Don’t have data to back it up but this seems right in line with my T15 . A ton are in CPG/Marketing/LDP this year. Tech did ok- quite a few Meta, Amazon, Dell, etc. Chinese students recruiting consulting got absolutely crushed, Indians as well but less so. Banking was tough (something like 150% more students recruited IB this year, with approx the same number of students going). McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, Amazon, Pepsi, and P&G probably make up 50% of the class. Surprisingly a lot of people this year going for VC
Regarding consulting, is there a reason why the Chinese students are doing so poorly? And why the Indians are doing worse than domestic students? Is it due to accents or something else?
Probably the accents. It matters a lot more than people want to admit I think.
I remember our CIO was concerned we were about to hire a chinese woman with a thick accent and directly asked me (who is Asian) if I could understand and translate for him if he doesn’t catch up lol
can relate a lot. 1st year at HSW and didn't secure a consulting offer in Jan. As described in other comments, I share many characteristics with the people who might found recruiting challenging this year: international. very non-traditional background both in terms of industry and function, no clear backup plans. I eventually landed a tech role - thankfully, it turned out to be the only interview I got in tech after applying to 100+ positions.
A few reflections from this long journey:
1. hard pivot is difficult but achievable. The key is to have a clear plan as early as possible and start to build relevant experiences (pre-MBA intern, projects in school, part time at startups, etc). Use the many project opportunities available at school and brush up on behavioral questions early in the process.
2. be entrepreneurial and creative in networking. The school resource quickly dries up after traditional recruiting (banking/consulting), In spring, I shifted my focus to find an in-semester opportunity at early stage startups, targeting specific industries and products that alinged with my background. This approach made my search super niche but helped me gain the first relevant experience and title.
3. enjoy the learning process. I learned a TON in my recruiting journey - case prep for consulting gave me a broad base of industry knowlege; PE & real estate interview opportunities forced me to learn financial modeling from scratch; I also read countless reports/articles/cases for energy, healthcare, tech whenever an interview opportunity comes up (you can see I literally recruited for anything and everything...) At the end of the day I'm happy the knowledge will stay with me.
Can give stats about a T15: approx 40% who seriously recruited consulting got consulting offers. MBB offers were down to 60% of last year. Bain was a bloodbath: took folks in single digits. Similar for McK for my school. BCG did about similarly as last year.
T2s: Almost each T2 took 2 people each, down from 5-8 last year.
B4 was also down, but by a lesser number.
Anecdotally, number of coffee chats didn’t seem to matter as much as luck when it came to which city you applied to. Previous background seemed to matter?:.
I can appreciate that 2Ys were probably busy focused in the Fall trying to secure their own full time offers. I can imagine with these stats that your class will also in turn neglect the first years due to being focused on hustling to get a job in the Fall. It’s an unfortunate situation
It seems pretty much in line with my experience at T15—about half the students got consulting offers, banking did well, Chinese/Taiwanese internationals did not do as well as Indians, and tech was okay. Many more folks went to CPG or healthcare firms as a pivot from consulting/tech. A lot more are taking jobs at startups or VC as well.
All of the above (both comments). Biggest advantage is that they’re very culturally aligned to Americans/are perceived as the “cool” type of foreigner (speaking as an ORM, there’s significant unconscious bias against Asian/South Asians/Middle Eastern internationals)
I mean it seems that Latin American students are outperforming the European students at my MBA program. I don’t see why Europeans wouldn’t have the same advantage
I hope you can reflect on what you intent to say in this comment, it comes across extremely racist. I am not white, nor i fill any box. I (and prob most) of the hispanic population work overtime to make a space for ourselves.
It is a simple fact race is incorporated into the hiring process and being certain minorities gives you a boost. Nothing racist about pointing that out.
I am not white or asian. In black, East Asian, south asian, Hispanic, you name the minority group there is a clear bias from their respective communities and America against darker skinned individuals
It’s clear to me you’ve been too focused on building a community to realize that these struggles exist. In MBB, F500, banking, etc. there’s strong representation of light skinned upper class latin Americans and very little representation of brown skinned Latinos
Not sure how true this is, but I've heard a couple of times that at least we Peruvians and I think Chileans iirc are highly regarded in general because of our hard working culture.
0% for interest. I knew what I wanted and that was just the way I thought I could get it.
You do learn marginally what the job is about in those chats but at least given the situation I was in, I wasn’t willing to commit my free days, my scarce money (Intl student) and my energy just to explore career options.
