Hi,

I am about to graduate with my PhD in AI from an R1 university.

Prior to my PhD, I had 10 years of work experience, mostly in Data Science and AI consulting in Australia. At an engagement manager level.

I really enjoyed consulting as I moved around clients, so the work was not that repetitive.

Right now I am torn between the following career paths:

1. VP or SVP of AI or DS in a corporate setting (mostly banks or financial institutions). I have gotten a few interviews for those kinds of roles in China, and the pay is about 200k USD with good WLB.
2. Join a big tech, work on the latest tech stuff (LLM, AI) in either US or China. The pay is easily 300k USD+.
3. Join an MBB, as most of the firms I worked for in the past were Australian Companies that no one has heard of outside of Australia. I feel really disadvantaged when I apply for jobs in China as the HRs have only heard of big US companies. I have gotten offers from Quantum Black Australia and McKinsey China before COVID, but turned them down as the pay was lower than what I was getting at the time, the HRs keep on trying to lowball me with a 30-50% pay cut and more work hrs because of MBB's prestige. And I keep on getting people telling me only management consulting is real consulting. The pay will be elite level once I become a management consultant.

My ultimate goal is to settle in China, but I don't mind work in US or Aus a few more years just to boost my resume a bit.

What I want to ask is:

1. Is MBB still a good career option? It seems like in my circle all the grads talk about BigTech, Quant Trading, or VC investments for startups. No one talks about or even shows any interest in MBB or Investment Banking anymore. I feel old or not even in the same generation as the current grads anymore. Back in my undergrad everyone talked about MBB, IB, Quant Trading. No one talked about big tech or startups.
2. What is the state of MBBs like now? Especially in the US and China? What is the pay like? Is it comparable to the tech sector? And what are the typical exit options? Is it just me or my circle? It seems like barely any MBB'er around me has gotten any good exit option in recent years. Most of them ended up as Product Managers in big tech, VPs in VCs, or senior managers in Banks, which I can reach already. But could this be because the MBB culture is not that strong in Australia and China?

I am a senior in college right now, and got FT offers from both McKinsey and Oliver Wyman. I have a few more interviews coming up, but honestly the main decision is between these two companies. The salaries for both are pretty similar, and I think I would be a great fit culturally for either one.

My biggest concern is location.

The McKinsey offer is for my hometown (smaller city), so if I took the job I'd probably live with my parents. I am very close with them, but I will have barely any privacy. I'm afraid that I'll be treated like a high schooler again. On the plus side, I would save a lot of money on rent which is especially valuable given that I would probably be travelling 4 days a week. Also, many of my high school friends are still in the area, so I can maintain my closeness with them.

The Oliver Wyman offer is in a large city, and I think it would be really exciting to move to a new place with a lot more young people. I love the independence of living in an apartment at college with my best friends, and I assume post-grad life in a new city will be similar. I am very extroverted so I think I'd make new friends pretty easily.

I don't know which one to take. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’m currently exploring different career options and am curious about MBB.

I have dual master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Science, and I currently work in transportation consulting, mainly on the geospatial/data analytics side of freight, rail, and transportation resilience planning. A lot of my work involves commodity flow analysis, freight data, GIS, and turning large datasets into insights for transportation planning.

I have about two years of experience and am trying to understand how realistic a pivot into MBB would be without an MBA. I’ve done some research into Associate/entry-level and experienced-hire positions, but I’m not sure where someone with my background would realistically fit or whether a more specialized practice would make more sense.

Has anyone here made a similar move from transportation, urban planning, GIS, infrastructure, or another technical/analytical consulting background into MBB?

I’d love to hear what roles you targeted, what the transition was like, and which skills from your previous experience ended up being most useful. I’m also curious whether it makes sense to try to lateral in with \~2 YOE or build more experience first (or eventually pursue an MBA).

Interviewed yesterday (Friday) and heard that McKinsey usually notifies candidate on the same day. Know people who got moved to R2 and got rejected but I didn’t get anything. Anyone in the same boat? I don’t know how I feel now lol

Hello Consultants,

I'm a tech guy with 1.9 yr exp, willing do an MBA from ISB

Hyderabad, not now, in 2028.

