Management consulting is a popular post-MBA career field, and MBA applicants like you want to know:
The employment reports published by MBA programs are a great place to start to learn about the total number of consulting placements or to view lists of “top employers.” However, you’ll also want a breakdown of placement results by firm, or by career changers vs. returning/sponsored students, to understand the full story of each MBA program’s career placement achievements.
Because these metrics are vital to understand how the reputation, network, and historical post-MBA placements of different business schools can help you achieve your career goals, a new kind of employment report is called for—one that breaks down post-MBA consulting data on a granular level.
For the first time ever, detailed analysis of post-MBA consulting placements is available through Menlo Coaching’s research team. We have analyzed 51,991 student profiles (and counting…) to give you valuable insights about each MBA program’s job placement history in management consulting, with data grouped by:
And the trends our report reveals may surprise you!
For example, the MBA programs with the best placement in the management consulting industry are not HBS, Stanford and Wharton.
Furthermore, several MBA programs not traditionally seen as frequent feeders to MBB have been rapidly increasing their placements at those firms (by as much as 155% over the last two years).
For more details on how we compiled our data and how you can best use the information in your research into top MBA programs in the US and abroad, see the methodology section.
Unless otherwise stated, all data in the following sections refers to 2020 placements.
| MBA Program | # of Students joining MBB for the first time | As a % of Student Body | As a % of New Consulting Placements |
| INSEAD | 156 | 15.3% | 76.0% |
| The University of Chicago Booth School of Business | 109 | 18.5% | 68.1% |
| Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management | 99 | 20.6% | 70.2% |
| Harvard Business School | 95 | 10.2% | 93.1% |
| The Wharton School | 87 | 9.6% | 77.7% |
| London Business School | 62 | 13.0% | 73.8% |
| Columbia University – Columbia Business School | 59 | 7.8% | 53.6% |
| The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth | 55 | 19.0% | 67.9% |
| MIT Sloan School of Management | 54 | 13.4% | 85.7% |
| University of Virginia Darden School of Business | 45 | 13.3% | 54.2% |
| Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business | 39 | 9.6% | 43.8% |
| Yale School of Management | 39 | 11.3% | 61.9% |
| University of Michigan – Stephen M. Ross School of Business | 39 | 9.2% | 39.0% |
| NYU Stern School of Business | 32 | 8.6% | 38.6% |
| Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management | 23 | 8.2% | 39.7% |
| University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business | 19 | 6.5% | 63.3% |
| UCLA Anderson School of Management | 19 | 5.4% | 45.2% |
| Stanford University Graduate School of Business | 18 | 4.6% | 94.7% |
| Carnegie Mellon University – Tepper School of Business | 15 | 6.3% | 36.6% |
| UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School | 10 | 2.9% | 37.0% |
| The University of Texas at Austin – Red McCombs School of Business | 6 | 2.1% | 21.4% |
| Georgetown University McDonough School of Business | 5 | 2.0% | 25.0% |
| Rice Business – Jones Graduate School of Business | 1 | 0.9% | 3.2% |
| University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School of Business | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| MBA Program | # of Students joining MBB | As a % of Student Body | As a % of Consulting Placements |
| INSEAD | 265 | 26.05% | 71.6% |
| Harvard Business School | 137 | 14.7% | 92.6% |
| Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management | 131 | 27.2% | 64.5% |
| The Wharton School | 126 | 13.9% | 74.1% |
| The University of Chicago Booth School of Business | 123 | 20.9% | 66.1% |
| London Business School | 89 | 18.7% | 71.8% |
| Columbia University – Columbia Business School | 87 | 11.5% | 54.7% |
| MIT Sloan School of Management | 68 | 16.8% | 79.1% |
| The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth | 58 | 20.1% | 65.9% |
| University of Virginia Darden School of Business | 48 | 14.2% | 50.5% |
| Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business | 41 | 10.1% | 38.3% |
| Yale School of Management | 41 | 11.9% | 55.4% |
| University of Michigan – Stephen M. Ross School of Business | 40 | 9.5% | 35.4% |
| NYU Stern School of Business | 35 | 9.4% | 38.0% |
| Stanford University Graduate School of Business | 33 | 8.4% | 91.7% |
| University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business | 27 | 9.3% | 64.3% |
| Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management | 23 | 8.2% | 37.7% |
| UCLA Anderson School of Management | 19 | 5.4% | 39.6% |
| Carnegie Mellon University – Tepper School of Business | 15 | 6.3% | 33.3% |
| UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School | 11 | 3.2% | 35.5% |
| The University of Texas at Austin – Red McCombs School of Business | 6 | 2.1% | 18.8% |
| Georgetown University McDonough School of Business | 5 | 2.0% | 20.0% |
| Rice Business – Jones Graduate School of Business | 1 | 0.9% | 3.1% |
| University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School of Business | 0 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| MBA Program | # of Consulting Placements (including sponsored students) | As a % of student body | # of New Consulting Placements | As a % of student body |
| INSEAD | 370 | 36.4% | 205 | 20.2% |
| Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management | 203 | 42.2% | 141 | 29.3% |
| The University of Chicago Booth School of Business | 186 | 31.6% | 160 | 27.2% |
| The Wharton School | 170 | 18.8% | 112 | 12.4% |
| Columbia University – Columbia Business School | 159 | 21.1% | 110 | 14.6% |
| Harvard Business School | 148 | 15.9% | 102 | 11.0% |
| London Business School | 124 | 26.1% | 84 | 17.7% |
| University of Michigan – Stephen M. Ross School of Business | 113 | 26.8% | 100 | 23.7% |
| Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business | 107 | 26.2% | 89 | 21.8% |
| University of Virginia Darden School of Business | 95 | 28.1% | 83 | 24.6% |
| NYU Stern School of Business | 92 | 24.6% | 83 | 22.2% |
| The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth | 88 | 30.5% | 81 | 28.0% |
| MIT Sloan School of Management | 86 | 21.3% | 63 | 15.6% |
| Yale School of Management | 74 | 21.4% | 63 | 18.2% |
| Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management | 61 | 21.8% | 58 | 20.7% |
| UCLA Anderson School of Management | 48 | 13.5% | 42 | 11.8% |
| Carnegie Mellon University – Tepper School of Business | 45 | 19.0% | 41 | 17.3% |
| University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business | 42 | 14.4% | 30 | 10.3% |
| Stanford University Graduate School of Business | 36 | 9.2% | 19 | 4.9% |
| Rice Business – Jones Graduate School of Business | 32 | 27.1% | 31 | 26.3% |
| The University of Texas at Austin – Red McCombs School of Business | 32 | 11.1% | 28 | 9.7% |
| UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School | 31 | 9.0% | 27 | 7.9% |
| Georgetown University McDonough School of Business | 25 | 10.1% | 20 | 8.1% |
| University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School of Business | 9 | 7.2% | 8 | 6.4% |
For details on our general data gathering methodology, click here.
In this report, we made one exception to the usual methodology and used statistics from INSEAD’s official employment report. We did this because of INSEAD’s two-term structure (September entry and January entry). This meant that at the time we gathered the data for the report, many management consulting job offers for January entry students (who graduate in December) were known already to the students and to INSEAD, and reflected in the employment report, but the jobs had not yet begun and were therefore not reflected in public data sources.
This gives some advantage to INSEAD, because official employment report data are almost always higher than what’s visible in public sources, but this does not change the conclusions. INSEAD had such a large lead that any realistic estimate of the (public source vs. private source) difference, which we analyzed for prior years, would still leave INSEAD as the leader.
We analyzed management consulting job placements for the graduating classes of 2018, 2019 and 2020 and calculated two primary metrics:
This is the number of students whose first full-time post-MBA jobs are in the management consulting industry, and it measures the strength of an MBA program’s network in the industry.
This is the number of students whose first full-time post-MBA jobs are in the management consulting industry, excluding students who returned to their immediate pre-MBA employer.
For example, both of these would count as new consulting placements:
This metric measures an MBA program’s ability to place career changers into the consulting industry for the first time, or to help consulting professionals to switch to a new firm.
We measure the metrics in several ways:
For example, if you want to know whether a given MBA program is likely to have alumni within the consulting firms you want to join, the total number of students that MBA program places into consulting is the best predictor.
On the other hand, if you want to know about your chances to break into the consulting industry for the first time, the % of the student body that joins consulting is a good indicator. You wouldn’t expect an MBA program of 300 students to place the same number of people into consulting as an MBA program with 900 students, would you?
And finally, MBB placements as a % of total consulting placements is a way to estimate the quality of an MBA program’s consulting placements. For example, an MBA program like Columbia has many students who choose to recruit into finance rather than consulting. This lowers the MBB placements as an absolute number and as a % of the student body, but should not be taken as a negative sign about Columbia’s consulting career opportunities. By calculating MBB placements out of total consulting placements, we avoid penalizing Columbia for its strong finance recruitment portfolio and its many finance-focused students.
Note on class sizes: where possible, class sizes are derived from employment reports. If employment reports are not available or graduating class sizes are not reported, figures reported at matriculation (in class profiles) are used.
| New Placements into MBB | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
| The University of Chicago Booth School of Business | 81 | 98 | 109 |
| Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management | 92 | 98 | 99 |
| Total Placements into MBB | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 |
| NYU Stern School of Business | 25 | 38 | 35 |
| Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management | 9 | 16 | 23 |
| UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School | 6 | 4 | 11 |
Compare MBA programs in management consulting job placements and consider seeking guidance from our MBA application consultant to enhance your career prospects.
