nanodearokane wrote:
Hi everyone,
First post but longtime lurker (and thank you for putting together and contributing to this excellent forum--it beats the pants off the BW forums any day of the week!), and very happy to be here. Anyways, it seems that most of the discussions concerning admissions chances put undergrad institution and WE into separate buckets. It seems to me, though, that for two super competitive pools (IB and MC, specifically), the two can hardly be taken as discrete variables. That is, it's impossible (or just about, at any rate) to get into McKinsey out of undergrad if you don't go to a school that McKinsey targets, right?
So how do Adcoms view the kid from Harvard who works at Accenture (despite presumably having had a shot at M/B/B) versus the kid who got into Deloitte from, say, Lehigh (which was pretty much the best he could do)? Do the schools really make a distinction based on the student's performance among his peers, or is it only against that applicant's bucket as a whole (thus making, ceteris paribus, the Bain consultant always better than the Deloitte consultant, regardless of their standing vis-a-vis other students from their undergrad)?
Also, to what extent can a high GPA and GMAT mitigate the effects of the not-quite-blue chip consulting firm, especially given the competitive nature of other applicants' gmats?
There's definitely an element of double jeopardy here. If you don't go to a top undergrad, you can't get a top job after graduation. If you don't go to a top high school, it's hard to get into a top undergrad. Some of the people I work with spend their weekends helping their kids study for JUNIOR HIGH ENTRACE EXAMS (what the heck), so that they can get into the right top junior high schools and get on the track. It starts to get pretty ridiculous at some point.
Anyway, I think that's where the essays and ECs come in. You may not work at McKinsey, but you can show your value in other ways. If you can stand out, you might get selected, in addition to (but not in place of), some of the McKinsey guys.
I think if you're the guy from Harvard who is underperforming, then you are in a bad spot.