PhD or MBA background

Depends on the market.

In German-speaking countries, the PhD is very valuable - sometimes even more valuable than an MBA. If you look at the boards of some of the German DAX-listed companies, you will see that the majority of the members have PhDs. MBAs are still looked down upon by quite a few senior guys I talked to as "playing around for one or two years".

In the US, the PhD is mostly an academic title and the first step to become a researcher or professor. Of course there are exceptions, but in general an MBA would be more beneficial for your career

I'm hiring.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm in the US and will be graduating with a PhD in engineering. From speaking with current consultants at McK and BCG it sounds like their on the job experience is pretty equivalent to a MBA. Is this true in general at most firms?

PhDs and MBAs typically get hired into banks and consulting firms at the same level. (In banking, it's "Associate")

But I would suspect you'll be doing much different work with a PhD. You're light years ahead of the typical MBA on quantitative ability. They may also suspect you will have different people skills and fewer connections than your typical Wharton MBA.

If you go the PhD route, I would much rather see you get an Econ, Finance, or ORFE PhD than a Physics PhD. You've got better options, less competition, and when you graduate, if you're at a top 20-30 school, students you taught will be working in industry and telling folks you know your stuff.

Other notes:

-A STEM undergrad and MBA usually make a pretty powerful combination for a lot of careers.

-There's also the ORFE MS route.

-PhDs are highly political. Irony of ironies, you need to be less of a politician to get an MBA than you do to get your thesis approved. MBAs may be riskier cash-wise, but PhDs are probably a riskier proposition over all. Say the wrong thing to the wrong professor, and four years of study goes up in smoke.

A Phd gives you more credibility in some industries (E.g pharma r&d, oil and gas, chemicals, some industrial goods). Even in other industries, when a client has asked my background, and I tell them phd engineering, they often react and treat me differently to me than my colleagues that are run of the mill MBAs.

Otherwise, promotions and exit oops are agnostic to your background. At least. At MBB, PhDs are not treated any differently than MBAs for career development. Exit pops can vary but that is probably more of a function of your case work than your background prior to consulting.

Other companies will hire PhDs and they may treat them differently than MBAs. LEK, Booz, Deloitte, dean, and others hire PhDs but often these require more legwork to get noticed than MBB.

I agree with what the previous posters said. I have a STEM Ph.D. I actually have friends who got Physics Ph.D.s with the intention of getting into quant work from the very beginning. I think this is not a good idea, because a physics Ph.D. is much more of a crapshoot. Your experiment might not work, or your thesis adviser may block you, etc. My program had a 40% washout rate alone. I know a lot of ABDs on the trading desks, and they are doing just fine.

My firm allows Ph.D.s to continue to use their knowledge. I built financial models based on information theory for my previous job at a big-box consulting firm. I realized that I was giving away all my IP for peanuts, and so I started my own shop. We also do consulting in classical communications and other quantitative applications. So if you want to do the classic MBB powerpoint monkey route, that's definitely open to smart phd holders. Be aware that it is a burnout profession and the washout rate is pretty bad. The exit ops are determined by WHERE you wash out. Washing at at EM and above opens different kinds of doors than at associate level. Also know that there are small-firm alternatives like mine though. Thankfully for us, it's a buyer's market for labor, so we have way more good candidates than we need. So if you want to find the niche players, you have to seek them out.