@MPT3D hoping you feel better soon!
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Congrats! 
Thatâs like your Grinnell scholarship of 2018 right? A nice surprise going into RD
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Good memory! Yes, S19 had a nice early merit offer from Grinnell. 
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Can I ask what I hope will not be an controversial question - just accepting that it is a matter of opinion based upon individual priorities so there is no wrong or right answer? I am of the opinion that paying sticker price (which is 2.3 times price compared to in-state school) for a top 20 school is âworth itâ for my son who may want to go into management consulting, but I am not sure how far down the list of selectivity it becomes ânot worth itâ ? Rank of 25? 40? His flagship state is ranked in the 60s. Assume all schools are an equally good fit. Assume we have the money set aside but would rather give it to him to buy a car or downpayment on a house after college if there is not a good return on investment. I am just curious where people would draw the line.
@rochboy21 I would say top 30. Otherwise your state flagshipâs honors program would be fine. For top tier management consulting, look at the business school or general collegeâs placement outcomes. Here are Emoryâs and UVaâs as examples. They both have reach into Northeast, DC and Southeast. 23% of Emoryâs class goes into consulting vs. ~30% at UVa McIntire. A school like Wharton actually lists how many go with each firm. Few placement offices will do that. 
Management consulting and IB firms will go to top LACs as well.
And then thereâs grad school. MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) wants hires with corporate experience (leadership development programs), IB, engineering, medicine, etc. Therefore, your kid could go to a 30-70 ranked school with aid, get a Big 4 consulting job or corporate position and then go to a top MBA program after 3-4 years it will certainly work too. There are also a few MBB firms that recruit at the 30-70 ranked schools, especially for regional offices.
Thereâs a point below top 100 that the first job isnât likely to be too great unless youâre part of a special program or at a flagship with 3.9+ GPA and solid job. For example, you can still get a 3.9+ at Oregon, work in a rotation program at Nike and then apply to a top 10 b-school with high test scores.
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@rochboy21 for work I basically put a dollar value on decisions for businesses. Iâm the guy who likes to figure out the cost per 100 calories of different sized pizzas. 
The answer depends a lot on the quality of your state flagship, whether the first job will be instate, and the quality of the T20 for business. For example a business degree from UofM is basically the same as Vanderbilt, but the same canât be said for CU Boulder (my flagship) vs Vandy.
Also, for consulting and accounting degree from a state flagship can be a great option. Especially if itâs paired with a CS/math minor.
The hardest part of this decision is to size up the career bump of the top 20 school. The top 20 is going to try hard to sell you the bump is huge, but itâs often pretty small for the average student. We have used Linkedin a lot to reverse engineer by looking at people who have the career path my kids want. Where did they go to college? What were their ECs? etc.
My Ds are all STEM/engineering types so I canât help you get all the way there, but I do think there a lot of people graduating with a business degree from state flagships every year, so you have to find a way to stand out in the crowd. A degree and advising at a Vandy really helps with that.
TL/DR: Iâd pay the extra for Vandy over an average state school, but not over one of the better ones.
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That is really helpful. Iâm trying to create a spreadsheet comparing schools and engineering programs as S21âs acceptances come in so we can see which schools would be âworthâ the extra cost, and which would not. If S21 gets really stuck, I may need to ask you for a â100 calorie pizzaâ type cost analysis for engineering programs!
We are lucky to live in Michigan, so we told our kids that we would only pay for another school (35K per year more expensive) if it is clearly better than Michigan. That greatly narrowed the range of college that they would have to look at. If one strictly considers value, I do not know if there is any other school that makes sense over Michigan in state.
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Thatâs how we feel here in TX. S21 would really have to convince us to pay more for a school other than UT.
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It helps that getting in to Michigan in state is much easier than OOS. About 40% acceptance rate vs <20% OOS acceptance rate. I think it would be much more difficult in CA which has excellent schools but the acceptance is quite difficult.
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@rochboy21 if I may provide input from an industry who leveraged management consultingâŠI find that consultants that make it to the top of their company lists who consult with us tend to have industry-specific experiences, as well as an MBA.
I do think they do have employees with an undergrad degree only, but they donât get the same exposure or type of projects assigned to them. There are key leaders without grad degrees but in my experience, they have worked 15-20 years to earn their top spotâslower climb.
If you have a public university that is a recruiting hot spot for consulting companies, you should be set. Someone mentioned University if Michigan and I 100% agree with the caliber of UofM. Does the university have a track record of being a place where students can get summer internships (thatâs key), recruiting hot spot, etc? If yes, I truly donât think youâd need T20.
Because they likely will need a grad degree of some sort like an MBA, itâs better to save the $ for the grad degree at a place like University of Chicago or Kellogg/Northwestern.
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@flyawayx2 as a Chem Engr and someone who recruited for my company the first few years of my engr career, I think engr is the one degree that is more forgiving about where you went to college and even GPA (3.4-3.6 is NOT bad), as long as the school positions your kid to have internships and if itâs a recruiting hot spot. Neither one of my kids want to be engineers but if they did, I would highly influence them to go to our local Cal State University Sacramento. Get their undergrad engr degree and then get out to industry and work. They can always go back to get an MBA, patent attorney degree, even an engr grad school (although in engr, you donât need a grad engr degree to do well. Experience is what truly matters).
