An MBA degree has long been known as a robust pathway towards accessing management consulting career options. Yet, what about other graduate degrees in comparison to an MBA? Having been a student ambassador for a program at my university’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, I have had plenty of conversations with prospective students asking me how realistic it is for a student to join management consulting from a non-MBA graduate program. The short answer is that people have done it, but it is often more difficult to break into consulting from another graduate degree program compared to an MBA. Based on my understanding, drawing on three years of consulting recruiting as both an MBA and non-MBA graduate student, I start off those conversations by outlining the current context via three points:
- Hypothetically, a high caliber student from any graduate program can matriculate into consulting with the proper networking and interview preparation
- Many consulting firms are trying to diversify the academic backgrounds of their talent pool to go beyond MBAs
- MBA is still far and away the most robust graduate school pathway into consulting, and provides enormous comparative resource advantages that help students enter the consulting field
In order to give some perspective, it is helpful to highlight what those MBA advantages actually are:
- On campus recruiting from a large range of firms
- Deep alumni networks that can help you score an interview and provide interview preparation
- A curriculum that shapes you to conduct problem solving like a consultant
- Robust consulting clubs that help you understand the consulting options and guide you from networking to interview prep to offer evaluation
For non-MBA graduate programs, at best there may be a few firms that conduct recruiting on-campus regularly, and placement opportunities are likely limited. My policy graduate program had one consulting firm that recruited specifically from that program on campus, and it was limited to roles in US government work. I know of many graduate programs with no dedicated consulting on-campus recruiting. On campus recruiting serves two key purposes. First, it is a convenient way for students to learn about firms, as recruiting events bring in current consultants that can give guidance and share their perspectives. When there are very few consulting firms available for students to learn from, there is simply a limited awareness among students about the consulting industry and the wide range of career options available. Second, when firms invest time and energy into on campus recruiting, there is usually an intention to take some number of students into the firm. It is simply easier for a student to join a firm when they deliberately want students from their program. Non-MBA graduate programs also generally have a limited pool of program alumni to connect with about various firms. In a practical sense, this makes it harder for students to acquire an employee recommendation that would flag them to the recruiter as high priority for an interview. Even if an interview is acquired, there are simply fewer alumni to help with firm specific interview prep.
All my non-MBA graduate program friends who have matriculated into management consulting have commented that case interview prep was comparatively harder for them. This manifested in two ways. One was that they simply had less exposure to business concepts and dynamics. Sure, in their graduate studies there are tangential concepts, but the MBA curriculum teaches students how to decompose business challenges, which are the core of most case interviews. The other was that they didn’t have a robust consulting club to lean on to organize structured case interviews. Consulting clubs in non-MBA programs are increasingly beginning to crop up and grow. However, in general they are simply not as active as their MBA counterparts.
Despite those disadvantages, non-MBA graduate students are indeed sought after in management consulting. There are plenty of high achieving non-MBAs that fill the same roles as MBAs in America’s elite consulting firms. However, also coming into greater prevalence are specific skill-oriented roles in firms, and they generally seek specific non-MBA graduate program talent. For example, a digital practice could seek those coming out of a computer science program. Another example I hear of are firms seeking graduate students from certain fields (statistics, data analytics, math, etc.) to focus on the data science aspects of consulting.
Ultimately, it is possible to be a consultant if you don’t seek to get an MBA as your graduate education. Yet, if you truly want to break into consulting as a non-MBA graduate student, I recommend you appreciate the comparative disadvantages in your journey. That will help you plan accordingly.
Hall Wang is a dual degree MBA and Master of Public Policy candidate at Georgetown University. He has worked at America’s most innovative companies including Blue Origin and Facebook, as well as having done two combat deployments as a US Army Officer.
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