MBB Consultant Admitted to Harvard Business School: Is the MBA worth it in this job market?
Right after her T-15 undergraduate degree, Suma (name changed for anonymity) started working at an MBB consultancy. A year and a half into this role, she decided to join a secondment – an externship where she would work at another company for a year or two before returning to consulting. During her secondment, she realized she wanted to take the MBA plunge, and applied to Harvard, Stanford GSB, and Wharton. With her strong academic background and application narrative, she successfully secured an admit to Harvard, and got waitlisted at Wharton.
In this interview, we sit down with Suma to get her insights on the application process, her journey over the last few months after getting into Harvard, and what the current MBA landscape and job market in the US looks like.
Watch the video interview here.
Q. Tell us about your stats?
Sam: I’ll jump in on this first. So one thing I don't want this conversation to be about, is pushing a narrative here that anybody can get into Harvard, or that we as consultants can get anybody into Harvard. Suma, you had an outstanding academic background to begin with, right?
Suma: Yeah, I had a GPA of above 3.9 and I studied economics and public health in my undergrad as a double major. I took the GMAT a few years before applying, and ended up with a 750. So I did head into the application with a good base, but I obviously needed a little bit of luck involved and help from Sam to actually get to the finish line.
Q. How many MBB management consultants apply to business school?
Sam: As an admissions consultant, management consultants are probably our single biggest group of clients that we work with. How many of your colleagues were applying to business school around the same time as you? How many of them got in?
Suma: So for the most part, most of the folks in my class would have actually applied the year before me. I am a little bit untraditional as I waited until having around four years of work experience in consulting by the time I start school. Most people do three.
Of the people I know who did apply in the last year or two, a good amount of them ended up at places like Wharton and Kellogg. Probably 5% of the people I know ended up at Stanford or Harvard. It's tough.
Q. How did you differentiate yourself from other MBB management consultants?
Suma: A few things.
One, I waited one more year to apply and I think that extra experience is probably seen as valuable, considering 3-4 years out of school is on the younger end for an MBA applicant.
Two, my secondment. I had always wanted to do a secondment because having learning experience outside of consulting is really important to me. It also differentiated me because I was able to say that I have worked somewhere else for two years by the time I join. That gave me an edge to my application that others might not have had if they decided to stay in consulting the entire time. I’m definitely in the minority in that sense, having this combination of management consulting experience and industry experience.
Three, I had strong extracurriculars that made me stand out within the consulting sphere. I was on my firm’s recruitment team for undergrad, which was just something I enjoyed doing, and I've been doing it since I first started interning. I wasn’t the team lead but I owned a work stream and I was able to make an impact there. I also had a buddy program where I helped pair young people at the firm for the first year or two of their time there.
And then outside of that, I had some tutoring experience, which showed leadership. It showed that I was actively involved in the spaces I chose to be part of.
Q. Do you think MBB management consultant applicants are at an advantage in MBA applications?
Suma: In some ways, yes.
The name recognition of your company is probably at least enough to put your application in the running and get a real genuine read from AdCom. Not to mention the massive network you can tap into, ask about schools, ask for advice, meet with people, which a lot of people may not have.
On the other hand, you are competing against incredibly accomplished people with amazing resumes and that's kind of where it becomes a little bit of a double edged sword. But I think overall, it was to my benefit.
Sam: What proportion of people from your firm at the 4-ish year mark are applying for MBAs?
Suma: I would say maybe 20-35%. Consulting does have high attrition, so many of them left at this point and aren't looking to return or pay for their own MBA.
Sam: What proportion of those 20-35% are sponsored?
Suma: At least 80%, I would say, are probably taking sponsorship. I do think there's a pool of people that take it and then decide not to actually go forward with the sponsorship and end up paying it back.
But in this economic environment especially, people are more likely to take the sponsorship and have the guarantee to return to the firm.
Q. How is the current consulting job market affecting people’s decision to pursue an MBA?
Suma: If you are viewing an MBA as a way to work at an MBB firm or a private equity firm right out of business school, then the job market is more relevant to you and you have to be able to face the reality that there just are fewer job offers going around right now.
But if you view the MBA as more of a longer term investment, where it may be that it doesn't get you into MBB right after of graduation, but maybe four years down the line when you're switching jobs - that's when it becomes valuable and the economic environment doesn't become as much of a concern.
I think I fall more in the second bucket because I am choosing to take a sponsorship, and so I think the value for me will be more longer term than immediate. It definitely depends on your perspective there.
