From MBA To MBB

But we've got a more relevant business school topic to talk about.

And that is this week, consulting.

So specifically... looking at the employment pipelines into the big three consultancies from the MBA and business school pathway.

So these are the big three, the MBB, McKinsey, Bain, and BCG.

And conveniently, I recently wrote a piece, a feature for Poets and Quants about this.

So specifically, I was looking at questions like, are the big three hiring fewer graduates lately? Has that sort of ideal candidate profile changed? And also, how are AI and geopolitics shaping the recruiting process and the timelines around that? So first, it's worth noting that the competition to get into these consultancies is steep.

So one recent INSEAD grad and McKinsey hire told me that two thirds of his classmates, he thinks, are heading into consulting applied for the MBB.

And another student I spoke to described this sort of grueling schedule that she had.

So she said, prepped for basically four months, 15 hours a week of prep on average.

She did 50 roughly mock interviews and had dozens of conversations with contacts at prospective employers.

Everybody should read the article.

I think a great piece of journalism and actually to prize some of the numbers out of these firms, you know, looking at it, as you said, highly competitive.

It's sort of the gold standard, right, for many.

Not necessarily where everyone would be happiest.

And that's perhaps something that we'll get to as we look at this discussion.

But, you know, the lingering story, AI kills consulting, I think that kind of gets the story backwards sometimes.

demand perhaps in the past two, three years.

We've seen the class of 24, 25 not being picked up in similar numbers to the previous years.

But consulting is the biggest seller of the disruption it's threatened by.

I think BCG just hit record revenues in 2025, 22nd straight year.

So very tough to get into.

But there's this big shift, right, in terms of I think you described it really well in the piece, moving from that smart generalist to the generalist that has a vertical.

So it's not just that you go to one of the world's top business schools, obviously, you know, INSEAD and Kellogg and Duke and Sloan and others that have been tremendous pipelines online.

to MBB, but they want more.

And AI is clearly part of that, but perhaps I'll stop there and we can also bring Maria into the conversation.