CONSULTING AT KELLOGG
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University sends more of its MBAs to consulting jobs each year than any other leading U.S. business school. Upon graduation in 2015, 35 percent of Kellogg’s graduates headed off to jobs at leading consulting firms, on par with three of the past four years and down just slightly from a high in 2011 of 37 percent. (By comparison, Harvard Business School sent 23 percent of its 2015 graduates into consulting and Stanford sent just 14 percent.)
Top hirers for the Kellogg Class of 2015 include the most prestigious consulting firms around, with McKinsey taking 34 Kellogg grads, Bain & Company hiring 28, BCG snapping up 26 and Deloitte wooing 20. If summer internships are any indication—and they often are—the Class of 2016 can hope to do equally as well.
In terms of pay, the average base salary for 2015 Kellogg graduates headed into consulting was $133,253, and the median was $140,000. The average signing bonus was $27,151.
Kellogg’s Classroom, Curriculum and Professors
As for how consultants are trained at Kellogg, the Evanston school offers its students not one but two consulting majors to choose from as they prepare for consulting careers. Its broad Management & Strategy major appeals to students interested in general management, new venture management, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. Its unique multidisciplinary Managerial Analytics major, meanwhile, encourages students to take advantage of both the school’s analytic courses—in decision models, analytical strategy and empirical methods—as well management strategy.
Almost 25 tenured faculty members teach in Kellogg’s Strategy and Management Department. In addition to deep subject-matter expertise and path-breaking research, many bring strong ties to consulting firms. Leemore Dafny, who is a professor of strategy, the Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services and director of Health Enterprise Management (HEMA) at Kellogg, worked as a McKinsey consultant before coming to Kellogg. Victoria Medvec, the Adeline Barry Davee Professor of Management & Organizations and Executive Director of the Center for Executive Women, also regularly consults for multiple outside clients, McKinsey and Deloitte among them.
Beyond the Kellogg Classroom
Kellogg’s strength in training would-be consultants extends well beyond the classroom. The Kellogg Consulting Club is one of the largest student organizations at the school, counting several hundred full-time students as members each year. Through training sessions, panels, a speaker series and a mentorship program, the club helps students decide whether a management consulting career is right for them, prepare for the management consulting job search, convert summer internships into full-time offers and choose between multiple offers.
Each fall, the club holds dozens of training sessions and workshops, providing mock interviews and resume review with second-year students, as well as more than 50 events in which practicing consultants come to campus to share first hand with students what a consultant’s work is really like. These events drew representatives from McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, Accenture and others.
In addition to the robust offerings of the student-led Consulting Club, Kellogg also is home to the General Motors Research Center for Strategy in Management, which supports ongoing research on business strategy, and the Kellogg Team and Group Research Center, whose research focuses on understanding and improving the performance of teams in organizations.
Annual conferences and other speaker events round out the consulting-focused extracurricular offerings at Kellogg, along with case competitions that have been hosted by both BCG and Deloitte in recent years as part of their recruiting calendar.
