MBA graduates continue to seek out management consulting jobs for the opportunity to provide strategic advice to business leaders operating large companies. Jobs at leading strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey, Bain and BCG (MBB) are particularly coveted by business school students because these firms often provide a fast track to senior positions in large corporations. In addition, M7 business schools such as Kellogg have a particularly strong track record of MBB job placement.
Management Consulting Job Placement for the MBA Class of 2022
All of the top MBA programs provide their MBA graduates with the opportunity to pursue a management consulting career. You can see this in the following chart, which highlights the percentage of Class of 2022 full-time MBA graduates who accepted a management consulting job, as reported in the Class of 2022 MBA employment reports for 23 MBA programs.
Jobs in the management consulting industry are quite popular with recent MBA graduates. Among Class of 2022 MBA graduates who accepted jobs, Goizueta sent the highest percentage into management consulting, followed by Tuck, Yale SOM and Ross. In fact, 21 of the 23 MBA programs reported that, among the Class of 2022 MBA graduates accepting jobs, over 24% of these MBA graduates accepted jobs in the management consulting industry. Stanford and Marshall on the U.S. West Coast sent a smaller percentage into consulting jobs.
Since the MBA programs vary by class size, it is also helpful to view the total number of MBA graduates that accept consulting jobs.
Larger MBA programs such as Kellogg, CBS and Booth each sent over 190 MBA graduates into management consulting jobs. In addition, HBS, Wharton and Ross each sent over 140 MBA grads into consulting jobs.
There are also a number of smaller MBA programs that send a lot of graduates into consulting jobs as well. For example, Fuqua and Yale SOM each sent 121 into consulting firms, followed by Tuck (116) and Sloan (106)
McKinsey, Bain, BCG (MBB) Analysis
Of the 23 MBA programs covered in this article, only seven publish the number of Class of 2022 MBA graduates who have accepted a job at an MBB consulting firm.
While we don’t have a complete set of published MBB job placement data, we have enough to note some MBA hiring trends for McKinsey, Bain and BCG based on the seven business schools that share their MBB data. In addition, while M7 schools such as HBS and Wharton do not share this data, their MBB job placement percentages are likely similar to those of Kellogg (77%), Sloan (75%), and Booth (74%) who do share this data. We begin by first reviewing the McKinsey job placement data:
Of the seven MBA programs that report Class of 2022 McKinsey job acceptances, Kellogg leads with 68 followed by Booth and CBS. Next are Ross, Sloan, Fuqua and then Stern. It is worth noting that Kellogg and Booth have more than twice the number of McKinsey job acceptances as do both Ross and Sloan.
Among the seven MBA programs reporting Class of 2022 BCG job acceptances, Kellogg leads with 64 BCG jobs, followed by Booth with 53. Interestingly, Sloan and Fuqua have more BCG job acceptances than CBS does. This is impressive since both Sloan and Fuqua have smaller class sizes than CBS does. Stern only sent 10 Class of 2022 graduates to BCG.
Among the seven MBA programs reporting Class of 2022 Bain job acceptances, Kellogg leads by a wide margin with 51. Next are Booth, Ross and CBS, followed by Fuqua, Sloan and Stern.
In the chart above, we combine the Class of 2022 MBB job placements by MBA program. Kellogg leads with 183 MBB jobs accepted, followed by Booth (143) and CBS (108). The next group is Sloan (79), Fuqua (70) and Ross (69), followed by Stern (26).
Now, Kellogg, Booth and CBS do have larger class sizes than the other four MBA programs listed. To account for this, we will now review the MBB jobs accepted as a percentage of total consulting jobs accepted by Class of 2022 MBA graduates of these programs.
Kellogg (77%), Sloan (75%) and Booth (74%) have the highest percentage of MBB consulting job placement. This suggests that these three programs are very good at placing their MBA graduates into jobs at these top consulting firms. Fuqua (58%) also has solid placement, as does Ross (48%) and CBS (48%).
It is also helpful to see the five year trends in MBB job placement at these business schools:
From 2018 to 2022, the MBB firms have been increasing their market shore of the MBA graduates accepting consulting jobs from top MBA programs. For example, Kellogg, Sloan and Booth have grown their percentage of MBB consulting job placement from 58%, 67%, and 57% in the Class of 2018 to 77%, 75% and 74% in the Class of 2022, respectively. It is also interesting to see the rapid growth in MBB job placement at Fuqua, which doubled its MBB job placement percentage rate from 29% in 2018 to 58% in 2022. Ross and CBS have also grown their MBB placement percentage rate from 37% and 34% in the Class of 2018 to 48% each in MBB placement in the Class of 2022.
We can also compare the five-year trends by total MBB consulting job acceptances by MBA program:
Six of these seven MBA programs posted an increase in MBB jobs accepted for the Class of 2022. Kellogg saw a particularly big jump to 183. While some of this increase is because Kellogg increased its class size in 2022, Kellogg’s MBB job placement growth is still quite impressive. Booth and CBS also saw large increases in Class of 2022 MBB jobs accepted. Also, note the strong growth in MBB job placements at both Fuqua and Ross.
In summary, for any MBA applicant interested in pursuing a post MBA career in strategy consulting, specifically at McKinsey, Bain or BCG, it makes sense to review the MBB job placement numbers, including both the percentages and the total number of MBA graduates accepting MBB jobs, from each MBA program.
