Columbia and Consulting Career

Question

Hello, everyone.

While creating a list of the schools to apply I came up to reviewing Columbia. From one side, it is a good school, ranking high; from the other it definitely has a strong feel of financial school - more than 50% of graduates go into financial sector; and the courses in finance are the most numerous, while courses in International Business, Management look like a supplement to the general financial program. From the other side, I see that many graduates are hired by top consulting firms. Figures greater than those of Columbia are shown only by Kellogg. How does it happen? Do these graduates all work in management consulting and not in financial consulting, if there is any at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.?

riverripper · Answer

Go on businessweek and look at the school profile it tells you how many people were hired by those 3 schools. Columbia though it is usually regarded as a finance school does place a lot of people in consulting. Most top schools do though since consulting and banking are the two biggest employers of MBAs. If you speak multiple languages, are willing to move beyond NYC, and consulting is you goal take a look at Insead, they seem to place a very vey large number of students in the big firms.

pelihu · Answer

I have heard that INSEAD posts such large consultant placement numbers because a much larger percentage of students are sponsored by their consulting firm employers. At a place like Columbia, maybe 1 or 2 people a year are sponsored by consulting firms, while at INSEAD the number is substantially higher. I think it's largely a difference between the way MBA programs in Europe and the US are viewed. As a one year program, people at INSEAD are much more likely to stay within the same industry; while people at two year programs have more opportunity to change their professions.

aceman626 · Answer

where do you find how many are hired by MBB for various schools?

riverripper · Answer

https://bwnt.businessweek.com/recruiting/index.asp?r=0

grad_mba · Answer

spoke to one of the CBS students.
Seems like u never have to fight finance beyond the required 2 cores.

In other words, there are PLENTY of quality strategy/Gen.Mgmt courses available.

aceman626 · Answer

Interesting..thanks for the source. Haas does better than I thought in M/B/B. However I'm surprised UCLA is pretty bad? Also, how come there are no HBS/Stanfords for any of the companies listed? Or did H/S kids all go on to PE/HF and don't even care about McK/Bain/Goldman/IBM anymore?

grad_mba · Answer

They did not participate in the survey.

haddy74 · Answer

It is a myth pelihu. While INSEAD does have higher number of company-sponsored students in comparison to its USA counterparts, this number has hardly increased 7% of its total student population (900 students). Another myth is that INSEAD is a consulting school but if you look at school’s career placements reports for latest 5 years, the distribution of students among industry, consulting and finance is absolutely even (finance and industry close to 33% and consulting close to 35%). Speaking of consulting specifically, usually INSEAD places close to 160 students to Mck/Bain/BCG and historically number of sponsored students from these three companies have never increased 30% which means that INSEAD still places over 70% of un-sponsored students to top consulting firms. Normally most of these 70% of students are career switchers. Please note that unlike I-banking, consulting hardy requires internship although you do have 2 month internship opportunity at INSEAD Jan term. Here is the link to INSEAD's 2006 career report. https://www.insead.edu/mba/careers/docum ... report.pdf

Columbia and Consulting Career

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards