I just finished my first year at IU and I consider it fairly successful. I got admitted into Kelley before the Spring semester, and I have a 3.4 GPA. I am triple majoring between Entrepreneurship, Business Economic Consulting, and Public Policy Analysis and am slated to graduate on time. Most importantly I passed tillers A100 class.
I am an entrepreneur at heart, but I want a stable backup plan for a career. I started my own company a while back and its fairly successful, I am making around 30K per year and it is paying for my college and living expenses. Although this is much better than a part time job, I am worried my own company would not be able to support a quality of life that I would like on the long term.
Management consulting is something I have researched intensely and I like it very much and would like to pursue it as a career. I am confident that I can attain anything I set my mind to, however I am not sure about the strategy to do so. I was looking into a possible internship next summer, but I don't see much along the lines of management consulting on the UCSO website. I will be starting my second year at IU in the fall, however I have a baccalaureate junior class standing. Will I be able to get an internship next summer at a respectable firm, or will it be still too early?
You might consider applying to the Kelley consulting workshop in Spring 2009. It seems like you have great credentials for your resume (companies value entrepreneurial spirit). Apparently compensation is not a major concern with students in the consulting workshop - the link indicates that the average is $60,000.
Thank you for the link, it looks like a great opportunity.
I'm still concerned about the internship part of the equation. One of my main problems is that I have never held a paid job, all of my working experience comes form my own company. I think a good internship will make my resume well rounded. Are there a lot of opportunities available for the summer ofter the sophomore year of college?
If your looking at the top prestigious management consulting firms such as Mercer, Bain, BCG, or McKinsey, it'll be difficult to achieve at a sophomore level because their internship recruitment is geared toward juniors. Not to mention that these firms don't recruit too heavily from IU.
Perhaps you can look into smaller firms in the midwest that don't have as rigid of a recruitment process as top firms. Your best bet is to start networking, make cold-calls to these firms. You should convey your sincere interest and pass on your resume.
Another opportunity you have is get to know your professors in the BEPP department. Professors are quite resourceful in developing connections. BEPP isn't one of the most sought after majors at Kelley. So the number of students in the BEPP classes are far less than accounting, finance, or marketing. Therefore, you have the opportunity to get to know your professors and gain personal attention.
As Wavarian pointed out, there is the consulting workshop, which you apply to in the spring semester of your sophomore year. It is rather difficult to get into the workshop due the rather large population on campus who have a desire of working in consulting.
Though it would help, your sophomore year internship or even your junior year internship don't necessarily have to be with a consulting firm in order for you to finally end up in consulting. As long as you can connect your experiences back to consulting in a meaningful way you'll be fine.
If you haven't taken X220 yet, you should. That way you have full access to the resources provided by the UCSO.
I have taken X220, and have full access to the UCSO, I could not find many internships posted, but I'm assuming they are not online this early in the summer.
In regards to the consulting workshop, I appreciate the suggestion, I will be applying later in the year. It looks like a great opportunity to get an inside look, as well as networking opportunities for the internship.
Would you recommend filling our general interest forms for employment at consulting firms, or would a more personal approach work better? Also what would be the job title of the people I would be targeting to approach? It would seam like recruiters serve particular areas, geographically speaking, and top firms do not recruit at IU. Would someone in human resources be a better target to cold call and send email to?
Internships are usually lined up before school ends by a month or two. Since we live on the west coast, my son (who will be a junior next year) lined up his internship back in March--and started working in May. Since most schools out here only finished their classes and finals this past Friday, he had an advantage over students who go to school here, since he was able to start earlier than most of them. (Many of the other interns started working earlier, but for only 20 hours a week--going to 40 hours a week starting next week).
This is a tough economic time in general, and for internships in certain areas that are hardest hit by the economic downturn, and when you combine that with the terrible weather in Indiana and Iowa and Illinois right now, it is going to be difficult to get an internship until people are through dealing with the weather problems.
However, the suggestions given to you by Waverian and yorkshirebanker are excellent ones and may help you overcome these weather difficulties. At this point I wouldn't be overly concerned about getting an internship in consulting. Any internship in a business area (finance, accounting, general management, marketing, computer science, economics, banking, or human resources) will help you get into a consulting internship next year. The important thing is to get the business experience on the resume.
Personal contacts, networking, and direct approaches (such as calling HR departments directly) are always preferable to just sending resumes to advertised positions. You need to also make your resume standout as well once they agree to let you send it to them directly (you might also consider putting it on a website where they can access it while you are on the phone with them). Make sure you remember what they taught you in Intro to Management on preparing resumes and cover letters.
Best of luck to you, and congratulations on your admission to the Kelley school.
Management consulting internship for a SOPHOMORE? Good luck, I don't think any spots would be available for sophomore.
Most top consulting companies want a 3.7 GPA, probably 3.5 minimum GPA, so if your GPA is being weighed down by weed out courses, no worries.
Companies usually want to make sure your serious, aka taken management courses, starting with good old Z302, which I found fascinating, and at least finished ICORE.
