Is a top school worth it?

Malishka31
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:08:42 +0000

I will just make a semi related post you might find helpful about internship.

I came from community college in california with some normal work experience and got an internship my 1st quarter at UCLA (i applied through monstertrack) at an economic consulting firm dealing in litigation cases.

It is a small firm, but a top firm, our clients included Costco, staples, merill lynch, sydley austin, etc.

the firm basically dealt in labor economics- hired lots of consultants and paid interns. We got paid 15$ (that is a lot for an intern in my opinion) … we did nothing but data entry and got some presentation about something or other.

Now the hiring practices for both interns and consultants and economists was quite simple, they hired pretty much from the top schools, and the interns came from UCLA, USC, then we had 1 from Northridge and 1 form Loyla (ca).

It was a bit of label wh*reing . But those were the schools in the area, and the state school was well represented.

Those with the internship and some rather non consulting majors for example one was majoring in psychology , went on to be consultants for basic firms with starting salaries of 55-65. (very good if you ask me form undergrad)

Going to UNC you are not going to cut yourself short on the basic consulting firm. They will reqruit form there, and like i said there are PLENTY of places you can work at that do consulting in one form or another.

But my point is that go to a school that is as well known as you can because i do think consulting is about labels. Even in our small firm of about 40 people, it was Chicago, Harvard Columbia etc Phds for the economists. and only 1 person, albeit the most important one, the statician held a degree from a highly uknown national school but known in NYC, but he also was the best friend of the PHd manager guy.

Unknown lacs i woudl avoid. But UNC gives you little to no debt, still gets you into the field and with enough work experience you can go on to get your brand name MBA/Masters and still apply to those top top companies if you want.

But i question who the hell wants to work 80 hours at G&S upon graduation anyways?