Do Grades matter after you are invited for an interview?

I've been to a couple of consulting interviews and what I so far found is that your Manager asks you few questions to understand more about your background in your narratives to see whether you had some analytical activities before or your exposure to the business world as well as your specialties.

In general, grades don't have much weight in your evaluation but the scores in competitive exams do such as GMAT GRE.

And then it all about how structured you are in your approach and your natural cognitive thought process to analyze the case while solving the case. In fact, for consulting job interviews some employers do notice on your soft skills, the way of communication, how nicely you dressed etc.

So, mostly, no one bothers you for your average grades and transcript.

Good Luck!

Hey anoymous,

I agree with majority: grades shouldn't be a critical point.

However there might be a big catch, if you have a really poor GPA, you might be asked what are the reasons behind it and how do you think you can no perform much better (especially if you're a fresh graduate) - be careful with your reasonings in these cases, as if it turns obvious for the interviewer that you were being simply lazy or consistently underperformer, then you see your chances of getting in lowering.

Best

Bruno

(edited)

Hi Anonymous,

as mentioned by Vlad, transcript check is done after an offer is extended, and is done by HR. This is the case as well for previous job experiences in case you are an experienced hire.

The interviewer will definitely skim through the CV and check your grades, but will normally ask questions only in case of poor performance.

Best,

Francesco

Generally no, but I’ve seen instances of post internship offer letters asking to maintain a certain GPA and/or graduate in the expected time.

andrea

Hi,

Several things here:

1. The grades don't really matter after you are invited
2. If the GPA is low, some interviewers can notice that in your resume and they may ask you for the reasons. Good reason might be that you were doing some projects / working on something in parallel
3. HR will check your transcripts after you get the offer

Best

Grades should usually not matter once you have made it to the interview stage.

Great! Thank you all for your feedback. Thats very helpful.

In genereal, Do Consultants in an interview also get a copy of all supporting documents from HR or do they only get your CV and cover letter etc. at MBB?

Cheers,

Klaus

It depends on whether or not there is something in your grades you want to hide. If they had access to your good/bad grades but STILL called you (I had a 2.7/4.0 in UG), then grades won't matter. If they've never seen your grades / your CV doesn't mention it, then yes it DOES matter and you must disclose it as early as possible so they are not surprised.