Finished my first year at LSE now what?

Hey guys I finished my first year at LSE in 2021 and I am currently doing my military service in my home country. I will discharge on 2023 and I will start my second year on the same year and my question is do I have a shot at an MBB career if I took a break from academics for approximately 2 year due to my service? I will apply to every spring weeks when I go to Ldn next year but I dont have any experience because of my service. Any advice with my current situation? Also I was not able to perform well on my first year due to my mental health issue. I want to work at Bain and Kearney as a consultant and eventually start my own business after few years of work experience. Apologies that I am using a pc from my military base.

 

aorqnr, hey, look at the bright side, at least you didn't get a ton of monkey shit thrown at you...here is my best guess on threads that might be helpful:

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Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

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Hey there,

This is entirely possible, but indeed it will require you to do some legwork before you graduate. A couple of things to note first: Bain London does not do ACI (the undergrad interns), so you can't intern here for the summer. Our only interns are Summer Associates. That being said, BCG and McKinsey both hire summer interns in London, I think. You can try for a Summer internship there, and later apply full time for Bain. If Bain does summer interns (ACI) in your home country though, you could try there, but be aware that there are some cultural differences between offices (happy to talk more about those in private if you like).

As for your situation in general, the military service is not an issue for us. We have a rather active Veterans @ Bain group here in London, so there is a complete understanding that some people will either choose to or have to work in their country's military. Now, if during that time there are sensitive / confidential bits of information you cannot speak about, that is understood too, but do try to think about how you might be able to structure a couple of experiences in terms of leadership / problem solving / teamwork / helping others. We are generally keen on those, wherever they come from.

For your grades, you have two things you can do:

  1. explain to them your mitigating circumstances in your cover letter and
  2. make sure to nail Y2 and Y3, so you can make it up and show that your Y1 problems were indeed situational.

If you can also get involved in some societies / sports / activities while at LSE, in addition to your classes, that will only enhance your application. That is for a couple of reasons:

  1. it will help showcase initiative, and give you more opportunities to gather leadership / teamwork experiences, and
  2. at Bain we are very happy to hire young eager people, but we are pretty clear that Bain should not be ALL you have/do. We very much want you to have a thriving and active life outside Bain. And having those types of experiences helps show us that you indeed can engage in your passions in addition to your core occupation.

Best of luck!

 

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