Does not attending Kellogg MBA hinder your chances of landing MBB?

I'm not the best resource on Tuck. But a few things to consider:

1. It's really difficult to recruit for both buy-side and consulting if your goal is buy-side. Consulting recruiting happens much earlier than a lot of buy side recruiting. Some people score earlier offers for buy side, but most of them come later.

Also, if you're recruiting for buy-side investment management, your fall is taken up by stock pitch competitions (all organized through the school); this is a huge time sink but very necessary for the process. Consulting networking happens at the same time. So it's really hard to do both at once (read: impossible to do both properly at once). Reneging on a b-school OCR offer is a big, big deal, so you kind of have to pick. As an aside, people don't really recruit for investment management and PE; they're very different, figure out where you want to focus before going to school. If you're recruiting for PE, you'd best have a relevant background and ideally some connections coming in; it's not an industry traditionally lateraled to from b-school.

You can recruiting again in year two of course, but you'll be much better served by deciding which you want to recruit for before recruiting begins (a lot of offers get locked up in internships for consulting, and a buy-side internship helps a lot with buy-side full time recruiting). That doesn't mean now, it means after orientation at school, so don't sweat too much yet.

2. Tuck places really well for consulting. I don't know the dynamics of the school's OCR though. One thing that typically separates the MBA business schools">M7 from the rest, though, is that literally every major U.S. office will be represented through OCR, on campus, for you to network with and meet. Outside of the MBA business schools">M7 it's usually only a few offices that show up in person and it's kind of on you to drive relationships with other offices. I don't know if that's the case with Tuck. I'd assume at least Boston and NYC will be on campus though. Kellogg might have more national cachet (i.e. west coast, midwest) than Tuck in that regard, while also being equally easy to recruit for east coast offices from. Tuck might be an exception to that dynamic though.

3. Both schools are known for their cult-like hugs and rainbows culture. I wouldn't consider the tightness of the community a real differentiating factor. Yeah, Kellogg is bigger, but Kellogg students tend to frolic hand in hand, 700 students strong, to pretty much everything. The real differentiator is going to be Evanston vs Hanover. If you're a woodsy, outdoorsy person and enjoy hiking, skiing, bouldering, the warm rain on your face while you lie in a mossy glade with 5 best friends wearing the same green sweatshirt, etc Tuck is probably the way to go. Northwestern's a huge school with a fun sports culture and a lot to offer as well, and is accessible to Chicago for a night out (45 minutes away - Tuck is not accessible to ANYWHERE for a night out).