How to Get a Consulting Job at Bain With a Low GPA

Can you get a consulting job with a low GPA? Edward Collinson did it, breaking into Bain & Company from a non-target school.

With the odds stacked against him, how did he do it? Not only a low GPA but coming from a non-core university program? We wanted to hear for ourselves, so we brought him on the podcast to share the full story.

Listen now for practical insights into how you can set yourself up for a consulting job even without an Ivy League background or “ideal” grades.

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Transcription: How to Get a Consulting Job at Bain With a Low GPA

MC 

Edward Collinson, welcome to Strategy Simplified.

Edward Collinson 

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

MC 

Hey, we’re excited to actually have you back. This is not your first rodeo. We brought you on a couple of years ago when you were in the thick of case prep for a live case. That was a lot of fun. And so I’m excited to reconnect and revisit your journey and kind of bring it full circle from that moment. And so for the audience that hasn’t been around for that long, can you just provide a 30 second intro of who you are and your background?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, absolutely. And we can dive into all the lovely details later. But I’m Edward, I am finishing up my senior year at Cal Poly on the central coast in California. And I’ve been recruiting for consulting for about two years. I’ll be working at Bain next year, really excited to receive my start date and jump into that. And I’m also studying business concentrating in information systems.

MC 

Amazing. Thanks for the intro there. And so let’s just dive right into Bain. So you start sometime in the summer/fall of 2023. Big congrats on that. I know it’s been a journey. Do you mind just sharing kind of a high level overview of that process? Then we’ll kind of go back and dive into some more specific aspects of that.

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, absolutely. So I found out I wanted to do consulting the beginning of my sophomore year in college, I interviewed for a consulting firm on our campus. And once I did a case interview, I really just fell in love with that whole process. And so I asked some friends at other schools, if doing what you do in a case interview is an actual job that you can do. And they told me about management consulting. So dove into that. Really liked McKinsey and Bain. Nothing wrong with BCG or any of those, those are just the two that I really gravitated towards. Lots and lots of practice doing interviews and networking. I actually got rejected from the internship and then interviewed again at the beginning of summer for full time, and then chose to go with Bain.

MC 

Amazing. And so I’m going to spill the beans a little bit, but there was a couple of major obstacles that you had to overcome in your journey. One is you come from kind of a non-core school, at least for MBB, there’s not a big focus on your program. And the second part of that is you had a lower GPA. We won’t reveal that on the podcast here. But that’s a fear that a lot of candidates have that don’t have a 4.0 or 3.5 or whatever is the qualifying GPA to have that’s considered good enough for consulting. And so can you just kind of walk us through how you overcame those two specific obstacles in your journey?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, of course, so I think they actually share some similarities, but I’ll try and address them both individually first. So coming from a non-core school was pretty daunting, but became less daunting the more research I did, because it started off as being told, Well, you don’t go to an Ivy League. And really the schools that they maybe consider are the Stanford’s and the UC Berkeley’s which are already leagues above going to a state school. And so that was definitely really nerve wracking at first.

And I look back on it and it makes me smile, because I was always the kid in high school that, yes, I tried to go above and beyond. But if there was something that someone said, only one or two people from your school will get this, it would have just pushed me away. And I would have thought, yeah, well, it won’t be me. And so I don’t know when that change came. And maybe it’s just because I was so passionate about it, I really wanted to do it. But I think if anything that kind of served to inspire me. And I know, I think we’ve had one or two from McKinsey. But from Bain, I don’t think any undergraduate had ever gone from college to Bain. And so having that, oh, it’s never happened is pretty daunting.

But I think it also really pushed me to strive and go for it. But as much as I was, I really worked hard. And I do want to acknowledge that I am very lucky. I think Bain started looking into, I think they call it Core Plus, so outside of the Ivy League’s and Stanford’s of the country and the world. And so they started considering schools like Cal Poly and other schools. And so I was very lucky that I am recruiting for consulting in a time where there is that shift, and they are looking for talent outside of the typical schools. So I do really have to acknowledge that there was a lot of luck matched in the timing. I think if I might have tried this two years ago, it might have been the same outcome, but it would have been a completely different journey.

