Investigation: Inside the ‘Cambridge to consultancy pipeline’
Rena Rawanchaikul investigates why so many Cambridge students are drawn to consulting, and how privilege interacts with firms’ recruitment processes to reinforce the ‘Cambridge-consulting pipeline.’
Photo by ISO Republic from Freerange Stock
A Cambridge graduate, now a consultant at McKinsey, walked into a meeting with their team. Of the five others sat in the room, three had graduated from the same Cambridge college, and one had graduated from Oxford. The frequently, and often jokingly, mentioned ‘Cambridge–consultancy pipeline’ conveys the popular perception that many Cambridge graduates end up going into consulting, a famously vague industry, often viewed as a means for privileged graduates to make lots of money without really doing anything. As such, I wanted to get to the bottom of what the industry really looks like and why so many Oxbridge graduates end up working there.
In an attempt to shed light on what it is that consultants do, a source described it as “therapy but for businesses”, whilst a consultant at BCG told me that consulting involved “helping a company to tackle something they think is an important problem that they can’t tackle themselves,” which encompasses a “huge broad spectrum of what you could do.” A consultant at McKinsey, however, distinguished between the types of projects consultants are assigned, where work differs according to whether it is a “strategic project” or a “transformation project.” The latter requires taking on a coaching role, where consultants attempt to convince businesses to change. Whilst consultants provided these job descriptions, there was still a sense of intangibility to the core of what they did.
“one of the things that does happen in Careers Services is that students tell you they want to go into management consultancies when they genuinely have no idea.”
Many Cambridge graduates now working at consulting firms cited similar reasons for going into consulting, and why they think the industry is so attractive to Cambridge students. Amongst the most common was the people involved, where you are part of a “community of intelligent but also quite sociable people” a consultant at BCG said. Consultants also valued how their work creates a clear impact, where a consultant at McKinsey mentioned how “you can see the work you do come out in the news later”. Consulting is also a high exposure industry with prestige, where “Cambridge, being Cambridge, makes you really attractive to a lot of high profile, high paying industries, and so you might as well make the most of that, get paid a lot of money, and do a high profile job,” the BCG consultant told me. To them, the intrinsic motivation of many Cambridge students stems from how the logic commonly goes: “I’m currently in one of the most prestigious universities, now let me go find one of the most prestigious, high paying jobs”.
Some consultants also conveyed how consulting appealed to them partly because they had no idea what they wanted to do. A member of the University’s Careers Service team said “I do think with management consultancy people are curious about it because it's such a catch-all term”, and told me how people often turn up to consulting careers events because they “don’t know what actually fits into it,” a sentiment which another source shares. It appeals to a wide range of students because it is so broad and therefore students of different disciplines feel it could potentially apply to them. It is therefore hard to discern genuine interest in consulting from a vague curiosity, as “one of the things that does happen in Careers Services is that students tell you they want to go into management consultancies when they genuinely have no idea.”
However, a BCG consultant expressed being drawn to consulting after falling out of love with their degree at Cambridge, which led them to “go find something else to do.” A source further believes that “there’s no way a first year has a deep-rooted passion for consulting” and that “recruiters and companies really sell it”. Many use consulting as an answer to the uncertainties and anxieties of post-graduate life. For many students, Cambridge not only saps the passion for their degree out of them, but also fails to prepare graduates for life after university adequately, given how many people are drawn to consultancy with little idea of what it actually is and no real passion for the job.
“A source detailed how if you have a reference inside an MBB firm, “someone who will vouch for you”, this could help if your score is a little lower or average on your test.”
Whilst Cambridge is inherently attractive in its pool of highly intelligent talent, some consulting firms actively work to reinforce the links between their industry and the university. Firms encourage students to get in touch with consulting societies via Careers Service events. They also reach out to students via Handshake, a career network platform connecting universities, employers, and students. In early February, I received such an invitation via Handshake from a Campus Recruiter at McKinsey to attend a virtual International Reception. Firms also conduct activity via the Cambridge Consulting Society, where the three most prestigious MBB firms (McKinsey & Company, BCG, Bain & Company) mostly “have their own thing eg. a recruiting event going on” and “just want publicity as they know they will already get applications'', a source stated. The Society received approximately two hundred sign-ups for an MBB event in the span of only one hour. A consultant described the Society as an “accessory to those events”.