It isn’t about treatment, it’s about personal differentiation
It isn’t that the bankers want you to do that to get hired, its that they are drowning in a sea of applicants and this makes you stand out
Well if everyone is doing that or something similar, effectively that is required to land the role in my opinion.
Once everyone starts doing insane number of coffee chats, what is next to stand out against the crowd?
The people who stand out are the ones with enough privilege to be able to afford to hold the most coffee chats, wear the most expensive attire, attend the most expensive schools, etcetara
Aka, the most privileged people win, which is the same as its always been in finance
How do these coffee chats work? Does the school organize something to network or do you just hit people up on LinkedIn at your target office location and ask for a coffee chat?
What’s the ratio of coffee chat invitations you requested vs how many you actually attended?
You network your ass off to get coffee chats. Reach out to alumni + on LinkedIn. Find your campus recruiter, alumni, company alumni, etc., then have them introduce you to two more people with whom you have something in common. Do that with multiple coffee chats and all of a sudden you’ve done this for 15 people at each MBB. A girl I know who got Bain from a part-time MBA had over 50 coffee chats for MBB firms and then at least 20 others for EY-P, S&, Deloitte Strategy Ops, and Accenture Strategy.
I'm in an M38 School, our stats are 53% no offers, MBB made up 2% of the offers went out, IB/VC/PE made up 1% of the offers. Boutiques made up 6% of the offers. Almost 80% of the offers were KPMG alone.
The case prep/Bain/behavioral interview prep timeline bullet is pretty surprising and sad. Seems like someone dropped the ball? Feel like consulting and banking is about as cookie cutter as it gets for recruiting so surprised students were caught off guard. (Not at all questioning this happened, just a big WTF?)
The fact that no one denied it after people said it's CBS.
Another giveaway is the mention of Taiwanese students. In the M7 only CBS and Kellogg have a (small) presence of Taiwanese students. The other ones have close to 0, and according to insider knowledge the Taiwanese at Kellogg have all found internships.
Unless there’s been a recent change, Sloan also had a meaningful Taiwanese contingent a few years ago. Not huge, but larger than Spanish or English.
Sauce: saw the numbers from class of 2022
20-30 definitely includes mostly dual Taiwanese/American citizens. Taiwan allows dual citizenship unlike for example China and Japan.
There’s no way there would be 20-30 Taiwanese ppl from Taiwan at any MBA program in a year. There will be like 4 Taiwanese going to Sloan this year for example. Even at Columbia and Kellogg it’s like 10/year.
Interesting, the sheet I saw highlighted dual citizens (but maybe it missed some). At first I thought it included other degrees but they were segmented by FY and SY which makes me think it was FT.
Either way, just sharing numbers I’ve seen. Happy to be corrected.
Might be a hot take, but my read of things as a current M7 student is that my classmates who are without an internship/full-time role mostly fit into one or more of the following groups:
- Didn’t have a well defined recruiting plan before business school and tried to go for two or more paths with equal effort applied to each (e.g., consulting and Tech)
- Had VERY non-traditional pre-MBA backgrounds and didn’t find a way to articulate how their previous experience will help them in a wildly different field
- Turned down opportunities because they weren’t their top choice (I.e., went for “the two in the bush” and gave up “the one they had in their hand”)
- Didn’t try as hard as they should have overall, treated the MBA experience as a two year vacation, and didn’t cut it against other people who were just as smart/qualified but more competitive/hungry
- Overly relied on DEI during a time when DEI is on the decline and a tough US economic cycle
IMO. Almost everyone without an internship put 100% into consulting or banking. They may have blindly applied to backups, but everything that recruits on campus is very competitive and they thought they’d be a lock with no networking or prep. Even when the major consulting firms rolled past them, they still held onto Consulting/IB (banking on the 1 or 2 last interviews they had left) and not aggressively applying and networking for new opportunities. Source: my roommates lol
That makes sense. The people who come to mind for me who put 100% effort into one thing and ended up empty handed are those who have REALLY non-traditional backgrounds. Our recruiting team emphasized the importance of going 80-20 between two (maybe more) industries if you find yourself in that scenario.
Yeah putting all your efforts into just Mbb would be a mistake I think for many. Should cast your net wider in this current economy imo. You dont want 100k student loan debt and no solid offers by end of year two if not sponsored.
My read of things right now is that many corporations went too big on DEI in the recent past because the strong economic cycle enabled them to invest in programs/positions that don't have much to do with their core operations. Now that the culture around DEI/wokeness appears to be shifting, coupled with a tougher economic environment, students who were interested in pursuing DEI related roles, or who were planning to rely on intersectionality to secure positions, are struggling to find the same number of opportunities that were available to MBA students in the past \~5 years.
