How difficult is it to focus on two career paths in business school?

As someone who has recently graduated from bschool, here is my advice. Please keep in mind that my comments are especially important during this current economic crisis, where jobs are scarce and competition for them is off the charts.

Bottom line: choose either banking or consulting. Not both. Anything else is fair game.

1) The BB and MBB will know that you are looking elsewhere.

The Investment Banks and top MBB consulting type operations will want to see that you are 100% committed to that line of work. If you are playing the field, or appear uncertain, they will worry that you aren't dedicated, and will wonder why you are reluctant to fully pursue that line of work. The BB will think you are worried about working long hours. The MBB will think that you are hoping to make more money by going into finance.

2) Looking for work takes a ton of time, and splitting your time between two career paths means you are not using 100% of your resources for either path. In this economy, you are going to need to do literally everything in your power to land a job.

You will be spending literally all your available time between school and job hunting. Particularly with BB and MBB, you will need to network incessantly. Consulting does a ton of networking events, and so does the BB. So if you're meeting McKinsey for an open house on Tuesday night, and having coffee with five alumni in NYC on Friday, it's just tough to do it all.

3) Academically, you're not going to really have problems.

School will take up a certain amount of your time. It will be secondary to your job search. Regardless of how much stuff you have to do, your course work will find a way to get done. You will find that although it is of secondary importance, you will always be wishing you had more time to focus on your job search.

4) Within finance, the same rules may not apply, but be very careful.

Investment Banking in particular is super obnoxious about wanting you to be 1000000% committed to the hours, and will be nervous if they find out you are considering the buy side, trading, or whatever. Also, the mid market banks might not want to hear you are talking to the bulge bracket. Within the same bank, the IBD will certainly not want to hear that you just told the Traders that you always wanted to be a trader.

But people understand that there are many similarities between these positions, so as long as you are discreet you might be fine.

5) General Management, Tech, Corporate Finance, Healthcare, Nonprofit, etc won't give a shit about who else you are talking to and they make a great backup career plan.