Story of sub 2.5 gpa breaking into MC
Hey all, I made a burn account so I can share a story of sub 2.5 gpa student getting offers from multiple MC firms including one from MBB.
Firstly, I'd like to preface this by saying that my purpose in 5 years of college experience was to experience as many and different things as possible. I attended a very strict all boys prep school throughout my entire life starting kindergarten, graduating with high honors (rank 5 out of 120 graduating class) with 2300+ SAT and double digit number of AP courses taken. I just simply wanted to stop studying like a damn machine and experience as much crap as possible. examples include blowing 15k on alcohol in 3 months, racing friends across the continent with rental cars etc etc
So when I did enter a top 20 school as an economics and math double major, enough was enough. I probably attended less than 50 classes throughout my entire college life. I just crammed for mid terms and finals and just wanted to get by while experiencing new things to the full. Now by experinecing, I do not, DO NOT, mean derping around home watching netflix and going to parties. Internships, travel etc was what i wanted.
I started interning starting freshman summer. I worked for a dotcom startup managing expert contacts and taking care of the website. It was fun and all but definitely not the lifestyle I wanted.
I started seeking for other opps during second year. I made some calls to family and friends and landed a strat internship at a fortune 500. It was better, but damn corporate life was boooooooooring.
I wondered what would be dynamic, exciting and thought provoking all at once. I started throwing out resumes like mad in september of my junior year. I landed a gig with Accenture but they wanted me to start right away due to a very busy project schedule and I said sure. I simply told my school i will be on a leave of absence and took an 8 month internship with Accenture strategy. I had found my calling. I worked on a 2 billion dollar go to market strat project for a fortune 30 and damn it was exciting.
Partner (engagement manager) of the project kindly gave me an offer after the internship was over in august. I simply left that hanging and he didn't mind. I still wanted to see more, see what other firms did and what they did better/worse. Because I had taken a semester off, I was still a junior so I had to participate in summer analyst recruiting when I returned. I got some offers from several firms but i decided to try Accenture again, albeit a different office. This time, it was not so great as I landed on a PMO project focusing on change management. Still, I liked the culture, the people, but I wanted to do strategy.
After the summer, I went back to school, preparing to graduate. Clearly I did not have much of a shot at recruiting full time for MBB. I shot for summer internships. I knew that If I could have just a little bit more of a pedigree and recommendations, I could maybe make it through to MBB.
Partner from Accenture who gave me the offer introduced me to a principle from BCG who eventually gave me a summer internship offer. I performed great but the office (non-US) was not giving any offers to summer class this year. What EM did though was refer me to the full time recruiting committee So I could partake in recruiting process for 2016 class. I did and performed outstandingly in the interviews. Because it is one of the biggest holiday season in the country, BCG told me they would get back to me next monday with a decision of offer or not as all partners were on vacation.
I am currently working as a contractor with Deloitte S&O and well just simply waiting for BCG offer.
I know I have not made the breakthrough of an offer yet but still, I am quote happy to say that despite horrenduous GPA, (literally half of what my weighted average in high school was) I still made some ground and hopefully I will get an offer next monday.
To those in trouble because of GPA, although it certainly is important and could work as a barometer, I strongly do believe that other attributes and qualities of your life could make some way for you to break in to MC.
Cheers.
H
hey! I list my SAT (2300+), GMAT (720+) and number of AP courses with 5s and 4s (10+) no GPA listed. Firms were fine with it
Did you have to send in an official transcript for the internship? Like for a background check... Or did they not care?
deleted
jeez stop throwing monkey shit at me all i did was throw it on the frontpage and say thanks
Great story. I'm in a near identical situation: similar GPA but good work experiences. I was able to network with a partner at a MBB who was able to get me to the 1st round. I'm wondering how you went through the interview process and explained your GPA? Did your interviewers ever ask?
My first round case, he just asked what happned in school? your other credentials are excellent but why the low gpa? i jus simply explained no more of studying for GPA bullshit but living life to fullest. He was like that's awesome. 1-2 (second round in the country I am in), interviewer didn't let me finish the case; he told me I had passed in the middle of it and asked if I had anything to ask.
Partner rounds were bit tricky. They asked what went wrong, I explained and they wanted to hear accounts of my experiences which they enjoyed.
Seems like you're a rich kid who got to spend his college days living off daddy's dime.
Haters gonna hate.
My exact thoughts. What privilege this poster must have to reach out to a "family friend" to have a "strat internship" handed to him .
Exactly. He spent college fucking around and traveling the world (again on his daddy's dime. Top prep schools aren't cheap...) and was able to still land a job because of connections within his privileged and sheltered social class. I mean, I'm not really that pissed that this happened because that's life, but to come on this board and make it seem like you worked your way from the bottom is utter bullshit. Some of the posts on here, regardless of whether or not they are 100% true, are really great for listening to people working their way from the bottom. For example, if I recall there was one where a guy started at CC, xferred to Berkeley after killing it at CC, and still managed to land some sort of top job (can't remember the specifics). That is an example of hard work and determination. Not whatever the shit above is.
ok i'll admit i didnt have time to reach much of the post before putting on frontpage, and haha what a poor choice of an image for the post...
Guy with every advantage carves out opportunity using said advantages. More at 11.
I've already said it isn't the part of taking those advantages that pisses me off, but trying to frame it like he actually had to struggle and face challenges to get them, as opposed to the truth which was probably calling up pop's friend and getting a job.
Lol at the criticism on his post.
To sum things up..