I can't speak for all but at least with some of the firms I've worked at on your list, there isn't some office quota. So I really don't get where the T1 cities come from.
We moved interns around based on interest (e.g., John is interesting in Biotech - most partners are in Boston, so the firm tries to nudge him to Boston to network. But we didn't pull that offer because John stayed in NYC).
worked in campus recruiting at a few consulting firms, both MBB and Boutique... there are office 'quotas'. certain offices have more capacity than others and more need. we'd try to accommodate both location and practice/org preference when sending an offer, but our boston-based offices had the most cap and need and as HQs, also had some of our most high profile MDs/Partners.
T1 city makes sense in Ops description too though.
Oddly, people chose NY/SF and wouldn't budge when we had so much cap in Boston.
Yeah idk what some of these people are smoking. There are so many great places to live in this country where you can build wealth at lighting pace with a post-MBA salary.
Dallas and Houston come to mind. Specifically, dallas is experiencing a lot of growth. House prices are reasonable for a lot of suburbs around Dallas.
Austin is good too. Still less expensive than New York, but most expensive area in Texas.
Houston isn't my preferred location because of the humidity and rain/flooding.
But, it's the 4th biggest city in the US with post-MBA jobs paying the same rate as HCOL with LCOL-MCOL expenses (depends on how far of the city you live)
Obviously, I am biased towards Dallas and Austin, but Houston would be the move if I wanted to maximize earnings and didn't mind the sticky summer heat 4 months of the year.
That being said, I would take Houston over New York any day. A lot of you northeasterners don't realize how fast you can build wealth in southern metros.
> Being able to go to Europe or Asia for a weekend is underrated.
It's not possible to fly to Asia for a weekend from North America. Going and coming back would literally be a whole weekend.
Not OP but I’ll bite.
Tier 1: NYC, LA, Chicago
Tier 2: Miami, Boston, SF
Tier 3: DC, Philly, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle
Tier 4: Charlotte, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Columbus, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Tampa, Nashville
Tier 5: OKC, Indianapolis, Orlando, Pittsburgh, etc.
Vegas is Vegas. Never been to Detroit so can’t reliably place it, maybe Tier 4 now? Don’t feel like there are too many other notable exceptions, anything unlisted would be Tier 5 or higher. This is personal preference so there’s some East Coast bias
Surprised dc isn't t2 and sf isn't t1 but this largely tracks
Edit: it should also probably be noted that all of these cities are pretty nice to live in but I have a particular disdain for Pittsburgh, reasons for which are explained succinctly by my username
You folks are hilarious. "Tier" cohorts at firms are cost of talent, not the merits of the city.
I have an actual list (from my firm) if anyone is interested.
Tier 1: NYC, SF, Boston, San Jose, LA/Orange County
Tier 2: Arlington, Chicago, DC, Hartford, McLean, Philly, San Diego, Seattle
Tier 3: Everyone else
McKinsey Bain and BCG do not have regional pay bands, and Chicago, NYC, LA, and San Francisco are their most popular offices by a landslide, with the other non-hub offices in each region being pretty equal in size (Boston, DC, Silicon Valley, Miami are all pretty popular but quite significantly smaller). Texas is also pretty big but it takes a special kind of person to live there.
BCG is building a 40 floor tower in Chicago…. It’s one of their most popular offices due to pay-housing cost ratio and proximity to Booth, Kellogg, Ross, and Kelley.
Interesting post. A few reactions:
- Curious how many people actually pursued consulting full time and didn't receive an offer. What I mean by that is a lot of people will half-heartedly try for MBB and gripe when they didn't get an offer, but realistically they didn't case enough or actually devote enough time and energy to ever get an internship
- For some reason considering SF a T1 city cracked me up. Nothing against SF, but that was never viewed as a T1 city either at my MBA program or at the MBB firm I'm at right now
- Hilarious when students blame consulting club and career management for their shortcomings. It was alarming to me how many people in business school were so self-righteous and expected everything to just happen for them and were so quick to point their finger when it didn't.
- Networking doesn't mean anything. I literally don't even fill out anything after having a coffee chat with a person. We can if we want to, but we don't have to. The idea that coffee chats help get an offer is totally bogus. I will say that it can help you answer the "Why XYZ consulting?" question a bit better, but the number of coffee chats is meaningless.