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I ran campus recruiting for a large region of the country for one of the large global consulting firms (I still work there, just in another capacity). I managed many of our top national schools where we would go deep into the candidate pool across our varying service lines. Unless youâre looking at a McKinsey, etc which really only hires a small number of BAs, not consultants, from undergrad, you are better off going to a strong public university with a good business program. Some schools overperform their rankings in terms of placements (ie Miami OH is an excellent example). You should also be researching/touring the placement offices. For example, IUâs Kelley Career Center is worth itâs weigh in gold and does a fantastic job placing students across programs and deep into its pool (UofM Ross is the same.) While some firms recruit at LACs, they donât tend to be in the tier of schools where all firms (+BB IBs and next tier IBs, etc) consistently invest to recruit broadly. Private school exceptions (outside of the ivies) are ND, Duke, Vandy, BYU, USC, etc. UPenn is obviously the most business focused (ie-pre-professional of the ivies). I hired a ton of students from schools like Texas, UNC, UW, Boston College ahead of those from Brown and Dartmouth.
Having said all that, if your child wants to stay and work in the same city/region, then Wichita State is going to be fine to get a job in Wichita and the same goes from a SUNY in NYC.
I hope that helps.
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I believe top 30 matters. Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley and UNC are in the 20s. While Penn is currently ranked #8 overall, its Engineeringâs stats are below:
- Google, Inc. (18)
- Microsoft (14)
- Facebook (11)
- Goldman Sachs (10)
14 went to MBB consulting.
And thatâs Penn engineering & applied science school, not Wharton.
As far as LACs, I only knew people from Williams and Amherst in IB (bulge bracket) so thatâs not too fair. Yes, NYU was a great âlocalâ option but itâs moved up so much in the rankings to be Top 30 now.
I agree that you need to get placement statistics and see where you want to work after graduation.
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So, do you think going to a top LAC is a downside in terms of getting into consulting? I would think consulting firms would like kids at top LACs even more than kids with undergraduate business degrees.
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Think about it this way - if a firm is going to invest significant time and money in recruiting at a school, youâre going to get a better ROI recruiting from a more diverse pool. I mean diverse from a number of perspectives: you can hire engineers for your tech group, business majors for M&A, economists and finance for economic modeling and Valuations. Youâre also going to find more URMs and first Gen students at public universities. Diversity of perspective is very important.
So, while some consulting firms definitely hire from LACs, they most likely will hire a much smaller percentage of students from there.
Please realize Iâm speaking generally, so there are exceptions.
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Hm. Interesting. So I wonder if the top LACs donât have these firms coming to them but the students maybe reach out to the firms, maybe via an alum, in order to interview. Just seems like youâd want the best candidates and students at LACs tend to graduate with a different (more useful in the long run) skill set than students with undergrad business degrees. They typically have a broader knowledge base, maybe have learned to write more, etc.
Now I feel like S19 should find out exactly how students at Bowdoin end up in these consulting jobs âŠbecause I know they do. It just might not be the same way someone at UIUC gets in with the firm coming to Champaign and interviewing kids.
Something to think about for D21. The career centers are always part of our metric when choosing a college and it wonât be any different for her. Iâve been pretty impressed with what Iâve seen from the career centers on her list and none of them are big state schools.
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I am not in business, but I definitely heard there is a pipeline for recruitment out of certain colleges for these top firms. There are even certain firms that usually go to specific schools. (I know there is another path post MBA.) They donât come to a lot of schools out of the top 30. And if you arenât at one of those schools then, unless you really know someone, it is hard to even get an interview. There are obviously many other companies that you can get hired at, but the prestige and starting salaries are much lower.
I have heard medical school is more of a meritocracy now based almost exclusively on GPA and MCAT. But in the 1990s, I went to a top 5 school, and it was only top 40 colleges represented. I have heard FAANG recruitment is more open minded. I donât know about law.
I am not even sure any of this will even matter for him. I just want the best for him.
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I notice a lot of Bowdoin grads work at MBB especially after MBA programs such as HBS, Tuck, Wharton, Booth, Sloan, etc. MBB knows Bowdoin is excellent and will take laterals from their grads. As you know 15-20% go directly to top grad schools but few go to med school. Both Bain and McKinsey hire directly.
A Bowdoin grad worked for me who first did corporate M&A at a Fortune 50 company and then attended Kellogg MBA. She is now a director in London.
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This conversation is fascinating to me. Since I too wondered if the top LACâs have these firms coming to them, I searched and came across this since Bain was mentioned in this thread:
Which is fun, since you plug any number of schools in and they show you the love, but a state flagship like CU and nothing, instead liberal arts Colorado College comes up.
I did see that Bain had a recruitment event last Fall, but I didnât see anything recent for Williams or even Bowdoin, but you could see that alumni seemed to be employed.
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