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<li><p>Consulting isn’t really a career ambition. I know a few people – a very, very few people – who started out in consulting and didn’t leave until much later, but generally consultants are young people biding time, picking up skills, and networking until they figure out what they really want to do, and older people who developed substantive expertise doing something other than consulting and wind up selling that expertise. I think that’s true even at the McKinseys of the world, although they do have some home-grown talent. (Pizzagirl: I have no idea what you earn, but my friend the erstwhile McKinsey partner earned enough to run a smallish country.)</p></li>
<li><p>The OP has obviously given some thought to what he or she wants out of life, and high-end consulting is consistent with that (maybe), but it’s hardly the only thing consistent with that. It’s just visible, prestigious, and it has recruiters. There are lots of opportunities out there for people like the OP, and high-end consulting jobs constitute a tiny fraction of them. </p></li>
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<p>If I were the OP, I would try to get into the business of brokering relationships between US design/distribution companies and Chinese manufacturers (including manufacturers owned by overseas Chinese in other Southeast Asian countries, like Malaysia or Cambodia). That would put his or her linguistic abilities and social skills to excellent use, and could be extraordinarily lucrative. I had a client sell a moribund business for millions of dollars to a big company, and the only thing the company really wanted out of the deal was the phone numbers of the factories my client dealt with and a couple of employees in a provincial office in China who maintained the relationships with the factories. And that was one niche business.</p>
<p>By contrast, my McKinsey friend spent years in places dominated by ethnic Chinese businesses, and as far as I know he never spoke more than rudimentary Chinese of any type. (His wife, a polyglot, did a fair job with Mandarin.) At his level, business was conducted in English, period.</p>
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<li>I am not any kind of expert on high-end consulting recruiting, but my impression is that what they value is quantitative skills, leadership, and communication ability. Because they pay so much and have so much prestige, they basically get the pick of the litter anywhere they look. So if the OP really wants to take a shot at it, the issue isn’t so much getting a fancy MBA (although that’s one way to approach it) as being the biggest, shiniest package of those qualities wherever he or she is. Including Chapel Hill. And if, in all honesty, he or she isn’t the biggest, shiniest package – forget false modesty, there’s absolutely no place for it in that world – then start working on Life Plan B.</li>
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