Sam: The stats are showing that for HBS graduates right now, 20+% of them are unemployed after three months. What’s your read on that? Could it be an indication of the devaluing of the MBA credential?
Suma: I think the 20% figure is a bit overblown. If you read the report, it says around 85% received an offer. So then we're really looking at 15% that truly would be unemployed. That means there’s a bunch of people that turned down offers. That’s one factor.
My other perspective on this is that I feel like we just go through this cycle every handful of years. In three years the MBA is going to be at like an all-time application high again. So I'm not worried.
I think that the MBA has its place. I do think it's becoming less of a requirement in the job market, but it still continues to be a differentiating factor.
Sam: And the other factor that I keep telling people is like it's 2025 now. By the time you graduate, it'll be 2027. Whatever the job market is doing right now, it's going to be completely different by the time you graduate. And you can't predict what it's going to look like. So you have to make the decision to apply based on where you currently are in your life.
Q. What was the hardest part of the MBA application process for you?
Suma: I would say two things.
One was the GMAT. I took it twice. It just became a multiple month process.
Two, the waiting period between submitting your application and waiting for interview invites can be really brutal. Especially if you get waitlisted.
I would have said the essay writing too could be stressful, but I think working with Sam made that process much more bite-sized and manageable. We started working together really early in the application process for Round 1, and we had full drafts of all of my school essays by June, maybe even sooner, when many other applicants start writing their application essays in July-August. We were a full 4-5 months ahead.
Sam: But then the Harvard essay questions changed in July, for the first time in 9-10 years.
Suma: We knew this was a risk going into it. So the approach we took was looking at my current essay and what we could carry from it. The prompts basically went from “What else do you want us to know about you?”, a very open-ended question, to 3 different questions about your goals, leadership, and curiosity.
So we figured out what still makes sense to keep from the previous essay and what we could repurpose, and ended up having a lot of luck with that. The curiosity one was the only one we had to really write from scratch, and even then we added a little from my Stanford optional essays. So it ended up being a relatively painless process.
I also think that at this point, we had just done so much work on crafting my narrative and what I wanted the school to know about me regardless of what the prompts were, that it didn't really feel like that much of a hurdle.
Sam: I’m just thinking back to it; you weren't the only person who was, especially initially, sort of flailing a little bit at that because Harvard is the only school at the moment to specifically ask about your curiosity.
It's important to them because it points to their strong case method focus and how they need students to be able to self-teach. They're relying on you being curious to study the cases in your own time. And so they've introduced this new question where they ask explicitly about that. They changed the prompts, but they haven’t changed what traits they’re looking for in people.
Q. What is Harvard Business School looking for in its MBA candidates now?
Sam: There has been some press coverage about Harvard's supposed move away from the alpha type of people towards people who are more emotionally intelligent. Is that something you've come across during your research?
Suma: I went to the admitted students Welcome event a couple of weeks ago and I was definitely a little nervous, feeling the imposter syndrome of “do I belong here?”. But looking around and talking to other people, I found that everybody seemed to feel that way and that was comforting. It wasn’t what I would have expected out of a class of HBS admits. So I think it may be true based on that.
I do think that there's just been a big general push in the workforce of having leaders that are not only intellectually capable, but also emotionally intelligent. Harvard recognizes the importance of that.
Q. What impact does the US political climate have on business schools?
Suma: I wouldn't say it would have an impact in at least Round 1. Thinking ahead to Round 2, I don't think it would play a big role in the current MBA admissions process.
The only thing I’m concerned about is how different diversity metrics are going to matter in applications moving forward.
Sam: Yeah, I haven't seen anything yet. Some of the quantifiable metrics like scholarship availability for minorities, etc. haven’t changed as far as we’ve seen. This will be a space to watch.
Q. How was the HBS Admitted Students Weekend?
Suma: It was great! It was 2 days on campus. It snowed, so that was awesome.
Overall, it was just a great way to meet people and learn a little more about what life would actually look like on campus. We got to see some of the on-campus housing, meet some of the clubs, and I got a better sense of how much people actually travel, sit in class, how much I'd be budgeting. It made things feel a little more real since getting in.
Everything I've heard about business school is a little bit of a “choose your own adventure” where you obviously have the fixed costs of tuition and healthcare and all that stuff. But then outside of that, like the discretionary spending on travel and other events is where I felt like I didn't have a good idea of how much I needed to be budgeting for.
And I think the perspective I got there was that there are people that will stay in Boston every weekend and others that are travelling three out of four weekends of the month to Mexico City for three days. So I'm just doing a little bit of soul searching on where I want to be on that spectrum – probably somewhere in the middle.
