact of your recommendations? How did you find something that others didn’t? Those are the things that you need to be bringing out.
Storytelling That Works: Creative Differentiation
Jeremy Shinewald: We wrote a book on HBS and Stanford essays. One of my favorite ones in there is about an individual in finance. And he talked about his obsession with puzzles. I think you can “control F” in our in our document and search for “puzzle.” And he talked about how his passion for puzzles kind of led him into banking and private equity and how he looked at this deal that was kind of dead as a puzzle and thought, “How can I riddle through this and revive this? Because there’s not enough money in this deal for the seller.” And he thought about an interesting way to change incentives and to create a world where this person could get more money out of the deal. And ultimately, they won the mandate. And like, it wasn’t about a resume bullet point. It wasn’t about a multiple. It was fundamentally about creatively looking at a situation that a lot of people had just left for dead. Oddly enough, it was about creativity and resilience, not about numbers. And this fellow got into Harvard. And I don’t think it was like he was a wonderful person in many regards, but this was one of the reasons he got in, because he told this broad personal story and didn’t get too into how that ratio worked or what a waterfall is. I don’t even know what that stuff is myself.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, it’s stuff that’s not part of your normal responsibilities for your job, just stuff that you’re doing that nobody even notices. One of my favorite applicants was a guy who was an investment banker at a really hard-charging firm. And they moved offices. It was a really big space. He was trying to build morale, and he pitched them for a ping-pong table. And he was getting everybody in the office to participate in a tournament, including the delivery people, reception. Everybody was in these, like, standings. And when he left, they gave him a parting gift of ping-pong paddles with his face on them. That was not part of his job description. It’s other things that you’re doing that people just notice about you, the glue.
Jeremy Shinewald: That’s an awesome example. I have someone who fascinatingly—and this person went to Stanford—had basically the opposite scenario, where his investment bank wasn’t observing their own rules around guardrails for analysts, and he saw analysts being burnt out. Like, do you want to be the analyst who walks into your MD’s office and says, “Hey, we have protected weekends at this firm, and everyone’s burning out, and you’re not observing that. And this is something that’s really important to us”? Like, no one wants to be that person. This individual had the courage to do it, took that risk, and ultimately, they responded and started observing these things, and morale went up. And I was like, that is a courageous stance. And he didn’t talk about deals, he talked about that. He talked about withstanding pressure, standing against a very strong current pushing him in one direction. And that felt risky for him to write about, but he wrote about it, and that was a great thing. So I think you’re right. These other character pieces can really help you stand out in your role, in your essays, even your recommendations. If his recommender wrote about the ping-pong table.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, it was the recommender.
Jeremy Shinewald: So that’s awesome, because that’s a very different recommendation than most people get. “Harold’s analytical skills were second to none.” It’s like “Harold got us a ping-pong table, and everyone loved him for it.” That’s a big deal.
Harold Simansky: It also really speaks to the fact that in many ways, for an investment banker or someone who’s working 80 hours a week, you know what you need to do to be unique. And what I mean by that is many of you are going to say something like “I work 80 hours a week, so I really don’t have time to do something else.” So from that perspective, you say, “Listen, let me be the person who has time to do something else.” And right now, if you can tutor a kid by Zoom, two hours a week, that really makes you stand out when everyone else is saying, “Listen, I just don’t have time for that stuff. I just can’t get out of the office.” So look for that as an opportunity.
Recommendation Strategy for Finance Professionals
Jeremy Shinewald: Let’s talk about recommendations, because you raised a really good point about the ping-pong table. We’ve got a bunch of similar investment bankers or the small number of equity research applicants or underwriters, whatever it might be. How do you advise your clients to get more to stand out via recommendation?
Julie-Anne Heafey: I think it just depends on where their strengths honestly are. I mean, you’re not looking for the recommender to create something that isn’t there, but I think just pivoting to what admissions committees are looking for as opposed to the world that they’re normally operating in. So it’s not just about, if you’re in research, your universe of coverage of the number of companies that you cover, but how that person made a difference within the group.
