Management consulting is a coveted career choice for many MBA aspirants and even experienced professionals. A consulting career can be very rewarding in terms of the sheer responsibility that the job entails, travel and networking opportunities, and the paycheck. If you want to know how Management Consulting became a favorite for MBAs, read The History Of Management Consulting and the Influence of Marvin Bower in Management Consulting
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the management, scientific and technical consulting industry is expected to grow by 2.4% by 2024 with 1.57 million jobs added in the market against the national average job growth of 0.6%. Among the fastest growing jobs in the US - Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists is estimated to add 587,800 jobs by 2024. The mean annual wage of management analysts across industries was recorded at $91,770, in 2017. Typical management consultant salaries fall in the range of $110,000 - $170,000, which goes up to around $280,000 for senior consultants. Even during the recession, the consulting industry had proven resilient. A career in management consulting is a great choice, with immense job satisfaction if you are aware of the traveling and advisory responsibilities.
Top consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte, Booze & Co, Accenture, AT Kearney, LEK, Monitor and BCG hire heavily from top MBA schools such as Kellogg, INSEAD, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. These schools provide the most opportunities and attract top management consulting firms from all over the country. If you are interested in pursuing a career in management consulting, here are some of the top MBA programs to consider.
Kellogg
At the Kellogg School of Management, there is a student-run consulting club in the campus which helps students figure out what management consulting is all about, what it demands and has to offer and also help decide whether or not it is a career that they should pursue. The Kellogg Consulting Club also assists companies to engage with the accomplished talent pool at the campus. Kellogg case studies are famous the world over and are known for taking on the timeliest of business issues. According to the Kellogg recruitment report, the percentage of acceptance for consulting jobs was 33% with a median base salary of $1,45,000 in 2016.
INSEAD
At INSEAD, the MBA curriculum is designed to prepare you thoroughly for a career in international business and one of the hot spots for consulting firms from all over the world for recruitment. The first half of the program comprises 14 core courses; you can choose 11 electives, from over 70 on offer, for the second part of the program. It is during the second half of the program that you can choose to concentrate on specific areas such as management consulting. INSEAD faculty members are from 37 different countries and are all involved in strategic research in key areas of global businesses. In 2016, at INSEAD, 48% of the graduates went into consulting job function with a median base salary of $110,000 and a total median salary of $156,900.
Harvard University
MBA at Harvard can change your life. With the top-notch Harvard curriculum, field-based learning, international immersions, case method courses and multimedia simulations; you gain invaluable and practical leadership lessons from Harvard. The Management Consulting Club at Harvard conducts case interview workshops, career panels, speaker series, and a consulting career fair. 27% of the 2016 class chose the consulting job function earning a median base salary of $140,000 and a signing bonus of $25,000 with the total compensation at $165,000.
MIT
The MIT Sloan MBA program consists of classes taught by highly qualified faculty, ample chances to interact with business leaders, case studies and discussions, and collaborative projects. The academic coursework is rigorous and balances ideas and theory with real-world application. The highly flexible curriculum at MIT allows students to define their career path. The MIT Sloan Management Consulting Club helps MIT students who seek to specialize in management consulting and strategic management. 34.1% of the students chose Consulting job function earning $140,000 in median base salary.
Stanford
Stanford is a top-ranked business school with strong ties to Silicon Valley. With a really strong general management program, Stanford makes a great choice if you are interested in a career in management consulting. The curriculum is tailored to the background, work experience and career aspirations of each student. Stanford has a Management Consulting Club that brings together students who are interested in consulting. Stanford's Career Management Center will work with you to create a personalized plan for a future career in management consulting. In 2016, 24% of the class chose consulting with the median salary at $145,000 and a signing bonus of $25,000. 
Pros of a management consulting career
A consulting career can be very rewarding. You get to meet a lot of people – many of them at very senior levels, travel the world, and not to mention the handsome remuneration. Management consulting perhaps has more autonomy than most other corporate jobs.
A stint in management consulting will expose you to all aspects of business and people at different levels. Consultants, because of their broad experience, are suitably equipped to land senior management roles during the latter part of their career.
When you are recruited into a consulting firm, you get a lot of training and mentoring. There is a wide variety of problems you deal with, so there is no chance of getting bored with the job. Even as a junior consultant hired right after your MBA, you will get to interact with the executive team of the company to which you are offering your consulting services. Consulting offers ample opportunities to travel within the country and abroad. With the regular performance reviews that are part of all big consulting firms, there is also a real opportunity for promotions and bonuses.
Cons of a Consulting Career
As you move up the chain of command, a consulting job makes more demands on your time. Since you will be assuming a managerial role, you will also be spending time not just on completing client work, but also on selling your services to new clients.
A jet-set lifestyle may feel great to start with, but soon, travel fatigue may set in. It is not very glamorous to live out of a suitcase for years on end. You may also have to travel to locations that are not your favorite spots in the world. As a management consultant, you may find it challenging to balance your personal and work life. Because of the inherent unpredictability of the job, you will never know where your next project may take you or for how long.
Future
However, consulting can be a great start to your career. Smart, enthusiastic people looking to develop leadership skills and problem-solving abilities will find that a consulting job is a great fit for their personality. The sheer variety of the projects, opportunities to interact with top level executives and exposure to different corporate cultures in client companies, can all help develop skills that are transferable to different careers. You may even decide to work as an independent consultant after a while.
Next Step
If the pros of the job far outweigh the cons, management consulting may be a great career choice for you. Read how you can stand out in a competitive application pool with Winning MBA Essay guide or find out MBA programs by speciality.
About the Author
I am Atul Jose - the Founding Consultant at F1GMAT.
Over the past 15 years, I have helped MBA applicants gain admissions to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Haas, Yale, NYU Stern, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, IE, IESE, HEC Paris, McCombs, Tepper, and schools in the top 30 global MBA ranking.
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Contact me for any questions about MBA or Master's application. I would be happy to answer them all
Winning MBA Essay Guide - A Complete Guide for M7 and Top 15 MBA Application Essays
F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay guide will teach you how to transform your essay into a life journey with trials and tribulations that will move the admission team.
+ Over 245 Sample Essays (Read Previews of F1GMAT's Winning MBA Essay Guide Sample Essays here)
+ Top 15 MBA Programs (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Booth, MIT, Kellogg, Yale, Haas, Darden, INSEAD, LBS, NYU Stern, Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Ross)
+ The Art of Storytelling
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
+ Leadership Narratives
+ Review Tips
+ Persuasion Strategies
+ The Secret to "unleashing" your unique voice
+ How to prepare and present for the Video Essay
+ How to write about your Strengths
+ How to write about your Weaknesses
Want to try the individual school Essay Guides before upgrading to the Winning MBA Essay Guide? Try below.
F1GMAT's Essay Guides
Harvard MBA Essay Guide (20 Sample Essays)
Growth-Oriented Essay: Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)Example #1: Persistence Narrative
Background Information: The applicant – a design and music talent, shares her journey through several setbacks. She attributes curiosity to her growth.
Curiosity: Philosophy
Curiosity (Explained): Curiosity as a philosophy is tough to translate into a narrative unless you are from the creative industry or your contributions had an influence on a solution or an initiative.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to capture the humanity of the applicant and her influence in music instead of just highlighting how she overcame multiple roadblocks to gain attention as a designer.
Theme: Persistence
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Life Starts at NO (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #2: International Community Building
Background Information: The applicant, a Machine Learning (ML) entrepreneur specializing in healthcare diagnostics, shares how his curiosity to learn other ML algorithms’ evolution in diagnosing Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease transformed his platform into a global community.
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to show the applicant’s contributions in diagnostic from 2020 to 2024 by citing two events. Such examples build credibility instead of engagements that were recent. The evolution of the platform from an AI development community to a community for discussing the application of AI in diagnostics is captured through a ‘curiosity’ angle.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Growth through Collaboration (AI in Healthcare) (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #3: Culture
Background Information: The applicant, an Entrepreneur from India narrates his first entrepreneurial experience – facilitating exchange of stamps in the late 1990s.
Theme: Culture
MBA Essay Strategy: Instead of addressing the biases in the investor community that could turn preachy, I wanted to focus on the applicant and his entrepreneurial journey by citing two entrepreneurial experiences – a platform(club) for stamp collection and his Grocery delivery App.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – The American Dream (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #4: Addiction
Background Information: The applicant – a beneficiary of the foster home system, captures the sacrifice his adopted grandparents made to save him from a path of addiction. Paying it back through early intervention among teenagers and community engagement is the curiosity narrative.
