Are consulting & banking realistic only for T14 grads? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Many JDs who realize they don't want to go into BigLaw but yet still want to make big bucks seem to consider management consulting (Bain, McKinsey, BCG, etc) and investment banking (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc) as alternative careers after law school.

However, I'm under the impression that these companies strongly prefer JDs from T14 schools, which is unfortunate because it's the non-T14 who struggle to find BigLaw jobs in the first place and thus would have a stronger incentive to seek non-legal career paths.

Anyone have insight into this? Any truth to this?

[20160810]

A friend of mine was a consultant at Bain and he basically said if you didn't go to a top-15 school you won't get an interview. They seem much more concerned about that than biglaw firms, who will usually be happy to interview you from a lower school as long as you have the right grades.

[Anonymous User]

However, MBB does hire at least from the top 30 undergrads or so.........maybe because there are thousands more undergrads than law schools?

[PMan99]

Many of these jobs are very, very school conscious. And it's more like prefer T6 / prefer HS(Y) than T14 - your chances are much better at Harvard (which has the most recruiting opportunities) than Georgetown (where I'm not sure any high-end non law jobs recruit at all).

[Anonymous User]

Many of these jobs are very, very school conscious. And it's more like prefer T6 / prefer HS(Y) than T14 - your chances are much better at Harvard (which has the most recruiting opportunities) than Georgetown (where I'm not sure any high-end non law jobs recruit at all).

Huh? Pretty sure if you get to the case studies interviews you're on equal footing. I went to a T-14 (not T6) and a fair number in the year before me and my year ended up at MBB.

I applied out of undergrad (not a HYPSMC) and they asked for my SAT scores and then you have to take the PST or whatever it's called. After that you do case studies interviews. Pretty sure once you get to the interviews you're on equal footing with everyone else.

[Anonymous User]

However, I'm under the impression that these companies strongly prefer JDs from T14 schools, which is unfortunate because it's the non-T14 who struggle to find BigLaw jobs in the first place and thus would have a stronger incentive to seek non-legal career paths.

Wouldn't they want to recruit from the same schools as biglaw for the same reasons? It's not like MBB is gonna say "let's recruit at Fordham because the kids at Columbia can get other jobs."

[PMan99]

Many of these jobs are very, very school conscious. And it's more like prefer T6 / prefer HS(Y) than T14 - your chances are much better at Harvard (which has the most recruiting opportunities) than Georgetown (where I'm not sure any high-end non law jobs recruit at all).

Huh? Pretty sure if you get to the case studies interviews you're on equal footing. I went to a T-14 (not T6) and a fair number in the year before me and my year ended up at MBB.

I applied out of undergrad (not a HYPSMC) and they asked for my SAT scores and then you have to take the PST or whatever it's called. After that you do case studies interviews. Pretty sure once you get to the interviews you're on equal footing with everyone else.

OP and my post were talking about getting an interview, not getting a job once you land the interview, but thank

[Anonymous User]

Many of these jobs are very, very school conscious. And it's more like prefer T6 / prefer HS(Y) than T14 - your chances are much better at Harvard (which has the most recruiting opportunities) than Georgetown (where I'm not sure any high-end non law jobs recruit at all).

Huh? Pretty sure if you get to the case studies interviews you're on equal footing. I went to a T-14 (not T6) and a fair number in the year before me and my year ended up at MBB.

I applied out of undergrad (not a HYPSMC) and they asked for my SAT scores and then you have to take the PST or whatever it's called. After that you do case studies interviews. Pretty sure once you get to the interviews you're on equal footing with everyone else.

OP and my post were talking about getting an interview, not getting a job once you land the interview, but thank

Weird - it's pretty easy getting an interview in my experience. The only difference among the T-14 is that while they do on-campus recruiting at say Harvard, you can only mail in applications from say Georgetown with your standardized test scores. But if you have whatever minimum scores they are looking for, my understanding is that you basically by default get an interview....

[Anonymous User]

Many JDs who realize they don't want to go into BigLaw but yet still want to make big bucks seem to consider management consulting (Bain, McKinsey, BCG, etc) and investment banking (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc) as alternative careers after law school.

However, I'm under the impression that these companies strongly prefer JDs from T14 schools, which is unfortunate because it's the non-T14 who struggle to find BigLaw jobs in the first place and thus would have a stronger incentive to seek non-legal career paths.

Anyone have insight into this? Any truth to this?

A few random thoughts on this:

1) The firms that you mention are basically at the top of their fields. They're hard to get into even if you had prior experience or applying from a legit b-school. Considering just MBB/MS/GS would be as if you were interested in working in biglaw but only applied to Cravath and S&C. If you're really interested in non-legal options, consider applying much more broadly (since these firms don't generally do OCI at non-T14s, you'll be shooting off your resume anyway).

2) Investment banks are generally less geared to hiring JDs than MBB is. Some firms run a separate process closer to biglaw recruiting, but many others don't. Sometimes, if you network and your resume gets in the hands of HR, they'll let you tack on to the later b-school recruiting process ... but this usually only starts after biglaw recruiting has wrapped up. And this is obviously a more feasible option if you go to a university with b-school that more employers recruit from (e.g., USC probably better than GWU).