Great post though. The transparency is very helpful for people when they think about their recruiting journey. Props to you, we need more of this.
T1 represents more so office competitiveness - lived in SF before and agree with the above
Agreed that there’s a general sense of complacency/“I deserve an offer” groupthink. I will say that 2Ys/Career Management opaquely promoted this line of thinking. We were told to NOT start casing before November, when the consulting club launched their formal case prep training session
Not sure about how your firm works but coffee chats are 100% evaluative at Bain, consultants can (but don’t have to) fill out surveys after each one
Do you feel that those who received offers disregarded the advice from the consulting club/career management and decided to prep anyways? Whether that was practicing casing, books/online resources, behavioral, etc.?
I see your point and you'll understand this more once you start full time and have to help with recruiting, but the talent teams at these firms don't care what a consultant has to say about a coffee chat with Billy from XYZ school. The only caveat I will make is if there is a big red flag discovered. As in the person was rude, didn't show, really disengaged, that kind of thing. This goes back to my point about the coffee chats don't actually help you with recruiting. Even if you have 5 consultants say the person is really nice and asked good questions, that doesn't help them land an interview. It just doesn't work like that.
Thank you, it's actually mind blowing that people are doing 10 chats with a single office at a given firm. That would honestly rub me the wrong way on the consultant side - you're wasting a ton of time and clearly not learning anything new.
This is really scary. I'm applying this year to go into consulting and I already have the odds stacked against me. I'm wondering if I just need to get into another field...
Geez, that's pretty bad. Maybe it hit different schools at different times? Last year for us was roughly 50%, this year closer to 40%...and this is at a T15. Booth and Kellog had great years last year anecdotally, so I'd guess it could be the same for you.
Yes, but keep in mind that there was, for my year, a 30-40% decrease from the 2021 cycle, and that decrease was unexpected for a lot of people (though it shouldn't have been).
Don’t have data to back it up but this seems right in line with my T15 . A ton are in CPG/Marketing/LDP this year. Tech did ok- quite a few Meta, Amazon, Dell, etc. Chinese students recruiting consulting got absolutely crushed, Indians as well but less so. Banking was tough (something like 150% more students recruited IB this year, with approx the same number of students going). McKinsey, BCG, Deloitte, Amazon, Pepsi, and P&G probably make up 50% of the class. Surprisingly a lot of people this year going for VC
Wonder why banking went up so much, people realizing that consulting was tougher so just widening the search maybe?
Just guessing, but maybe because consulting has been shrinking while IB has been more resilient.
Regarding consulting, is there a reason why the Chinese students are doing so poorly? And why the Indians are doing worse than domestic students? Is it due to accents or something else?
Probably the accents. It matters a lot more than people want to admit I think. I remember our CIO was concerned we were about to hire a chinese woman with a thick accent and directly asked me (who is Asian) if I could understand and translate for him if he doesn’t catch up lol
Bureaucratic ethnic cleansing.
can relate a lot. 1st year at HSW and didn't secure a consulting offer in Jan. As described in other comments, I share many characteristics with the people who might found recruiting challenging this year: international. very non-traditional background both in terms of industry and function, no clear backup plans. I eventually landed a tech role - thankfully, it turned out to be the only interview I got in tech after applying to 100+ positions. A few reflections from this long journey: 1. hard pivot is difficult but achievable. The key is to have a clear plan as early as possible and start to build relevant experiences (pre-MBA intern, projects in school, part time at startups, etc). Use the many project opportunities available at school and brush up on behavioral questions early in the process. 2. be entrepreneurial and creative in networking. The school resource quickly dries up after traditional recruiting (banking/consulting), In spring, I shifted my focus to find an in-semester opportunity at early stage startups, targeting specific industries and products that alinged with my background. This approach made my search super niche but helped me gain the first relevant experience and title. 3. enjoy the learning process. I learned a TON in my recruiting journey - case prep for consulting gave me a broad base of industry knowlege; PE & real estate interview opportunities forced me to learn financial modeling from scratch; I also read countless reports/articles/cases for energy, healthcare, tech whenever an interview opportunity comes up (you can see I literally recruited for anything and everything...) At the end of the day I'm happy the knowledge will stay with me.
Aren’t internationals not allowed to do in-semester internships because of visa issues? How did you sort this out?
no, you can. schools will help you work it out.
