Two Steps Ahead
Hi, I am entering my freshman year this fall. I have in the couple of weeks, met with a lot of high achiever students that are currently in their 2nd/3rd year of business undergrad and they told me that it is insanely competitive to break into management consultant. These are the people who appear on the newspaper. The problem is that they discovered consulting as a career when they were in their 2nd/3rd year.
I have people tell me that I shouldn't worry about this yet but I feel like if I know what can help me put myself ahead of the competition right from day one, it would give me the vital edge that I need to secure a position. So coming in as a freshman, what should I do? I am also studying engineering not business at a target university for MBB.
Isn't it like 1% of applicants make it into those companies?
I m not sure but I wouldn't mind going for boutique or lower tier.
I'm sure someone can give you some good guidance about breaking in. You are ahead of the game, trying to figure this shit out now.
One Word: NETWORK. Anything is possible with the right network, I pull an FT offer for consulting after going to a non-target and having no prior consulting experience simply by my network.
And I didn't study Business...
Brooj14 what was your major? Could you elaborate on network? I m actually trying as much as I can already with networking. I have met with 1 management consultant and 1 Vice President investment banker as of yet. What sort of experiences should I have?
My major was in the Liberal Arts College...so nothing math based or hard. This wasn't because I couldn't do business or engineering, I just choose not to. I had a 34 on ACT in Math, originally studied Accounting and had a 4.0 in it before switching to something else because I was bored in Accounting. In Consulting, generally, no one cares what you studied as long as you are smart, analytically minded and personable. I had a friend that was a public policy major, only math class he took was like College Algebra, he is in management consulting and current project is with an IB and seems to be doing fine.
I had several connections at all the big name firms but my main contact was someone senior up in his office to the point that all pending offers had to go through him for approval before official offers could be made. Needless to say, he knew the recruiting team very well and passed my resume on to them, from that point, it was on me to shine. As you began college, your network will grow. Joining a fraternity or sorority will help you exponentially (about 80% of my connections are fraternity brothers I contacted randomly).
I had no consulting, finance internships, or etc but what I lacked there was made up by big picture student leadership position that were year long endeavors i.e. summer traveling which played into my lack of summer internships.
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