Because management consulting remains a highly popular goal for MBA students, we’re taking a closer look at consulting careers placement for Class of 2024 graduates and other recent trends. Jobs at the best strategy consulting firms including McKinsey, Bain and BCG (together known as the 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 Chicago / Booth and Northwestern / Kellogg have very strong track records of MBB job placement.
Consulting Industry Placement for the MBA Class of 2024
All of the top MBA programs provide their MBA graduates with the opportunity to pursue a consulting career. You can see this in the following chart, which highlights the percentage of Class of 2024 full-time MBA graduates who accepted jobs in the management consulting industry, as reported in the Class of 2024 MBA employment reports for 24 MBA programs.
Jobs in the management consulting industry are quite popular with recent MBA graduates. Among Class of 2024 MBA graduates who accepted jobs, Dartmouth / Tuck (44%) and Virginia / Darden (43%) sent the highest percentage into management consulting industry jobs, followed by Emory / Goizueta (41%), Duke / Fuqua (39%), NYU / Stern (37%), Georgetown / McDonough (36%), Michigan / Ross (36%), Northwestern / Kellogg (35%) and Chicago / Booth (34%). In fact, 15 of the 24 MBA programs included in this analysis reported that over 30% of their Class of 2024 graduates who were seeking employment accepted jobs in the management consulting industry. In contrast, both Harvard (HBS) (18%) and Stanford GSB (14%) sent the smallest percentage of Class of 2024 graduates into the consulting industry.
Since the MBA programs vary by class size, it is also helpful to view the total number of MBA graduates that accept roles in the consulting industry.
Larger MBA programs such as Columbia (CBS), Chicago / Booth and Penn / Wharton each sent over 140 MBA graduates into strategy consulting jobs while Northwestern / Kellogg and Virginia / Darden each sent over 125 MBA graduates into strategy consulting jobs.
There are also several smaller MBA programs that send a lot of graduates into consulting industry jobs as well. For example, Michigan / Ross and Dartmouth / Tuck each placed over 95 graduates into consulting jobs while NYU / Stern, Yale SOM and MIT / Sloan each placed over 72 MBA graduates into consulting jobs.
Recent Declines in MBA Graduates Accepting Consulting Jobs
While these MBA programs continue to send a large number of graduates into consulting industry jobs, there was a marked decline in consulting jobs accepted by MBA graduates the Class of 2024 when compared to the number of consulting jobs accepted by MBA graduates in the Class of 2023.
Here is a chart showing the percent decline in MBA graduates accepting consulting industry jobs when comparing the Class of 2024 to the Class of 2023 for 24 leading MBA programs:
Note that 22 of the 24 MBA programs reported a decline in the percentage of graduates accepting consulting industry jobs. The biggest percentage declines were reported by Carnegie Mellon / Tepper (-17%), Emory / Goizueta (-13%), Texas / McCombs (-13%), Yale SOM (-12%) and Cornell / Johnson (-11%). M7 schools such as Northwestern / Kellogg (-7%), HBS (-7%) and Penn / Wharton (-4%) also posted declines. Interestingly Dartmouth / Tuck (-2%), MIT / Sloan (-2%), and Stanford GSB (-1%) posted very modest percentage declines.
Since MBA programs vary by class size, it is also helpful to see the decline in the number of consulting jobs accepted by MBA program.
Note that all of these MBA Programs posted a decline in the number of graduates accepting consulting offers, with nine MBA programs reporting a drop of 42 or more. It is clear from the data that management consulting firms pulled back from hiring across the MBA program landscape, not just at a few schools. Meaning, while business schools still send a large number of MBA graduates into consulting, the number of consulting jobs accepted by Class of 2024 MBA graduates is down across the board from last year.
To put this into perspective, below we review five-year trends in consulting placement for the Class of 2020 thru the Class of 2024.
A few key points stand out. Over the past five years, CBS, Chicago / Booth, Penn / Wharton and Northwestern / Kellogg have consistently been sending many MBA graduates into consulting roles while Stanford GSB and Indiana / Kelley have been sending the fewest graduates into consulting roles. Second, for 14 of the 23 MBA programs, the MBA Class of 2024 consulting industry job acceptances are the lowest of the last five years, including for all of the M7 schools. Third, there was an unusually high number of Class of 2023 MBA graduates accepting consulting industry jobs for ten of the MBA programs (Penn / Wharton, Duke / Fuqua, HBS, Michigan / Ross, NYU / Stern, Cornell / Johnson, Georgetown / McDonough, Texas / McCombs, Carnegie Mellon / Tepper and Emory / Goizueta). Meaning, while the corresponding declines in Class of 2024 consulting industry jobs accepted were large when compared to the Class of 2023 consulting industry jobs accepted, the declines were less when compared to the consulting jobs accepted by the Class of 2021 or the Class of 2022.