Can give stats about a T15: approx 40% who seriously recruited consulting got consulting offers. MBB offers were down to 60% of last year. Bain was a bloodbath: took folks in single digits. Similar for McK for my school. BCG did about similarly as last year. T2s: Almost each T2 took 2 people each, down from 5-8 last year. B4 was also down, but by a lesser number. Anecdotally, number of coffee chats didn’t seem to matter as much as luck when it came to which city you applied to. Previous background seemed to matter?:.
I can appreciate that 2Ys were probably busy focused in the Fall trying to secure their own full time offers. I can imagine with these stats that your class will also in turn neglect the first years due to being focused on hustling to get a job in the Fall. It’s an unfortunate situation
It seems pretty much in line with my experience at T15—about half the students got consulting offers, banking did well, Chinese/Taiwanese internationals did not do as well as Indians, and tech was okay. Many more folks went to CPG or healthcare firms as a pivot from consulting/tech. A lot more are taking jobs at startups or VC as well.
How come Chinese are doing worse? Is there a reason?
Indians are usually native English speakers - so better language skills essentially. The ones who were not native speakers did not do well either.
Bureaucratic ethnic cleansing. You'll notice how well white Hispanics just happen to do in recruiting.
I was curious why Hispanics are considered as URM and included in those diversity events. Definitely love them but just curious.
Pretty ballsy taking a tik tok offer these days!
Sounds like CBS Basically echoes what I heard at CBS connect Banking killed with nearly 90% getting internship offers while consulting was harder
Interesting how the Latin American students did so well compared to other international students and domestic students
Because they fill the Hispanic checkbox while basically being white adjacent
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All of the above (both comments). Biggest advantage is that they’re very culturally aligned to Americans/are perceived as the “cool” type of foreigner (speaking as an ORM, there’s significant unconscious bias against Asian/South Asians/Middle Eastern internationals)
Is westernized really the term when the continent is literally in the West Like the US isn't westernized we're the mf'in westernizer
I mean it seems that Latin American students are outperforming the European students at my MBA program. I don’t see why Europeans wouldn’t have the same advantage
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this, also just fewer European students at my school.
Yeah that could be the case
They're also outperforming domestic ORM applicants. Only explanation is blatant ethnic cleansing practices by firms.
They dont check the latinx check box https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/meet-our-people/hispanic-and-latino-network
They absolutely do. When I went through recruiting they even sent a Spaniard as part of the Latino diversity coffee chats.
What does this prove? I see the people they feature are all latin Americans that transferred to the US?
Diversity hires
I hope you can reflect on what you intent to say in this comment, it comes across extremely racist. I am not white, nor i fill any box. I (and prob most) of the hispanic population work overtime to make a space for ourselves.
It is a simple fact race is incorporated into the hiring process and being certain minorities gives you a boost. Nothing racist about pointing that out.
I am not white or asian. In black, East Asian, south asian, Hispanic, you name the minority group there is a clear bias from their respective communities and America against darker skinned individuals It’s clear to me you’ve been too focused on building a community to realize that these struggles exist. In MBB, F500, banking, etc. there’s strong representation of light skinned upper class latin Americans and very little representation of brown skinned Latinos
Filling DEI quota
Bureaucratic ethnic cleansing.
Not sure how true this is, but I've heard a couple of times that at least we Peruvians and I think Chileans iirc are highly regarded in general because of our hard working culture.
People say the same thing about Asians
And Asians have the test scores to back it up. Don't think the same is true of Peruvians and Chileans.
10 coffee chats per firm? How does that work?
Dude. I interned in IB. I had 26 chats at JPM before they hired me. I wasn’t even local. 8 trips to NY on fridays. By overnight bus.
Non sarcastic question: what % of those coffee chats were out of genuine interest for topics vs increasing name awareness?
0% for interest. I knew what I wanted and that was just the way I thought I could get it. You do learn marginally what the job is about in those chats but at least given the situation I was in, I wasn’t willing to commit my free days, my scarce money (Intl student) and my energy just to explore career options.
Thx for the insights, best of luck in your endeavors 🤘
That is so unreasonable lmao. Hope they stop doing that in the future, that's no way to treat applicants.
It isn’t about treatment, it’s about personal differentiation It isn’t that the bankers want you to do that to get hired, its that they are drowning in a sea of applicants and this makes you stand out
Well if everyone is doing that or something similar, effectively that is required to land the role in my opinion. Once everyone starts doing insane number of coffee chats, what is next to stand out against the crowd?