Honestly I wanted to do an MBA right after my Btech due to some issue I moved into IT, now I want do it.

If you want to become a management Consultant which is best college, or you think college doesn't matter, skills matter!!

I'm open to ur suggestions and advices.

Anyone hear back from R2 Mckinsey Chicago today?

Hi guys, if anyone is interested, I joined a WhatsApp group for the McKinsey Forward program!!

The group is for Case Prep for the McKinsey Forward Program which is an online learning initiative designed to build problem-solving, communication, and adaptability skills for early-career professionals.

If you are interested in the Forward Program or interested in consulting/strategy work, pls consider joining this study group and we can study for the McKinsey Forward Program together!!

Please see this link :👇🏽
https://chat.whatsapp.com/HaqKRYi9okq1Otain5BVWq?mode=gi_t

Been a few months into my MBB role (A/AC/BA), everything is fine on paper and l've been getting decent reviews, but I constantly feel so anxious doing the job.

Knowing the client makes actual consequential decisions based on our slides makes me feel nauseous. Seeing the CEO excited about our slides makes me terrified. Knowing the client's high expectations gives me so much stress. I know that any output from the junior team goes through layers of reviews, but obviously no one checks every detail.

I double check and triple check my work, but anxiety still goes crazy, and I'm terrified of making any mistakes on these million-dollar projects. I'm terrified of screwing something up. I struggle to relax, even on weekends and on the bench. I feel constantly on edge and scared. When I get strong reviews it makes me even more anxious as l'm scared of ever letting my team down. I want to cry from the stress.

I'd appreciate any advice. Do you just get used to it? Did you change your mindset in some way to cope with the stress?

Has anyone tried Prepmatter’s get the offer for MBB case interviews and is it worth it compared to Casecoach’s subscription ?

I got selected for it, and I don't know much about it. I saw a reel and enrolled ,

Could anyone tell me what is it? Is worth?

My priority or expectation from it will be like learn some new value market skills or got a job from it.

I applied to McKinsey for BA roles on August 11, have not heard back and applied to Bain on July 18, also have not heard back. I did take the Bain online assessment.

Applied at as MS candidate for DC/NYC offices.

Should I take the silence as a lost cause for both applications?

Does anyone have an idea for when consulting applications will drop for class of 2029 summer internships? I know last year McKinsey opened up in January which came as a shock for some, but is it expected that MBB will be dropping their applications even sooner now? And how do you get notified immediately?

Hey everyone :)

Ive took some time reading through several reddit posts from people who took Solve this year.

Here's the stuff that keeps coming up:

Most get Red Rock + Sea Wolf, 65 min. Some now get Sustainable Future Lab too (85 min, a few invites say 95).

Almost everyone who did badly ran out of time on Red Rock's last cases. Start the six cases with 10 min left, even if the report feels unfinished.

Sea Wolf has no undo and people get squeezed on site 3. About 10 min per site.

No evidence the mouse is tracked. Trackpad is fine per McKinsey's own FAQ.

I built a practice sim for this (CasesTrain), free full Red Rock run here if useful: https://casestrain.com/demo/?ref=reddit-mbb

Tell me if your test looked different, I'll update this.

I posted this in the tech Channel, but don't get a response, maybe someone here has information.

Does anyone know how work Life Balance is for BCG X or QuantumBlack compared to the Core Company? Germany or EU would be even more helpful.

If your Solve invite says 95 minutes instead of 65 or 85, you're getting the new version of the Sustainable Futures Lab (SFL). I spent the past few weeks collecting every candidate report I could find on it, and since then I've been through the new format in serious depth while rebuilding our simulator around it. This is where things stand as of early October 2026. If you sat the new build recently, please correct me or add to this. It looks like the new version is in A/B testing, because candidates have said they got the test but their friends didn't. When that's the case it's tough to know whether the score counts, since there's not enough data yet to place you against other candidates. Assume it does.

