Yale SOM vs Cornell Johnson - (Consulting)

You may also want to look at the Businessweek profiles for each school. My (cursory) understanding is that they are a little weaker in consulting placement than other schools in the 10-15 range (e.g., Fuqua, Ross, Darden). This comes from knowing a current SOM student who recruited for consulting (and didn't get it) and research I've done into Johnson.

If consulting is your goal, then you really need to do some real due diligence on this matter. Both schools are excellent and have great momentum at this time - Yale with a new dean and new facility and Cornell with its massive New York City campus.

Since I believe that nothing replaces primary, personalized research, I would start researching this matter as follows:

* contact the career placement office and speak to a counselor and get some insight into which firms are coming, new firms that started consulting this year and how aggressively they are pursuing their graduates (ask questions like how many receptions they held, how active the alumni at premier firms are at recruiting new graduates, etc.)
* next, each of these schools have management consulting clubs. I would contact one of the officers at these clubs and speak to them. You can get this information either from the student activity center or each club might even have its own web site or link to the school that provides this information. By speaking to these students, you will be able to get a good idea of the number of students interested in such a career, how "warm" each firm is to the school, trends in the number of students pursuing a career in this field, etc.
* lastly, try to find an alumni or two from each school at some of your targeted firm and ask them for some time to speak about the advantages/disadvantages of attending their school as it relates to securing a position in consulting.

This is a place to start. Good luck in your application process and future consulting career.

Kimberly Plaga
Senior Admissions Consultant
Manhattan Review

@Kimberly:

Thank you for the tips.
In fact I have already started to talk to alums from both Yale and Johnson. I think it makes sense to contact the consulting clubs next.

How about getting admitted to both first?

good thought and how I wish! But I haven't reached that stage yet. I'm still considering whether Cornell fits in with my goals and does it make any sense to write the whole application.

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This may be of help: top-consulting-school-by-placement-at-mbb-138975.html

From a 3rd party observer perspective, these two schools are on par with each other, as far as the strength and reach of the consulting placements.

If your focus is on consulting, and not on the prestige of the consulting firms, you can also expand your school search to be broader. It is my belief that you’ll have an equal chance if the company recruits actively on campus. So instead of picking two similar schools, maybe look a different school, where you would be happy spending your 2 years at.