Internship at Barcap or Oliver Wyman FS
Given a choice between a summer internship at Barcap IBD and at Oliver Wyman Financial Services, what's a better bet in terms of keeping longer term options open for M/B/B consulting and an MBA? I don't know very much about how OW FS is viewed in the consulting industry. Also, is it easier to switch from a finance internship to consulting or FS consulting to general consulting? M/B/B all participate in on-campus recruiting at my school...
US or EMEA?
It sounds like you're not particularly interested in financial services, and really just want to keep your options open. Barcap isn't good for IBD, and OW is the joint FS sector leader, but it makes conversion of an OW internship pointless. That said, you hardly specialise in an internship, and so it will be good for CVs when applying to MBB grad. If you don't want to apply to IBD grad, just take OW.
It's kind of impossible to advise you without knowing your preferences and aspirations in more depth. Do you actually have offers from both?
Both opportunities will get you first rounds at M/B/B in the fall (I'm assuming your GPA is legit - otherwise you wouldn't have these offers).
Others can debate the perceived prestige of the two opportunities, but I'd recommend OW FS if your goal is M/B/B. After spending a summer consulting, case interviews will be something of a breeze -- you'll speak the right language, think the right things. I interviewed around after a summer consulting internship (which was M/B/B) and found case interviews to be a million times easier.
That's really interesting advice, thanks! In terms of future aspirations, ideally I'd like to have a good consulting job full time. I just don't know if top tier consulting companies value the brand name of a good bank (and the experience gained therein) over that of a second tier consulting company.
If it's consulting you want to do, go with OW. They're the top name in FS, and whilst companies outside the industry don't often realise this, everyone in MBB will.
MBB look very highly upon banking internships at the top banks (GS, MS, Barcap to some degree). For you, either OW or Barcap will be good enough experience for you to leverage it into a full time interview. I've written about how to break into consulting without having a summer internship at MBB in my posts.
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