Office Weighting During Recruitment
So I think it is pretty common knowledge that you are asked for your top 3 or so office locations when applying to MBB (maybe the big D as well?) but I recently found out that Bain asks you to weight them out of 100 points... and basically what I heard was if you really want one office to put 50+ points into it, putting 45/30/25 or so will make you seem agnostic about where you end up and thus not pulled to one office or the other. Do McK and BCG ask you to do the same thing as well? Does anyone want to shed some light, maybe on the recruiting side of things, as to how these percentages are looked at? Obviously a 20 or 10 percent weight is VERY weak and looks last ditchish but what kind of game theory strategy do you do with these weightings? just curious





In my experience, Bain really
In my experience, Bain really only wants to send you to your first choice office (at least at the MBA-level in the USA). I had a buddy who put 50/50 on two cities and they called to ask him to pick one or the other.
McKinsey doesn't ask you to
McKinsey doesn't ask you to weight them. Just first, second and third choice.
BCG had us weight our top
BCG had us weight our top three choices at the MBA level. I can't think of anyone that didn't get their top choice.