Fuqua vs. KFBS ($$)

I disagree on picking a b-school on "feels". These schools are in different tiers and there's significant money on the table.

Some points to consider: If you're staying in the Mid-Atlantic/South, the schools are closer than if you're leaving the region. UNC is much more powerful regionally than nationally/internationally. The employment report hints at this. I'm not sure what MBB recruiting looks like at KF, but I bet at Duke pretty much every office for MBB is represented on campus. I could be wrong, but that's what the M7 look like; this means that if you're recruiting for San Fran/Boston/Chicago/other like regions, the San Fran office flies 3-5 people out to you for major events and dinners. At KF, I don't think this is the case. You'll probably only have the closest 1-3 offices represented in person. Doesn't mean you can't recruit elsewhere but it is a factor if you're leaving the region.

The OCR outside of MBB will likely be more regional too. Don't take my word for it, but do some research here. Definitely a more regional networking base with most of the class staying local.

UNC is the lowest ranked school that McKinsey considers a target; I don't think BCG and Bain officially consider them a target (check the firms school based web pages).

Duke sent 34% of their class into consulting with a median salary of $140k. The top firms (Bain, BCG, McKinsey, Strategy&, LEK, Deloitte, ATK) are all paying around $150k base right now. Accenture and Roland Berger are close; between $140-150k. The next tier of big recruiters (EY, PwC, IBM, KPMG, ZS, etc) are all around $140. Then there's all the smaller firms, boutique, tech consultimg firms that show up on campus, noone targets them but they take those who don't land at the big shops who don't want to go corporate and they pay under $140.

So to show you how it changes by school tier: Here at Booth, we send 27.5% of our class into consulting with a median salary of $145k, so approximately more than half of those students are at Accenture/Roland Berger or above (and less than half are below that) and it is hugely skewed towards MBB. At Duke, they send 34% into consulting at a median pay of $140k or above, so the split shifts down so the bulk of students are now landing at EY/IBM/etc and above with. I think on an absolute basis they send half as many or so to MBB, the numbers drop off dramatically between tiers.

It's normal to see 5-10% variation by industry per top school because some schools draw students looking for certain industries (finance, pe, tech, etc) so there's some self-selection. But UNC only sends 17% to consulting - a huge dropoff and certain correlated with a lower recruiting presence on campus. Additionally, their median pay is $132k. So definitely less than half of their students are going to top firms and probably a lot less than that. Also, the MBB presence is almost certainly considerably less at UNC. You'll note that UNC doesn't even list hires by company; this is why. They want to tell you McKinsey recruits there but behind the numbers there are big skews in the data. If you look at a class size of 300, 17% in consulting (~50 people), more than half of people going to firms that pay under $140 that leaves maybe 15-20 offers at top firms including EY/IBM/KPMG, and those are going to be weighted more towards the $140k firms than Duke. Even if half those students land at MBB you're looking at 5-10 offers per year going to MBB? Potentially more like 1-3 if only McKinsey targets them and they only target them regionally. Feel free to ask the school and people there, I'm making assumptions based on the numbers but I'd be careful about drinking the kool-aid too hard based on "feels" for this one.

Upside there is you could be the big fish in a smaller pool if you think you're a standout, but for consulting recruiting the data unquestionably pushes hard for Fuqua. The quality of corporate jobs is likely commensurate.