Is Consulting easier to break into than Investment Banking?
Just curious what the usual requirements for Consulting are. Is Consulting as strict as IB where they mostly take target uni graduates with experience or are they a bit more lenient?
following
No, it’s harder IMO. Consulting may have more room available due to larger class sizes but for MBB atleast you’ll need a perfect profile and even getting the interviews is hard(for the summer atleast, they look for close to perfect kids/engineers or other stem majors, atleast at my UNI) was much more comfortable going into IB recruiting with a 3.6-3.7 GPA compared to Consulting and risking not even landing an interview at MBB. Tier 2 firms I don’t know much about, maybe getting the interview is easier. IB gave me looks from top BBs all the way down to boutiques, but with consulting I’d imagine only getting looks from tier 2/big 4/smaller.
Gl
Larger consulting class sizes is balanced out by 3 top consulting firms vs a dozen or so top banks.
Would it be easier to transfer from a big 4 or tier 2 firm to MBB than the equivalent in banking?
I think that consulting is more accessible than IB. IB tends to look at a narrower range of backgrounds whereas for consulting, there is more receptivity toward a broader pool of candidates in terms of background/majors. Don't get me wrong, you still need to have a great resume, but I think if you compared a stack of resumes of accepted candidates between IB and MBB, you'd see far more diversity in the MBB pile. However, in terms of receptivity to non/semi-targets, I am not in a good position to compare between IB/MBB.
I find this accessibility thing extends beyond the resume screen, and is a theme with the interview process as well. consulting case interviews are fundamentally a measure of how you think and structure problems rather than a test of explicit financial knowledge as seen in IB.
But at the end of the day, I feel like if you are smart enough to get into an MBB or a top IB, you probably are smart enough to get the other one too, a lot of times, it is a matter of circumstance or where you choose to focus.
I would agree with everything in here. Re:targets I would add that IB is better for semi/non-targets vs consulting, but it has gotten easier over the last year or so as competition for top talent has intensified and consulting and adjacent industries (including IB) have taken more students overall (could absolutely see this slipping back if we go into a recession or something else happens that reduces the insane levels of consulting demand though)
It's hard to provide any hard data to support this, but I do feel confident based on my and my friends' experiences both recruiting to get into consulting & IB from a semi/non-target and our experiences being involved with recruitment in subsequent years. In consulting you'd historically really have to be a standout candidate even get a look from MBB/T2s non-target
The flip side of this is that many students are unsure of how to get placed in Consulting. With IB, there are a set of common skillsets or experiences to build from (i.e. stock pitch competition, FO/MO/BO role, interest in CFA (or have done part of CSC/CBV), financial modelling bootcamp, investment club). However, with Consulting, because they take from a broad pool of candidates, there's very little "tried and true" path available. I, personally, have struggled placing in MBB because they consider such a wide pool and look for near-perfect candidates to even begin the interview process with. In contrast, simply having a degree in finance with a BO finance internship had gotten me interviews at IB back when I was actively pursuing my FT position. This is anecdotal and may not represent the whole market, but I found IB to be easier to pursue because the skillsets are more readily defined than consulting.
The answer is pretty nuanced in my opinion; it's not clear cut.
Generally it seems like the overall BB/EB recruiting pool as a whole has a wider spread and ever so slightly lower median profile than the MBB recruiting pool. At top schools, MBB seems to compete with places like PJT/EVR/GS/MS/JP for talent, as opposed to Citi or Barclays.
If you focus on the most coveted spots in banking, e.g. PJT RSSG, then in my experience those kids had to go through a lot more focus and a lot more work to get their offers than MBB candidates (in addition to being equally pedigreed). The very top IB candidates have been wired into the finance world the moment they stepped on campus - i.e. the recruiting cost seems higher than consulting.
MBB on the other hand is more accessible from a focus standpoint, but not from a pedigree standpoint: candidates need to have impressive schools/grades, but not necessarily focused from day 1 of college. I know people with Rhodes/Marshall or Olympic athletes who put a lot less work into case prep and MBB recruiting than their banking peers, who seemed to waltz into MBB. I don't think those people could've landed a top banking seat as easily though.
If you want to talk in extremes then MBB definitely has more of a pageantry aspect to it. You could say MBB recruiting is "we are looking for someone who can add mystique and impressiveness to this exclusive club we've created" whereas IB recruiting is "we are looking for someone who can do this job x% faster and better than the rest"
Just my two cents.
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