<p>a degree in accounting?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure you need to rack up some serious on-the-job experience before you can obtain either of those two titles. I mean, you’d probably have to work in the industry for a few years first.</p>
<p>Not true, both hire out of undergraduate. A better question than your major is whether or not you go to a target school.</p>
<p>^basically this. The only ways to get a job at Goldman and the like are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Go to Harvard and the like, be the best there, use the career services to get you a job.</p></li>
<li><p>Have a family member that’s an important person at those places, or marry someone who has family that is an important person at those places that can help you get a job there.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to a state school, pray you meet someone who has family or other connections that are important people at those places, help them get you a job there.</p></li>
<li><p>Go to a state school, pray that you can get good enough work experience/GMAT/GPA for a top MBA, be one of the best at the top MBAs, use career services, get a job there.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So as you can see, unless you are the best (options 1 and 4), or know important people (2 and 3), it’s going to be damn near impossible to get a job as a banker/consultant.</p>
<p>this is just how to do it right out of school right? You dont mean to tell em its impossible to work your way up, do you?</p>
<p>What do you mean work your way up?</p>
<p>as in start out lower in a company and become a banker or consultant.</p>
<p>You’d likely have to get an MBA from a top school to make the transition.</p>
<p>Where do you go to school? They’ll be looking for the “pre-screened” pool of students, which are the ones who got into the best schools.</p>
<p>Here, both investment banks and consulting firms show up to both the undergraduate and graduate (master’s program) career fairs.</p>
<p>Yes but with only one lucky person out of 100.</p>
<p>c-otwa, that may be the case for the most exclusive companies, but there are i banks and consulting firms that still pay well, give you good experience and hire many more than 1 percent of students at target schools.</p>
<p>Perhaps I’m wrong, but here’s why I would guess that a few years experience working in the field would be necessary before becoming a “consultant” or “i-banker”:</p>
<p>A consultant is normally someone you speak with to help you solve a problem. The consultant is expected to possess knowledge and wisdom that will be worth the money you will pay to rectify the problem.
I highly doubt that companies will consider someone with a degree but no job experience as a “consultant” or someone worth “consulting” to help fix their company problems. Don’t get me wrong; a degree is an excellent stepping stone; but is it right to call someone a “consultant” if they have no job experience in the real world, which is incredibly different from college?</p>
<p>pretty much all of the top-tier consulting firms and banks hire straight out of undergrad</p>
<p>so no, prior full-time experience isn’t necessary</p>
<p>(these fresh graduates aren’t immediately placed in situations where they must make decisions on their own; they’re assigned to teams in which they learn and practice the skills required to be consultants or bankers - the team makes decisions together)</p>
<p>@ winbacker: your point is true, but mny people at my school do actually enter consulting jobs right after college.</p>
<p>What winbacker doesn’t understand is that being hired by a consulting firm does not mean you get flown around the world to start telling CEOs how to do their jobs. You will most likely have a support role to someone who does, though, and that experience is extremely useful, especially when applying for a position where you actually do those things.</p>