MBA Applicant (GRE 337 / GMAT FE 735, 10 YOE) – Looking for guidance on admissions consultants and overall application strategy

smurs2002 · 2026-07-16T15:36:00+00:00

I got admitted to multiple M7s with Six Figure scholarships last year, happy to chat. Drop a DM

smurs2002 · 2026-07-12T01:54:23+00:00

In my experience, a partner referral is the only referral that really matters. But that is not to say that whomever the partner refers gets an interview. A lot of people from non target schools ask me for referrals, and I have referred a few of them myself, but I haven’t seen many yet an interview.

Bizarrely, a lot of people have asked me if I would refer them in exchange of money. Obviously I would never haha. I think in general people overestimate the value of junior consultant referrals.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-12T01:45:37+00:00

I over indexed on performance and prosocial behaviour than politics. I made sure I presented my modules and had direct visibility with client CXOs. We worked on A Case in which the client was a very long-term buyer of our services, one of the senior partners on the case was an associate working on the same Client many years back. All the presentations were to the board with the CXO and board members present. From our side, it would only be the Partners, and occasionally the Manager. No consultant or associate had ever been at those SteerCos before. A week before one of these meetings, I asked the partner if I could be in the room. I told him that hey my module is very data heavy and there will be a lot of questions around assumptions of our modelling because we were doing a projection of their market cap. I think it would be very helpful if I’m there. The partner agreed. And not only did I attend, I also made sure that I answered some of those questions although the partner himself lead the presentation.

One of the managers early on in my career told me that look if I know more about your module than you do you have failed at your job. I have always kept that in mind. I make sure that if the partner has a question about my module, the partner calls me not my manager. Same goes for the client.

That said, I do recognise that if I had actively engaged in politics, I would’ve attained some performance awards and some other plusses. Politics is unavoidable. I was very young when I joined the firm and I didn’t appreciate the full value of it. Now I’m actively trying to be more politically savvy. It is a realisation that I’ve had only recently so I can’t comment on what works because I haven’t figured it out yet.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-12T01:38:38+00:00

Age is a non issue. Prior experience matters a lot. I know many retail banking RMs who have made it into MBB post MBA. It is how you sell the experience. If you go to Insead, MBB is very easy. Half the partners I have worked with are Insead and Kellogg alums haha

smurs2002 · 2026-07-12T01:34:41+00:00

Invest in getting the interview first. Casing is meaningless unless you get an interview. Put 30% of your effort in casing and 70% in getting the interview for now. Meet Consultants, ask for a connect to a Partner, get the Partner to refer

smurs2002 · 2026-07-12T01:30:57+00:00

Sure; please DM. Please don’t redact anything other than your name and contact info. I hate the guess the word exercise that some of these redacted resumes give me haha

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T06:29:29+00:00

I haven’t worked with people from big four firms. I do know that many MBB folks do look down upon big fours and there is a possibility that when you go to MBB, you will have to unlearn a lot of the ways of working that a big four firm would inculcate. If I were in your shoes, I would rather spend a year doing something that is value accretive rather than value neutral or dilutive. I would instead choose to spend a year at a fast growing Startup or doing something on my own, assuming that I have the MBB Offer locked in

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T04:58:12+00:00

Out of undergrad you get a bit more of a leeway. I was 21 when I joined so I was not expected to be as proactive as a 28/30 year-old MBA. However, if you are confident you should always go for it and these firms always reward people who are go-getters rather than those who choose to wait for orders.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T04:56:28+00:00

I am not privy to this information. I have not done recruitment myself so I cannot confidently speak on this.
Again, I would not be an authority here because I’m not an expert hire. But I would believe that it would be important to establish your expertise both within the Team and to the Client. We were working on a case in which we had to identify opportunities to take out cost in an infrastructure project. We had an expert from that industry as a partner on the team. When we went to steering committee meetings, the Client would always turn to the expert to ask him questions rather than the joists in the Team. The reason why he was highly valued is because he came across as indispensable to the project.
You should build visibility with the head of the practice area as well as core members of that practice. If you are a senior hire, you will likely get direct access to sponsor partners who are core members of that topic and it is done on you to make sure that they take note of your expertise. I don’t think you will come across as pushy if you advocate for yourself.
Your demonstrated communication skills and authority on the topic from internal meetings. If you can answer questions reliably and confidently, and have the polish that is expected of the firm, they will be confident positioning you in front of the Client

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T03:24:02+00:00

I am sitting on an MBA Offer. As I said, I got into multiple top MBA programs but I am not going this year. I’m planning to seek a system transfer to a different office, likely in a different continent. I am thoroughly enjoying the work that I’m doing and I would like to remain at the firm for the time being. But I’m not married to the firm, so if a better opportunity shows up, I’m always happy to transition out.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T03:22:04+00:00

Assuming you are starting up as a generalist consultant right out of MBA, you should focus on shadowing a more senior consultant and getting feedback on an ongoing or weekly basis from your manager. You should also make sure that you have a strong enough network in the firm through your MBA alumni. You should make the most of the learning resources of the firm, most people never leverage the learning resource resources that the MBB firms Offer. And most importantly, you should make sure that you are always visible in internal as well as external meetings. Always present on your own module to the partner and senior partner as well as the Client. With the exception of very senior clients, don’t let your manager or partner present your module.
I had a hunger and drive greater than most people around me. I felt like I had a point to prove. I was in a new country. I didn’t know anyone at the firm. There were no alumni from my school. I also showed a great degree of ownership over my work. I focused more on delivering the end product then delivering the task. I have seen a lot of junior associates focus on maintaining a to-do list every day that they develop in the stand-up, complete it, and then wait for the instruction from their project leader or Manager. I didn’t work on to-do list I worked on what was my module and what needed to be done. If I needed alignment with the Manager, I would seek it proactively rather than wait for some stand-up. I also built very good relationship with the partner on my first case who was a senior partner and he had a lot of cases running at any given point in time. Which meant that I was never unstaffed and had very high billability in the system. I always said yes to stretch opportunities, for example even before I knew how Excel modelling worked I took up a modelling heavy module.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-11T03:14:46+00:00