Q. Tell us about the costs of doing an MBA and any scholarship opportunities at Harvard.
Sam: How much are you budgeting for your MBA?
Suma: I've heard anywhere from $20 - 60k a year on cost of living. And it looks like everyone spends more than they thought they would.
So I'm going to have to do a little bit of planning and budgeting. Am I going to let my finances guide me on what I can do, or am I willing to take out loans and go into debt for some of the travel and experiences that other people might totally find worth it to do?
Sam: Can you tell us more about the scholarships and financing side of things? How much have you seen is available to those that need it or ask for it?
Suma: So HBS and Stanford are really the 2 need-based scholarship schools where they don’t hand out many merit-based scholarships, I believe. If you are in need, you will get aid from them. I don't believe they cover the full cost for anybody regardless of your background, but it is helpful to know that you will get some aid if you need it. Apart from that, no other real scholarships that I've heard of.
I believe they have some fellowship opportunities, but I don't think the applications for them even open until May or after the Round 2 admits, so I'm not entirely sure what exactly they are for.
Q. What about dual degree programs at HBS?
Suma: My friend from college is actually going to do an MS/MBA dual degree program at HBS.
I personally never thought about it because none of the dual degrees are particular areas of interest for me that I would consider a longer term career in.
But I think if you have an engineering background and want to go into med-tech or something of that nature, a dual degree can make a ton of sense.
Sam: For those applying to dual degree MBA programs, get in touch with Nanako Yano, our resident dual/joint MBA degree expert with an MBA/MPA-ID from Harvard.
Q. What surprised you about the HBS MBA?
Suma: The biggest surprise for me coming out of 3-4 years of consulting was how many people were not in consulting! It was refreshing to see people from all of these different backgrounds.
There were a ton of private equity sorts, but there was also someone who worked in strategy for really big music halls and his background was majoring in an instrument. That was very unique. There’s probably 300-400 more of these stories where people aren't coming from super traditional backgrounds. I'm excited to meet those people and see what they're trying to do after.
Sam: Yeah, I remember during my MBA, the guy next to me just dropped that he was going to be in the Olympics. And sure enough, he rowed for the American Olympics team. There are some really incredible people.
What was it like working with an admissions consultant?
Suma: I put a lot of time into deciding on whether I wanted to use a consultant, and then which one. I probably talked to somewhere between 12-15 different people. I was very thorough. It was a mix of small names and the larger firms, but in many of my intro calls, I felt like it wouldn't be a tailored and individualistic process.
I ultimately ended up going with Sam. What really stood out to me was the almost entirely live process of writing essays, which nobody else talked about doing. I don’t think I appreciated how much of a difference that made in our application process at the time.
For those of you that don't know, our process went like this: after several weeks of brainstorming my narrative, Sam and I would sit down twice a week, pull up Google Docs, and start writing my essays together. That just made such a big difference in the quality of the product that we were able to produce and it was so much more efficient to get live feedback. Compared to standard consultancies where you work offline, that was the big sell for me.
One of the other really positive things about doing it live is that having met for multiple months, I feel like you had actually gotten to know me very well. That made the essays better too. There were times where I was struggling to really form my thoughts and you were able to pull it out of me because you knew me so well. There’s a ton of value there too.
What advice would you give to other MBA applicants?
Suma: If you think you're going to apply for an MBA within five years of graduating from college, take the GMAT. It will make your life easier. For example, I had a lighter course load in my senior year which helped me prep for the GMAT. I took it in 2021.
Second, if you are on the fence about whether you want to go to business school or not (which was me), start your career operating under the assumption that you will go. And I made certain decisions because of that, which ended up benefiting my application. For example, getting the GMAT out of the way. Then, my secondment, which was on my radar early on.
Your extracurriculars, too. AdComs are really good at sniffing out when you pick up an extracurricular nine months before the application is due. Don't do something just for the sake of doing it, but find something that you would actually enjoy doing for two or three years until you apply. For me, that was recruiting. Taking up activities that align with my narrative is my dream. It’s not always possible for people to do that, but if you have some inkling as an applicant that maybe you want to pivot from consulting into some particular industry, it’s good to pre-empt that move with extracurriculars that demonstrate an interest in that direction.
Similarly, there are a lot of decisions like that in your career that you might make if you assumed that you would be going to business school. You could maximize your application and what you want to get out of it.
Are you a management consultant applying to top MBA programs? We can help you shape your narrative. Book a free 20-minute consultation here.
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