Is it possible to work at Mckinsey as an Associate (above Business Analyst) after a t15 law school like UCLA or UT-Austin?

Or does Mckinsey only hire from t5 (Harvard, Columbia, etc.)

Any advice (read: not random speculation but ppl who know from experience) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

You aspire to enter a career overcharging people for useless/destructive advice because.....

management consulting is one of the worst things ever

Why would you go to law school to bypass an entry level position? Wouldn't it make more sense to just do the entry level position? At the very least, you'd probably make/save more money than going to law school.

I think he wants to go because from what I hear, working at Mckinsey is a great stepping stone. I had a cousin who worked there, but it's pretty irrelevant because he was an mba grad. Good luck to the OP though.

Read "the mckinsey mind", network, and get some excellent grades.

Why would you waste an extra year of tuition for a job that is hardly relevant to law school?

Go to business school, instead. You'll have a better time and will be better prepared to be a consultant.

I appreciate the career advice, but can anyone answer the question?

The general consensus/trend I've seen is that:

Business/finance>law

Go for management consulting

i like how people just assume one can walk into mckinsey and say "okay! i'm ready to work my way up to associate, when do i begin?" or into a top business school to "bypass a year's tuition."

having tried to get into both mckinsey and a top b-school before going for law school, i can safely say that (as a recent grad from a non-hyp+wharton ivy) neither is very likely these days.

Seriously, McKinsey is an extraordinarily difficult place to get a job. Also, law school is (arguably) easier to get into, since it's much more numbers-driven than b-school is (which is to say that a huge percentage of the people at most top business schools come from places like McKinsey and BCG, and the only "easy" way to get into those is to go to HYPS+wharton undergrad). If you went to a no-name undergrad, you simply aren't going to have the option of working at McKinsey, which means that your likelihood of getting into HBS or Stanford GSB is significantly reduced. Law school seems like a good way around that.

So, does McKinsey actually show up at UCLA (and take people), or does it only show up at t-6?

For the typical college graduate, getting into McKinsey/Bain/BCG or getting into a top 10 business school is MUCH more difficult than getting into a decent law school. Heck, I argue that getting into b-school is much harder than law school for anyone simply because one has to be very well-rounded or exceptional as opposed to bookish/smart/high LSAT.

To the OP, I assume it's not McK or bust... besides M/B/B there are many good management consulting firms out there that hire law school grads. M/B/B only reach out to their target schools, which means they actively recruit at probably 5 or 6 law schools. However, that's also the case with business school, as MBB will "actively" recruit from only 8 or so business schools but have interviews at several others.

Does not being at a target law school hurt you from getting into McKinsey? Sure does. Is it still possible? Definitely. You just need to put in the extra effort to network and utilize some of the business school's resources.

+1. My buddy just graduated with a B.A. in Econ and Poli Sci from WashU and had to work pretty hard to get a job at Bain (he had a 3.75 GPA).

So they actually go to law school's OCI?

HAHA!

People get MBA's to network. People go to law school to get smart.

Prospective lawyers mocking the utility of other professions is very, very funny.

Yep...

Do you know the link for the site that shows what firms go to what schools OCI?

If you want to do M/B/B consulting after law school, it will be hard to do unless you go to HYSCCN. Going to UCLA Law will make it very difficult for both MBB consulting and big law both(before the biglaw bubble burst, about 40% of UCLA got into biglaw; it will probably be 20% or less in the future). Also, it is very difficult/borderline impossible to get into a top-15 business school straight out of undergrad. Less than 1% of students going to these programs are straight out of undergrad. They specifically want people with several years of business experience. Whereas the LSAT will get you a spot at HYSCCN, the GMAT only serves to disqualify you.

A typical top-MBA class is 1/3 finance people, 1/3 consulting, and then 1/3 other. The 1/3 other are either military, Peace Corps, or from professional jobs such as not-for-profit office jobs or Fortune 500 non-banking/consulting jobs (such as financial analyst for PepsiCo, or General Electric rotational finance; for the purpose of this post, consider "finance" to be investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital). Not-for-profit might be the easiest way to get in, because you'll be competing against other applicants from not-for-profit. If you're a banker, you'll be competing against bankers for the third of the class that is reserved for bankers, and a large percentage of them will have no problem getting 700+ GMAT scores and good letters of rec. And most of the people going to a top-tier MBA program that aren't already from finance or consulting are doing it to get into finance/consulting.

MBA programs are hardly used for anything other than to get a promotion in finance and consulting, and you won't learn very much other than things finance people and consultants want to know. In fact, one of the most popular classes at Harvard Business School is a class where you learn how to do case studies for a private equity associate interview.




good one