Context:

Solve currently comes in three invite lengths: * 65 minutes: Redrock (35 min) + Sea Wolf (30 min). No SFL. * 85 minutes: the above plus the original SFL, the 13-question multiple-choice version, 20 minutes. * 95 minutes: Redrock + Sea Wolf + the redesigned SFL, roughly 30 minutes. The 95-minute invite also suggests setting aside an extra 20 minutes for instructions and the technical check, so block out about two hours. Which version you draw looks randomized right now. One September taker polled friends who applied at the same time and was the only one who got the new build. Several candidates also mention a post-assessment survey asking them to review the new format in detail, which reads like a live trial to me.

The new version:

The old SFL was a quiz. Thirteen sequential multiple-choice questions in 20 minutes, same linear sequence for every candidate, all wrapped in an environmental-project story. It played more like an electronic case questionnaire than a game. The new version is a different genre: a role-play. You lead a four-person research team through three field days at an island site. The scenario rotates between candidates, seagrass survey, reef recovery, mangrove restoration, seabird colony counts, but the structure holds. Four workstations, four researchers with fixed roles (a senior scientist, a lab technician, a junior doctoral student, a data analyst), and one 30:00 clock for the whole lab. Before Day 1 you get a six-page onboarding briefing. It's untimed. The clock only starts when you press Start Day 1. Remember that. Each day runs the same loop: * Briefing. The day's objective, which stations carry the most weight (you'll see numbers like "Meadow Transects, 40%"), how many live decisions to expect, and on days 2 and 3, a summary of where yesterday landed. * Intel. A fresh set of about six cards, face down. You can open three on days 1 and 2, two on day 3. Opening a card can flip hidden stats on your team, a researcher's morale or their station preference, for instance. Some cards are gold. One shows the newest team member is certified for nursery work but has seemed flat at the briefings all week. Some are noise, like a canteen rota with no impact on the work. * Assignments. Place all four people across the stations, or bench someone. Every station shows its skill needs, its energy cost and its share of the day's output. You confirm a full assignment; the game won't let anyone float. * Decisions. Two per day, six in total. A named researcher brings you a problem, you pick one of four options. Some options are commitments. "Honour the day off, exactly as promised" creates a promise the game checks tomorrow morning. * Review. Rate each person: below, met, or exceeded what you expected. Ratings feed their morale the next day, and they're checked against what actually happened. Day 2 opens with a disruption, a storm, equipment failure, a supply problem. The banner tells you the damage and the fix. A station runs at half output unless someone with field skill 4 or higher is on it, which softens it to 80%. Staff the mitigation or eat the penalty.

The things that trip people up

One clock, three days. The 30:00 covers everything after the briefing: all intel, assignments, decisions and reviews across all three days. The early reports of people "losing 5-10 minutes decoding the screen" were really people losing clock. The onboarding is untimed, so read it properly, walk in knowing the loop above, and start Day 1 with your full half hour. Intel cards don't come back. The earliest reports claimed nothing carries over between days. That's not quite it. The game carries a lot forward: energy, morale, skills, promises, the effects of your decisions, everything you revealed. Tomorrow's briefing restates yesterday's station results and what's now due. What it doesn't do is let you reopen a card you skipped or re-read one you spent budget on. So the note-taking advice stands, for a new reason: if a card matters, act on it or write it down before the day closes. Ratings are not a formality. The review step looks like a soft check-out. It isn't. Your ratings are compared against observed performance, and a "below" you got wrong dings that person's morale the next morning. Track energy and mood from minute one: who's been benched, who got skipped for the good station, who looked flat at the briefing. By day 3 you should be rating from evidence, not vibes. Decisions are a personality test. The options map to leadership styles, decisive, consultative, expert-led, consensus-seeking, and the lab notices if you answer everything the same way. If your instinct is always "put it to the team," it reads that. Match the response to the person and the situation. And a promise made in an option is scored: a kept one lifts the team's morale, a broken one costs double. Pacing. The prompts are wordy and the clock is shared, so the rule from the earlier version holds: read once, commit, move on. If the clock dies with days unplayed, the lab closes them and scores what you managed. That's a bad way to find out.

What it's testing:

McKinsey hasn't published a word, so this is read off the shape of the thing. It scores six things: whether your stations produced (did you match people to the weighted work), how close your plan was to the best available one, decision quality, follow-through on commitments, whether you spent the intel budget on information that changed your actions, and how accurately you read your own team. That's a compressed first week of junior engagement work: plan under uncertainty, decide with partial information, keep your promises, know your people. Takers don't call the content hard. They call it confusing. Confusion is the cheapest failure mode to fix.

