IB is Harder to Break Into Than Consulting

I know this has been debated before on this forum but just wanted to share my thoughts. The caliber of people getting IB roles these days is much higher than consulting ones. I go to a non-target school, and it's very rare to see people get BB/EB placements or even top MM, but there are tons of people who get MBB.

I will concede that consulting interviews are slightly harder, but going off of this alone is misleading. In IB, the big barrier to entry is getting the interview in the first place, and the bar is much higher in terms of past internships and networking ability. I find that it's a lot easier for people to get interviews at MBB compared to even MM IB. Yes, MBB is more picky in terms of GPA, but so many people frontload all their easy classes to boost their GPA for sophomore recruiting, so this is clearly the more gameable metric. The time investment to prepare for case interviews vs. learning IB technicals at BB/EB level is comparable.

I've also noticed that the consulting types are not exactly the most book smart, but tend to be better at bullshitting their way through conversations even if what they say has no underlying substance. They tend to have lower ACT/SAT than the IB people as well. IB also tends to attract the more ambitious people as it pays better and provides more lucrative exit opps. These are just some of the trends I've noticed at my school, but curious if anyone has experienced something similar. MBB gets way more respect than it deserves imo