Career Choice

There are several traditional career paths that lead to a great business school and a much smaller set of non-traditional paths. It seems like roughly half of my classmates at Harvard had pursued the “traditional” path. I define the traditional path as 2 years of grunt work at a consulting firm or an investment bank then 2 years of work at large company, hedge fund, venture capital or private equity firm. The result is that most of the class had 4 years of work experience and most of my classmates had worked at an investment bank or consulting firm at some point in their careers.

There are several strong secondary paths that lead to top-tier business schools and the schools are adding more of these non-traditional paths each year. Here are several that I believe represent several meaningful alternative paths:

· 3+ years of consulting or investment banking. Most of the large consulting firms and investment banks encourage (or strongly encourage) professionals to move on to a different career after spending 2 years at the firm. These firms make exceptions for those professionals that they consider their strongest or top-performing professionals and they invite these professionals to stick around for 3+ years. Often individuals in this category are given raises that put their salary in a range fairly close to that of MBAs. Further, many of these firms will invite these professionals to stay at the firm until they are accepted at business school and then they will offer to pay for their business school for them in return for a commitment for these professionals to return to the firm after business school. MBA programs are aware of these programs and every year they admit many people directly from consulting firms or investment banks who have stayed at the firm for more than 2 years.

· Star undergraduates. Most of the top-tier business schools now have a track for star undergraduate students. Typically you have to have a very high GPA, incredibly GMAT scores (i.e., close to 800) and have had significant leadership experience in undergraduate to qualify. Almost every person that I knew in this category was a student body president.

· 4+ years of “big company” experience. Many of my classmates came from Fortune 500 companies—WalMart, IBM, Marconi, eBay, etc. Top-tier business schools admit a significant number of individuals from these companies each year. However, you often have to have more than 4 years of experience and you definitely will need to outperform other people of your tenure at the organization. Business schools want to see proof that you are on a faster leadership track than your peers. Typically, they want to see a rapid promotion schedule and significant leadership experience.

· 3+ years of nonprofit or social enterprise work. While this is probably the smallest category of those I have identified in terms of percentage of admitted students, it is an important one. Further, business schools are emphasizing this category more and more. Again, you will have to point to significant leadership experiences that will separate you from the large numbers of applicants with similar backgrounds

Obviously, you shouldn’t make a decision about your career path based on getting into a business school. However, I do believe that the career paths I have outlined do have a significantly higher probability of leading to a top-tier business school than others. One other thing. The career you choose before business school has enormous impact on your career choices after business school. In general, you have to have worked in private equity, venture capital, or at a hedge fund before business school to get a similar type of job upon graduation. You should keep this in mind. Business school is only a small step in your career.