This raises questions about the role privilege plays in determining who gets these high-paying positions. A source detailed how if you have a reference inside an MBB firm, “someone who will vouch for you”, this could help if your score is a little lower or average on your test. Having a ‘contact’, often made at a Cambridge-linked event, can give you a higher chance of still getting to the first round of interviews. The importance of networking with those within firms is demonstrated by a consultant at BCG who mentioned how when they were at Cambridge “going to these [Consulting Society’s] events was more so to meet somebody whose name I could then slap on my cover letter.” “I think there are explicit and implicit systems of recruiting”, a source told me. Some Cambridge recruiting events have barriers to entry. At a McKinsey case workshop the Consulting Society held in October, participants had to submit their CVs and pass a game to be invited to the case workshop in the first place. Participants were then judged on participation at the workshop, where their goal was also to “connect with people who could help with applications.” Unequal hiring opportunities remain within the consulting industry, which is dominated by extensive privilege, where personal contacts and the Cambridge name can help with the progression of your application notably.
The Cambridge-consulting pipeline can be seen most strongly in specialist or boutique firms who work with the Consulting Society most actively and sponsor workshops and events, some of which are Cambridge-wide; Newton sponsors the Oxbridge Varsity Ski Trip, for instance. The high number of events that Analysys Mason and Publicis Sapient put on with various consulting societies shows their desire for many of their incoming hires to be Cambridge graduates. One source told me that some specialist or boutique firms have offices in London, Cambridge, and Oxford. They then hire from both Oxford and Cambridge and as new hires progress, the best ones are funnelled down to the London office. If the value of an Oxbridge degree has softened over time, in industries like consulting with strong historical links to the universities, this does not seem to be the case as much.
Strong links to consulting can also be subject-specific. Medics at Cambridge often dominate the pool of new hires, since they are often “used to problem-solving and have done lots of extra-curriculars” according to one consultant. They “have been studying and have more research project experience for longer”, they conveyed. As a result, medics are often favoured and incentivised. Of the four incoming McKinsey recruits from their new recruiting round, three are medics from the same Cambridge college. Similarly, if you join as a medic at an MBB firm, you enter at the position above entry level which you would have gotten if you had joined after a normal three-year degree.
“The [consulting] network is not really bridging social capital, but bonding social capital”, “so your pool is not becoming wider it’s becoming denser”
A member of the Careers Service team did note that fewer people go into consulting than is commonly assumed. One of the reasons consulting gets so much attention is because it is “purely a numbers game” - they recruit thousands of graduates a year, and so they often hold big careers events, bolstering the perception that an overwhelmingly large number of students become consultants. The Graduate Outcomes Survey takes data on what graduates are doing 15 months post-graduation. Of those who graduated from Cambridge in the academic year 2020-21 who replied to the survey, only seventy-one Cambridge undergraduates were management consultants or business analysts. Yet ‘management consultancy industries’ takes the second spot in Top 10 Industries. These figures also do not reveal how many students applied to consulting firms in the first place, with the large number of Cambridge applicants suggesting how attractive the industry remains.
As such, the presence of Oxbridge continues to dominate at many firms. Although attempts are being made to diversify the pool of recruits, most of my sources did not think these were radically changing hiring trends. “The [consulting] network is not really bridging social capital, but bonding social capital”, “so your pool is not becoming wider it’s becoming denser” a source stated. “BCG is a very Oxbridge heavy place”, particularly at the graduate level, and although it is “probably getting better, to be honest, I would not assume that it's getting that much better”, expressed a consultant at BCG. Another consultant suggested that approximately 50% of those working at their firm graduated from Oxbridge, and while admitting this is “a lot”, noted that this is improving, as each year fewer Oxbridge graduates are hired.
Many firms claim that they intend to remove the Oxbridge bias. However, whether that intention follows through in the long run remains to be seen, given the historically strong link between the consulting industry and Oxbridge. If consulting is to be made a truly more accessible industry, a greater degree of transparency and accountability is required.