Theme: Addiction
MBA Essay Strategy: My strategy is to capture a gratitude narrative in the first one-third of the essay to demonstrate motivation for starting the venture and dedicate the latter part of the essay to the unique solution
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Drug Addiction and Gaming (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #5: Scarcity
Background Information: The applicant, an education major, recognizes that 70% of all students in Kenya don’t have a computer. The curiosity that drives him to pivot from one solution to another is the growth narrative.
Theme: Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: Often, innovation is captured with a ‘hero’ narrative where the applicant is the sole originator of an idea. I wanted to break that cliché and include a person from whom the applicant learned to use a concept called ‘scaffolding.’
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Scarcity (Growth-Oriented HBS Essay Example)Example #6: FinTech
Background Information: The applicant captures a vulnerable moment of a beneficiary to compare his journey of side hustle before a technology giant noticed his talent. Although cryptocurrency is not a flavor for the year, capture niches where innovation is still happening.
Theme: Education, Child Welfare
MBA Essay Strategy: Empathizing with a techno solution is tough without a strong backstory around the beneficiary. For the essay, I wanted to clearly establish the beneficiary – Rami, before the applicant narrates the similarities to his journey and finally shares the solution that emerged from his curiosity.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – FinTech as a Tool for Good (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #7: Learning from the best
Background Information: The applicant – a Remote Engineer in the Oil and Gas industry, reflects on a value that has helped her learn from the best regardless of her geographical limitations.
Theme: Learning
MBA Essay Strategy: The effectiveness of the case-study method depends on the assumption that peers in a Harvard MBA class will help elevate your learning experience. For the essay, I have highlighted the applicant’s recognition of this value proposition with three examples.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Learning from the Best (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #8: Military & Search for IMPACT
Background Information: The most common narrative for US military applicants is to quote 9/11 and the reaction your immediate family had while watching the events unfold. The horrifying moment is captured as a motivation to join the Military. On digging deeper, most applicants would share that their motivations were diverse.
Theme: Career Choice
MBA Essay Strategy: I wanted to quickly highlight that the applicant had the choice of entering any industry. One achievement to demonstrate his curiosity that I shared in the first half is the invention of a game. Since the game is mentioned in the resume and verifiable through search, I didn’t quote the name. By clearly highlighting the person’s curiosity and career options, the family legacy is used as a factor in joining the military.
Read: Harvard MBA Curiosity Essay – Career Choice after a Military Career (Growth-Oriented HBS MBA Essay Example)
Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)Example #9: Small Business Values
Background Information: The applicant - a second-generation Asian American, is familiar with the values of fiscal conservatism, building relationships, and understanding the daily struggles of the community through his family’s department store.
Theme: Customer-Centric
MBA Essay Strategy: The applicant’s role in developing an App for the store is highlighted in the essay at a crucial part of the narrative so that the essay is not all about his father. I have also humanized the journey – by sharing how upset the father was when the revenues fell by 40%. The essay is about the transformation in the applicant’s value from a person chasing productivity and optimization technique to someone who is truly thinking about the customers.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Small Business Values (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #10: Breaking Away from Family Business
Background Information: A unique challenge that applicants whose parents are public figures or CXOs of businesses or entrepreneurs are the pressure to live up to the parent’s standards or milestones. For the leadership narrative, the burden of legacy is established before the narrative addresses his leadership principles.
Theme: Authenticity
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, I want to capture an entrepreneur’s journey to rise above his entrepreneur father’s image. But I didn’t want to make the entire essay about this complex dynamics. The narrative is around the applicant’s focus on customers and surrounding with teams who keeps him grounded.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Breaking Away from Family Business(Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #11: Creativity and Communication
Background Information: When the overall percentage of users with internet access is 62% in South Africa and the inequality accentuated by the rural and urban divide, the applicant endured the lack of digital infrastructure, and spending close to 22% of the family income on gaining relevant information on schools, global exams, and financial assistance.
