Congratulations, we played ourselves

As we know, MBB has two deadlines this year, one in summer and one in fall. Recently, I've been wondering if the summer cycle is going to be more competitive, given the people who are applying now may be a self-selecting group in two ways:

1. They are at least familiar/comfortable enough with consulting interview process to undergo the recruitment now vs. the fall, aka they may be the more experienced/proactive applicants 

2. They may be people who already have internships/relevant experience and applied now because of pending return offers

Ik MBB always has always been competitive as hell, and it's not to say that the people applying in the fall are somehow worse applicants, but I do think the summer cohort may be skewed towards more prepared/experienced applicants. Obviously, the bar to get/pass interviews doesn't change, but the idea is that if you have a disproportionate amount of people above that bar, it's harder for everyone involved. 

Anyways, this is all conjecture and I just wanted to throw this out there. Since this is the first year this is happening, I guess we'll just have to see how everything plays out, but genuinely curious to hear other thoughts about this. 

6 Comments
 

It certainly may be true that the applicant pool may be more self-selective in terms of talent caliber, but this also most likely means that there are much less applicants in this round than there would be in the fall round. Numbers-wise, even if the pool as a whole may be less talented in the fall, the pool will most likely be bigger and thus more competitive in that way.

 

As you say, this is all conjecture, and doesn’t really change anything for ya at this point. There’s also less time to prepare for the same people with return offers, suggesting the opposite. At this point, all you or anyone can do is give it your all, and leave the post game analysis for after we see everything play out in the fall.

 

OP here, and yea you're totally right, doesn't make a difference thinking about it now, although I still would have applied for summer deadline regardless. But overall, I still think it's an interesting question to consider, and our discussions may be especially relevant for future applicants if this 2 cycle thing continues (who knows, maybe MBB will have ED or EA soon lmao). Anyways, thanks for the helpful perspective, and best of luck with your recruiting szn. 

 

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