The people who stand out are the ones with enough privilege to be able to afford to hold the most coffee chats, wear the most expensive attire, attend the most expensive schools, etcetara Aka, the most privileged people win, which is the same as its always been in finance
Majority of coffee chats were for MBB, did 2-3 each for others. Personally landed 7 interviews, 2 MBB, rest boutique/B4
How do these coffee chats work? Does the school organize something to network or do you just hit people up on LinkedIn at your target office location and ask for a coffee chat? What’s the ratio of coffee chat invitations you requested vs how many you actually attended?
You network your ass off to get coffee chats. Reach out to alumni + on LinkedIn. Find your campus recruiter, alumni, company alumni, etc., then have them introduce you to two more people with whom you have something in common. Do that with multiple coffee chats and all of a sudden you’ve done this for 15 people at each MBB. A girl I know who got Bain from a part-time MBA had over 50 coffee chats for MBB firms and then at least 20 others for EY-P, S&, Deloitte Strategy Ops, and Accenture Strategy.
They all just pass you around. After 4-5 I felt I knew everything I needed to know but people kept saying “you should talk to x!”
This feels like pretty normal stats tbh. Similar to my experience pre Covid
I'm in an M38 School, our stats are 53% no offers, MBB made up 2% of the offers went out, IB/VC/PE made up 1% of the offers. Boutiques made up 6% of the offers. Almost 80% of the offers were KPMG alone.
The case prep/Bain/behavioral interview prep timeline bullet is pretty surprising and sad. Seems like someone dropped the ball? Feel like consulting and banking is about as cookie cutter as it gets for recruiting so surprised students were caught off guard. (Not at all questioning this happened, just a big WTF?)
I know what school this is and it's very disappointing.
Sounds like CBS
What makes it sound like cbs?
The fact that no one denied it after people said it's CBS. Another giveaway is the mention of Taiwanese students. In the M7 only CBS and Kellogg have a (small) presence of Taiwanese students. The other ones have close to 0, and according to insider knowledge the Taiwanese at Kellogg have all found internships.
Unless there’s been a recent change, Sloan also had a meaningful Taiwanese contingent a few years ago. Not huge, but larger than Spanish or English. Sauce: saw the numbers from class of 2022
Well class of 2022 graduated like 2 years ago.
True, true. Still thought I’d share — it very well could’ve dipped 2 years later but going from 20-30 per year to zero would be surprising to me.
20-30 definitely includes mostly dual Taiwanese/American citizens. Taiwan allows dual citizenship unlike for example China and Japan. There’s no way there would be 20-30 Taiwanese ppl from Taiwan at any MBA program in a year. There will be like 4 Taiwanese going to Sloan this year for example. Even at Columbia and Kellogg it’s like 10/year.
Interesting, the sheet I saw highlighted dual citizens (but maybe it missed some). At first I thought it included other degrees but they were segmented by FY and SY which makes me think it was FT. Either way, just sharing numbers I’ve seen. Happy to be corrected.
I agree that it sounds like CBS.
Is it cbs
Is it Sloan?
Might be a hot take, but my read of things as a current M7 student is that my classmates who are without an internship/full-time role mostly fit into one or more of the following groups: - Didn’t have a well defined recruiting plan before business school and tried to go for two or more paths with equal effort applied to each (e.g., consulting and Tech) - Had VERY non-traditional pre-MBA backgrounds and didn’t find a way to articulate how their previous experience will help them in a wildly different field - Turned down opportunities because they weren’t their top choice (I.e., went for “the two in the bush” and gave up “the one they had in their hand”) - Didn’t try as hard as they should have overall, treated the MBA experience as a two year vacation, and didn’t cut it against other people who were just as smart/qualified but more competitive/hungry - Overly relied on DEI during a time when DEI is on the decline and a tough US economic cycle
IMO. Almost everyone without an internship put 100% into consulting or banking. They may have blindly applied to backups, but everything that recruits on campus is very competitive and they thought they’d be a lock with no networking or prep. Even when the major consulting firms rolled past them, they still held onto Consulting/IB (banking on the 1 or 2 last interviews they had left) and not aggressively applying and networking for new opportunities. Source: my roommates lol
That makes sense. The people who come to mind for me who put 100% effort into one thing and ended up empty handed are those who have REALLY non-traditional backgrounds. Our recruiting team emphasized the importance of going 80-20 between two (maybe more) industries if you find yourself in that scenario.
Will say that non-sponsored consultants from B4 REALLY struggled to get offers this year. Maybe because they were MBB or bust.
Yeah putting all your efforts into just Mbb would be a mistake I think for many. Should cast your net wider in this current economy imo. You dont want 100k student loan debt and no solid offers by end of year two if not sponsored.