A similar story is shown when reviewing the five-year trends in the percentage of MBA graduates accepting jobs in consulting from the Class of 2020 to the Class of 2024.
Seven MBA programs (Emory / Goizueta, Michigan / Ross, Vanderbilt / Owen, Yale SOM, Cornell / Johnson, Texas / McCombs and Carnegie Mellon / Tepper) saw large percentage declines in consulting job placement from the Class of 2023 to the Class of 2024. Having said that, most likely the Class of 2024 consulting industry job placement is a sign of business schools returning to a more sustainable percentage of consulting jobs accepted. Meaning, the Class of 2023 seemed to be overweighted in consulting jobs accepted compared to previous MBA graduating classes.
In summary, while the number of consulting jobs accepted is not as high as it was for the MBA Class of 2023, consulting continues to be one of the most popular career paths for recent MBA graduates from top MBA programs.
McKinsey, Bain, BCG (MBB) Analysis
Of the 23 MBA programs covered in this article, only seven publish the number of Class of 2024 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 Northwestern / Kellogg, MIT / Sloan, and Chicago / Booth who do share this data.
We begin by reviewing the total number of MBB consulting jobs accepted for the Class of 2024 for these seven MBA programs.
Chicago / Booth (101), CBS (91) and Northwestern / Kellogg (82) placed the most Class of 2024 graduates into MBB jobs, followed by Duke / Fuqua (59), MIT / Sloan (48), Michigan /Ross (45) and NYU / Stern (21).
Now, Chicago / Booth, CBS and Northwestern / Kellogg 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 2024 MBA graduates of these programs.
Chicago / Booth (68%), MIT / Sloan (67%) and Northwestern / Kellogg (64%) have the highest percentage of MBB consulting job placement. This suggests that these three MBA programs are very good at placing their MBA graduates into jobs at these top consulting firms. In addition, Duke / Fuqua (55%), CBS (51%) and Michigan / Ross (46%) have a higher percentage of MBB consulting job placement relative to NYU / Stern (25%).
While these Class of 2024 MBB job placement statistics are quite strong, they do represent a decline from the MBB jobs accepted for the Class of 2023:
For six of the seven MBA programs, their Class of 2024 MBB job placements significantly declined from their MBB job placements in the Class of 2023. Only CBS was able to increase its MBB job placement from 2023 to 2024. Thus, the decline in MBB hiring mirrors the overall decline in MBA hiring by consulting firms in the Class of 2024.
This can also be seen in the decline from 2023 to 2024 in the MBB jobs accepted as a percentage of total consulting jobs accepted for six of the seven MBA programs.
To place things in perspective, now we will review MBB job placement over the past five years.
In four of the last five years, Chicago / Booth and Northwestern / Kellogg were consistently sending the most graduates into MBB jobs. Having said this, both schools are sending significantly fewer graduates into MBB positions in the Class of 2024 compared to the Class of 2022 or the Class of 2023. In addition, CBS has been steadily gaining ground, surpassing Northwestern / Kellogg for the number two MBB spot for the Class of 2024. For both Duke / Fuqua and Michigan / Ross, they posted declines in MBB job placement in 2024 after four years of MBB job growth from 2020 to 2023. MIT / Sloan has a surprising decline in Class of 2024 MBB jobs (48) after consistently delivering 69+ MBB jobs/year in the previous four years. NYU / Stern’s Class of 2024 MBB job tally (24) marks a decline from 49 MBB job placements in the Class of 2023.
The Class of 2024 also marked an overall decline in the MBB firms’ market share of MBA graduates accepting consulting jobs from top MBA programs. For example, Chicago / Booth, MIT / Sloan and Northwestern / Kellogg have seen a recent decline in their percentage of MBB consulting job placement from 80%, 75% and 72% in the Class of 2023 to 68%, 67% and 64% in the Class of 2024, respectively. It is also interesting to see the overall growth in MBB job placement from the Class of 2020 to the Class of 2024 at Duke / Fuqua (44% to 55%), Michigan / Ross (38% to 46%), and CBS (32% to 51%).
In summary, while the management consulting industry did reduce their MBA hiring in 2024, consulting remains a popular career choice for many MBA graduates. In addition, all of these top MBA programs provide their MBA graduates with the opportunity to pursue a management consulting career. In addition to the MBB firms, there are other leading consulting firms that also hire top MBA graduates, including Deloitte, EY Parthenon, and Accenture. For any MBA applicant interested in pursuing a post MBA career in strategy consulting, it makes sense to review the consulting job placement numbers, including both the percentages and the total number of MBA graduates accepting consulting jobs from each MBA program.
