A Business School "Good Girl" Discovers Consulting

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If I had to put a label on my past self, I'd call her a pretty typical business school "good girl."

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After arriving at Penn, I noticed that everyone around me seemed to know what they wanted to do from a very early age. Finance especially — recruiting timelines start early, and everyone was already sprinting. When I heard that plenty of classmates had internship experience by the end of freshman winter break, I panicked. The peer pressure and cutthroat competition made it feel like if I slowed down for even a second, I'd be left in the dust.

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So even though I barely understood finance and had no idea what I actually loved, I joined the crowd: everyone was preparing for investment banking, so I did too. Looking back, the whole reason I chose finance was to prove something — that whatever others could do, I could do as well.

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Then, in the summer after my junior year, I accidentally opened a casebook from school — and my first thought was: this looks way more interesting than memorizing the 400 investment banking interview questions.

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I found myself drawn to questions I knew nothing about, slowly pulling them apart: What's happening in this industry? Where's the real problem? Which factors matter most? The process — moving from not knowing, to understanding, to finally proposing a solution — felt genuinely enjoyable.

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I started asking myself honestly: do I really love finance? If it's only about proving myself, why force myself to stay somewhere I don't really enjoy? A "rebellious" thought took over: why not spend one summer going all-in on consulting?

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I wanted to bet on myself: aim for the very top — MBB — and if I failed, retreat back to my comfort zone. That meant competing, in under three months, against people who had been preparing for years. It sounded a little delusional, honestly, but I still wanted to try.

Aiming for the MBB Grand Slam

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The summer had already started and consulting deadlines were right around the corner. I knew I couldn't figure this out on my own in time — I needed someone who could systematize the entire process and had real success to show for it. After scrolling through posts from OSG students sharing their journeys, I decided OSG was the one.

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In my first conversation with my lead mentor, Jeremy, I proudly declared my goal: offers from all three MBB firms. The moment I said it, I felt my own confidence crack — I hadn't even touched a single case yet. Landing one MBB offer would already be a miracle, let alone all three.

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Jeremy's reaction was completely different from what I expected. He didn't think I was being unrealistic — he told me, with total conviction: believe in yourself, you'll be fine. Later I realized it wasn't just Jeremy: every single OSG mentor gave me their full support. No one tried to talk me out of it. They all said, "you've got this."

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For someone still at level zero, that encouragement was exactly the reassurance I needed.

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Of course, it wasn't all cheerleading — my mentors were strict when they needed to be. At first I tried to coast: I'm still far from getting interviews anyway, I'll figure it out along the way. Jeremy gave me a firm "No." He mapped out a preparation and application timeline for all three firms and kept repeating: don't wait until the deadline is breathing down your neck. Every hour you waste now slips away like sand through an hourglass, and by the end there's no room left.

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He was right. My summer turned into a mountain of internship work, cases, coffee chats, and mock interviews piled on top of each other.

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My first mentor, Tim, built my casing foundation from the ground up, step by step. He also shared a simple trick: watch and listen to as many case videos as you can. Soak it all in and you'll slowly develop your own sense for it. I tried it — and it actually worked.

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Jeremy later told me not to practice with just one mentor — different people read cases, ask questions, and give feedback in different ways. So I started booking mocks with a rotating cast of mentors. That's where I stopped being timid: I could lay out a structure for an unfamiliar case, then keep adapting my thinking as the interviewer fed me new information.

Summit or Nothing: The Mindset Battle

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The hardest part of the whole process wasn't the technical work — it was fighting my own mindset. There was never a single moment when I was 100% sure consulting would work out.

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By July, whispers were everywhere: people were already receiving McKinsey interview invitations, while my inbox stayed silent. On top of my baseline anxiety, I felt like a headless chicken — practicing cases, networking, texting mentors every day, with no one able to guarantee it would all pay off.

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Time kept moving, my plate was full, and the noise in my head wouldn't stop: What if none of the MBB firms want me? Should I switch back to finance? And if I go back, investment banking again, or something else? Every time these thoughts hit, the confusion and frustration came flooding back.

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I'm grateful that my mentors kept holding me up through all of it. They'd calm my swinging moods, keep telling me "you're doing great" and "we all believe in you," and gently pull my attention back to one concrete thing I should be doing next.

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I knew they had their own plates full and other students to support — yet I almost never heard "no time," "too busy," or "let's do it later." They always found room for me. I could genuinely feel that each of them wanted to see me pull this off.

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The Payoff: MBB 3/3

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In August, the invitations finally came. Bain and BCG moved first, with McKinsey following.

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Once interviews started, the pace barely left room to breathe. Often I'd finish an interview in the morning and learn I'd advanced by the afternoon or evening — then my mentor would immediately book a mock. Those weeks were one continuous cycle: interview, wait, mock, prepare, interview again.

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By the later rounds, my fundamentals were solid — what mattered more was leaving my brain a little room to think.

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I still remember the Bain final: I made an arithmetic mistake on a math question. I stared at the number, internally falling apart, but I refused to let it break my rhythm and kept delivering smoothly. I later realized that how you present yourself, how you speak, and how you connect with people matters just as much as producing a perfect number.

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An interview isn't a test where mistakes aren't allowed. When you slip mid-case, how you recover, how you explain yourself, and how you keep your logic flowing are all part of the interview too.

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The McKinsey final felt more like a test of my mental limit. It was that tight: the night after my previous round, the interviewer called me out of the blue and arranged an in-person final for the very next day. Strangely, that news relaxed me. No one can level up overnight. All I could do was trust the months of work my mentors and I had put in — and give it everything.

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When the first offer arrived, I was thrilled — but there was also a nagging "only 1/3" feeling, a mission still unfinished, with two more battles ahead. Then 2/3 came. And finally 3/3.

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I was at a train station, heading back to campus, when the McKinsey offer came through. There was no dramatic explosion of joy — just a quiet "finally, 3/3." The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and all I felt was relief.

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Those three months feel almost unreal in hindsight. Every minute inside them was agonizing — worrying I'd never get an interview, questioning whether any of it mattered. Now that the boat has crossed the mountains, I look back and realize it was only three months. One summer. And somehow, from zero, I completed a goal that once sounded like a fantasy.

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To this day, I don't think my casing is anything extraordinary. If I had one piece of advice for students coming up behind me, it's this: build solid fundamentals, but don't try to turn yourself into an interview machine that only outputs standard answers. Trust your own thinking — and don't let a short stretch with no visible results make you question everything you've already done.

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*Disclaimer: OSG has no cooperation/affiliation with the companies mentioned in the article; OSG students enhance their abilities through OSG services and secure offers through regular campus recruitment/social recruitment channels.