Hi all,
I’m currently a sophomore in a california community college. My story is rather complicated and I am seeking advice. In my first year at BCC I received a 4.0 and finished up 30 units. During that year I interned at UCSF as a research assistant as well as attending an investment banking class hosted by the iBanking Institute. In the summer, a friend of mine was impressed with my investment strategy track record that I established from high school through college and said he had connections to raise capital for a start-up hedge fund. I initially was skeptical as I was looking to follow the standard path into Investment Banking. Unable to find an internship during my freshman summer I decided to carry ahead with the idea since I figured that the worst case scenario would be that I have a hedge fund to put on my resume. Needless to say, the fund began to eat into my time more and more. I spent the entire year out of school spearheading the fund launch, structuring the portfolio, and monitoring our strategy. I was in charge of running the equity portfolio and I ended up with a year end performance of 23% YTD.
Unfortunately, running the fund took many hours away from my studies and upended my transfer path. Being young, I wasn’t exactly certain that we would be able to make our fund scale in a timely manner and as a result I have looked to finish up my class list and transfer. I made the decision to put school on the side in part because of my personality. I am the type of person that pushes all of my focus into my efforts regardless of the outcome, sometimes this works sometimes it doesn’t. I certainly learned a great deal about investing. My time at my fund involved many hours building models for our investments, working on risk management, and forecasting macro economic trends teaching me a great deal about how markets work at the institutional level.
I have currently applied to UCB and UCLA along with several other UCs, but still am short some credits. I am considering applying to an Ivy league school as I feel like I may have a shot to transfer. I am wondering what you guys think about the viability of a transfer to an Ivy or UCB given the fact that I took some time off.