And then in terms of the lower GPA, I just did research and not to scare any listeners. But I think the minimum typically is a 3.7. And I was below that. So that worried me. But I think the real takeaway of anything here is that you have to have your competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting. I think that’s more than just consulting, that’s any job. And for me, I love learning, and I love learning new things and getting new skills. But GPA has never really been something that’s been drilled into me, obviously. I grew up in England, so we didn’t have GPA there. So maybe that has something to do with it.

But for me, it’s much more important to get that real world experience. So personally, in my college experience, I have really nailed down the extracurriculars and leadership roles on campus. And we can go into those more a little bit later. But I think that that was the biggest thing that helped me, combined with networking. And I think just really like, if you don’t have one of those two things, right, really high GPA, or coming from a target school or a core school, you have to give them a reason to hire you because the reason isn’t already given. It isn’t already, oh, he’s a he’s a 4.0 student, or he’s a Harvard graduate or undergraduate. And so just finding what you’re really passionate about and what you’re good at, I think is the absolute key to success in that area.

MC 

Amazing. Thanks for sharing all that. You mentioned networking as a key differentiator. Do you mind just briefly going into that?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah. In the on campus consulting firm that I’m a part of, they used to have a philosophy that you should never apply to a job. You should have someone apply for you, or should be applying through a referral link, because it just cuts down your competition by so much. And I think I took with that and ran with that, because I only heard about this during the recruiting process, and during that those two years. And I realized that again, coming from a non-target school with a GPA that I’m pretty certain is on the lower end of candidates, there’s got to be a reason that my name gets brought up in a good manner around the office.

And so basically I sat down one day and was fed up and looked at every single alumni from my school from MBB, and email to every single one of them, which took me about three minutes because there weren’t that many. And so once I did that, I chatted with some people and I know that, and again, a lot of the stuff here is gonna be very Bain centric, just because that’s what I did the most recruiting for, that’s what was most available. But they had a lot of events, whether it be how to do a case interview or meet the SF team or meet the Chicago team. And every event I would thank every single guest that was on the Zoom call whether they spoke for one minute or an hour And I’d try and get them down for 15-20 minutes in the next month or so. And I started off by doing that, and then asking them if they could refer me to anyone and just trying to expand. But obviously, just based on the math there, that gets to a huge number. And it’s not necessarily manageable. And that was also the time that I was coming up to interviewing.

So I did end up going down a little bit on that, but then picked it up again later. And again, there’s two routes you can go with networking, I think there’s quality or quantity. I think they both have merits. But I really think ultimately it comes down to quality. I think there’s a few misconceptions that people think, I have to be talking to the recruiter or the partner and, and that’s great. But typically, they actually won’t be making the decisions, it will be the people one or two years into the firm. And I was really lucky that there was one or two people that I really connected with. And they helped me so much, they did multiple cases with me. One of them brought me in to look at the San Francisco office. And that was also why I chose Bain was because there was there were so willing to help me, a complete stranger from a non-target school, try and get a job there.

And they would set aside time, they would send me zoom links. It was it was so proactive on my behalf that I didn’t have time to be proactive, which I thought was a really lovely touch. But again, I’m kind of straying from the point there. I think it’s really good to have quantity at the beginning. But then as you get closer and closer to that recruiting process, I think having someone that you have a really deep connection with is really important, because they’re going to be the one that speaks the loudest in that room where they’re making that decision.

MC 

Yeah, I love everything you just said. Start with a wide funnel, but then narrow it down as you get closer to the interview time. And you mentioned finding a deep connection with with a few folks at Bain. Can you just share a little bit more about how did you connect with them? Was it over a specific topic? Can you just share a little bit more about that?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, I read somewhere that when you network with someone when you ask a question, one to be more engaging, but also just to be a better person. Don’t ask a question unless you actually want to know the answer, or reverse engineer to ask questions that you want to know the answer to. So even something as trivial as how’s your day going, don’t just ask that for formality. Ask how their day is going and really care about the answer. And I think by doing that, you develop that connection between them. I know one of the people I was speaking to was in the process of applying to business school from Bain. And then our business school and, and so really, that was something I was passionate about and and talking with them about that here and there was, I think, really helpful to getting that connection. Or even just as something as one of the people I spoke to actually have family in a small town in England, which is where I was from, which was I mean, an insanely unlikely coincidence. But because of that it was an instant touch point that we could talk about and having that that connection, I think was really good. So I think having some sort of common ground, and also really not just networking with them for a job, not networking with them to get answers to questions, but networking them to get a connection and to, I wouldn’t necessarily say form a friend, I think that’s really stretching it, but have someone that you want to talk to and that you want to stay in touch with.

