These days a top MBA is almost a prerequisite in order to reach senior or even mid-management levels at many of the major consulting firms. The leading strategy consultancies in particular have redoubled their recruiting efforts: McKinsey hired over five hundred MBAs in 2005 and this figure was set to rise in 2006; Booz Allen Hamilton, BCG, Bain and IBM Consulting all...

The consulting world has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and with it have the career options open to the best consultants. In the 1980s and early 1990s, the brightest consultants joined one of a handful of elite strategy firms. They stayed loyal to the firm, were sponsored to do an MBA at an Ivy league business school, and if they stuck at it and made the...