INSEAD vs. Duke for MBB in the US
I was recently accepted to two great MBA programs: INSEAD and Duke. I would like to do management consulting in the US (hopefully MBB and hopefully West Coast) and was wondering which school would give me the best opportunity to do that. INSEAD seems to be considered more prestigious and has shared career services with Stanford, Harvard, and Kellogg, but Duke is in the US so it has a bigger US network and would make OCR easier.
Which school would make more sense?
Can't comment on Duke. But I do know INSEAD places very well into consulting.
INSEAD. While they have a large number of sponsored consultants, it is fairly easy to get interviews at all three of MBB + RB there. Source: Two American friends at INSEAD, one going to McK, the other Roland Berger.
Also just a quick addendum, Fuqua is fine and can also get you MBB interviews, but I honestly don't think it is worth the extra lost opportunity costs. Also INSEAD is just on another level entirely in terms of activities.
Agreed with the above. INSEAD has more brand power. Fuqua has more U.S. connections, but most of those connections will be in the South/East Coast offices, so west coast might be tougher.
At the end of the day, you're probably fine at either one, There's such a big difference in lifestyle/experience between the two that I would focus more on that vs. marginal differences in recruiting placement.
What exactly do you do right now, audit? I am curious as I keep hearing audit/accounting guys don't get into these kinds of programs very often.
It's a different paradigm outside the US. In the UK, Canada, Australia many bankers/CEOs start out as auditors. Auditing/Accounting does not have a bad rep like here in the US. The ACCA designation is well respected in these countries, and I believe you will find former auditors at the C-Suite and as top bankers.
That is what I have been hearing, but I was assuming the OP is American if he is looking at Duke. I worked for a Big 4 and am considering an MBA, but I am worried schools like Duke or Michigan could be a stretch with my accounting background. Maybe I should look into Insead for that accounting respect factor.
insead all the way. fuqua wont place many to MBB
Can't disagree with any of the commenters since I don't know anything about INSEAD, but I'm at Duke and I have interviews at MBB very soon. We do place a fair number of people there. Fuqua has a really strong network--I had one-on-one conversations with over 50 people across MBB this fall, and I could easily have set up more. The network is slightly stronger in the south than the north, so keep that in mind, but plenty of people do wind up moving west for consulting jobs.
OCR here is a well-oiled machine. Not sure how it is at INSEAD--anyone else have insight?
At my MBB, Fuqua is a target school and we give out double digit offers there a year. My understanding is that our competition does so as well so I'd say that it places decently well. As far as Fuqua's geographic network with in the United States, that doesn't have any effect at all. When candidates get an offer from us, they are free to choose any core office in the country and that's how it works for most firms. The bigger question is how difficult it is to get a state-side MBB offer at INSEAD.
Why do people take things so personally?
34 MBB full time hires for Fuqua class of 2014. 234 MBB full time hires for Insead class of 2014.
That's a factor of almost 7.
Insead is nice enough to split out sponsored students, but even non-sponsored is 140, or a factor of more than 4.
Yes, we should control for class size and all that, but whatever, I'm pretty sure Insead gets a lot more offers than Fuqua per head.
I just checked Kellogg and it's over 2.5x Fuqua at 88.
Fuqua just won't get as many MBB offers per head as other schools that are ranked a bit better. Insead is one of those schools that is ranked a bit better.
Sources: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/documents/mba_recruiting/DukeMBAFinalEmployme… http://mba.insead.edu/documents/MBA_EMPLOYMENT_STATISTICS.pdf http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/career_employer/employment_statisti…
Okay, so I was curious about your numbers and went to check, fully expecting to find that Fuqua's per-capita MBB offers were low.
INSEAD's latest report (from 2014, available here: http://mba.insead.edu/documents/MBA_EMPLOYMENT_STATISTICS.pdf) shows 140 MBB offers (excluding sponsored students) out of 977 students actively looking for a job. That's about 14.3% of those actively looking who were able to get jobs at MBB.
Fuqua's latest report (from 2015, available here: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/documents/mba_recruiting/DukeMBAFinalEmployme…) shows that 51 people got MBB jobs out of 377 actively looking. That's about 13.5% of those actively looking who got jobs at MBB.
So, INSEAD does appear to give you slightly better "odds," (14.3% vs. 13.5%), but the difference is not huge.
It looks like you're going to be in good shape whatever you choose.
Current INSEAD student here. Forward 215 did you strip out sponsored students in your Duke numbers?
I can't speak for Duke but at INSEAD, pretty much everyone will get an interview and as expected, specific offices are more difficult than others (NY, London, Paris etc) but your odds are higher in progressing (all else equal) if you have some sort of connection to that City or country. If you are a US citizen, getting an offer in the US posses no extra hurdle schooling in Europe.
Keep in mind that at INSEAD you have over 200 of your peers who are MBB folks and will be super helpful in case prep. One last point, if you take a deeper look into the 14.3% number, it is not as bad as it looks. For example, at McKinsey, about 500 people apply and about 90 people get offers. I would say only about 150-200 people are really serious about consulting prepping for cases early enough, networking etc. The rest have consulting as a back up or didn't even apply and have the consulting firm reach out to them for interviews through the CV book.
If you are serious about consulting, prep early enough and state that your interest is in the US during networking and you will be fine.
Current INSEAD student here. Forward 215 did you strip out sponsored students in your Duke numbers?
I can't speak for Duke but at INSEAD, pretty much everyone will get an interview and as expected, specific offices are more difficult than others (NY, London, Paris etc) but your odds are higher in progressing (all else equal) if you have some sort of connection to that City or country. If you are a US citizen, getting an offer in the US posses no extra hurdle schooling in Europe.
Keep in mind that at INSEAD you have over 200 of your peers who are MBB folks and will be super helpful in case prep. One last point, if you take a deeper look into the 14.3% number, it is not as bad as it looks. For example, at McKinsey, about 500 people apply and about 90 people get offers. I would say only about 150-200 people are really serious about consulting prepping for cases early enough, networking etc. The rest have consulting as a back up or didn't even apply and have the consulting firm reach out to them for interviews through the CV book.
If you are serious about consulting, prep early enough and state that your interest is in the US during networking and you will be fine.
At a glance, I'm not sure I see # of sponsored MBB students in Fuqua report.
The relevant apples to apples comparison is... Insead = 234 / 977 = 24% Fuqua = 51 / 377 = 14%
Not sure why I had 34 Fuqua in my previous post. Poor mental math or looked at the wrong line or something -- sorry about that. Either way, Insead has a higher placement -- open to being proven wrong, but an intellectually honest comparison shows it's not really comparable.
Also, for an american like OP, it seems like living in France would be cooler than living in North Carolina. Sure, Duke would make choosing a team in March easier, but that's about it. It also sounds cooler when you're at MBB a a colleague looks you up. At MBB your Fuqua MBA will be a bit lower in prestige than the degrees of most of your colleagues. Insead looks a bit better, and is kind of fun an different for an american.
I guess the main thing is INSEAD is shorter, right? Can you still do internship? Are you looking for more time off work?
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