Is MBB or IB harder to get?

MBB is harder than IB, but if you land BB / EB SA, I feel like MBB FT can be done if you have target school, GPA, etc. 

My friends who flopped BB recruiting used MBB as their backup plan 

Yes and no. The part that’s harder about MBB is that they care about labels like school name and GPA lot, so you’re basically already disqualified if you don’t come from a top tier school (MBB doesn’t even go on campus for a lot of schools that would be considered strong targets for IB). For MBA recruiting, McKinsey even fucking asked for people last year to disclose their high school transcript and test scores INCLUDING the SAT. For people who are 30+ years old btw.

That being said, I personally founding casing to be much easier to prepare for than technicals for finance roles. But that might depend on the person. 

So long story short, someone at HYP would find MBB just as easy, if not easier to recruit for than IB. Whereas someone from a state school would find MBB considerably harder to break into than IB.

I think a higher % of MBB would be successful recruiting for IB than IBers recruiting for MBB. With enough time and effort anyone can nail technicals and behaviourals, and the networking is mostly effort and social skills. Case interviews take a grain of intelligence though that might trip up some bankers (however they’re not rocket science as some suggest).

In the end, they’re looking for slightly different things which means many MBBers would fail IB recruiting and many bankers would fail MBB recruiting. But from a raw numbers perspective I think MBB is harder.
 

It’s much more difficult to get into MBB than EB/BBs. 

First because they are way less spots in MBB than in banking, and second because the interviews are harder. You can learn the answers to banking interviews, you can’t learn the answers to MBB interviews (although you can prepare). 

The profiles are also different, MBB are looking for different personalities, including artistic people etc., all with top tier communication skills. Bankers are more often the financial hardo type, and with lesser communication skills at the junior level on average. As people said earlier, nearly impossible to make it at MBBs from a non target 

In terms of lateraling though, banking -> consulting will be much easier than the other way around. As a banker you can work on PE due diligence, M&A assignments, strategy etc. As a consultant you don’t have any hard financial skills. 

Overall it shouldn’t matter, both are elitist, go to what you really want to do. The success rate will be lesser at MBB though due to limited spots vs banking. 

Imo MBB is harder but not worth it
Esp in london where MBB pays 50k

How hard is the actual day-to-day of a junior consultant at MBB? The cases lwk don't seem that bad, but definitely a different type of thinking than banking. However, I keep hearing that most consultants add little value and act as a "sign-off" for companies already looking to go a certain way.

My best friend and roommate is at MBB in the same city and I'm in banking. He studied for ~2 weeks for MBB interviews and got an offer and took it on a whim (he prepped by helping a friend prep). He was considering RX IB prior to this

MBB pays less but it is better in almost every other way including exits (especially non PE exits) - perks, lifestyle, people, exposure, hours. If you really care about learning, you also get to do a lot more than the banking skillset that you just get 'reps' doing - slides, DCF/LFO, maybe some one off analyses and meeting prep, etc.

I've met many of his coworkers, there are a good number  'non-targets' at his MBB - but they are all hard workers and really genuinely intelligent, more than the average students at targets. Like intellectually curious personalities / my roommate does puzzles and legos regularly for fun, trivia, etc. Banking is cut and paste, the personalities don't translate well to MBB. Also there's a genuine emphasis on diversity - like PHDs/Masters degrees in social sciences/history/hard sciences, etc. That stuff goes unappreciated in banking, it's a totally different lens; the travel in your early/mid 20's is a big perk too (lot of it sucks, but maybe he's lucky but has got to go to T1 cities abroad for a couple of cases)

I've thought about doing the lateral but keeping doubting if I could/should; I think the answer is a clear yes however..

Both consulting and banking are the lowest tier pursuits that pay well.  That's the reality.  Both exist solely as bureaucratic paper pushers that cater to the whims of management and create very little value beyond that for society.   

From my perspective the MBB vs IB, or even MBB vs EB / BB / other is kinda weird. IB encompasses so much more than just the top three most noted firms (GS, MS, JPM). Convo isn’t interesting until you’re comparing the whole of consulting vs whole of IB or MBB vs top of banking.

In terms of the actual job itself, which is more difficult and why? (disregarding the process of landing an offer and difference in hours)

I think we can agree either MBB or EB/BB IB, you are in a great start to your career

I dont think its harder vs easier bc it seems both are tailored to different skillsets and types of people

I think it depends on what school you go to as well. Including B4 and Tier 2, some schools are targets for consulting and not for IB and vice versa. Consulting is more target school biased and will even give interviews with 0 networking because their clients care about the university brand of the team that's advising them. This doesn't exist as nearly as much in IB where target school does matter but not as much as MBB recruiting. 

In terms of prep, consulting can be prepped faster than IB technicals and behaviorals since in IB, you also have to spam almost 80+ emails every week during peak networking season. Networking with consultants is also more chill based on experience. What makes IB even harder is that interviews happen early second quarter of sophomore year and only becomes earlier and earlier every year. 

Having gone through both (shamefully admitting I struck out of IB), I do think consulting recruiting is easier if you go to target school. But if you are truly realized extremely early that you're gungho about finance and have everything in your resume (target school, GPA, IB/PE experience, feeder clubs, maybe even being diversity), then maybe IB recruiting is for you since consulting attracts a bunch more backgrounds and candidates with only three MBB firms.

I didn't get the Goldman return offer after my summer, so recruited for MBB. Before talking about technicals, IB takes years to get into just because of the high emphasis on networking (literally spending years building relationships with banks) and it takes a lot of perseverance (the people gunning for IB are the cream of the crop and you'll get so many rejections that it takes a mental toll). Then, there's the technical prep - I prepped for ~5 months (on-and-off).

It didn't require any networking for me to land MBB. I had chats with a couple of people from MBB, but it was just to see what the job entails as opposed to relationship-building like IB. I also didn't do that many practice cases - I already had the knowledge and problem-solving skills required for the case interviews from IB and other experiences - just needed to learn to structure my thoughts like a consultant.

I think my perspective on this is skewed since I already had IB experience before interviewing for MBB, but MBB was miles easier and took a much shorter time commitment. IB prep is understanding complex concepts and learning them from scratch - memorising walking through a DCF is useless if you don't actually understand the fundamentals for the interview. Anyone can walk through one, but interviewers will ask you how scenarios affect CFs or whatever. However, the problem-solving in MBB came easy to me, and it likely will come easy to you if you can make it to a top IB.

Also, I would say the screening for IB is much more strenuous than MBB. You need to have the best grades, work experience, and awards for IB - literally my cohort at GS had the most cracked people - most already had high finance experience (I already interned at a boutique in addition to other places). For MBB, most of the people I met would never make it through IB screening.