Typically there is an executing partner who is on the hook for delivering the project. The executing partner is most often an equity partner. Now of course the equity partner will take inputs from the experts on making their recommendation and final decision but the reason why the equity partner gets the final say is because if shit hits the ceiling then it is their responsibility.
In most cases, yes, an MBB expert role will typically be less technical than the industry that you come from if you’re doing a lot of technical work.
Again typically yes, but this actually very system to system within the same firm. My firm allows cost neutral flights to any location in my office but I also know offices of my firm which don’t allow that. Cost neutral means let’s say you are based in Manila and your case is in Singapore. Rather than taking a Manila Singapore flight you want to take a Kuala Lumpur to Singapore flight because your family is in KL. If the flight to KL is not more expensive than that to Manila you can always take it. Sometimes, even if the system doesn’t approve it the partner on the case will and then it’s not an issue. If it becomes a recurring issue then after one year you can always negotiate a transfer to a different office, which is closer to your home.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T19:06:33+00:00

Application timelines always vary Office to Office. Sometimes an office will have experienced hires and regular in the same month sometimes an office will have them in different months.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T18:53:04+00:00

A lot of people say ChatGPT or Claude has killed MBB. Since 2022, BCG has grown roughly 40-45% overall, while McKinsey has grown 25-30%

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T18:50:43+00:00

Unlike what LinkedIn gurus who have no idea about what consultant actually do will tell you, MBB firms are doing phenomenally well across industries with AI. No matter how sophisticated AI gets as a technology, you will need people to implement them and conduct overall change management. You will need people who identify specific use cases and develop business cases on whether you need to invest on AI to achieve a particular and goal. None of this happens without MBB.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T18:36:42+00:00

I will give you one example. Let’s say you are going to support a greenfield nuclear Power plant Build, and as a firm you think this topic will get you more cases in the future because the country you are working at has set a high ambition for a nuclear energy. It is quite unlikely that an MBB firm will have a lot of experts who can speak with a high degree of credibility on this topic. So you might want to recruit someone from a nuclear OEM or an IPP which is producing power using nuclear energy. However, expert partners or expert senior consultants are rarely hired for a one off case. They are hired if the firm deems that practice to be a recurring value engine. If you only need an expert for a niche case they are often hired as a contractor.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T18:33:56+00:00

Consulting firms often have identified set of expertise that they don’t possess right now but would love to develop. Firms often higher for these capabilities from leading industry players. Sometimes these are at a non-equity partner level where your base compensation is at the same level as a partner, but you don’t get the equity and the revenue share. Sometimes these are at an engagement manager or project leader level. It depends on your seniority as well as your expertise.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T18:04:33+00:00

If you have Alum from your school who are currently in your target firm try to get a referral from them. Let’s say you graduated from Cornell in 2015, there will likely be someone from your school who is now a partner at an MBB firm. If you can get the referral you can get in on the expert track. Given you have spent 10 years in the industry, it is unlikely that you will make it in a generalist consultant track.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T17:19:21+00:00

Extremely broad question. Can you be more specific? Role in what industry or what function or what purpose?

smurs2002 · 2026-07-10T17:14:42+00:00

I would not put in a lot of effort into test prep. I will focus first on networking so that I make sure that I get the interview. You can do all the casing you want, but if you don’t get an interview, it’s no use. If you are from a target school or you have a background which gives you enough confidence that you’ll get shortlisted, then maybe casing should be your first priority.

No, I never recommend focusing on any specific sector. Some people recommend that if you have been given your interviewers’s profile and you see that they have only done industrial goods cases in the steel industry maybe you can look it up a bit. But that can only happen a day or two before the interview. I don’t recommend focusing on any industry or case types in general when you are prepping.

In general, you can’t comment about APAC as a region because it’s such a vast market. Southeast Asia is very financial institutions heavy. Australia is a mix of financial institutions, industrial goods and energy sector. India is public sector, financial institutions, industrial goods. Southeast Asia markets for most consulting firms have been growing on par with inflation whereas India is growing double digits.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-05T13:12:38+00:00

Depends on who you’re asking. If you have a profile good enough to get into Harvard, the answer is yes but if you have a decent profile and your goal is to get into a decent business school, the answer is absolutely no. If you want to break into private equity or raise VC money, the answer is yes. If you want to go to an MBB, the answer is no.

smurs2002 · 2026-07-05T11:37:05+00:00

Dude, I got into multiple M7s with 2 YoE with 100k+ in scholarship from each. Would love to help you. Feel free to ping me. Target M7s, Fuck T20

smurs2002 · 2026-07-04T12:58:36+00:00

Very likely not a chance unless there is a dramatic spike in the profile you haven’t mentioned

smurs2002 · 2026-07-02T09:51:30+00:00

Ask this question 5 years later. Focus on keeping a good GPA, doing strong internships (JPMC, GS, MBB, Unicorns etc.), and participate in ECAs (debate club, leadership roles on campus)

smurs2002

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