The most interesting part of the email is the fact that he already knows that he’s interested in starting his career in management consulting and is targeting the top-tier firms (McKinsey, Bain, and BCG). Given that I’d never even heard of management consulting until a couple of years after undergrad, this kid is definitely ahead of the curve. He had a LOT of questions for me about what he should be doing now to prepare to make himself into a strong candidate and, after giving him some feedback about that, I hit him with a few thoughts.Â
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JF wrote:
Hello Marquis,
I have been reading through your blog and some of your interviews. I’d like to begin with thanking you for always taking the time out of your day to give advice and answer questions, resources like you are invaluable. With that being said I will provide some background information on myself. I recently turned 18, and I completed high school in 3 years (I turned 17 about a month before I graduated). Throughout my secondary schooling I took 3 years of Spanish and 2 years of Mandarin Chinese in hopes of sticking out more for business schools. During what would’ve been my senior year I have taken a gap year program through ‘Carpe Diem Education’. This gap year has brought me through much of Central America, mainly Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. I did a variety of volunteering and Spanish schooling as well as cultural experiences through home stays. I saw this as being a very good option for a college resume as I was rather lacking in volunteering and extra curricular activities as I had focused primarily on scholastics and finishing early. In retrospect I could’ve definitely balanced everything better. I plan on attending a local university for my first two semesters beginning this fall. Local for a Texan like me would be UNT, TCU or Texas Tech. I’ve chosen these schools as places to get my base credits which are generally similar regardless of school, and it’s more financially sound. The schools I will be applying to this fall are UT, Columbia, Duke, Stanford, UPenn, Princeton and Northwestern.
That should be enough background information, I hope. My main question for you is what can I do from here forward to better prepare myself to land a job at Mckinley & Co, BCG or Bain? I truly believe I have the ambition and work ethic to be a successful member at any of the top management consulting firms. Are there classes that I should focus on as an undergrad that most would overlook? What in-school organizations would be ideal to be a part of? I’m part way thinking of finishing my undergraduate career in six semesters as opposed to the general eight. Understandably that’s a very hefty workload, but something I believe I could handle. Also it would be another smart move financially to avoid tuition costs of an entire year of university. How would an early graduation look to a recruiter? Would they think that I can excel or would they I had rushed through and not really absorbed the knowledge necessary to be a successful member at their firm?
I know it can take months for you to answer so I figured the earlier I message you the better. I realize that Ive asked quite a bit, but I believe your areas of expertise could be quite useful to me. It’s absolutely understandable if you’re not sure how to answer some questions, just some general feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again.
-JF
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My response:
JF,
I hope this message finds you well.Â
I never cease to be amazed when people who are either in high school or are just barely out reach out to me. When I was your age, I barely knew what I wanted my college major to be, much less how to think about career things. It’s impressive that you are so career-minded at such an early age and you should give yourself a pat on the back for that.Â
So, before I get too far into this reply message, first thing first, you asked WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY too many questions in your email. If you’ve read through my archives, I’m not a fan of people sending in more than a handful of questions because it doesn’t take into account the amount of time that it would take me to answer. Furthermore, it isn’t fair to other people who write to me for one person to try to take up a disproportionate amount of my cycles to cover a laundry list of questions. Since I put a lot of thought into the emails that come to me, it would take a non-trivial amount of time for me to go through all of that. Going forward, I’d encourage you to be a little more thoughtful on the front end and take the other person’s time into account when you ask for advice.
Net-net, I’m not going to answer every one of your questions, not because I can’t (I actually have answers for them all), but because you really should have prioritized the most important points and asked about those. Instead, I’m going to take care of that for you and pull out what I think are the most important points and address those in this reply. Also, I’ll refer to several past blog entries that I’ve written as a way to more efficiently respond.
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- What can you do to prepare to make yourself a strong candidate for McKinsey,Bain, and BCG?
If I think back to what a person starting college could do to prepare him- or herself to make a run at a Big 3 consulting firm, there are so many things that I could advise. In fact, I’ve actually been asked similar questions in the past by college students, but, admittedly, not by anyone as young as you. I did a quick search of my blog archives and found the following entries that might be of interest to you:
- https://marquisparker.com/2009/03/request-from-college-freshman-for
- https://marquisparker.com/2010/08/advice-on-course-selection-for-a-rising-college-senior/
- https://marquisparker.com/2012/06/questions-from-a-college-freshman-interested-in-management-consulting/
- https://marquisparker.com/2013/09/recruiting-advice-for-a-european-grad-student-targeting-management-consulting
- https://marquisparker.com/2012/02/high-level-overview-of-the-management-consulting-industry/Â (General information about the Management Consulting industry)
After reading through the above entries, I’d recommend that you give my archives a read because there are probably several others that contain information that will be useful to you. I just didn’t have time to do a thorough search myself.
Overall, if I were in your shoes, I’d be thinking of the following things as I start the road toward college:
- Maximizing academic performance: When it comes to Analyst-level positions, there is a lot of competition and, as data-driven organizations, consulting firms tend to look at GPA as a data point to rank/prioritize candidates. Don’t let your grades be the reason that you aren’t invited to interview by one or more of your target firms.
- Exhibiting leadership capabilities: Some kids end up joining a bunch of organizations as a way to fill in their resumes, but never take the time to be leaders in any of the. As a result, the impact of having those items on a resume is basically eliminated. Firms want to see students be willing to step into leadership positions and exhibiting influencing, organization, and administrative types of skills. When it comes down to it, having leadership roles in a smaller number of extracurriculars is far more important than being a member of a bunch of groups or just being a member of what people might consider to be the “right” organizations.
- Developing problem solving capabilities: A major part of the interview process in consulting is the case interview. The best way to prepare for case interviews is to practice them, but, even before then, I’d recommend taking classes that will train your mind to take a structured and strategic approach to solving tough problems. Usually, one can take these types of courses in an undergrad business school, but there are non-business courses that can build your problem solving skills, as well.
- Enjoying your college experience: This should go without saying, but college is a time and place for you to learn a lot and also to gain the experiences that you’ll look back on forever. Don’t sacrifice the fun parts of college in order to overinvest in preparation for a Big 3 consulting job because, if you don’t end up getting into one of those firms, you could end up looking back and realizing that you wasted several years when you could have been having the time of your life.
— - Should you aim to graduate early from college, particularly as it would relate to your candidacy for one of the management consulting firms?
In your email, you said something about graduating early being a way for you to save on tuition costs and, as someone who worked almost full-time while in college to pay my way through, I totally feel you on that. But, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t try to graduate early because it would take away a valuable year of time that you could work toward building yourself into a strong candidate for a Big 3 consulting role.
A few considerations include:
- If you only have 3 years of college, you’d have to take more courses in each semester to complete your courseload, which could impact your ability to score as well in any individual course and possibly put pressure on your GPA
- The need to cram more courses into each semester might take away hours that you would otherwise spend participating in extracurriculars that would round out your profile
- Only doing 3 years of college gives you only 2 summers to complete internships that will add valuable professional experience to your resume; If you don’t end up being able to get an internship in either of those summers, it could put you in a tough position when applying to the top firms
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That’s about all that I have for you. I trust that my thoughts above have nailed all of the points that you were hoping to get out of my response.Â
Take care and have a nice evening.
Marquis
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