Northwestern vs Cornell for a career in management consulting(aiming for MBB or T2)

Is management consulting recruiting stronger at Northwestern or Cornell? It seems that Boston Consulting and Bain don't recruit at Cornell, while all three MBBs recruit at Northwestern. However, Cornell has that Ivy brand, and still does pretty well.

4 Comments
 

Sounds like you're in a great position! Offers from two fantastic Universities is nothing to sneeze at, way to go!

Anyway, you're going to want to go to Northwestern over Cornell if your end goal is to get into MBB. I've got buddies at Cornell that couldn't even get internships at Tier 2 firms. Not that they can't, obviously, but the pipeline is much more stablished at Northwestern than at Cornell.

Hope this helps! And have a Merry Christmas!

-KHC

Remember, always be kind-hearted.
 
Most Helpful

I have to second this take. Though I didn't go to either school, I have coworkers who went to both. From what I hear, MBB sparsely recruit from Cornell, while NU is a target for all 3. Same with many tier 2s. My tier 2 recruits heavily from NU while we take a few if any Cornell graduates who sneak in through the non-core process each year. NU really is a powerhouse for consulting, both at the undergrad and graduate levels.

I think this is mostly due to the fact that NU is very easy to recruit from (a ~40 min train ride from the Chicago loop) while it is much harder to get all the way up to Cornell. I would only note that you may get locked into a Chicago office if you go to NU. I know my firm lets NU grads pick any office they want in the US, but other firms might be less lenient to let NU students go to other offices. At Cornell if you have a firm recruiting on campus it would likely be for the NYC office (though, again, you would probably get less at bats there). Also, at Cornell you are competing against the Ivies/other good private schools for NYC/Boston spots, but in Chicago there is just NU/U Chicago/Notre Dame/Michigan and then the other good but not great B10 schools.

 

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