She has asked a lot of questions here and my long-time readers know that I DON’T like getting emails with tons of questions because it takes so long for me to think through thorough responses. In this case, I decided to go high-level in my reply instead of deciding not to respond at all. I hope she still finds my response to be useful as she plans her next steps to move forward with McKinsey.
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FA wrote:
Hi Marquis!
I’m “FA”. I first want to say that I love your blog and think you are an awesome inspiration. I relate to you in so many ways, you just don’t understand. I’m also a PK who didn’t have too many role models going into my career and have been just figuring things out as I go along. But on the bright side, I’ve learned a lot about what NOT to do in many situations and I share that advice with my mentees freely! Its great to be a mentor to so many people, but its also a little bit stressful and confusing.
Anyways, I just wanted to see if I could pick your brain for some insight and help on prepping for the consulting interview process. I’m an African-American female medical student at the Univ of Chicago who recently made the decision that I don’t want to pursue a medical residency and would like to go for consulting instead. I’m a little worried because aside from the name of my medical school, I don’t feel like I have much else going for me education wise, but I’m going to apply anyway. I have a 3.2 GPA from UG, and I go to a pass/fail medical school so grades are N/A… I’ve passed everything. My test scores: SAT 1450 M-650, V-800; MCAT 32Q. I do have some good leadership experience as I do a lot extra-curriculars and service work for fun and I tried to highlight that. I don’t have any work experience, I started medical school immediately after undergrad. I have my heart set on THE FIRM
:-), mainly because its the firm that seems the most interested in applicants like me, which make sense, as I’m sure I would be a great fit. I’m also excited about the work they’re doing, I think its very cool.
Okay, I have several questions:
Thanks,
FA
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My response:
Hi FA,
Thanks for reaching out. As you probably know by now, I’m always down to help someone seeking information about areas where I have background, but it sort of makes me smile to know that it’s a fellow PK that I’m helping. 🙂 It’s especially good to know that you share my passion for sharing your knowledge through mentoring others…that sort of thing is so important.
I’m not sure if you’ve read through the full McKinsey.com site yet, but one page that you should check out is http://www.mckinsey.com/Careers/Your_background/Advanced_professional_degrees.aspx. On this site, you’ll see a bunch of information that McK has put together for candidates like you and I’d guess that it’ll be able to answer many of the questions that you have about going into the process. The Firm is really good about keeping people informed as they think about applying for a job.
OK, so let’s get to your questions. In the spirit of full disclosure, I usually am not a fan of emails with lots of questions because they often take a long time for me to respond to. Given the number of emails that I receive, it isn’t really fair for me to devote a ton of time to any one person’s email by doing a deep-dive on a long laundry list of questions. In this case, I’ll go ahead and try to give you something on each question, but will probably take a lighter-touch approach because you’re asking so many things. Sound good?
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- I have been going through your earlier posts and I saw that you had released a guide on case interview prep. Is it still available? If so, could you send it to me?
I posted the file up on my server a while back and linked to it in a past blog entry. You should be able to download it at THIS LINK. Be forewarned that I went really high-level with this document because it was written to help the kids in the class behind me at Stanford GSB to understand how to approach the case interview process. I went pretty “broad brush strokes” on this one. - Do you have any advice on quality case interview prep programs for those of us who may not have access to consultants or even friends interested in consulting to help with practice interviews? I anticipate that this will be a major issue for me (I don’t have much of a business background). I’m reading Case in Point and Case Interview Secrets, but I’m still having a bit of trouble even understanding the frameworks, let alone knowing when to apply them correctly. I’m starting to get the sense that I will need to fork over a significant amount of money for one of these case interview prep programs in order to be successful, but I don’t know which one to invest in. Any advice?
In general, when it comes to something like case interview prep, I’m reluctant to give a testimonial for any service that I haven’t tried myself. With these kind of things, I am cautious because I wouldn’t want to give a recommendation for how good a service is without knowing for sure based on personal experience, only to have my readers come back to me with bad feedback on it.When I was learning about how to do cases, my 2 main resources were “Case in Point”, which you already have, and David Ohrvall from MBACase. I did one of David’s Crack the Case workshops during my first year and found his approach to understanding to be really useful. You can find more information about him and his company at:
http://www.mbacase.com/t-case-interview-coaching-meet-david-ohrvall.aspx
http://www.mbacase.com/index.htmThere are plenty of case interview prep services out there, but you’d have to do some more Google searches to see what others who have used them say about their quality.
Unless you have a bunch of money to spend on case interview coaches, your best bet might be to leverage the resources that could be available to you for free. Given that you’re at UChicago, I’m thinking that you could go over to the Booth School of Business and connect with folks in their Consulting Club. There are tons of kids enrolled there who either have worked in Consulting prior to business school or have gone through the recruiting process more recently. It may be a shot in the dark, but, if you make the request for help, you may be able to find a couple of current students who’d be willing to work with you to get better at cases at low or no cost.
- I’ve also started to think some about which offices I would be most interested in applying too. I submitted an application for Insight Healthcare today and I was surprised when they asked me about office preferences as I don’t really know much about the different offices. Could you share a bit about the culture of the Atlanta office and what you liked/didn’t like about working there? Also, were there any other offices that you looked at closely, or maybe were familiar with based on a friend’s experiences?
Instead of doing a deep-dive on the Atlanta office, I’ll refer you to http://www.mckinsey.com/global_locations/north_america/southern/en/atlanta, where McK has done a good job of compiling information about the office, the type of work done there, and testimonials from folks who work there. Because people join and leave a given office regularly, it is tough to truly describe an office in any moment in time unless you’re currently there, so I’ll leave it to McK to tell you all about that.Based on what I heard from friends in other offices and what I saw myself, the DC and Chicago offices seem like good places to work. I’ve heard that both offices have really great people, interesting clients, and truly supportive senior folks. Also, having lived in both cities myself, I can attest to how fun the non-work lifestyles can be in both places. I actually looked really closely at the DC office because it would have put me only a couple of hours from my family, but, ultimately, ended up being slotted into the ATL office pool when I was being recruited out of business school.
- (I know these are a lot of questions and I do apologize). I’ve done a lot of searching on the internet and it seems like McKinsey recruits pretty heavily at all the other schools at UChicago except for the medical school unfortunately. Consulting just isn’t a popular career choice for U of C med students. Do you think this will negatively impact on my application since there isn’t much of an alumni base at McKinsey?
I don’t think that the lack of UChicago Med School folks at McK will have a negative impact on your application. In my experience, all of the consulting firms evaluate applicants based on their own merit and, if a given applicant has a strong profile, the firms are usually willing to give that person a chance, whether he/she comes from a school that is well represented in the current staff or not. Having alumni of your program at a firm like McK does help in terms of having people that you can reach out to for questions and perspectives, but I wouldn’t say that you need to be worried about it as a factor in how your application will be reviewed. - Would you be willing to help me go through some cases? I know this is super forward of me and you are super busy, but like I said earlier I don’t have many contacts in the industry and I know I need the help. I’d be willing to buy you lunch for your time!
Once upon a time, I used to help my blog readers out with things like this and even offered my services as a paid consulting case interview coach, but, as I’ve become more senior in my career, I have had more constraints on my time. So, unfortunately, I don’t really have time to help you out with case prep. Your best bet would be to reach out to the Consulting Club at Booth and find out if they have anyone who might be willing to go through cases with you.
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I hope the responses above are helpful to you. Fortunately, you are getting pretty far ahead of the process in pursuit of McKinsey for full-time recruiting in the Fall, so you have a lot of time to make the right connections and get prepped by then.
Take care and good luck!
Marquis
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