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College student with questions about getting into a Big-3 firm and office selection

by | Oct 24, 2013 | Business, career, career path, consulting, management consulting, McKinsey | 0 comments

The email below came from a relatively new reader of my blog who is interested in pursuing a career in management consulting. He recently completed his Freshman year at Georgia Tech, so he’s particularly interested in the Atlanta offices of McKinsey (and its peer firms) and had a few general questions for me.

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SP wrote:

Hello Marquis,

I am new fan of your blog. Ever since I came across it this past week I have not been able to stop reading the insights you’ve provided to prospective consultants just like me. I am currently a freshman industrial engineering student at Georgia Tech interested in getting an internship and/or full-time offer from McKinsey, Bain, or Boston Consulting Group.

  1. Given your experience in the McKinsey office in Atlanta, which schools do you see represented in their yearly business analyst classes? Does it mostly comprise of H/Y/P/S, Duke, UVA, and Texas, or does Georgia Tech have a good share of students also present?

  2. If GT is significantly less represented than these other schools, what extra qualification/traits/measures do you think are necessary for a Tech student to break into this office?

  3. You’ve previously said that we should begin preparing for the case interviews early on in the process. What resources do you recommend? Are there any guides out there that you would consider worthwhile purchasing as a freshman? I’ve considered some such as Vault, consultingcase101, management consulted, wallstreetoasis, and wanted to know which in your experience worked best for you.

  4. Specifically for McKinsey, is it more difficult to get into the New York, Chicago, and SF offices than it is for the ATL office? What are your impressions of the main differences between these 4 offices? Thank you for your time and commitment to this blog, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

    PS, I am entertaining the possibility of transferring to the Texas Business Honors Program, because of its better track record of placement in management consulting, and ibanking jobs. What are your thoughts on transfer overall and how it may affect leadership opportunities in ECs.

    -SP

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    My response:

    Hi SP,

    Thanks for finding my blog and reaching out to me as a resource. It always amazes me when people as young as you contact me for advice on how to guide their collegiate studies in order to reach a certain career goal, especially when that goal is a gig in management consulting. Without further delay, let’s get to the heart of my response…

    If you’ve been reading through my past entries, then you should have already seen several mentioned that I don’t like to receive emails with a lot of questions in them. Because of the volume of emails that I receive, it isn’t fair for me to spend a ton of time on a single person’s email. Instead of prioritizing your 5 questions and choosing ones to give long responses to, I’m going to give shorter responses to each one. I find that to be the easiest approach on my part.

    • Given your experience in the McKinsey office in Atlanta, which schools do you see represented in their yearly business analyst classes? Does it mostly comprise of H/Y/P/S, Duke, UVA, and Texas, or does Georgia Tech have a good share of students also present?
      Great question…From my recollection, there were several schools represented in each BA class in the Atlanta office, including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, UVA, Duke, Emory, and Davidson. I remember there being several BAs who came in from Georgia Tech too, so there was definitely representation from your school. Back when I was at The Firm, the ATL office had a knack for finding talent at universities across the Southern region and dedicated recruiting efforts toward identifying candidates at those schools.

    • If GT is significantly less represented than these other schools, what extra qualification/traits/measures do you think are necessary for a Tech student to break into this office?
      I wouldn’t say that GT was significantly less represented in the office because there were so many schools whose alums made up the BA group there. Overall, I’d say that the key is for candidates from GT to have the academic performance, interesting internship/work/leadership experiences, problem solving abilities, and strong performance in the interview process to break into the office.

    • You’ve previously said that we should begin preparing for the case interviews early on in the process. What resources do you recommend? Are there any guides out there that you would consider worthwhile purchasing as a freshman? I’ve considered some such as Vault, consultingcase101, management consulted, wallstreetoasis, and wanted to know which in your experience worked best for you.
      My knowledge of the case interview prep books may be pretty dates, but I swear by a book called “Case in Point” by Mark Consentino. It was a great help to me when I was preparing for case interviews and I know of many others who were helped by it. You can find it on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Case-Point-Complete-Interview-Preparation/dp/0971015864.

    • Specifically for McKinsey, is it more difficult to get into the New York, Chicago, and SF offices than it is for the ATL office? What are your impressions of the main differences between these 4 offices?
      This is a pretty nuanced question because it’s almost like comparing apples and oranges when you put ATL up against NYC/CHI/SF, as those offices are the most popular ones in the United States. As a candidate, the first hurdle is to make it through the resume/application screening process and, when there are a lot of strong applicants in the pool, that becomes more difficult. The more popular the office location, the more candidates will submit applications. As such, offices like NYC, Chicago, and SF end up with a larger number of applications and it becomes more difficult to get an interview invite. Once you get into the pipeline and are granted an interview, the process should be consistent from office to office, whether you’re trying to get into ATL, London, Beijing, or NYC.

      I’ve never worked in the NYC, Chicago, or SF offices, so I don’t really feel comfortable commenting on the specific differences between them. If you visit the McK website, I believe you’ll be able to find some commentary on the different types of projects that are typically done in each location, which should give you some insight into the variations (at least from a work perspective).

    • PS, I am entertaining the possibility of transferring to the Texas Business Honors Program, because of its better track record of placement in management consulting, and ibanking jobs. What are your thoughts on transfer overall and how it may affect leadership opportunities in ECs.
      I received an email about 12-18 months ago with a similar question about transferring to a different university in hopes of leveraging the other school’s placement stats for management consulting. I wrote a pretty thorough response to that email and posted it as a blog entry at the time, so I’ll leave it to you to find that entry in my blog archives to get my thoughts on the question.

      At a high level, I’m always cautious about people transferring to a new school simply to get a certain type of job because of the risk of not being able to score that coveted job offer. Unless the choice to transfer is driven by other factors, like fit of the academic institution, desired course of study, or social environment, it feels like a tough proposition to make such a move.

    I hope the response above are helpful as you plan for your desired move into a management consulting role to start off your professional career.

    Marquis