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I'm wondering how the expectations for students seeking a consulting internship differ from those for students seeking the typical finance internship.
The focus everywhere seems to be on finance majors and how to get into the top i-banks. I honestly do not want to go into finance and would much rather prepare myself for high-level management. The path to i-banks is popular and well defined, but what of the path to consulting?
I plan to co-major in International Business and Management and Operations from NYU Stern.
You'll want a high GPA (around 3.8). From there you should work to find any internships made available to you your freshmen year (even if they are not in management consulting). Try for internships in an industry/field you could see yourself working in other than management consulting (assuming you cannot find an internship in management consulting). This will give you some degree of specialization (and the chance to possibly be a manager in that field down the road). Make sure you get started early on the internship process as it is quite competitive and it's (often) hard for freshmen to find decent internships. As you get more work experience (and presumably maintain a rather high GPA) you should be able to leverage that into a management consulting internship.
Thanks Milton. When you say to find an internship freshman year, do you mean fall, spring, or both semesters? I hear that one should take it easy for the first semester so that one doesn't burn out. Is this an option, or is the level of competition a reality that favors working the first semester of college?
Your first semester you should not worry about getting an internship (for that semester). You'll want to adjust to college. You can work the second semester, but you'll find more options for summer internships (and a good deal of internships are full-time). Just make sure you start looking for summer internships earlier in the year (working too much during the school year can detract too much from your studies).
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