Want to potentially start a consulting club at school

DIsclaimer: Not a consultant

Get a few of the case study guides and use those as materials to jump start conversations and such at your meetings. I'm fairly certain that some consulting firms make you do a group case study as part of the interview process. Your 'club' could be used as a platform for you and other interested students to familiarize yourselves with the case studies in this type of environment and improve teamwork, etc.

Just a thought.

I'm also not a consultant, but maybe you could get the school to allow you to do a project for them. Maybe approach the dean in charge of facilities and offer to do a study of how to save on energy prices by replacing old light bulbs with compact flourescents. Get creative, there's plenty of stuff like this you could do on a university campus, all you need to do is be proactive - spot a problem and pitch an idea to the person in charge.

What year are you & how close is the nearest city?

Consulting clubs can either be professional development clubs (i.e. do presentations about consulting, bring in consultants as speakers, do mock cases / case competitions) or student consulting groups (i.e. try to take on projects for local non-profits, small business, and possibly the school itself) or hybrids.

The professional development route is easier, and may actually be better in terms of networking because the whole point of existence is getting students exposure to consulting. The time commitment is much more manageable (you only need to ramp up when you're putting on an event, and you decide when the events are).

Building a student consulting group is pretty tough, but is also more rewarding. It may/might not help you network, but it does give you more hands-on experience. This is much harder to do unless you have a group of committed students and possibly some faculty. Having dedicated faculty makes it easier to pitch clients (esp. for-profit companies... non-profits generally take whatever help they can get).

Many of the big consulting clubs have some faculty involvement; some of them also bridge across undergrad & MBA programs. Some examples include Illinois Business Consulting @ UIllinois, Student Consulting Initiative @ UTexas... Google "undergrad student consulting service" for more. My experience was with an undergrad only program.

We had separate organizations for the professional club and student consulting group. The professional was nice to have but kind of useless (except for one year where the president was really good; also I might be biased here). The student consulting group was a lot more interesting, but we struggled a lot with motivation & accountability. One of the problems is we were completely student-run, so the churn rate w/ graduating seniors made consistency tough, especially since it was essentially a 2 year old organization.

Anyways, you should figure out what exactly your goal is & what kind of club you want to have. Depending on what you want to do / how big you want to scope, I'm not sure you need to pitch faculty. If you want a consulting group, find a bunch of motivated students and an advisor or two (faculty w/ experience and/or actual consultant). Then find local non-profits and think of some areas they might need help in; use those ideas as suggestions when cold calling... bonus points if you can have the advisor refer you to a non-profit they know. Then you start building credibility, get better students, better clients, and hopefully find someone to take the reins so it doesn't fall apart when you graduate.

My firm does mentoring with consulting clubs (for example, the Penn Biotech consulting club). I would reach out to your alumni in firms, or, better yet, consulting firms that recruit at your school (any regional ones that go to your non-target?)... and try and set up a mentoring/partnering relationship?

all this is great (no disrespect) but I started my own at a semi-target. Figured out who the two most beneficial phd profs that would sponsor...beneficial by contacts i mean...and started out at the micro level...all groups work on Deloitte cases and all the case competitions everyone is familiar with but mine is different. By micro level I mean working with your Chamber of Commerce (if you have a small internships and have them sit as your panel. Its easy but you gotta do do do. Just be presentable in everything you do. Develop a good website etc. It takes time and years of work to establish a good consulting club but with the effort it can be done. Plus leave your mark. WRITE THE CONSTITUTION yourself. Shows leadership. Join the UGRAD consulting group on here (i started;) ) and network with other groups like that.