I graduated from a tier 1 university from my country (non US/ UK) in an undergraduate degree in finance and was amongst the top 5% in terms of the academic performance in my batch. Post that, I worked in an analytics role at the IB division of a major global bank for 2.5 years and then moved onto exploring the research roles in the public sector since the last 1 year. I worked on research projects for organizations like USAID, Ministry of External Affairs and finally J-PAL (a poverty research organization). These stints involved grassroots level involvement, data analytics, project management, managing the field operations, reading up a lot of literature relating to the projects as well as extensive government relations.

I soon start my Public Policy Masters at a target UK school of global repute and wanted to know if the experienced hires, so to speak, get hired from a background like mine. I made a clear shift from banking to the public sector space and would really benefit from joining the top tier consulting firms' public sector divisions. Many of the public sector engagements that MBB have involve coordination directly with the top level management and are fast-paced – a factor that I found lacking in the previous roles I had taken up.

So, do the experienced hires aiming for consultant roles within the public sector divisions at MBB compulsorily need to have an MBA/ management degree in order to get shortlisted for the interview or non-MBA graduate courses and a range of experiences in diverse roles and fields work too? Kindly note that while I aim to know the possibility of the initial shortlist for now, any comment/ advise unrelated to this would be very helpful too.

Thanks a lot in advance to all those who will take the time to answer this.