What degree is best for consulting?
When consulting first became a profession in its own right, consulting firms used to only hire the top MBA graduates from specific target universities like Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.
Those days are well and truly behind us but it leaves us with the question…what degree is best to get into consulting?
In this blog we’ll break down which degree courses best prepare you for a consulting career.
Business, Economic and Management degrees
This is pretty obvious but in a job where you’ll be advising businesses on how to gain a competitive edge and be more profitable, having a good understanding of the different elements of a business and the economic climates they operate in is very helpful.
Business and economics degrees also teach you how to objectively analyse business problems and consider the impact of business decisions. There’s certainly some parallels between the group exercises that you cover in your degree and what you do in ‘real world’ consulting.
Humanities: English Literature, History etc
It might surprise you to find arts degrees here. However, these degrees actually teach you a lot of transferable consulting skills. Here’s some examples:
Communication. Humanities students have to write a lot of essays which means they exit a degree with top notch written communication skills. There’s often presentations as well and oral communication is also a vital part of being a successful consultant.
Critical thinking. Arts students are required to critically assess material that both supports and opposes their essay’s central argument. They need to be able to objectively evaluate these sources and communicate the impact on the original essay question. Similarly, consultants must use external data and information and critically evaluate its provenance and impact on the hypothesis they’re trying to prove to the client.
Forming an opinion out of something abstract. In addition to reviewing other sources, humanities students must formulate their own opinion about a text or historical scenario and articulate that through written communication. This is very similar to a client asking a consultant for an opinion on something that can be pretty vague.
Think your humanities degree stops you from becoming a consultant? Wrong.
What degree is best for consulting? Any!
If it isn’t already obvious, any degree can help you get a job in consulting.
Instead of worrying what your degree was, focus on what transferable core consulting skills it gave you. How can you prove this through examples? Did you have group project work? Were you part of any societies?
Above all else, what will help you stand out is any real world work experience you gained whilst you were studying. Put all of these together and you have a winning consulting application.
