| Topic Name: |
McKinsey in decline? |
| Message Name: |
Best and Brightest |
| Date Posted: |
01/31/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
The observation you recollect for the best and the brightest 'b&b' gravitating for PE/HF positions sounds plausible--as you said, money is just too good compared to management consulting. My point in the previous post was presented poorly so let me try again: if you look at the employment statistics of Stanford MBAs from 1997 to 2005, you would find that the percentage of management consulting accepted offers changed from 22% to 20% and financial services (IB/IM/VC in 1997; IB/PE/HF/VC/IM in 2005) did not change at all at 25%. Same number of ??b&b?? went into financial services and management consulting in 1997 and also 2005. So stating that the quality level of MBAs have deteriorated recently due to b&b pursuing PE/HF/VC positions seems to be incorrect??data suggests that it has been this way for quite a while, at least for the last 8 years.
The spikes needed to be successful in PE/HF are probably different from the ones in management consulting. Labeling this limited pool of MBA students with the appropriate spikes required for PE/HF jobs as the b&b sounds little bit far fetched. I??m sure a group of APD??s with background in math, physics or engineering will beat out PE/HF MBAs on just analytical/quantitative brain power.
Lets not forget about the accomplished APD??s from impressive schools/backgrounds who take up a significant portion of the new associate class in McK and BCG. I??ve read McK is the biggest single employer at Harvard law school.
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| Message: |
Well this leads us back to the question about how you define the best and the brightest.
I think the very b&b from my Wharton undergrad class '06 are not going for mainstream consulting. I think b&b get special offers from special firms like Blackstone group. The fact that they pretty much only interview people with a cumulative 3.9 (and no there is no grade inflation here, that's Princeton) and still manage to burn through most of those applicants, means they must end up with pretty distinct people. The fact that 25% of a graduating class goes into consultancy means to me that those are not the most special people in that class.
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