I don't know what I want to do.....

Question: What the heck did you write in your essays regarding focus/goal?

I'm kind of in the same boat. I imagine many people contemplating bschool are as well.

None can beat the real exposure.. what i am trying to do is talk to alumni in the specific field.....or networking with my undergrad alumni who pursued diverse careers

I am with you rhyme! I think that many jobs sound interesting and I do not feel dedicated to any one career path. As far as I am concerned, if hours are reasonable (so I can also focus on the important things in life) and work is intersteing, I'll sign up for it. I have met numerous prospective and current students on my school visits, and the one thing I noticed is that those with finance background want to get into consulting, those in consulting want to get into marketing, and so on. It is like everyone thinks that someone else's job is better... I supose the story would be different with Exec. MBAs, but still...

Most undecided people seem to end up in Management Consulting. After a couple of years, they get tired of the hotels, the airports and working in far flung places like Mobil, Alabama. At this point, they pick an industry they fancy or have experience in and join it in a corporate dev./gen. management role. My worst fear is that I will follow the crowd at school ending up as a finance monkey in IB and eventually hate myself two years after graduation.

I want to find out more about rotational programs, any one talked to a current student/alum about this ?

Yea that seems to be the case. There are of course some people who are staying in industry, but it seems like most everyone wants to switch something up. No one is happy and the grass is always greener on the other side.

This is why its so important for me to figure out what I want to do NOW - once I get there, it'll be far far too easy to just follow the herd into banking knowing full well my heart isn't there.

That's the route that I wanted to take, but consulting seems to be the most difficult industry to break in to. The travel and inconsistent schedule can be a drag too.

The worse part of banking and MC is that they recruit before everybody else. And they have all those recruiting events.

I don't want to go into I banking or MC, but I'll interview with them and attend all their events just to hedge myself.

Investment management/hedge funds all recurit after the banks and/or off-campus.

Right, and it gets very old very fast - the travel that is. You don't always end up on fun projects in fun places, and can be a real drag to get on a plane week in week out. I'm also attracted to corporate rotational programs, but no haven't talked to anyone about this yet.

Consulting is easy to break into. Don't worry about that.

Really? Why does everyone act like it's the world's biggest deal? Or is it just the biggies that are hard to get into? As I've been working on this, consulting has actually piqued my interest, but I've kept that to myself. It seemed like showing up to an interview and saying, "I want to do consulting!" was too much like when I was 8 and wanted to be a movie star.

Yeah, sweetie, sure thing.

I guess it is easy but not that easy. You still need to crack the case in the interview. If you can't, it is a sure ding.

You're health will go to **** in consulting. You really have no control over your diet excpet which restuarant to eat out of. You might be far away from a gym.

In banking, you could at least go to the gym during lunch and have control over your diet.


But then, if you're going into these 2 fields, you're putting money over your health.

Because it's not a hard and fast area. That is, it's not saying "I want to work for an IB" where they will care what specific courses you've taken that address key knowledge areas. Do you know NPV? Can you figure out yield curves? Do you know crap about WACC? etc etc.

It's not like trying to get a job in corporate where your industry experience, or lack thereof matters. Know nothing about the mortgage industry? Hard to make an argument to be a product manager in that area.

Now consulting's different. You dont need any industry knowledge because its any industry. It doesn't matter what. Don't know NPV? Thats ok, it might not come up. It just depends on the projects. We dont have to staff you at Goldman, we can staff you at Pillsbury. Basically a consulting gig boils down to little more than a "can you think, do you mind travel, and will you fit in?"

And cases are easy once you learn how to do them.

That's also the problem with consulting. You spend a couple years in it, and by the end of it, unless you get high enough - say director or above - you've become a jack of all trades and a king of none. You don't know one industry especially well, becuase you've worked in fifteen by then, you dont know any one company very well, because you've worked for twenty of them, and you find yourself in a position where you know a little bit about a lot, but not a lot about a little bit.

You work out at the hotels. The food issue is true though. You eat out all the time.

I've never really liked the mini-gyms at hotels. I need a squat rack and some free weights.

Well, yea they aint ideal, but they work.

I'm in the same boat (and I think most MBA applicants are as well). I have narrowed it to this list:

Don't want to do:

* IB
* Finance
* Sales
* HR

Interested in:

* Strategy Consulting
* Marketing
* General Mgmt
* Sports Mgmt