MC 

I love that. Just being a good human and actually caring about the person rather than it being a completely transactional process is a beautiful perspective on that. I love that.  Ed, you had mentioned earlier, this is switching a little bit, but you’d mentioned being rejected by I believe it was Bain when you’re in the process of applying to internships.

Edward Collinson 

Yes.

MC 

How did you maintain those good spirits, the confidence to keep going despite those hurdles that you ran into?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, so I think, and also it wasn’t just Bain. I applied for probably the top seven firms for specifically management or strategy, I got resume rejected from all but Bain, McKinsey and Accenture. And I knew a lot of the recruiters really well, in addition, which made that tough. And then I did the problem solving games for McKinsey and Accenture and didn’t move forward with that. Bain I got a first round, and I did really well on what in the first case, and the second case, I was very poor at communicating, and I think that that was the ultimate reason that it didn’t work out. And I wrote down in my notes here that it’s it kind of reminds me of that movie Elf, the Christmas movie. There’s a scene in there where they finish making all the gifts for Christmas on Christmas Eve. And it’s like, yes, time start preparing for next Christmas. And so going through that emotional rollercoaster of Oh, my goodness, I just got an interview at Bain, one of my dream companies, you know, this, this is crazy, to Oh, it didn’t work out and they’re not moving forward. There were two ways I could go with that. I could say, well, I’ll give up and I’ll move on. And I think all successful people in recruiting for consulting or for investment bank for any really competitive position, share this other path, which is okay, well, what can I do to make this happen? Because, and I think this has helped me and hurt me in life. But if I want something, I’m just not going to stop until I get it. And sure, I could have said okay, maybe I’ll work at a smaller firm, and then try and transfer but I really, really wanted this job. And I really saw myself there. So I think not even I think one day after I got the rejection, I’d signed up for ,if I do the math, for 30 case interviews over 10 weeks. My career readiness center on campus, they do mock case interviews. And so I signed up for three a week for 10 weeks. And for me, it was, I don’t know, maybe it was just a poor coping strategy of okay, I’m gonna bury myself back in the work. I mean, I’m not complaining, it worked out. But I think just saying, Okay, well, it didn’t work out, let’s really go ahead and just make it work and do whatever I can to make this work for next year. And I think that’s the way I best dealt with it. But also, I had an incredible support group. I don’t necessarily know if we’re going to touch on this on any specific questions. But the biggest takeaway I got from this whole process over a year or two is, how amazing my friends and family are and how lucky I am. Because through the failures, through the successes, through the periods of just no news. They were checking in on me, and they were saying, Oh, my goodness, how’s the consulting going? You know, I’d say 90% of my friends are pursuing accounting, and maybe 9%, or I guess the honestly, the other 10% are pursuing some different avenue. And at the time, I was the only one pursuing consulting. And so it was a very lonely road. But having everyone there to let me ramble on about case interviews 24/7, and consulting and just listen to me and hear me out was a really amazing experience.

MC 

Anyone willing to listen to somebody talk about case interviews is a special person.

Edward Collinson 

That’s how you find the true friends honestly.

MC 

I love that. Just stubborn tenacity, persistence, not giving up. That’s great. Nothing more needs to be said. Thanks for sharing that. You mentioned case interviews a few times there. Can we just go there, and can you just start by giving us an overview of your interview prep process? How many practice cases did you need to do? What was your strategy? Who did you case with? All that good stuff.

Edward Collinson 

So I definitely lost track. I know it’s in the triple digits. But I started off, did one prep case for this interview for the on-campus consulting firm. I then did that case interview as part of my interview. And then I think I did three or four more occasionally for over maybe a month or two. And then I heard about Strategy Simplified. And I saw that you did the cohorts. And I thought, Wow, that’s really cool. However, I want to see if I can just get the real experience. So instead of joining one of these zoom calls and listening someone do it, why don’t I just do it, and then I get tailored feedback to me selfishly, but also I get that experience. And I get to be case by you know, someone who’s ex MBB.

