Top Consulting Employers by Business School Rankings

Over 30% of incoming MBA students select consulting as their desired industry, making it one of the most popular industries for business students during their recruitment cycle. However given the high selectivity of consulting firms and the limited number of positions available, many individuals ultimately matriculate into a different industry. While many factors contribute to receiving a consulting job offer, with our blog post here+ detailing the best strategies to maximize one’s chances at a consulting career, we wanted to see how business school rank correlated with hiring firms within the consulting industry..

Utilizing the MBA tier list we organized based on aggregated rankings, as outlined by this previous blog post, we found the top consulting employers for each business school tier from data collected from MBAs.

First, we looked at the overall top consulting employers from all of our MBA data.

chart of the top consulting employers in relishcareers data

list form of top consulting employers from relishcareers data

Next, we asked the question who the top consulting employers were for each tier.

top consulting employers in business schools in the top 2 tiers

Tier 1

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

McKinsey & Company

13.6

2

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

12.8

3

Bain & Company, Inc.

11.0

4

Deloitte Consulting

11.0

5

Accenture

5.2

6

Strategy&

5.2

7

A.T. Kearney, Inc.

3.3

8

L.E.K. Consulting

3.3

9

ZS Associates

2.7

10

KPMG

1.9

11

Ernst & Young LLP 

1.6

12

AlixPartners

1.4

13

PwC Advisory

1.4

14

Analysis Group, Charles River Associates, IBM, Roland Berger, The Brattle Group, The Cambridge Group

.8 each

Tier 2

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

McKinsey & Company

12.9

2

Deloitte Consulting

10.1

3

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

9.8

4

Accenture

7.0

5

Strategy&

6.6

6

Ernst & Young LLP

5.2

7

Bain & Company, Inc.

4.9

8

L.E.K. Consulting

3.1

9

KPMG

2.8

10

A.T. Kearney, Inc.

2.4

11

Oliver Wyman, Inc.

2.1

12

Parthenon-EY

2.1

13

ZS Associates

2.1

14

Analysis Group, The Cambridge Group

1.7 each

top consulting employers in business schools in tiers 3 and 4 (deloitte, etc)

Tier 3

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

Deloitte Consulting

15.1

2

PwC Advisory

8.0

3

Accenture

7.7

4

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

7.1

5

McKinsey & Company

6.9

6

Ernst & Young LLP

5.8

7

L.E.K. Consulting

5.5

8

Strategy&

3.6

9

Bain & Company, Inc.

3.3

10

KPMG

3.3

11

ZS Associates

3.0

12

IBM

1.9

13

Parthenon-EY

1.9

14

A.T. Kearney, Inc.

1.4

15

AlixPartners

1.4

Tier 4

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

PwC Advisory

25.7

2

Deloitte Consulting

12.4

3

Ernst & Young LLP

7.6

4

KPMG

7.6

5

McKinsey & Company

6.7

6

Accenture

5.7

7

AlixPartners

1.9

8

Aon Hewitt

1.9

9

Cognizant Business Consulting

1.9

10

Everest Group

1.9

11

North Highland Worldwide Consulting

1.9

12

Schlumberger Business Consulting

1.9

13

Slalom Consulting

1.9

14

Tata Consultancy Services

1.9

15

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

1.9

top consulting employers in business schools in tiers 5 and 6 (accenture, etc)

Tier 5

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

Ernst & Young LLP

17.5

2

Deloitte Consulting

15.5

3

Accenture

12.6

4

Cognizant Business Consulting

3.9

5

KPMG

3.9

6

McKinsey & Company

2.9

7

Daugherty Business Solutions

1.9

8

Guidehouse

1.9

9

IBM

1.9

10

Infosys

1.9

11

The Advisory Board Company

1.9

12

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

1.9

13

ZS Associates

1.9

14

ARCADIS

1.0

15

Acuity, Inc

1.0

Tier 6

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

McKinsey & Company, Inc.

14.3

2

Accenture

11.4

3

Deloitte Consulting

11.4

4

Bain & Company, Inc.

5.7

5

Booz Allen Hamilton

5.7

6

Slalom Consulting

5.7

7

PwC Advisory

5.7

8

Daugherty Business Solutions

5.7

9

Grant Thornton

2.9

10

Strategy&

2.9

11

SBI (Sales Benchmark Index)

2.9

12

Hitachi Consulting

2.9

13

Ernst & Young LLP

2.9

14

AlixPartners

2.9

15

Cicero Group

2.9

top consulting employers in business schools in tiers 7 and 8 (KPMG, etc)

Tier 7

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

Deloitte Consulting

15.6

2

PwC Advisory

15.6

3

Accenture

8.9

4

Booz Allen Hamilton

6.7

5

Cognizant Business Consulting

6.7

6

KPMG

6.7

7

CGI Group

2.2

8

L.E.K. Consulting

2.2

9

Slalom Consulting

2.2

10

Sapient Global Markets

2.2

11

SAI

2.2

12

Ryan, LLC

2.2

13

RSM

2.2

14

NTT DATA

2.2

15

International Data Corporation

2.2

Tier 8

Rank

Employer Name

Percentage of all MBAs employed by company (%)

1

Accenture

18.2

2

KPMG

18.2

3

CGN Global

9.1

4

Crowe Horwath

9.1

5

Deloitte Consulting

9.1

6

Ernst & Young LLP

9.1

7

PwC Advisory

9.1

8

RAS & Associates

9.1

9

Slalom Consulting

9.1

As seen above, certain employers hire a larger percentage of a certain tier and several seem to be recruiting from a few tiers alone. To investigate if we can see a clear trend of the tiers that popular consulting employers are recruiting from, we plotted the above percentages by company.

MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Strategy Consulting FirmsPercentage of MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Strategy Consulting Firms

It appears that the leading firms associated with Strategy (Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey & Company) employ mostly from business schools in the top tiers.

MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Implementation Consulting FirmsPercentage of MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Implementation Consulting Firms

The four largest accounting firms in the United States seem to recruit from a variety of business schools, with a certain percentage of each tier being employed by one of the four. Based on the above, KPMG seems to attract and employ business students attending schools at all ranks while PwC Advisory is a popular consulting employer for tier 4 students.

MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Industry-Specific Consulting FirmsPercentage of MBAs in Consulting from each Tier at Four Industry-Specific Consulting Firms

While employers such as Booz Allen and Cognizant Consulting have larger percentages with increasing tier (decreasing business school rank), Strategy& tends to employ in tiers 1-3. Accenture, the fourth most common overall consulting employer in our data, seems to hire across the board of tiers.


Are you interested in learning more about top MBA employers? Continue checking out the RelishCareers Blog, where we will continue posting information about employers, job function, and work culture.  Candidates can also sign up for an account through RelishCareers and registrants will be informed of all upcoming blog posts through email.

Scroll to top