Applied Predictive Technologies 1st rounds, any insight on them?

It's not even a question- go with MBB. I know someone who worked at APT and they really didn't like the experience.

1) From what I've gathered, APT's consulting role is called a "Business Consultant" as compared to MBB which are seen as "Management Consultants." With MBB, many CEOs sponsor these engagements, and you will constantly work with C-level executives. With APT, this isn't the case and you won't get much if any C-level time. This is mainly because the APT work is implementation work, where MBB deals with high level strategic initiatives.

2) Exit opportunities are much better at MBB. MBB sponsors business school for many, where as APT doesn't (or at least didn't when my friend was there, but I don't think that has changed). MBB has a much better brand name and will offer much better experience (as mentioned above), meaning that it will be easier to leverage MBB to get a good corporate job, where as with APT it will be much harder, and impossible depending on the company you are trying to get into (ie at MBB it is possible to go work for Disney, Uber, etc where that won't be happening from APT in all likelihood).

3) I've heard that APT can be pretty bureaucratic, but it really depends on the teams you get staffed on (my friend didn't get any say at first, but after a few years you begin to get some apparently). My friend wasn't a fan of many of the people he worked with as it tended to be slightly cut-throat, especially around promotion review. I guess this could describe most places though.

4) APT's hours tend to be more like banking hours than consulting hours. If your friend doesn't mind that, then this really isn't an issue, but my friend worked a lot more than people I know at MBB.

5) Career Development- From what my friend said, APT didn't really offer much, where as MBB offers formal training and then consistently checks up with presentation training, GMAT prep, etc. My friend wasn't really a computer science guy, which made the compsci parts of the job pretty hard and there wasn't any formal help.

6) Role of the job- While consulting at first will require a lot of deck building at MBB or APT, my friend said he felt more like a software salesman and support man at APT. People would call him up looking for a button on the software and he would go to the client site to do APT software training all day. He said it wasn't a very intellectually stimulating job.

Your friend could always go from MBB to APT if he/she really felt like he missed out; however, going from APT to MBB would be much harder if not impossible.

Thanks much for that!

Apparently the work is a cross between implementation and quant analytics, but the pay is absurdly high, like 90k start + signing bonus. Decent, not great, work-life balance, pretty competitive to get an offer. Definitely bullish on the gig, but it has to be something you're into.

Anyone know how the Mastercard deal has changed things?