And so I sent you an email and I said hey, can I can I jump on this and I think you’d asked how many cases I’ve done. And I’ll have to dig up the email. I think it was seven at the time. And you said hey, Just get back in touch when you’ve done closer to 20 or 30. You know, we want to make sure that you’re ready for this. And so all right, I’ll go do that. And I did 20 or 30 more and got back in touch and you said yes. And so I know this is a question later. But I thought, Okay, I’m about to do a live case interview with a really high caliber interviewer in front of upwards of 100 people, how can I possibly prepare for the nerves that this is going to bring.

So I got all my friends to agree to do stand up comedy with me, for public speaking, did stand up comedy purely for the case interview. That was the only reason I did it. And then when it came to the actual case interview, in front of people, it was a little bit easier. And then after that, I probably did 100 or so, which was definitely a lot. And also, I acknowledge that I’m unusual here, and I really enjoy them. I know a lot of people think, Okay, I have to do this to prepare for the job. I just love them. I think that’s so fascinating. And that’s why I’m excited to go into consulting. And I know a lot of my friends make fun of me about that. But I we all laugh about that. I think it’s a something I enjoy.

But but with that I got in touch with someone from UCSB. And I forgotten how I got in touch with them. But her and I started a Slack channel for aspiring consultants, and it was a lot of non-target schools. And we just did case interviews with people. It was really cool. She was was definitely the one driving that. So you know, congrats to her for that. And I hope she – I haven’t followed up, I hope she got a good position somewhere. And I do have to name drop and thank Vivian, if she’s listening. Her and I did probably 50 cases together. And not just that, but she was a year ahead so she was done recruiting by the time I’d been rejected from the internship. And she’s still helped me with cases. So I owe her a huge thanks. And she was great for helping me. And then also a lot of the career readiness center. And with occasional people here on there. Actually, I did one in Palm Springs over spring break with one of my friends. That was a particularly difficult case, I remember that. And just trying to get that variation of people.

I think it’s so hard to improve if it’s just one person on the phone. I think having different types of interviews is really important, as well as interviewing people. And then the last part of that was the case chain that I did. I was lucky enough to be invited to this thing called a case chain from Bain. And essentially, it was myself and two others were in a group with a consultant. And the consultant would give one of us a case, we would then give someone else the case. And then finally the last person would get the case. So it was kind of some sort of chain. And actually the other two people never responded. So it was just myself and the associate consultant. And so I got a lot of one on one experience, though, which was really good. And that also got a really good connection with someone in the firm that which i i definitely think helped.

MC 

Yeah, man, you just attacked those cases. And I love that you just actually enjoy the work. It’s gonna make you a great consultant. And that’s awesome. And the piece about doing stand-up comedy is epic. I’m gonna definitely need to ask you about that later today. So in what you shared there, were there maybe one or two things that you did that made an outsized difference in going from good to great, and also ultimately being able to land the offer?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, I think there was several things. Definitely Management Consulted. I didn’t do any of the packages with you guys. But I know I did listen to most of the podcasts. And it was great because I could listen to live cases, I could listen to like three minute summaries. And it was all just stuff to get me more interested as well. But I think that the two biggest things, “Case in Point.” That book is just phenomenal. I think anyone who’s going into consulting should just read it. It’s like the Bible for case interviews. And the case interviews in there are notoriously difficult. And most case interviews are a lot more simple. So that was something that really helped me. I think in addition to that, I know the case books, there’s millions out there. I really liked the Columbia one, those are the ones that I ended up using. So I’m obviously going to be more biased. I think those were the biggest two, and also someone at Bain actually showed me the way that they took notes during the case interview. I was just kind of very just writing on a blank piece of paper, but she actually showed me how she kind of drew the page into into quadrants and did all these specific way of taking notes. And that was a game changer having that additional level of structure. Maybe I can draw a picture and send it to you guys, and we can include it. But that really helped me as well.

MC 

Yeah, that’d be awesome. Well, Ed, it’s been really, really phenomenal chatting with you today. Let’s say you’re talking to somebody who’s in the recruiting process right now. Do you have a couple of words of wisdom you’d share for them   just to maintain good spirits and to keep going in the often grueling recruiting process?

