Recruiting for BOTH Banking & Consulting (or: Sloan vs B vs CBS)

Hi all,

I am happy to announce that I got accepted into multiple M7 schools (completely beyond expectations), including Sloan, Booth and Columbia. I come from a 'non-traditional' background (non-US citizen), have a decent undergrad GPA from an average school and a decent gmat score (740). Upon applying to business school, and for the past two years, my plan was to move into investment banking post-MBA. Even though I still think that banking is a great career path, several factors make me think twice whether it is a path I want to pursue after my MBA.

I sincerely enjoy dealmaking and executing transactions. It is exciting, fast-paced and gives me a lot of energy. Admittedly, the steep pay-curve is a factor that I consider as well. From this perspective, banking would make a lot of sense. However, the main reasons that make me think twice are having absolutely no control over your schedule, lots of bankers seem miserable, exit opions are limited and looking at my friends - it even has a serious impact on their health (for some of them). It seems like a lot of (prospective) MBA students have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and I believe I belong(ed) to this group as well.

That's why I gave management consulting a second thought. I love travelling, regardless if it's for work or not. There have been months that I was living out of a suitcase because of work-related travel and certainly did not mind. The broad(ER) range of exit opportunities appeal to me, and even though you are still working a lot of hours, I enjoy the predictability of not having to work every weekend. Furthermore, management consultants do not get laid off as quickly as banking (big deal if you're on a Visa!).

I am not asking you for advice on what career path to take. I believe that I will enjoy both, though my preference is management consulting at the moment. However, it seems much harder to break into MBB than into IBD (post-MBA). Therefore, I have the following questions:

  1. Is it possible (and common) to recruit for both banking AND consulting in your first year? I want to make sure that banking is my back-up option if I am not getting a summer-internship offer from MBB (or Deloitte perhaps).

  2. What school would you recommend in this case? I am leaning towards Columbia at this point. I really connected with the students, love to use the flexible curriculum (internship throughout the year) and location. It is generally known that you will need to go to a lot of coffee chats and do a lot of networking to break into banking. Being based in NYC would save me a lot of time in this respect.

Does any of this makes sense or am I missing something important?

Thanks!

Side note - I got my Tuck acceptance call with 30k scholarship earlier today. Don't think it's worth choosing CBS / Booth over Tuck, but still glad with the call.

 
Best Response

It is possible to recruit for both, first year, but probably makes sense to do banking over consulting for your internship. The reason is if you do banking for your first year, consulting with an MBB is stil possible your second year for full time recruiting. However consulting internships to full time banking is almost impossible.

If you are from Asia, I know people who did a 10 week US banking internship and an 8 week consulting internship at MBB simultaneously, so that's available depending on your banking start time and consulting firms flexibility.

Regarding school choice, I can only speak for Booth. It's actually advantageous to be in Chicago at Booth for banking recruiting. Alumni from banks fly to you in Chicago and then require a simple informational call; no need to go to NYC to grab a coffee. All the banks come to Booth so no need to go outside of the process to meet more people.

 

1) Re: combining banking and consulting recruiting, it's simple. IB only recruits via the summer internship. Consulting recruits both for Summer and FT, and there are probably more spots in FT. If you want to try both, try IB for your summer and if you don't like it, do MC in your 2nd year. You can't do it the other way around.

2) Re: schools, based on the data, it's a 3-way tie in MC (they're equal targets), and a Booth/CBS tie in IB. The networking is actually easier from Chicago than NYC since the expectations are lower (you aren't in New York, where you're always 15 min away from treating a banker to coffee).

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 

Thanks a lot guys. Certainly my preference to lock an internship at MBB during my first year though, as I will guess that LOADS of students will recruit for MBB full-time in the second year (is this correct?), and given that MBB is my preference, wouldn't it make more sense to TRY to secure an MBB internship, and if that does not work out, I will have an IB internship as a back-up?

Admittedly, your approach does sound more logical @jtbbdxbnycmad"

 

Maybe a handful of people started out trying to recruit for both, but I think they all dropped one by the end of first semester. It's just too busy in terms of events to go for both banking and consulting, unless you only focus on a few firms in each space, and then you could be really shooting yourself in the foot if they happen to not work out.

 

The busy-ness only occurs if you are recruiting for every single bank and also MBB firms.

If you recruit for say 6 banks between BB and EB and MBB I would say it's manageable (some people recruit for 15+ banks). Keep in mind the MBB make or break is the interview. If you network hard you get an invite and bomb the interview you won't get an offer. On the other hand, Booth has a bidding system for interviews. People who did no networking and bid on MBB interviews and subsequently crush them still get offers.

Banking is more unavoidably time intensive. You must go through the networking process before the interview to get the offer.

At Booth, for reference, I personally know someone who was in at both McKinsey and BAML for internship. Also know a guy who did GS for internship and got McKinsey FT.

 

Thanks a lot for your comments. Curious to hear your opinions on one last point, as people seem to have different views on this:

To what extent is it true that CBS students are required to do coffee chats 24/7, whereas at other schools such as Booth you will not have to fly to NYC all the time?

 
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Thanks a lot for your comments. Curious to hear your opinions on one last point, as people seem to have different views on this:

To what extent is it true that CBS students are required to do coffee chats 24/7, whereas at other schools such as Booth you will not have to fly to NYC all the time?

My impression of this from talking to a lot of students at several schools, including CBS, is that it's overblown by a lot of non CBS students/applicants. Does CBS require you too network more on your own around the city? Yes. But Booth does too (or Sloan) if you recruit those local offices. And a lot of Booth students recruit for Chicago. Also, you don't have to, but a lot of Booth/Sloan students still do travel to the city regularly to "get a leg up". I was told by one Booth student that it's definitely not required to do well, but he thought there was absolutely correlation to getting better offers.

Even if you are recruiting NY only offices only at CBS, its only about a 6-8 week span where heavy recruiting can even happen. You aren't allowed to be talking to banks or banks talking to you until about mid to late October. Then it dies down once interview decisions are out in December. Then there is pretty much nothing over the Holidays until you do all your actual interviews the first or second week of January.

Just my impressions from visiting and talking to people at each school.

 

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