Consulting

Consulting is a popular field for young people who are unsure about exactly what career they want to go into, but want an opportunity to try a wide range of things. Having a company like McKinsey on your LinkedIn profile can open up a lot of doors for you.

The top Consulting firms, just like the top investment banking firms have a fairly formal recruiting pipeline, which is why getting into a “target school” for consulting is a very real phenomenon. This chapter we explain what are the best schools for getting the best consulting jobs.

This is an excerpt of the consulting chapter in our ebook, The Atila Schools and Jobs Guide | The Best Canadian Universities for the Best Jobs

Methodology 

To decide which 5 tech companies to include in our top 5, we used Vault.com’s top 50 list from 2020 where they rank firms by revenue, prestige, growth, and employee satisfaction. See the introduction[tk add link] for the general methodology that we used for all industries to find positions and salaries. The five companies selected include Mckinsey and Company, Bain and Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Deloitte and Accenture. 

The Vault ranking actually placed PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), and Ernest and Young LLP (EY) ahead of Accenture. However, we chose to leave them out because EY is already covered in our accounting chapter and BAH does not have a major Canadian Presence.

At first we included both Mckinsey, Bain, and BCG (MBB), with Deloitte and Accenture in our totals. But then as we looked at the data it became clear that 1. There is a significant gap in prestige amongst the MBB and the other two schools, but we already knew this. What we found surprising after our research is that Deloitte and Accenture hire far more students than the MBB. For example, U of T has more consultants at Deloitte (125) than the consultants at McKinsey from all 17 Canadian schools combined (76). So we have decided to look at both the top schools amongst the MBB and then the top schools overall. 

Like we mentioned in the introduction, Canadian universities are best evaluated on a per-program basis and not necessarily as a university as a whole. Additionally, we have organized job titles based on positions at each company. For example, Bain has an org structure that’s different from most companies. Instead of new hires joining the firm as an analyst, they join as an associate consultant. Thus when we compare entry level hires we compare Bain associate consultants with analysts from other companies and we treat case team leaders at Bain as managers at other companies.

 

Our list focuses exclusively on Canadian schools because those are the schools which are the most relevant to our target audience. However, if you're interested in American schools as well, check out the list of North American Target Schools for Management Consulting (MBB) from Peak Frameworks.

Highlights

The top 5 schools for Consulting were:

  1. Toronto (870)
  2. McGill (707)
  3. Western (668)
  4. Queen’s (645)
  5. Waterloo (540)

*note Waterloo’s numbers over UBC’s

The top 5 Schools for MBB Consulting were

  1. U of T (514)
  2. Western (458)
  3. McGill (400)
  4. Queen’s (378)
  5. Waterloo (367)

The best paying firms for an entry level analyst were (Toronto and/or NYC)

Toronto

  1. McKinsey ($107,531)
  2. Bain ($181,059)
  3. BCG ($102,506)
  4. Deloitte ($58,497)
  5. Accenture ($65,079)

     

New York

1. McKinsey ($105,849)

2. Bain ($105,230)

3. BCG ($104,202)

4. Deloitte ($103,113)

5. Accenture ($114,038)

 

San Francisco

1. Accenture ($120,285)

2. BCG ($111,927) 

3. McKinsey ($110,170)

4.Bain ($100,978)

5. Deloitte ($77,332) 

Key Findings

  1. Unlike Tech and Investment Banking, There is No Clear Best School for Consulting (but U of T still wins)

     
  2. MBB Recruiting is very different from Deloitte and Accenture Recruiting (and the Real Definition of a “Target School”)

     
  3. Consulting Recruiting is very similar to Investment Banking Recruiting (the top firms at both are “unapologetically elitist”)

     
  4. Canadian Schools don’t perform well in landing students in upper management (compared to American Schools)

Unlike Tech and Investment Banking, There is No Clear Best School for Consulting (but U of T still wins)

When we looked at tech and investment banking, we often found that one school had the most hires for every company, and usually by a wide margin. For example, in tech Waterloo was the most popular choice for software engineer at every tech company, while U of T was first for every Canadian Investment bank and McGil was the top choice for 3 out of the four American investment banks.

In consulting the story is very different,  McGill was the top school for McKinsey, Queen’s was the top choice for Bain and BCG, and U of T was the top choice for Deloitte and Accenture. This was surprising for us because we would have expected to see the same school dominate for all the companies or at least have the same school dominate amongst “The Big Three” MBB (Mckinsey, Bain, BCG). It was also surprising that while U of T was the top choice for Deloitte and Accenture, it didn’t come first in any of the MBB companies.

When you look at which school places the most students at MBB companies, McGill still comes out ahead. However, it is not the same dominant lead it had in Investment Banking or the same lead Waterloo had in Tech.

In Consulting, The "Target School" effect is real

There is a reason why McKinsey, Bain, and BCG are called “The Big Three”. Not only is their recruiting a lot more selective (recall the earlier statistic that,  U of T has more consultants at Deloitte (125) than the consultants at McKinsey from all 17 Canadian schools combined (76). Their total compensation is a lot higher as well. 

An entry-level analyst at Deloitte makes just $56,409 compared to $82,294 for a new grad analyst at McKinsey. At the associate level the gap is even larger with an associate at Deloitte making $75,905, while an analyst at McKinsey makes more than double that with an annual salary of $158,248.

Below we have the graph of school placements for McKinsey, Bain, BCG and for Deloitte and Accenture (DA). The first thing that stands out is the much higher number of students that Deloitte and Accenture recruit relative to McKinsey, Bain, BCG. The second thing that stands out is the sheer dominance of UofT at Deloitte and Accenture.

But the most subtle yet most interesting difference is the different distributions between Deloitte and Accenture recruiting compared to MBB. 

This graph is a perfect visualization of what it means when people refer to a certain university as being a “target school”. The big gap between UBC and Montreal is a perfect graphical representation of the fact that UBC is considered a target school for consulting at an MBB firm, every school after that would not be considered a target school.

 

Consulting Recruiting is very similar to Investment Banking Recruiting (the top firms at both are “unapologetically elitist”)

If you’ve read the investment banking chapter you’ve probably noted some striking similarities between the investment banking chapter and this consulting chapter. 

The most basic example is that the top 5 schools for investment banking, are also the top 5 schools for consulting.

For example, recall when we compared recruiting at Canadian banks (RBC and BMO capital markets) to recruiting at American Banks (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Bank of America Merilly Lynch). In this scenario, Deloitte and Accenture recruiting matches the Canadian Banks Recruiting and McKinsey, Bain,  BCG recruiting is similar to the American Banks. Recruiting at MBB and the American Investment banks reminds me of the way the legendary quant hedge fund, DE Shaw used to describe their recruiting standards, it’s “unapologetically elitist”. 

Elitist has a negative connotation and I don’t mean it pejoratively, I actually say it somewhat affectionately. These firms have very high standards, but they also have ...

 

 This article is an excerpt of the consulting chapter in the Atila Schools and Jobs Guide, available at atila.ca/schools.