Theme: Creativity, Communication
MBA Essay Strategy: The strategy is to share why the applicant values no distraction in a child’s home for optimum education experience. Then I highlight the many roadblocks the applicant’s non-profit faced in receiving fee waiver for their cooperative run ISP.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Non-Profit (Telecom) (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #12: Mental Health
Background Information: The applicant like most didn’t pay much attention to the mental health epidemic until tragedy hit home.
Theme: Communication, Innovation
MBA Essay Strategy: A question we frequently get from applicants is whether they should cite tragedy in the family as a motivation for a venture or a non-profit initiative. As long as you don’t linger too much on the tragedy and offer a balanced narrative, there are no restrictions on leveraging unique stories from your life.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Mental Health (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #13: Trauma, Healing & Finding Authentic Self
Background Information: The applicant narrates the absurdity of war in the narrative about the duties in Kabul, and the trauma. Instead of wallowing in on the horror, the applicant takes what makes military applicants strong and guides unprivileged children build life and leadership skills.
Theme: Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing PTSD in an essay, the healing process, and the cues that helped the applicant are too sacred to be shared in a Harvard MBA application essay. However, with the right motivation and narrative arcs, you can capture the essence of your journey without sharing the darkest secrets. That is what I did by merging two stories – the horrors of the war with a non-profit engagement.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Military & PTSD (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #14: Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra
Background Information: In this narrative, the applicant captures Peru’s Silver mining boom of 2006. The growth experienced in her father’s business shifted the family’s economic status to a new stratosphere. Through the changing economic and family dynamics, the applicant finds her voice in a unique way, initially to record her unheard voice but later as one of the youngest subject matter experts in mining and commodities.
Theme: Failure
MBA Essay Strategy: For the essay, the strategy is to show how life’s unpredictability is a blessing. By narrating two setback events, the essay demonstrates the applicant’s resilience and her acknowledgment of people who made a comeback possible.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – Addiction, Setback and Leadership Mantra (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Example #15: War, Immigration and Starting Over Again
Background Information: Despite a raging war in Syria, the family of the applicant was unblemished by the chaos. The strategic government assets near the applicant’s house would have made the region an easy target, but it was not. The calmness of her journey is shattered in one event. From the privileges of a cocooned life, the applicant is forced to think about survival, her sister’s future, and her future in the US. The second half of the narrative captures the change that was forced on her.
Theme: Gratitude, Resilience
MBA Essay Strategy: I consciously chose not to start the essay with a dialogue or trauma. Two lines are allocated to set up the narrative before the trauma event.
Read: Harvard MBA Leadership Essay – War, Immigration and Starting Over Again (Leadership-Focused HBS MBA Essay Example)Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay: Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)
Example #16: Creative or Finance
Background Information: The applicant starts the narrative with the origin of her talents. The unbridled enthusiasm receives a reality check when in high school, the applicant’s father has a conversation with her about academics. While the applicant picked up her quant skills, she was reaching over 50,000 loyal fans, and her videos captured 1 million views.
Theme: Passion, Talent
MBA Essay Strategy: Capturing vulnerability is the toughest part for Harvard MBA applicants. For this essay example, I have captured the applicant’s uncertainty about career choice throughout the essay. Here the goal is to show vulnerability in the career choice essay while for leadership and growth essay, I could capture one example each from creative and PE industry respectively to balance the narrative. So don’t follow this example without a strategy.
Read: Harvard MBA Business-Minded Essay – Creative or Finance (Business-Minded HBS MBA Essay Example)- Stanford MBA Essay Guide (24 Sample Essays)
- Columbia MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Wharton MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- INSEAD MBA Essay Guide (19 Sample Essays)
- Darden MBA Essay Guide (21 Sample Essays)
- Yale SOM MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Tuck MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays)
- Haas MBA Essay Guide (18 Sample Essays)
- NYU Stern MBA Essay Guide (15 Sample Essays + 6 Examples - Visual Essay)
- LBS MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Essays)
- MIT Sloan MBA Essay Guide (6 Sample Cover Letters + 3 Sample Video Statement Scripts + 3 Sample Optional Essays)
- Kellogg MBA Essay Guide (11 Sample Essays)
- Chicago Booth MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
- Ross MBA Essay Guide (31 Sample Essays)
- Duke Fuqua MBA Essay Guide (10 Sample Essays + Two 25 Random Things Samples)
- Cambridge MBA Essay Guide (12 Sample Essays)
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