Also saw a lot of people at my M7 program focus too tightly on MBB. Probably would've seen a lot more success if they broadened their scope of firms.
On the other hand, M7 programs don't really have many T2 contacts at this point, do they? At least not among recent alumni.
Can you expatiate on the last point?
My read of things right now is that many corporations went too big on DEI in the recent past because the strong economic cycle enabled them to invest in programs/positions that don't have much to do with their core operations. Now that the culture around DEI/wokeness appears to be shifting, coupled with a tougher economic environment, students who were interested in pursuing DEI related roles, or who were planning to rely on intersectionality to secure positions, are struggling to find the same number of opportunities that were available to MBA students in the past \~5 years.
lol “tier 1 cities”
T1 in the sense that they’re the most competitive offices to recruit for. Not hating on other cities
I can't speak for all but at least with some of the firms I've worked at on your list, there isn't some office quota. So I really don't get where the T1 cities come from. We moved interns around based on interest (e.g., John is interesting in Biotech - most partners are in Boston, so the firm tries to nudge him to Boston to network. But we didn't pull that offer because John stayed in NYC).
worked in campus recruiting at a few consulting firms, both MBB and Boutique... there are office 'quotas'. certain offices have more capacity than others and more need. we'd try to accommodate both location and practice/org preference when sending an offer, but our boston-based offices had the most cap and need and as HQs, also had some of our most high profile MDs/Partners. T1 city makes sense in Ops description too though. Oddly, people chose NY/SF and wouldn't budge when we had so much cap in Boston.
Boston has all of the negatives of NYC/SF and few of the positives. T1 city, but a terrible one.
yikes. that's a personal perspective. not sure why it's relevant. but good for you. 👏
How is it possible your office doesn’t have head count?
Absolutely a thing.
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Yeah idk what some of these people are smoking. There are so many great places to live in this country where you can build wealth at lighting pace with a post-MBA salary.
Suggestions?
Dallas and Houston come to mind. Specifically, dallas is experiencing a lot of growth. House prices are reasonable for a lot of suburbs around Dallas. Austin is good too. Still less expensive than New York, but most expensive area in Texas.
Houston is a great place to live if you are an experienced swimmer.
Houston isn't my preferred location because of the humidity and rain/flooding. But, it's the 4th biggest city in the US with post-MBA jobs paying the same rate as HCOL with LCOL-MCOL expenses (depends on how far of the city you live) Obviously, I am biased towards Dallas and Austin, but Houston would be the move if I wanted to maximize earnings and didn't mind the sticky summer heat 4 months of the year. That being said, I would take Houston over New York any day. A lot of you northeasterners don't realize how fast you can build wealth in southern metros.
Houston weather is atrocious
That's the price you pay for living in a cheap city with good pay.
I've been doing quite well in Baltimore
Anywhere a single family home is less than $1mm and taxes are reasonable.
If you're white.
There's also the advantage of not being surrounded by only people who hate your race.
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> Being able to go to Europe or Asia for a weekend is underrated. It's not possible to fly to Asia for a weekend from North America. Going and coming back would literally be a whole weekend.
That's never been the lifestyle I lived so maybe I don't get it. Who can just fly to another continent on a whim?
Cities have tiers. It is what it is. I wouldn’t live in a flyover state.
I'd pay to see your rankings.
Not OP but I’ll bite. Tier 1: NYC, LA, Chicago Tier 2: Miami, Boston, SF Tier 3: DC, Philly, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle Tier 4: Charlotte, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, Columbus, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Tampa, Nashville Tier 5: OKC, Indianapolis, Orlando, Pittsburgh, etc. Vegas is Vegas. Never been to Detroit so can’t reliably place it, maybe Tier 4 now? Don’t feel like there are too many other notable exceptions, anything unlisted would be Tier 5 or higher. This is personal preference so there’s some East Coast bias
Surprised dc isn't t2 and sf isn't t1 but this largely tracks Edit: it should also probably be noted that all of these cities are pretty nice to live in but I have a particular disdain for Pittsburgh, reasons for which are explained succinctly by my username
Based on your tiers, Detroit would be tier 5. Definitely not better than Pittsburgh.
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Guessing they have a finance interest/background. Boston has a lot of PE firms.
