If you want to earn an MBA with the end goal of pursuing a consulting career, many schools in the New York City metro area may be a perfect match. For instance, New York University’s Stern School of Business had 28% of its 2015 graduates accept jobs in the consulting field. Furthermore, eight prominent consulting firms hired three or more graduates from the Stern School each in 2014. Consulting employers include the Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Company, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
To prepare its students for these consulting careers, the Stern School offers a variety of classroom instruction, extracurricular activities, and career preparation options for its students. To learn more, I contacted Roxanne Hori, Associate Dean of Corporate Relations, Career Services and Leadership Development, NYU Stern School of Business.
How does Stern help prepare students for careers in consulting?
“NYU Stern MBA students have access to extensive programming, mentors, and networking through the school’s Office of Career Development as well as the Management Consulting Association, one of our popular student clubs,” said Hori.
The Management Consulting Association, which aims to help students prepare for a career in the management consulting industry, offers Stern School students corporate presentations, networking events, and Casing Boot Camps. The boot camps are designed to help students prepare for and practice casing interviews for consulting roles.
Stern also has an Office of Career Development to help students manage their career growth, as well as a global alumni network of over 100,000. Resume reviews, on-campus recruiting, and industry panels are regular features of Stern School career development. Furthermore, students gain access to top consulting firms at a variety of formal and informal events that are held both on-campus or hosted by the companies themselves. This gives students the chance to get to know the firms’ office culture and find the company that is the best fit for their career goals.
And all of this preparation is paying off. Hori noted that, over the past decade, the percentage of graduating full-time MBA Stern School students who accepted consulting jobs has doubled. Furthermore, for the most recent graduating class (Class of 2015), more students went into consulting than investment banking. The consulting field is increasingly attractive to MBA students, and Stern School graduates are successfully obtaining consulting jobs in record numbers.
What skills do consulting firms value most, and how can Stern MBA students gain those skills?
“The nature of consulting work is a great match with our student profile,” said Hori. “We seek applicants who possess both strong intellectual and interpersonal strengths—what we call IQ + EQ.” She also noted that consultants must be very smart, good with clients, and effective managers.
She added that many Stern School students hone their skills through the Stern Consulting Corps, Board Fellows Program, Leadership Development Program, and club leadership roles. The Stern Consulting Corps encourages students to apply classroom knowledge of consulting to clients such as Carnegie Hall, City Harvest, and the William J. Clinton Foundation. Meanwhile, the Leadership Development Program offers students personalized leadership and experiential learning opportunities to help them grow as business leaders.
Again, this extensive preparation pays off career-wise.
“The consulting firms acknowledge the value of this winning combination by hiring our students,” said Hori.
What makes consulting jobs so appealing in today’s job market?
“Consulting roles are intellectually demanding, consist of rotating short-term engagements and require a quick ramp up period,” said Hori. “As a result, management consultants are pushed to learn at a faster pace compared to other industries and functions, embrace diverse subject matter, be nimble, and adapt readily to change.”