Dear Forum,

I'm asking for your help and experiences to help me figure out what my next steps into consulting might be. I've been making a plan for the last few days, but would be incredibly interested in your recommendations.

Briefly about me: I am 23, engineering student at German university. Will finish my degree in September with 1.3. In the A-levels I had a 1.5, in the Bachelor equivalent only a 3.0 (I'll get to that in a moment). Scholarship present, both theses of the study nominated for highest technical price. Parallel to my studies, I worked for two and a half years as an IT employee in an e-automotive medium-sized company (30 employees), among other things as a project manager (often approx. 40-60h/week) and later shortly as a technical consultant. During this time, I managed many projects, including digital marketing, cybersecurity and merchandise management, and helped plan strategic corporate decisions. Therefore I had little time for my Bachelor equivalent degree.
Since April I have been active in a student consuting group (first experience with management consulting), was financial director of a carnival association for 2 years (over a thousand guests per year) and sit on the board of the youth organization of one of the big political parties in Germany. Unfortunately NO international experience (thx Corona for cancelling both semesters abroad) or classic internships.

I really want to switch to consulting after my studies and not start as an engineer, because I mega enjoy the economic-entrepreneurial topics and want more customer contact (also I like to work 50h+). Now I applied to Kearney + Wyman three weeks ago to test the waters and promptly got two rejections (plus panic). Goal for me is to get into McK/BCG eventually (explaining why would take too long). I assume the main factor for the rejection is the lack of international experience and consulting experience.

Do you have any recommendations on what I could do now to strengthen my profile? I am currently thinking about applying for international positions at Accenture/Capgemini or in-house consultancies, and I will be sending out a lot of emails to the HRs today asking them about this. Do you guys have any tips or recommendations for me on how to proceed now and would make sense?

Thank you so so much!