My path to a Consulting Internship

I would start by saying you will receive a lot of advices in the course of the next 8 months, a lot of them would be great advices based on a lot of other students' experiences. That said, your judgment is crucial, as you soon see, people will give you advices on what works for them but you bring something different to the table and unless you have the exact same background as I have and the exact same career aspirations as I have you will HAVE to make tweaks to advices you get.

The Main things that worked for me securing an internship in consulting

1. Work hard on your resume and get it done at least a week before the school deadline.

2. Practicing, Practicing and Practicing cases – overall I practiced between 30-40 cases

a. Don’t start before Fall B – you will burn yourself.

b. Try to do cases with MBA2 and MBA1 (make sure you try different people from time to time).

3. I decided not to take a 4th elective in Fall B like a lot of other students did, I think it helped me to reduce stress and to be more focused on recruiting/networking.

4. Networking – I am really bad at this, seriously really bad at this, and I still got two offers. So it is possible. But, I had luck and you should do a better job at this than I did.
Keep in mind that sometimes networking with second year is as important as networking with company employees, in fact in one of the companies I got an offer from I was placed under their radar by a second year I worked with in the consulting club. So try to schedule sometime with at least one second year who worked in each company and ask him about his/her summer. To summarize this point: do your networking and do it well, it is not as important as in I Banking but it is important.

5. Bidding – Some companies don’t like bidders and focus on people they asked to interview but some others understand that they must have missed some good candidates so they will treat you as equal. I got an offer from AT Kearney as well, and I wasn’t in their closed list, I bid for them. Then I pass 7 interviews and one presentation and I got an offer, so that’s should tell you that if you are not on the closed list it doesn’t mean anything. So have faith in yourself all the way.

6. When January comes there isn’t much you can do, you just need to get into the room and amaze them ;-)

Hope it helps, and again use your judgment, there is no better or worse there is better for you,