-OP has tiger parents in HS -Goes to college, discovers women and alcohol -Almost fails out of school -Calls his dad to bail him out -Immediately gets awarded a F500 Corporate Strategy internship as a sophmore -Finds this beneath him, gets Accenture MC internship -Finds this beneath him, starts working at Deloitte S&O -Finds this beneath him, goes for MBB FT offer -Still doesn't have a FT offer
Great success story WSO, front page material. I think OP said it best himself:
"I strongly do believe that other attributes and qualities of your life could make some way for you to break in to MC."
Just to clarify,
I am not trying to brag or over-glorify whatever I had overcome or had handed to me but simply write an account of how low GPA is not the end of the world for those in recruiting. Yes, I do come from a privileged background and yes I did have family and friends help me out through the way.
Yes, I am absolutely certain that having fortune 500 strat internship helped me getting through the resume screening but interviews and actually getting good feedback from start shops did involve some of my own efforts whether you choose to believe it or not.
Also if you had not noticed, collegeboard and GMAC do not give out AP/SAT/gmat scores just because my father's position in the society nor do they give thme out to you because you come from a high achieving prep school. Maybe I am delusional, but as you all have very kindly pointed out, I did live my life rather lavishly until I had experienced mc life at Accenture. I do certainly mean it though when I say that since that point, I had not used my family's contacts even once to land any of the gigs or opportunities I had received but were of merit. I even removed my for500 strat internship from my resume to strictly include only what I have done on my own merit.
If you choose to be mad that I have had more opportunities and outs because of my background, then I don't know what to say. But as I recall, having a partner from a shop help you out finding opportunities purely out of your performance and attitude on an 8month long project with a "diamond client", I am sure that has to still count for something.
cheers
Of course it fucking isn't when your life is handed to you on a silver platter and you can call up friends to get you jobs. It's not the matter that you did this, but the fact that you are trying to frame it like you're just an everyman who worked hard and got where he wanted to be. Stop lying to yourself.
Look I understand why some of you are giving the OP crap, but I think there is a message here that should not be ignored.
Yes GPA is important (especially for your first job), yes it will cut you out of opportunities, and yes the OP did have a lot of opportunities that others don't due to family connects, etc, but below are the two points I think are important and are a part of the OP's message:
1) Network. The OP had a network due to family, but whether that connection was due to a family or due to good networking, it doesn't really matter, the important part is that networking can allow you to get the interview even if you have a less than stellar GPA.
2) Your performance on the job matters a lot, especially at the beginning of your career. If you have a sub 2.5 GPA there is a very high chance you will not go to IB out of undergrad, there is also a relatively high chance that you will not follow the typical banking route (well duh, if you are not an analyst you probably won't go analyst -> MBA -> PE, but I mean it will be hard to break in pre-MBA and still tough post MBA). But if you perform well on your job it will start opening doors, if you can show growth at your company that helps, top performers tend to stand out and have MBA opportunities as well as other roles and it helps you with the networks (i.e. co-workers, bosses, etc). To be clear the odds are still low, but this will start improving those odds.
Last thing I will add is also not to give up on your goals. I know people who didn't break into IB at the beginning but ended up at HF's, AM, PE a few years later. It took a lot of work, positioning yourself in the right roles, getting an MBA or an MSF, basically showing that you can handle it. A few of them had bad GPAs (sub 3.0) but were able to get into good programs and get good jobs. So I wouldn't discount this advice (although most of it has been said a few times already).
not impressed, you haven't even landed a truly impressive job even with all the help in the world.
You are a welfare case, go into pharma sales where you belong
I have nothing much to contribute to this post...just want to state OP is a huge douche
Other attributes and qualities of life = parents with a strong network calling in big favours for their non-performing child?
Ok - I get the GPA point. Fair enough.
This story is a little incredibly suspect though. Why would the Accenture partner refer him to a BCG Principal? That makes no sense to refer a top performer to the competition - especially with Accenture making bolder moves in expanding and recruiting.
.The school let Accenture start you during the school year? I've literally never heard of this happening before and I've been involved in consulting recruiting on both ends of the equation for a few years now.
BCG not offering ANY summer class return offers? Literally unheard of. Not true in the US, not sure about elsewhere. OP could potentially be global so it might be different. If this is U.S. then absolutely 100% not true, especially if this is recent.
Contractor at Deloitte S&O? Can any corroborate that these exist? Why would Deloitte hire contractors who aren't SMEs with years of experience in lieu of a kid out of college? I have loads of friends and peers who work at different branches of Deloitte and I've not heard of this.
I don't know what to think, but I know that if this is in the U.S. it's a high likelihood of being false. That being said, a low GPA will not nullify your chances of a consulting job, but it will drastically decrease them. In fact, you'd better have a damn good reason outside of "school's bullshit yo".
OP if you want to clarify anything I've questioned here feel free to do so.
Source: I work at BCG
The whole thing seems a bit suspect to me. I'm at an MBB and am involved in recruiting, and I just can't imagine Partners having that kind of a reaction to a 2.5 GPA. But you know, exceptions do happen from time to time, and if that were the only question mark, then I could believe it. But there's so many other things in there that require suspension of disbelief, that I am inclined to believe its just made up.
Again, one of two of these things I could believe in an exceptional case. But for all of them at once? It's just too much for me at least...
Wow I threw you a SB...I haven't laughed this hard all week. Can you please make this into a series? It can be about all of the different hardships you faced in life and how you overcame them. Topics that you could probably discuss next:
1) When pop's was outbid by $1.2 million for the last seat at Yale and you had settle for Brown
2) When Miss Rivera was out with the flu and damn it you had to struggle with doing your own laundry
3) Fumbling through awkward small talk when the village people came to fix your clogged pipes
4) When Uncle Augustus died prematurely before the family could set up an inheritance tax shelter
5) Crashing the r8 after just blowing a quarter of your trust fund on it
6) Your bought with chronic hemorrhoids
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