MBB Summer 2020 Q&A
Hi all! Longtime lurker here and someone who has benefited from these threads. I go to a target undergrad and am a Junior who received offers from M and one of the Bs. I will be working at one of the B's. Q&A! I know there is another thread going but happy to answer repeat questions / provide another perspective as well.
How many lockers did you get stuffed in during your time in high school?
Congrats man I’m curious what your rationale was behind choosing between offers.
Thanks man!
At a high level, I'd summarize it as: I didn't see significantly different opportunities (exits / types of clients / exposure) at McKinsey vs the firm I chose but I did feel significantly better fit in the office of the firm I chose vs the McK office I had an offer in.
In more detail: The typical advice all MBB cross-offers are typically given is to choose based on culture/fit: The reason for this is as follows: a. you work with these people 60 hours a week - you want to enjoy being around them b. the interns in your class will presumably convert to fulltime - the interns you meet at sell-weekend will thus not only likely be your friends, but also be people who help you on projects when you're having trouble - for both reasons you want to be able to feel like you can fit with them c. the people (partners/principals/ems) ultimately will largely affect your success at the firms - you want to vibe with them.
For all the above factors, the firm I chose I felt SIGNIFICANTLY better about than M.
Prestige: I was skeptical of this because I'm a bit of a prestige-whore. But at the end of the day, McKinsey's prestige edge in my opinion does not map onto much tangible benefits because
While McKinsey has more prestige than BCG/Bain, the difference is most marked amongst people who won't be hiring you in the future (while people who will be hiring definitely know and respect BB). The HBS stats from this year are particularly demonstrative of this with BCG/Bain having more admits per capita.
At the end of the day, it was a tough decision, but one that felt right and was validated by how every person at my target (all 3) and every person in my city (also 3) with a cross-offer between the firm I chose and McKisney, declined McKinsey. The cross-offer win rate McKinsey has is not 75%+ for a reason.
Can I ask what offices your offers were for? Even understanding if was regional (Dallas, Philly, St. Louis, etc.) vs. main office (SF, NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc) would help.
In my experience, when people turn down McKinsey for one of the B's, it's almost always because their offer at McKinsey or both firms was in one of the regional offices.
Although my title is consultant, I work in finance so I don't know too much about MC. Still, there is not as much about MC on this forum as there is about finance. What parts of WSO did get benefit from? On top of that, how many cases did you practice and what books did you use? Did you have a case partner or you mainly practiced by yourself? Thanks.
As per your first question about what parts of WSO I benefited from, I'd say I mainly benefited from: 1) threads like these where I heard about other people's preparation processes 2) purusing through the different types of forums to see what jobs seemed to the most enjoyable and what seemed to be the truth (people in all these industries tend to glamorize their jobs - WSO seemed to be more real / to prompt novel ideas in my head).
As per your cases question I'd break my prep into a few parts: 1) Live cases: I truly believe that one should not focus on number but rather on quality of cases.
So the most important part of this is who you case with:
Critical to this is a: People at the firms By the end of the process, I had done about 25 with people who had either interned at MBB or worked there fulltime already - (probably about 15 distinct people). In this sense, networking was of extremely great use here and I can say with large confidence that I became extremely strong at casing because of the competitive advantage of having done many cases with many strong people. b. Live case buddies Case partners can also be great here - if they are good; I did about 5-10 with a couple people who I thought were committed as well to doing a great job. These might not be people you know but either a. Rocketblocks b. Preplounge or c. Mutual friends can be a good place to find other people to case with. To answer your question though, in the end I did about 65 live cases - there was not a single person who I did more than 10 with - so I didn't have just one case partner
2) Skills development outside of live casing: For me this involved a. Reading articles / taking courses (highly recommend CraftingCases) b. Drills - Rocketblocks, reading through cases, etc. c. Talking through the skills with friends / practicing the skills in other environments.
Ancillarly resources like books, Victor Cheng, etc. were the beginning of my prep - imo they don't go far enough and are a bit outdated. That being said, a lot of people think LOMS and other resources are great - I wouldn't be sure because they were not of heavy focus fro me.
are you a diversity hire? how did you get this position?
I'm not a diversity hire - I went through on-campus recruiting for both firms I received offers from for Junior summer.
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