I am an incoming 2Y MBA student at Kellogg with a background in impact investing & investment management, a top undergrad (HYPS), and stats (GPA, GMAT) above average for the program. My goal is to transition into consulting through a summer internship at either MBB or a tier 2 firm (OW, Deloitte, Strategy&, Parthenon) and I plan to prep hard for it, through preparing for cases early and networking well. Would appreciate any advice on chances with someone with my background, anything I should definitely keep in mind while prepping, and what roles I should recruit for in the case I don't get a summer internship. Thank you.
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Recent MBA grad who recruited for consulting here (though I chose a different route). My pre-MBA experience was in investment management, and my stats were probably similar to yours, though slightly less prestigious UG.
A Kellogg MBA would be best suited to answer this, obviously, but I think you should be in good shape as long as you formulate a good story and do some quality case prep. Kellogg's consulting club will have some excellent case prep tools. Be sure to use the second-year students once you get on campus to talk through your story, case prep methods, and how to network with each firm. For instance, Deloitte cares a great deal about the volume and quality of your networking as a proxy for "fit."
You'll have good chances to get into consulting, but you can look at a couple different routes if all else fails. The recruiting timeline for consulting, at least in my experience, was to network/case prep through the fall with interviews in December and January. Corporate strategy roles would be another solid route, but the timeline may be similar to consulting - you'll want to look at these on a case-by-case basis.
Hope that helps!
Thanks for the advice! Quick question - do corporate strategy positions only recruit those with pre-MBA consulting or banking experience? I have one summer IBD internship from undergrad, but otherwise don't have the "normal" career path.
No - I recruited for a couple of these without having any pre-MBA consulting/banking experience and received a couple offers. I was able to spin my investment experience in a way that made sense - something like "I've spent my career placing a dollar value on corporate-level strategic decisions, and I'm using the MBA to transition to making value-generative strategic decisions." Make sense?
Around 50% of people at M7 schools who recruit for consulting get MBB, obviously higher including S&O. You sound like a high achiever so odds seem high that you'll end up at MBB imo.
Technically, it's about 50% of the people who get and accept consulting offers that are MBB. I'd say at least 1/3 of the people that recruit for consulting don't get offers or stop looking after they go below whatever their target tier is (comp drops off fairly significantly at a few points and the resume stamp factor isn't as great, so if consulting isn't your long term target the value proposition changes). For most people that don't really want consulting long term that's at or below EY/KPMG/IBM level.
I agree on your assessment that the OP's chances of MBB are pretty good as long as they can case decently.
Final rounds are tougher. Most HYPS grads seem to land at MBB. The firms evaluate fit differently but I'd say based on what I've seen that McKinsey is probably a little more skewed towards liking someone that has the 'whole package' (i.e. top UG in addition to achievements) and Bain probably the least concerned about UG school and performance.
It's not a guarantee though and I know of a few people from HYPS that did not get offers at MBB. Everyone from a top 5 undergrad that I'm aware of got an offer somewhere in consulting, but at some point the value prop might not be there.
I'd feel comfortable committing to school that your odds are very, very good at landing at MBB or a top 5-10 firm. Just like everyone else though, make sure you have a backup plan just in case. I.e. a few corp strategy roles, tech companies or whatever that you network with and apply for.
ATK and LEK should both be on your target lists as well. ATK has a really solid Chicago presence for recruiting (this is home base for them).
In terms of prep, the consulting club will teach you everything you need to know and provide a timeline. There's nothing to worry about until they initiate the process.
Pretty much any internship sourced in OCR can lead to re-recruiting for year two, so go with what you're interested in for backups.. Obviously Amazon is better than Groupon, JP Morgan rotational is better than Key Bank, etc and that will matter a little, but they'll more be looking at what you did over the summer unless you're at a top firm.
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