Jeremy Shinewald: Right, right. And I think you’ve got to sit down—because a lot of these people are sort of high-volume recommenders because they’re in environments where a lot of people are asking for recommendations. And so some of them know what they’re doing, actually. That can be an advantage of being in the financial space. But others, even if someone knows what they’re doing, you still have to sit down with them, walk them through and remind them of the things you’ve done. And I’m kind of curious what you guys think, because this might be controversial, but I don’t think that for most people, I don’t think they [the recommender] should be talking about your analytical skills or your ability to build a spreadsheet, because I think that’s sort of the table stakes, right?
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, it depends on the role.
Harold Simansky: Yeah. Listen, HBS always talks about aptitude for analytics, academic abilities, and habit of leadership. And at the end of the day, I think it is far easier to show, certainly, aptitude for analytics. You do a great job on the GMAT. That sounds great. I think “engaged citizen”; that’s also something they look at. Engaged citizen, habit of leadership. So this notion of, okay, if you’re an investment banker, you’re working in your cubicle, you’re doing fantastic work. But what does that say about your habit of leadership? Are you mentoring other people? There are ways to really bring informal leadership, as well as this notion here, engaged citizen. At the end of the day, business schools are building small communities. They want people that are going to like other people, that other people can work with. And when you’re working in such a high-stakes environment, intense environment, I think your recommender has to show that people like working with this person.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, definitely. I think one of the pitfalls, though, that you can run into with recommenders is that sometimes people in these roles that aren’t in banking or whatever, they might not have gotten an MBA, they might have gone the CFA route, or they might just be very technical or have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and reached a high level. And some of them might not always be super supportive of an MBA.
Harold Simansky: That’s right. That’s absolutely true.
Julie-Anne Heafey: And so that’s something that we really have to navigate, because you always want to have that conversation with your client. Is this person supportive of this step that you’re taking? And sometimes that means you’re going to pick somebody else.
Harold Simansky: I think that’s right, because at the end of the day, if you’re a private equity, investment banking candidate, your boss, whoever’s writing you the recommendation, knows what to say and probably has done it before. If you’re coming out of the insurance industry and they have never gotten an MBA themselves, or they don’t even know people get their MBA, they don’t write these recommendations, then yes, there has to be a lot more hand-holding as far as those recommendations go.
Jeremy Shinewald: And just in case this conversation has sent shivers down anyone’s spine, you don’t need to have your boss as a recommender. It’s good to have, but it’s not a must-have. And the admissions committees understand that if you don’t have that person, you write about it in your optional essay, and they basically trust you at your word and give you a pass. And so you can find someone else, you can find a client, you can find your previous boss, a mentor. There are lots of other options for you.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, but we sit down and get creative, we map out all the different options that you have, and you can usually find somebody who is going to be that cheerleader for you.
Jeremy Shinewald: So, in terms of how we work with people to succeed as finance applicants, ex-PE, I think we’ve touched on some, but first of all, you have to have a good long-term plan, because otherwise, it’s going to be hard to stand out. You can’t call Julie-Anne a month before and say, “Can I add community service at this point?” It doesn’t work. So good long-term plan, write a resume and essays that people can relate to on a human level, prep your recommenders—that’s an important one—and try to make sure that they’re writing about you in a way that differentiates you from others, in a positive way, of course, and allows your qualitative strengths to shine. In terms of qualitative strengths, I’ve had a lot of applicants in the finance space who succeeded by sharing some personal stories. It doesn’t always have to be—I gave the baseball example—“I spent three years coaching baseball on the side.” It doesn’t always have to be that. You can share your values and who you are by talking about a commitment you made in your cousin’s life to get him through school because he was struggling with his mental health. I’m making it up, of course.