Edward Collinson 

Yeah, I think the first one, it’s going to sound blunt, but be okay with failing. A lot of people I feel like who go for consulting, could land a lot of jobs very easily. But consulting is just so competitive. It’s not that easy. And I have some of my smartest friends have been through successes and failures with that. And so just be okay with failing, it will work out. You just keep being tenacious. I think that is the most important thing. And lastly, just really focus on the positives as well. I think it’s easy to get bogged down in case interviews and consulting and interviewing with what you’re doing wrong. But I really encourage everyone to just take a little bit of time, and focus on also what they’re doing right. Because for me, that was the hardest thing was I prepared for two years. And I would say, only a month or two before my interviews this summer did I actually change my mindset from I’m not good enough, I have to fool them into letting me into their firm, to I’ve prepared long enough. I’m a good candidate, I can bring value to the firm. And if that could have happened earlier for me, I would have been very happy. But just really focus on what you’re doing well. I think that’s something that’s very overlooked in this process.

MC 

I love those mindsets and perspectives. Yeah, preparation leads to competence. And I love that, that you experienced that shift in mindset towards just being competent. And knowing that you’ve done the work for this. Love that.

Edward Collinson 

Exactly.

MC 

Yeah. All right. Well, I think I know the answer to this question, but Ed, what are you most looking forward to at Bain?

Edward Collinson 

I mean, where to start. But I think most importantly, I’m really excited to training and learning. I think I’ve become very good at case interviews, now I’d love to take that a step further and really be good at consulting and breaking down those real world problems even moreso. I think I’m also just really excited to begin full time and really be working in that environment with those people. But maybe I need to also just enjoy the last last year of college and relax before that happens.

MC 

It’s not the free coffee that you’re most looking forward to?

Edward Collinson 

I forgot about that.

MC 

Amazing. Well, before we let you go, I’m going to continue our tradition here at Strategy Simplified, asking a few more personal fun questions. So first, let’s talk about stand up comedy. I love that. Do you have a favorite moment or a funny moment or an embarrassing moment you’d be willing to share with us?

Edward Collinson 

So I did that one time, and I actually did it once more sporadically and once planned. And I actually did it, I got talked into it on a second date, and I completely bombed. Like every joke I said just didn’t land. People were laughing when I didn’t think they would not laughing when I thought they would. And that’s a really tough moment to go through. But one of my favorite moments was because we all did it as roommates. One of my roommates got up and made a quick joke. And after 10 seconds or so I was like, Okay, I’m done. And we’re all laughing thinking he’s joking. He’s like, no, no, I’m done. And I just remember tearing up laughing because it was just such a funny situation. But I really recommend everyone does it. I think it’s horribly uncomfortable and awful. But it’s very liberating.

I love that. I wish I could have been in the room. Did the second date lead to a third date?

Edward Collinson 

It did actually. Yeah. So maybe they felt sorry for me. Work on my humor.

MC 

Brilliant. Well Ed, you have a beautiful British accent. But you know, having been in the States for a couple of years curious. Can you do an American accent?

Edward Collinson 

I’m definitely better than when I first moved here, but you can be the judge of that. Do you have anything you want me to try and say?

MC 

I’m going going to be a management consultant.

Edward Collinson 

Okay, I’ll give it a go. I am going to be a management consultant. That’s the best I’ve got for you.

MC 

That’s pretty good. I don’t think it would have been able to notice. Well, last question here. Can you share one thing on your bucket list that you’re hoping to knock off in the new year in 2023?

Edward Collinson 

Yes, I would love to go to Wimbledon. I’ve always dreamed of that and never really had the time. COVID canceled the last time I was planning to go, so fingers crossed I can walk the grounds and watch some professional tennis. That would be an amazing experience.

MC 

Amazing. That sounds epic. Well Ed, it’s been great having you on Strategy Simplified. Thanks for coming on and sharing your your journey, the trials and triumphs and just the wisdom and perspective that you gained along the way.It’s been really great for me to hear and I know our audience is gonna find a lot of value in it as well.

Edward Collinson 

Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on.

MC 

Thank you for listening to this episode. Talking with Edward really showcased the truth to me that if you give something your all and don’t take no for an answer, sooner or later you will succeed. So again, if you resonated with Edward’s story and are trying to break into consulting, we’d love to help if we can. We’ve got tons of free, as well as personalized paid resources on managementconsulted.com. On our YouTube channel, just search Management Consulted, and right here on the Strategy Simplified podcast. Thank you for being a listener. We’ll see you again next episode.