New Contacts Made!!

Success..... So I had my first conversation with one of the contacts I reached out to and it went very well. My contact is a lawyer who specializes in PE, and he offered some fantastic insight into the day to day life of someone involved in the industry. We talked about everything from current trends, to news resources, to the best schools to attend. He confirmed alot of what I already knew, but offered some other information that will definitely prove to be quite valuable as I am breaking into the industry. I have another call set up for mid afternoon tomorrow with a different contact. Hopefully the next one goes just as well as this one. I will keep all of you posted.

I am also still in the process of trying to narrow down my school selection. So far, I am for sure applying to Stanford, USC, and Columbia. Other schools on the table include; Chicago, Northwestern, UTexas, Duke, and UNC... I will probably choose two from this group, and may end up applying to a total of 6 schools. We will see though.

Thats all for now.....

Yesss

yo yo yo yo ... updates y'all

Whats up everyone...... sorry I haven't updated in like a week...... but I have been busy making contacts and working on apps. I just started my application for Columbia, and the thought of doing 5 or 6 of these applications sounds like a lot of work.... but it will all be worth it! I am actually pretty excited about the prospect of going to business school and breaking into the Private Equity industry. I love the college atmosphere, and to be honest I am like a sponge, and I really just want to learn as much as possible and meet as many people as I can.

I recently reached out a few people from my Alma Mater and one through some existing contacts to speak with them about their careers in Private Equity and Venture Capital. I really want to see how they ended up in these industries. From the information that I got, it appears like a few of them have some pretty unique stories, so I will keep you posted as to how these conversations go.

Lastly, the thought of living in another city for a few years is pretty exciting as well........ however, waiting to find out where life will take you, is not fun. I remember this when applying to schools for my undergraduate degree. There is something about the uncertainty that is stressful.

Ciao for now.....

First Entry / Background Info

To give you all a little background, the point of this blog is to chronicle my experiences during the process of applying to business school, life in business school (provided I am accepted somewhere), and life after school. Some information on me; I am 26 years old and I work for a large US bank in southern California. For my undergraduate degree, I attended the University of Southern California with a major in International Relations Global Business. It is my goal to begin business school in the fall of 2010. Schools I am interested in attending include: Stanford & Columbia (my top 2), U of Chicago, MIT, Harvard, NYU, Duke, USC, UCLA.

The reason why I want to go to business school is to alter the current career path I am on. Currently, I am in the financial services industry, on the sales side. While I am grateful for the experiences that I have had here, I really want to get into VC / PE in the short term (I know, I know, it's very difficult, but whats the point of aiming low) and then transition into government in the long term.

At this point, I have taken the GMAT, and did fairly well (I scored a 700 for those who know the scoring scale). I participate in several volunteer organizations, 3 of which I take a leading role in and I have been promoted 1 time at work in 2 yrs 6 months. As far as my applications go, I am currently laying the ground work for my essays, and hope to apply to all schools in Round 1. We will see how it goes, I will keep you all posted.

Until Next time.......