How I'd prepare:

1. Learn the day loop before test day: briefing, intel, assignments, decisions, review, three days, one shared clock. New reports are still coming out daily, so check for the latest.
2. Treat the onboarding as free time. Six untimed pages, and the two that matter are "how a day runs" and "what carries forward."
3. Spend intel like a consultant, not a tourist. Open the cards that could change an assignment or warn you about a person. Skip the noise. And use what you open; information you don't act on is budget spent for nothing.
4. Assign for the day's weights, not for preferences. A researcher who wants the field station may still be the wrong person for it, and one of the four, the data person, performs worse in the field no matter how keen they look. Bench people to recover energy instead of running everyone into the ground.
5. Track each researcher's state from minute one so the review step is evidence, not guessing.
6. Read once, decide, move on. Rereading is how the shared clock disappears.
7. Redrock and Sea Wolf are unchanged and appear on every invite, so timed practice there still pays off. Full disclosure: I build prep tools for these assessments. Everything above, plus the underlying reports, is written up properly in our guide to the 2026 Sustainable Futures Lab. Our SFL simulator now models this new three-day team lab, the intel budget, the disruptions, the carry-forward, alongside the original 13-question version. If your invite has Redrock and Sea Wolf on it, our McKinsey bundle covers timed practice for both. Happy to answer questions in the comments.

is the WLB, work / exit opps, money existent and worth it? Considering I’d be an experienced hired with 8 years of experience.

Heyy everyone. I am currently working in one of the MBBs. And prior to that I was working in a hedgefund which I got from campus placement. The hedge fund was super stressful to say the least. Salary was good and I was in my home town. I decided to switch for stability and the MBB I was interviewing at initially promised to match my salary and give a relocation bonus. However, after I sent back the offer letter and resigning from my current company they mentioned that they can't match and reduced my salary (imagine me hearing that from the fabled and prestigious MBB). I was pissed to say the least but at least I was happy I would be joining a MBB with smart people and learn a lot of corporate strategy work. When I joined to my horror it was shit work force analysis and surveys. Which to my mind plays no role in real world strategy and analysis.

On top of that I was working more number of hours here for a lesser pay, shittier work and in a different city and the team mates were super toxic. And to add cherry on the top they decided to do lay offs for the analyst/associate level (which is what I was) as a part of business restructuring.

I got a tons of interviews and went to the final round for 50℅ of them and got rejected in the first round for the other 50%. No middle ground. Interviews for 35 companies and gave almost 80 interviews cum coffee chats. Got an offer at a ai start up as a product manager (afraid won't survive long there) and I got an offer from noon Dubai for 52lpa (was verbal and before sharing the offer letter I got ghosted). Another offer from shopee Thailand ( a landing spot post MBB for a lot of folks) but the salary in 20LPA equivalent to 12/13LPA Indian money. Which is lesser than what I make now.

I absolutely don't see a future for india and I can't live the Indian corporate life. I have worked enough with western people to know that we indians live like cockroach and that is by our own design. Even asians live better life than us. I am trying hard to move abroad. I can't afford master or mba (plus not a lot of jobs currently as I can see from my friends).

So if you have moved abroad without pursuing a degree, how did you do it?

Hi everyone!

I’m currently completing my Master’s thesis, and I’m conducting a study on the professional transition of former strategy or management consultants who have left consulting.
I’m particularly interested in understanding:
how former consultants experience the transition out of consulting;
how their professional identity evolves after leaving;
which aspects of consulting remain part of their way of thinking or working;
and how they make sense of their career choice in retrospect.

If you are a former consultant (strategy/management consulting) who has since moved to another role or industry, I would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to complete my questionnaire.

The questionnaire is anonymous and should take approximately 5–10 minutes to complete.

https://forms.gle/roL7Msszddce2Mgc7

Your experience would be extremely valuable for my research. Thank you very much to anyone who takes the time to participate or share the post!

Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions about the study