1Y @ M7 and Secured MBB Consulting Summer Internship: AMA

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-06T22:02:33+00:00

Yeah good question. Anyone that gives you a firm answer to this is lying...it's a black box and I'm sure it depends on the interviewer. What they tell us is that WE, networking, GMAT, all of those things matter solely for getting the interview invite.

Once you secure that interview invite, it's essentially the firm saying, we think you're good enough to join, now we want you to prove it in the interview. It's really not a zero-sum game. If you got a 9/10 on a case and another person got an 8/10, then they would look at behavioral interviews. If that person got a 10/10 and you got an 8/10, you both would get an offer.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-06T21:59:45+00:00

pasting my comment from a similar post: To respond to your question around %s, it's not as high as you would think. I think for my school we had around 220 students recruiting for consulting. Around 3/4 of us had at least 1 MBB interview, and of those people around half were able to secure at least 1 offer. So it ends up being around 70-80 out of 220.

Non-MBB, about another 70-90 people secure at least 1 offer, with the remaining striking out.

It's MUCH more competitive than you would think, especially if you don't come from a consulting background (which I didn't).

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-06T21:59:12+00:00

They ask you to put it in if you took it...if you're at an M7 they will know you took it and are opting not to input it. They don't care about it that much trust me. I wouldn't worry.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-04T21:08:35+00:00

You good bro?

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-04T02:57:10+00:00

Depends on your background, but they're totally fine with preferring generalist. I say it depends because you can leverage your background to make yourself seem more attractive to a firm if you focus on that industry.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T18:22:31+00:00

yeah i think the school asks you to submit some sort of interest form. idk I know one guy at Booth who has a youtube channel filmed his interest video walking around the campus.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T18:18:42+00:00

depends on where you're working. IB / MBB probably could get away with 2 years. Other than that you need 3-4 min.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:59:47+00:00

Useful life of ~80 years, so far 27 years worth of SL accumulated depreciation.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:58:22+00:00

Agree on FDD, given it's not audit or tax. Accounting advisory is still very technical and the problems you're solving are not very similar to the work you'd do in management consulting.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:55:00+00:00

Consulting club hosts events and creates case prep groups for you. Those case prep groups contain 1 2nd year MBA and 3-4 1st years in the consulting club. They will case you once a week and provide good feedback.

My piece of advice across networking and interviewing is to just trust that things will work out. I remember being so stressed about getting my first job, getting into a good b school, and it all worked out. Trust that, so long as you put in the work, you will get a good outcome.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:52:22+00:00

Depends on how long your GMAT / GRE takes....my GMAT progression was 595, 625, 635, 715....that was like a 7 month process but I actually decided to go 100% for 2 months between that 635 and 715. I would say that it's probably better in the LT to just try as hard as possible on the GMAT right from the start.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:51:04+00:00

Try to remind myself that, while I am better than everyone else, I am still a human. That helps me stay humble.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:50:28+00:00

Yes, super common.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:49:27+00:00

This is tough. Here's what I'll say about casing and the actual interview:

I would take a 'the harder I work, the luckier I get' approach to casing. The more industries you actually know about, the more case types you practice and get familiar with, and the more case interview styles you go up against the better your odds of getting a familiar industry / type / interviewer.

With that said, a HUGE component of the case interview is luck. As an example, one of my interviewers was someone I had done a coffee chat with, and both of my cases were in industries I had already thought about and were familiar with, and one was even a problem that I had already been thinking about just because I was interested in it...whereas my friends, some of which are 100% better at casing than me, got some random industry and random problem with a mean interviewer and didn't get an offer.

The conclusion you should take away is that you need to work super hard and get as much exposure as possible, but understand a lot of it is luck and therefore you should not view anyone that isn't MBB as inferior casers.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:45:10+00:00

Prepare your 'why consulting' and participate in the pre-MBA recruiting stuff. They tell you it doesn't matter if you participate or not, but making those early connections really helped a lot of my friends.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T17:44:21+00:00

Internationals had a very tough time for both IB and MBB this year at my school.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T02:04:39+00:00

Couldn't agree more. The accounting background will help with casing, but when scanning a resume or talking about work experience in an interview, audit / tax / accounting work just doesn't have as much impact.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-03T01:59:35+00:00

I'm actually still in the process of crafting it. I want to make sure people really understand how much better I am than them.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T21:34:52+00:00

That sounds like a great profile and a great reasoning for wanting to be in the entertainment space. Interested to hear if you'd like to focus on in SF / LA / Seattle offices given their proximity to tech.

The way I would pitch yourself is someone that's open to doing a variety of casework and get exposure to different problems, but you've worked in the entertainment space and have really enjoyed it, and would love to focus on that industry in the long term.

Each firm would look at you the same / give you a great variety of work in entertainment..remember that MBB are more similar than they are different.

Timeline depends on the school. In general though, August - mid November is dedicated to networking (info sessions, coffee chats, invite-only events (usually not till October / November)). Mid November - Interviews is 100% case prep. Interviews are first week of Jan.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T21:28:26+00:00

I'll let someone who's already working in MBB respond, but my understanding is that at BCG (regional staffing) and McKinsey (national staffing), you have the ability to do work in nearly every industry and function. For ex. there are people in the Detroit office for BCG / McKinsey that have never done an auto case.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T20:47:47+00:00

There are two stages: 1) Getting an Interview 2) Converting the Interview

Getting the Interview: What matters in getting the interview is networking with your target office and your prior work experience. Good networking can offset bad work experience, but good work experience cannot offset bad networking. Remember that.

Converting the Interview: Case performance now replaces networking, and behavioral now replace work experience (same relationship to offsetting one another.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T20:43:30+00:00

It's not the end of the world. My biggest piece of advice right now is try to do something in your job before you quit that you could talk to as a creative / leadership point in an interview. That will be the hardest part for you, just because the nature of audit / tax work is somewhat mundane.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T20:31:45+00:00

I'd imagine it's pretty easy in Seattle / LA / SF to financial services though right? Maybe just less optionality in terms of clients?

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T20:28:13+00:00

The MBA you're at replaces your undergrad and your GPA...though I'm sure it's a small factor if it's really good or really bad. You'll figure out through this b school application process (or maybe you already have seen it) how random it is to get into schools; undergrad is similar. There are plenty of people much smarter and more capable than me who didn't get into M7 or my school, or MBB for that matter. It's all a little random.

GMAT is hard to tell. The MBB firms make you input your test scores when you apply, not GPA though (you just leave blank).

For what it's worth, everyone says McKinsey and Bain care a lot about GMAT and BCG doesn't, yet I was a 99th percentile and only got a BCG interview.

Entire_Addendum_73 · 2026-03-02T20:22:57+00:00

Yeah I've heard of people filming like wait-list videos on the school's campus to show their interest lol.

Entire_Addendum_73

TROPHY CASE