The Student Room Group

Best degrees/unis for management consultancy

Hiii ... would be greatly appreciated if anyone could answer these queriess ...

1) Is management consultancy the same as IB in terms of fierce competition for jobs?
2) Would you have to go to a top 10 uni to get a good management consultancy career?
3) Would Business Research and Consultancy (the only management consultancy bsc in the UK) at Aston be any good?
4) What uni/course do you think would give the best chance of getting a good management consultancy position.

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1
1.) Depends on which firm you aim for
2.) Define 'good'. Effectively yes.
3.) Ehh.....I would still go for uni rep > course
4.) Research!

I'm not aiming to go in to this field myself, just some thoughts I have after researching a few months ago for myself...
Reply 2
Good as in top 10 firm with a good starting salary and good prospects.
Reply 3
I've put Aston as my firm for BAM. I really really want to go into management consulting. I've heard accenture are good but do you think theres any chance of getting into the bigger consultancy firms like McKinsey?or is that jus Oxbridge calibre?
Reply 4
Accenture is nothing special. You could get into Accenture relatively easy from a top 40 uni aslong as you meet the academics and competencies.

If you want to work for the top consultancies in the world (McKinsey, Bain, BCG etc) then it is advisable to go to a uni which is on their milkround. Typically these consultancies select the top unis when they market themselves so Oxbridge, LSE, Warwick, UCL, Imperial. Although, you will also find that they are present at other top unis such as Nottingham, Bristol, Bath etc. There is an obvious reason why they target these unis as they require excellent academics (as such the proportion of students who meet such criteria is higher at those selected unis).

A string of As at A level, a solid 2:1 or 1st is what you should expect academically. You shouldn't negelect competencies as communication, confidence, lateral thinking, analytical skills are what is expected rather than desired. McKinsey (in my opinion) is harder to get into than Goldman (front office).
Reply 5
the top consultancy firms are much harder to get in that IB. some of these firms only recruit primarily from oxbridge and only particular popular colleges.
Reply 6
would an MBA from a good business school offset going to an average uni like aston?
I'm finding management consultancy horrifically fierce to get into. Even my accenture assessment centre was only oxbridge, candidate wise. At another firm I found myself to be the only non JCR president there (of five).
Reply 8
WOW! even accenture want top 10 unis?!
What's with the big dicking on accenture? Pretty much every FTSE100 firm out there is a client. Is it the pay? Seemingly below industry standard (£28k + 10k sign on), what do they pay in second year? Is it because they're not strategy freaks? I like their obsession with technology, you'd get to see the value you're adding in a firm like that. Is it full of monkeys? I have no idea really, but their applicants were bright, and their societies/networks hold great events so I suspect not.
Reply 10
Accenture are a joke. Period. Don't be deluded into thinking that the £28k and £10k signing bonus will hold you in goos stead. The £10k signing bonus is given to you over two years and around December last year, partners announced that there were to be pay freezes depite the company announcing record profits. This means that there is a chance that your salary as a third year analyst will be less than that in your first year (having accounted for inflation). The work they do is hardly stimulating and all you will be doing is 18 month long systems integration/installation projects for the government. Seeing as they are a huge firm, no doubt the bureaucracy of the organisation and lack of client exposure will frustrate you.

Going back to Mr.Universe's original question here are my answers -
1) yes and no. There are less applicants overall probaly less applicants per place, but the average quality per candidate is considerably higher than that of banking. Banks get applicants from mediocre universities applying for front of office positions, and proply get binned. Consultancies solely market themselves to the best unis and so get better quality candidates. Also, the number of places per year within consultancy is far smaller than within banking - a strategy consultancy will be looking for 5-15 grads per year max, whereas a bank will take on 150-300. as there are places within sales, trading, research, IBD, quants......

2) No. Top 5 only. Oxbridge and LSE on your cv will get you an interview, and exceptional candidates from Warwick, UCL and Imperial. Obviously there are exceptions, but only for exceptional people.

3) No chance mate.

4) Engineering, modern languages, economics or a hard science from Oxford, Cambridge, LSE. If not Imperial, Warwick, UCL.

Your comment about an MBA is a tad naive. You won't do one until you're in your mid to late twenties, and the likelihood is that you'll already be sponsored by your company to do it.
Reply 11
Oh, I forgot to say that my comments carry a bias towards strategy consulting. If you set your standards lower and are happy to go to Accenture, CapGemini, PA......then Aston should be just about ok.
Reply 12
thanks for all your advice everyone. I think im going to have to settle for the average consultancy firms but I dont really mind. I'm sure the pay is good enough!
Accenture--not a great place to work. Prestige aside, all the people I know there feel overworked and underpaid. And this includes people working for them in the US and the UK.

You need really good grades for McKinsey. They seem to like academic-types. As an undergrad I got interviews for Bain, BCG, and Accenture (back when I thought I wanted consulting) but was rejected straight away by McKinsey. Word was that you had to have a 3.7+ GPA (equivalent to a 1st) to get an interview--and this was for people from one of the top US universities. However when I applied to McK again this year with the same undergraduate grades but now being an MSc student, I got an interview.
Reply 14
kool thats what i thought aswell. So having post graduate qualifications really does help. What MSc are you doing and where?
I did the 'Discovery' week with McKinsey. Here are some observations:

1) Of around 30 people, there were (roughly) 2 Cambridge, 3 Bristol, 20 Oxford, 1 Imperial, 1 UCL, 2 Bath, 1 Nottingham.

2) Most people academic types - lots of predicted 1sts.

3) Popular courses: PPE, Engineering, Physics, Languages, Geography.
Mr Universe
kool thats what i thought aswell. So having post graduate qualifications really does help. What MSc are you doing and where?


I'm studying politics at LSE. The one person I know going to McK from LSE is doing a dual degree at LSE/Sciences Po in political economy.
Reply 17
fuglyduckling
I did the 'Discovery' week with McKinsey. Here are some observations:

1) Of around 30 people, there were (roughly) 2 Cambridge, 3 Bristol, 20 Oxford, 1 Imperial, 1 UCL, 2 Bath, 1 Nottingham.

2) Most people academic types - lots of predicted 1sts.

3) Popular courses: PPE, Engineering, Physics, Languages, Geography.


Why were there so many more from Oxford I wonder, especially compared to Cambridge?
Reply 18
V1000
Why were there so many more from Oxford I wonder, especially compared to Cambridge?


Point no 3 is one of the main reasons.
Reply 19
wazzup
the top consultancy firms are much harder to get in that IB. some of these firms only recruit primarily from oxbridge and only particular popular colleges.

Very, very few recruit only from Oxbridge, although they exist. None just recruit from some colleges, since they'd have no idea which college you're from. It'd be laughable to only recruit from certain colleges.