Crafting Compelling Essays from Traditional Backgrounds
Harold Simansky: But no, listen, more broadly, when you come from one of these finance backgrounds, it is likely you have to work very, very, very hard to craft that essay that’s compelling. I really find that’s the case, because the reality, if you’re coming out of a start-up or if you’re coming maybe out of a nonprofit or you’re coming out of someplace that’s really unique, then the essay becomes a lot clearer. The points you have to make really have to be a lot clearer. If you’re talking about an investment banker has to now find that story where they’re coaching baseball, then you know what? You have to do a lot of introspection to recognize what is that right story. That makes it a really hard application to write. I don’t want this to be a commercial by any means, but that said, just look at our HBS and Stanford essay book, and we can really help you find those sorts of stories that are not obvious and do take time and do take a lot of effort to write.
Jeremy Shinewald: Short answers, I would say, are often overlooked. I think a lot of applicants just kind of copy and paste from their resume, [but] the short answers are another opportunity for you. Don’t just give, like, what’s your major accomplishment in your role? “Oh, I worked on this deal, I managed eight advisors, we got it done.” We learned that already from your resume. Give us a little bit of color, give us something different you did. Make sure that you’re impactful with every aspect of your application.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah, I get a lot of people who will put just the end result, like “reached 3% higher performance on whatever fund.” And what they [the schools] want to know is how did you do that? What are the things that led you to that success? Another pitfall is sometimes people will pat themselves on the back a lot in that area. Accomplishments. Got my promotion. They want to know what you did to get that promotion, and it should have a focus that’s bigger than yourself. I think a lot of times, people can be focused on just the next rung, but these schools want people who are going to go out there and change the world in a lot of ways—or at least have an impact on something bigger than their own office space or career. So it’s not just about “I’m going to go get my MBA, hang out, learn some things, and go back and earn some money.” It’s about what kind of an impact are you going to have wherever you’re going?
Proving You Actually Need an MBA
Jeremy Shinewald: Your interview sort of parallels with your essays. You want to be ready to tell stories that are qualitative, relatable, not just about your work, not dry finance stories about how a transaction went down, but talking about your impact. And then I think the other piece, kind of the spirit of what we’re talking about today, is really understanding your connection to the school, not just taking it for granted that, like, I’m a finance person, maybe I’m going back to finance, and I’m going to Wharton, and I’m going to write in a few Wharton platitudes. You’ve got to really explain why you need the degree, what you’re going to achieve with it, and why you truly need that school’s MBA program and the resources you’re going to use in order to get there, because otherwise, it just sounds rote, and it sounds boring. And you want to show them that you really belong there.
Julie-Anne Heafey: Yeah. And God forbid you write an essay and it’s sent to Wharton and Columbia’s in there.
Jeremy Shinewald: Right.
Julie-Anne Heafey: I still run into that!
Jeremy Shinewald: Yeah. Or you’re living in New York and you haven’t gone to visit Wharton. It’s like, Wharton’s right there, it’s a train ride away, you’ve got to show some effort. “I’m really busy. I work a hundred hours a week. I can’t do community service. I can’t go visit schools.” Okay, someone else can. Someone else is going to find a way, because it’s important to them. So you’ve got to put the effort in as well.
Harold Simansky: That’s right. And by the way, you can certainly say you’re going back to the same industry—you’re coming from asset management, you’re going into asset management. What do you need to learn over two years? What sort of skills are you looking for?
Jeremy Shinewald: And what’s your exciting future? And do you really need that MBA to get there? If you can’t articulate why you need the MBA, the admissions committee is not going to be excited about you. If you are not a PE applicant, if you are a finance applicant, and you’re thinking to yourself, “How am I going to differentiate myself?,” again, I would suggest that you reach out to Julie-Anne, to Harold for a free consultation. You can read many of the guides that we have on our site. There’s also onTrack by mbaMission, where we have specific sections for finance applicants on how to differentiate themselves, our self-study curriculum. So please check that out. We wish you the best of luck with your applications. They’re no doubt around the corner, depending on when this airs. There’s always a season around the corner.
Harold Simansky: That’s right.
Jeremy Shinewald: And we hope that you can take some of the nuggets that we’ve offered today and turn them into a success for yourself. Best of luck.