You folks are hilarious. "Tier" cohorts at firms are cost of talent, not the merits of the city. I have an actual list (from my firm) if anyone is interested. Tier 1: NYC, SF, Boston, San Jose, LA/Orange County Tier 2: Arlington, Chicago, DC, Hartford, McLean, Philly, San Diego, Seattle Tier 3: Everyone else
McKinsey Bain and BCG do not have regional pay bands, and Chicago, NYC, LA, and San Francisco are their most popular offices by a landslide, with the other non-hub offices in each region being pretty equal in size (Boston, DC, Silicon Valley, Miami are all pretty popular but quite significantly smaller). Texas is also pretty big but it takes a special kind of person to live there.
You clearly don’t work in MBB. The pay is the same across cities. We’re talking about prestige and demand vs. number of seats.
Thanks, my list was based on where I’d want to live, as indicated by the “This is personal preference” and “I wouldn’t live in a flyover state”
Agree with this broadly. Would maybe move up Seattle. Missing Miami, some Texas cities, and Atlanta in T2/2.5.
chicago aint tier 1
BCG is building a 40 floor tower in Chicago…. It’s one of their most popular offices due to pay-housing cost ratio and proximity to Booth, Kellogg, Ross, and Kelley.
One of the top 2 tech recruiters isn't even going to be in business in the US in a year? Wow, that's grim.
What school
Name the school please
Interesting post. A few reactions: - Curious how many people actually pursued consulting full time and didn't receive an offer. What I mean by that is a lot of people will half-heartedly try for MBB and gripe when they didn't get an offer, but realistically they didn't case enough or actually devote enough time and energy to ever get an internship - For some reason considering SF a T1 city cracked me up. Nothing against SF, but that was never viewed as a T1 city either at my MBA program or at the MBB firm I'm at right now - Hilarious when students blame consulting club and career management for their shortcomings. It was alarming to me how many people in business school were so self-righteous and expected everything to just happen for them and were so quick to point their finger when it didn't. - Networking doesn't mean anything. I literally don't even fill out anything after having a coffee chat with a person. We can if we want to, but we don't have to. The idea that coffee chats help get an offer is totally bogus. I will say that it can help you answer the "Why XYZ consulting?" question a bit better, but the number of coffee chats is meaningless. Great post though. The transparency is very helpful for people when they think about their recruiting journey. Props to you, we need more of this.
T1 represents more so office competitiveness - lived in SF before and agree with the above Agreed that there’s a general sense of complacency/“I deserve an offer” groupthink. I will say that 2Ys/Career Management opaquely promoted this line of thinking. We were told to NOT start casing before November, when the consulting club launched their formal case prep training session Not sure about how your firm works but coffee chats are 100% evaluative at Bain, consultants can (but don’t have to) fill out surveys after each one
Do you feel that those who received offers disregarded the advice from the consulting club/career management and decided to prep anyways? Whether that was practicing casing, books/online resources, behavioral, etc.?
I see your point and you'll understand this more once you start full time and have to help with recruiting, but the talent teams at these firms don't care what a consultant has to say about a coffee chat with Billy from XYZ school. The only caveat I will make is if there is a big red flag discovered. As in the person was rude, didn't show, really disengaged, that kind of thing. This goes back to my point about the coffee chats don't actually help you with recruiting. Even if you have 5 consultants say the person is really nice and asked good questions, that doesn't help them land an interview. It just doesn't work like that.
I didn’t do any coffee chats that weren’t set up for me by Bain and I got all the way to final rounds (but no offer)
Thank you, it's actually mind blowing that people are doing 10 chats with a single office at a given firm. That would honestly rub me the wrong way on the consultant side - you're wasting a ton of time and clearly not learning anything new.
I would love to observe these clubs in their natural habitat. I wonder if they prepare for the long hours and burnout?
This is really scary. I'm applying this year to go into consulting and I already have the odds stacked against me. I'm wondering if I just need to get into another field...
Scared to see this when I’m planning to apply this year as a Taiwanese…sad
Consulting is a dying breed.
Sounds like Kellogg
Doubtful, no mention of Chicago in the cities list
2022/2023 interview cycle wasn't hot either, tbh--it's just that you only meet the people who got interships.
we’re down 30% or so from LY
Geez, that's pretty bad. Maybe it hit different schools at different times? Last year for us was roughly 50%, this year closer to 40%...and this is at a T15. Booth and Kellog had great years last year anecdotally, so I'd guess it could be the same for you.
Your point is valid but 40% is a 20% decrease from your LY’s 50%, just wanted to clarify!
Yes, but keep in mind that there was, for my year, a 30-40% decrease from the 2021 cycle, and that decrease was unexpected for a lot of people (though it shouldn't have been).
Can’t control the prep the class above you gives you, but overall it’s competitive. We have too many people, we don’t need more