Clear Admit recently explored which business schools help prepare MBAs the most for a career in consulting, which you can read below.
With starting salaries in the $140,000 to $150,000 range and a customary $25,000 signing bonus on top of that, it’s no wonder so many business school students target the prestige consulting firms known as the “MBB”—McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company—as their post-MBA landing pads. That $170,000+ annual compensation package can quickly cut any MBA loan debt you may have taken on down to size.
Indeed, management consulting has been one of the most coveted career paths for fresh MBA grads for ages. And though the technology industry has in recent years been stealing some grads from the consulting industry’s traditional slice of the pie, the most recent MBA employment reports reveal that consulting is already making a comeback against tech at certain schools.
The opportunity to work with a range of clients comprised of many of the world’s most celebrated businesses across industries—tech included—is part of the appeal of consulting. In many ways, a top consulting gig allows MBA grads to continue their management education while getting paid for it—and further honing their skills and expertise by helping solve a wide variety of business challenges. And, not for nothing, breaking into the MBB is a highly competitive pursuit—one that almost assures that your colleagues will be smart, driven people you’ll get a lot out of working with.
Finally, where the top consulting firms are choosing to find their talent reflects on the quality of the education those schools’ students are getting. In many ways, the hiring practices of the MBB can serve as a gold star standard of sorts for MBA programs.
Elite Firms Hire Grads from Elite Business Schools
The crème de la crème of leading business school talent has headed toward the top consulting firms for decades—and performed well there—creating a virtuous circle of sorts in which the firms’ appetite for such talent only grows. And while this piece focuses on MBB, we should note that a host of other consulting firms—Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, Accenture, Strategy&, and Oliver Wyman among others—are also highly prized post-MBA destinations.
If you are looking to see which business schools send the greatest percentage of their graduates into consulting overall, don’t miss our September 2017 analysis of leading consulting industry feeder schools. Which schools top the list? And what stands out about how these schools successfully train students for careers in consulting?
Looking at Class of 2016 graduates, the University of Virginia’s Darden School led the pack, with 38 percent of its graduates heading into consulting. Columbia Business School was next, sending 35 percent, followed closely by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which sent 33 percent.
The 2017 employment reports, which have been released since our analysis last fall, show some shifts year over year. Darden tied with Emory’s Goizueta School of Business in terms of the percentage of Class of 2017 grads who headed into consulting, with each school sending 34 percent. Close on their heels were Columbia, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School. All four sent 33 percent of their most recent graduating class off to consulting firms.
2 Non-U.S. Schools Lead All Others in Consulting-Bound ’17 MBA Grads
But year after year, one thing remains the same. INSEAD, with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, beats all leading U.S. business schools when it comes to consulting. INSEAD’s 2016 MBA employment report, detailing employment outcomes for December 2015 and July 2016 INSEAD grads, shows that 46 percent went into consulting. And the most recent figures reveal that almost a full half—49 percent—of the 1,029 students who completed the INSEAD MBA program in December 2016 and July 2017 chose to either enter or return to the consulting field.
We should note here that INSEAD is distinct from many other schools in that it includes sponsored students who are returning to their pre-MBA employers among its hiring stats. This is in contrast to many U.S. schools, where the reported number and percentage of students hired by sector and employer corresponds to those students actively seeking employment, excluding sponsored students. Of the 49 percent of INSEAD 2017 grads headed into consulting, 33 percent were new hires and the remaining 16 percent were returnees.
London Business School (LBS) was the runner-up for the Class of 2017, sending 41 percent of grads into consulting. This was a 6 percentage-point gain over the school’s previous class of MBA graduates. Like INSEAD, LBS’s reported sector designation and top employer information includes sponsored students, only its employment report does not disclose what percentage of the class those returning students represent.
MBB or Bust!
Now, let’s drill into those 2017 employment reports to see which schools are sending the most graduates to McKinsey, BCG, and Bain in particular. At both INSEAD and LBS, the top three consulting firms were also the top three recruiters. At INSEAD, McKinsey snapped up 182 grads, followed by Bain with 107, and BCG with 97. Of the 432-student 2017 graduating class at LBS, McKinsey took 37, BCG took 36, and Bain took 35, together accounting for 26 percent of all hires.
At Kellogg, 104 students headed off to the three leading firms—that’s 35 percent of all graduates hired. Here again, McKinsey took the lead, hiring 40 students. Bain followed, with 28, and BCG brought up the rear, bringing on 26 Kellogg grads.
At Chicago Booth, 19.6 percent of all hires in the Class of 2017 headed off to one of the three, with McKinsey taking 48 graduates alone. And at MIT Sloan, 19.2 percent of grads were MBB-bound, 26 students off to McKinsey, 21 to BCG, and 19 to Bain. And at Columbia, out of 706 students , McKinsey hired 55, BCG hired 36, and Bain took on 27. Not to be overlooked, the MBB accounted for three of the top eight employers at Fuqua, hiring 21 (McKinsey), 14 (BCG), and 10 (Bain) students.
So, in truth the MBB dominate MBA recruiting at the majority of the most elite business schools, both in the United States and elsewhere. Harvard Business School (HBS) does not release specific details about how many students are hired by individual firms. But we know that 23 percent of the 712 graduates of the Class of 2017 who were actively seeking employment upon graduation went into the consulting industry. As widely renowned for its case study teaching methodology as HBS is—and with deep alumni ties to all three MBB firms—you can be sure a healthy number were headed there.
Stanford GSB Sees a Consulting Rebound with 2017 Grads
Like HBS, Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) does not disclose the number of students hired by individual recruiting firms. So, here’s what we do know about the Palo Alto school: Of the most recent graduating class, 20 percent headed into consulting, up from just 14 percent two years earlier. Technology hires, meanwhile, fell 8 percentage points, to just 25 percent. In sharing its 2017 employment statistics, the school called it “a rebalancing of the scales among the three top industries.” The third, of course, is finance, which lured 32 percent of the most recent GSB grads.
The school does disclose salary data for the industry as a whole, specifically that the median base salary for consulting-bound grads was $147,000, with an additional median signing bonus of $25,000. These figures trail HBS by a mere $3,000 and are on par with Chicago Booth and Columbia, which suggest that the prestige consulting firms are also those hiring the lion’s share of GSB grads.
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Keith Bevans, global head of consultant recruiting at Bain, confirms his firm’s predilection for graduates from top programs, adding that he has noted common threads between them. “We hire the same type of person from different cities and countries and schools. They tend to be very smart, very passionate, maniacally focused on making a difference in whatever they are doing,” he says.
“Of course, the largest schools tend to have more people. Harvard Business School, INSEAD—they will always be big schools for us because when you look at the size of the program and the percentage that go into consulting, that’s where the people are,” he adds.
Bevans’ insights all suggest that the above data can indeed help steer you toward the business schools most likely to help you break into the MBB firms. But he also noted that Bain ended up hiring from about 60 different schools when he last looked at the data. “Our hiring is concentrated at the best business schools, but the truth is we are looking for the best talent we can find from all sources,” he says.