MBB: Ranking within your class affect exit opportunities

Hi,

Sharing some additional perspective on this:

1. How does ranking within your cohort work at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG?

• At BCG, you are graded according to 5 grades/percentiles
• There is no linear ranking, but it is possible to extrapolate at which % of the curve you fall in under based on your grade

2. Is it something that future employers will ask about?

• Theoretically no, however I have heard of instances where future employers ask informally their network within MBB firms on a persons reputation

3. Could mediocre rating hurt chances of acceptance to HBS/GSB level business school--or another competitive job?

• Totally no

Hello there

1) There is no cohort rankings in MBB. What exist is rankings based on your performance evaluation but that applies to the whole levels.

2) Never, internal information is never to be shared with outsiders, this is especially the case with MBB where confidentiality is the core, people know this and will never ask

3) No, it will affect if you will be awarded MBA scholarship by the firm or not, but doesn't affect the school acceptance.

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,
Nathan

Hello,

Here my answers:

1. There is no one
2. No
3. No

Best,
Luca

Hi,

Do I understand correctly that you mean the cohort of people who entered MBB together with you? If yes, then:

1) There is no ranking within the cohort. Your rating is purely your rating and is based only on your performance

2) Nope, never

3) Nope. But they will not sponsor your MBA

Best

Hi!

1. There is none

2. No

3. No, just the financial backing by the consulting firm might be negativelyaffected of your rating is low.

Cheers, Sidi

Hello!

Here are my toughts: 

1. If so, the thing to be taken into consideration is not the ranking within your cohort, but with the overall class. Still, it´s up to you to include that information. 

2. No, unless you say you are top 1%/3% and they want proof

3. For sure it won´t be helping you, but those are holistic applications that look into many different metrics, not just rankings and GPAs. 

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

1. no
2. no
3. no, but you are not going to achieve the firm sponsorship

Best,
Antonello

Hi,

1) Sharing a bit more about BCG. There is no forced ranking e.g rank 10 ppl from 1st to 10th. That said, based on your project performance, you are assessed along 2 dimensions - performance and potential. For performance, you would get a rating (1 to 5, 1 being best, 5 being worst) after each project you work on. For potential, it depends on the feedback collected by your career advisor. When you have both dimensions assessed, you would be mapped on a chart that shows your trajectory movement every 6 months. With that you would know your quintile - are you a Quintile 1 performer (which in BCG is the best) or lower.

2) No future employees seldom ask that. Only exception is that if your next employee is a consulting firm again, they might ask you whether you'd be promoted or not if you stay. If you are a Q1 or a Q2, then you can be quite confident that you would be promoted when time is due

3) No. B-school admission wouldn't have that info as long as you don't volunteer.

Best,

Emily