Top MBA Program Career Placement Outcomes: U.S. Job Placement in the Management Consulting Industry

For many years, MBA graduates have sought to work at leading management consulting firms for the opportunity to provide important strategic advice to business leaders operating large companies. Jobs at leading strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey, Bain and BCG, are particularly coveted by MBA graduates.

In this installment of Top MBA Program Career Placement Outcomes, we take a closer look at the management consulting industry job placement across leading business schools.

Class of 2021 MBA Job Placement in the Management Consulting Industry

Here is a chart showing the percent total of Class of 2021 MBA graduates who accepted* jobs in the management consulting industry as a percent of the total Class of 2021 graduates who accepted jobs. This data is from the Class of 2021 employment reports from 16 full-time U.S.-based MBA programs.

Jobs in the management consulting industry are quite popular with MBA graduates. Tuck (36%) sends the highest percentage into management consulting, followed by Ross (35.1%) and Booth (34.4%). In fact, 13 of the 16 full-time MBA programs send over 27% of graduates seeking employment into the management consulting industry. Stanford (18%) and Anderson (16.4%) send a smaller percentage into consulting jobs.

Since the MBA programs vary by size, it is helpful to view the total number of MBA graduates that go into management consulting from each MBA program. For example, in the chart above, the big MBA programs such as Wharton (154), Booth (158) and Kellogg (162) send over 150 MBA graduates each to jobs in management consulting firms. (Note: While HBS and CBS are not included in the chart, we estimate that they each send over 145 MBA graduates into management consulting jobs as well.)

Beyond the larger MBA programs that place over 145 graduates in consulting firm jobs each year, there are a number of smaller sized MBA programs that send a lot of graduates into consulting jobs. Ross sends 120 MBA graduates into management consulting firms, followed by Fuqua (104), Darden (95), and NYU Stern (93). Tuck (88) is next, followed by Yale SOM (83) and MIT Sloan (78). It is interesting that the three MBA programs that send the fewest into consulting jobs are the three West Coast schools of Haas (60), Anderson (46) and Stanford (41).

McKinsey, Bain, BCG (MBB) Analysis

Among MBA students and MBA applicants seeking a management consulting career post-MBA, there is a lot of interest in working at leading strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain and BCG (‘MBB’). Thus, MBA applicants are often interested in seeing the MBB job placement track records for the different MBA programs. Unfortunately, not all MBA programs provide this level of detail in their published MBA employment reports. Here is a summary of the MBB data that is published:

Of the 16 MBA programs reviewed, only six publish the number of Class of 2021 graduates who have accepted a job at an MBB consulting firm. Three other MBA programs (Haas, Anderson and Wharton) state that each MBB firm hired at least two Class of 2021 graduates. Another six MBA programs (CBS, Darden, HBS, Johnson, Tuck and Yale) state that these firms hired at least one Class of 2021 graduate. Finally, Stanford did not include any information about employment by firm.

While we don’t have a complete set of published data, we have enough to note some trends. Let’s look at the Class of 2021 job placement trends at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain separately for the business schools that share this data.

Of the 6 MBA programs that report Class of 2021 McKinsey full-time job acceptances, Kellogg leads the way with 56, followed by Booth at 46. MIT Sloan (30), Ross (26) and Fuqua (24) then follow. NYU Stern has the fewest with 17. Meaning, Kellogg (56) has more than twice the number of McKinsey job acceptances as Ross (26) and Fuqua (24) and Kellogg has more than three times as many as NYU Stern (17).

Among the 6 MBA programs reporting Class of 2021 BCG job acceptances, Booth leads with 36 BCG jobs followed by Kellogg with 33. Interestingly, MIT Sloan has 29 job acceptances at BCG, ten more than Ross (19) or Fuqua (19). This is impressive since MIT Sloan has the smallest class size of these 6 MBA programs. Thus, it appears that MIT Sloan has a particularly good track record with BCG recruiters. In contrast, NYU Stern only sends 11 Class of 2021 grads to BCG.

Among the 6 MBA programs reporting Class of 2021 Bain full-time job acceptances, Kellogg leads with 20 followed by Booth with 18. Both Kellogg (20) and Booth (18) have twice as many Bain job acceptances as does Ross (9) and Fuqua (9) and three times as many as NYU Stern (6). Here, MIT Sloan (11) is closer to Ross (9) and Fuqua (9).

In this chart above, we look at the combined MBB job placement by MBA program. Kellogg (109) and Booth (100) send over 100 Class of 2021 graduates into MBB consulting jobs. MIT Sloan (70) is next, followed by Ross (54) and Fuqua (52) and then NYU Stern (34).

Now, Kellogg and Booth have larger class size than these other 4 MBA programs. To account for the differences in class size across the six MBA programs, we will now review the MBB jobs data by school as a percent of the total jobs accepted.

Amazingly, 89.6% of the MIT Sloan Class of 2021 grads who accepted a management consulting job accepted the job at an MBB consulting firm. In addition, Kellogg (67.3%) and Booth (63.3%) also have a strong track record of MBB job placement for graduates seeking a management consulting career. Fuqua (49.8%) and Ross (45.1%) also have a solid placement rate, helping almost half of the grads accepting consulting offers land an MBB job. Stern has a 36.6% MBB placement rate among those Stern graduates accepting a consulting job.

Here we compare MBB job placement as a percentage of total Class of 2021 graduates who sought employment and accepted a job. Of the Class of 2021 graduates accepting jobs, it is impressive that over 20% of MIT Sloan (25.4%), Kellogg (22.3%) and Booth (21.8%) graduates accepted a job at one of the three MBB consulting firms.

It is also interesting to see how Fuqua (16%) and Ross (15.8%) send a similar percentage into MBB jobs while NYU Stern sends 11.4% into MBB jobs.

“Among the six MBA programs reporting MBB job placement, the M7 programs of Kellogg, Booth and MIT Sloan really stand out with their strong MBB job placement, both in terms of their overall numbers of placements as well as the high percentage of MBB job placements when compared to total Class of 2021 graduates accepting jobs,” says Graham Richmond, Clear Admit Co-Founder. “In addition, both Fuqua and Ross post solid numbers in terms of both MBB total placement and percentage total. While NYU Stern reports smaller MBB numbers than the other 5 MBA programs, it is clear that Stern grads have a good chance of landing an MBB job as well.”

While we don’t have the official MBB data from the other M7 programs, it is very likely that HBS, Wharton and CBS have similar MBB job placement stats as Kellogg and Booth. For any MBA applicant interested in working in strategy consulting, and specifically with McKinsey, Bain, or BCG, it makes sense to dig into the MBB job placement numbers by MBA program and to think carefully about both the percentages and the absolute number of MBA graduates accepting jobs at these three firms.

*In this article, we are using data from the Class of 2021 MBA Employment Reports. In the MBA Employment Reports, “Accepted Job” is defined as an MBA graduate who 1) is seeking employment 2) received at least one job offer and 3) accepted a job offer. As we showed in the ‘MBAs Seeking Employment’ Article, about 75% – 85% of MBA grads seek employment, receive an offer and accept a job offer. In addition, keep in mind that MBA Students who already are sponsored by a consulting firm and return to work at a consulting firm are not counted as part of this metric.