Has anyone ever interned / does anyone work at NERA?

Recently got an offer from NERA. Assuming I pass the background check and/or unless another firm (also in economic consulting) offers me an internship, I will most likely be there for the summer. 

If anyone works there or has interned there, how did you like it? Do they typically value work-life balance? Are there good exit opportunities, and do interns usually become FT employees?

After working at NERA and assuming I stay for a bit after college, I'm hoping to exit to a quantitative market research position or possibly a more data analyst-oriented role elsewhere, if I decide to stay in business. Would working at NERA allow me to take on a more senior position in either of those industries? 

If I don't stay in business, I'll try to go to medical or nursing school (long story but yeah). I don't really want to do law school at least for now. 

Edit: I did say I wanted corporate strategy earlier, but a more data-driven strategy role would probably be a better fit. 

 
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Friend works at NERA, they like it but it really depends on if you like economic consulting work so you should use the internship to figure out if that's something you're interested in. Hours average 50-55 hours a week, but there can be high variance. Some weeks you'll work 70+ because a deposition's coming up and some weeks you'll be out after lunch because your cases just wrapped up. NERA does put you into a specific practice but you still get to work with a lot of different industries, and you might be able to switch practices for FT.

Your exits are definitely possible and have been done before. Not sure if you'll get a very senior position though so if you want to make the change probably do it at the 2-3 year mark, especially because you might get pigeonholed. Also feeds very well into analytics / data science roles if you're into that. If you stay for long enough, EC places well into top business schools, it's a very common path.

 

> I'm hoping to exit to market research or corporate strategy

I don't know much about market research as a field, but economic consulting will not set you up well for corporate strategy, at least judging from everyone else I know who entered econ consulting out of undergrad, but admittedly that doesn't include anyone at NERA specifically. If you're interested in corporate strategy you're much better off starting FT in a strategy consulting role. I'd take the internship offer and re-recruit senior year for FT (I interned at a less prominent economic consulting firm and it worked well for FT strategy consulting recruitment)

 

I'm the person from above and agree with this sentiment, if corporate strategy (without an MBA) is your end goal then you'll be better off recruiting for MC full time or strategy positions that take undergrads.

I've seen several people exit to strategy out of econ consulting but usually it's a more data-driven strategy position or they start off in an analytics position and transition internally to "traditional" strategy, the skillsets required for EC and MC are different. A direct exit is still possible, just not as straightforward.

Edit: since OP is now saying analytics and quanty market research, EC is a really good choice assuming you like the internship. Lots of opportunities in places like big tech, finance, and startups

 

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