Wondering if I could get feedback into non-mba masters that may be useful for breaking into consulting. I attended a small state uni in the western US (first gen urm student, gave me a lot of scholarship money, thought a degree was a degree). Needless to say the work opportunities since graduating have been very uninteresting and limited in their upward mobility which makes me feel admission into a top 20 MBA is highly unlikely.
Would a masters/phd in a STEM-related field give a person at least a punchers chance to potentially break into consulting? If so, would it be best to obtain this degree from schools that the consulting firms recruit MBA's from? If you have first-hand experience from your own journey or from other people's journey that would also be great. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Sloppydro, have you checked out these or run a search:
Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.
Yes. M__, especially from a top-ranked school in that particular specialty will work. Not likely for MBB, but for Tier 2 no prob.
Example Le Premiere: MPA (Masters of Public Administration): lots of them work in the DC area in a lot of good jobs, including consulting. Why? Clients need people who know basic whatever skills and stuff about gov't.
Example Le Deuxieme: MPH (Masters of Public Health): " + and stuff about healthcare.
The coursework is surprisingly similar. Surprisingly [raises eyebrows].
If you get a Masters in Whatever Administration, and are good at doing stuff people want to pay money for, that will get you your first 1,2,3 jobs. Then, degree matters less, mostly as a screen for some companies for certain job Pay categories.
In addition to the MPA (for Govt consulting) and MPH (for Healthcare consulting) mentioned above, I would look into a highly analytical/technical masters degree. Something like a Masters in Operations/Supply Chain Mgmt or Masters in Data Science will be incredibly useful for a role in strategy/ops consulting.
As companies are becoming more data-driven in their decision-making, the value-add of an MBB consultant that simply manipulates a client's own data in Excel pivots and Tableau, is becoming less and less. Any monkey working for the client can do that themselves. Having a deeper technical skill-set like Data Science, will provide a much clearer value-add to clients. This will allow you to develop deeper business insights that can't be discovered simply by playing around with pivot tables and Tableau
If your end goal is a post-MBA consultant position and you can't get into a target MBA/MPA/MPH, I think the next best thing is to get into a target advanced degree program (i.e. PhD). This will give you a chance to network and participate in their summer programs. MBB sometimes considers MS candidates with >3-yr professional experience, but your chances are slimmer. I agree that STEM-related field is great, but I would prioritize in getting into a target school.
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