Rejected from all Consulting clubs at target school - now what?

Just curious, are you on the west coast?

Chin up! I got rejected from all of my school’s consulting clubs as an undergrad way back in the day. When I applied to MBB ended up leaning into leadership roles I had in non-consulting orgs (arguably didn’t even have anything to do with business), and my genuine passion + non cookie-cutter experience got me through.

A ton of people get great jobs not in business clubs. It really isn’t a big deal and college students seem to think professionals care or that being president of your business frat matters when really it doesn’t matter at all. However, here is what you need to figure out: why did you get rejected?

• One reason could be you come across as a weirdo, or arrogant. Or put another way, you interview poorly. If this is the case, you will need to determine why this occurred and work to fix it. Most people can’t do this. It’s very hard to objectively look at yourself and fix a flaw in the way others perceive you, since if you were aware of the flaw you wouldn’t act that way. Generally people are weird or arrogant because they are unaware of how they are coming off. That said, I know some people who learned they are perceived as arrogant and became better at interviewing since they learned to act more unsure of themselves and be less abrasive.
• another reason could be lack of preparation. Many kids get to college and have no idea about business or the types of questions a club would ask, so things like “how many mcDonalds in the US?” Is a crazy difficult question if you have never seen or thought about a problem like that before. If preparation was your issue, you might be able to better prepare next time, but similar to attitude, from my experience people that don’t prepare or under prepare for an interview for a club are the same type of people to underestimate how much they need to prepare for a real interview. Still, some people mature and fix this for real jobs.
• Weird things out of your control. I don’t know how many clubs you applied to, but it could be you made out with the presidents current boyfriend/girlfriend so they just hate you and tanked your ability to get into the club. This does happen, but more likely than not, you didn’t get in because you 1) came across as weird or arrogant to people or 2) you were not prepared. Be objective, work to fix it, if you can find the person you hit it off with most and ask if they have any advice for future interviews.