Why study at Harvard to end up in a low-paying sector? No need for a degree from a famous institution.
I went undergrad to a state school, studied CS and graduated to a great tech/finance job. But something I recognize in retrospect I never got in college was "being challenged by my peers."
I didn't really get this until I started doing recruiting for my company. I would go to career fairs at most colleges and the kids would remind me of kids I went to school with. Then I'd visit a "top" school and the kids blew me away: they were mature, articulate, focused and ambitious. It came through in how they talked about their careers.
The student body at a top school makes it harder for you to coast as an unfocused mushmouth. So you have 4 years of being shaped by the environment and challenged by your peers. I didn't get that until after I graduated and lucked out into a company that gave me such an environment.
In my college, I probably ranked pretty high on "articulate and driven" so there was no motivation to elevate that. At MIT, I would have probably been below average on these categories, and you don't want to be below average so you naturally do it more and better.
Lots of people graduated from Harvard to go on to make very little money but large contributions e.g. Richard Stallman is the parsimonious example that comes to mind. Noam Chomsky and other top academics probably aren't rolling around in cash either.
Dated two management consultants in my life. One was deeply involved in deciding the next CEO of Disney after a few years out of college, as an example. The other reported being basically in charge of a turnaround effort at a fortune 500 company.
Both examples required them to deeply understand the situation and the options and then to advocate for the path they have chosen.
Seemed fun and impactful.
It's difficult to imagine they would be anything more than assistants to the real decision makers.
Of course but it's the same thing.
Executives and the board make the decisions and take responsibility for them. But generally they make these decisions based on the framing and options presented to them by people who work for them.
As a consultant, you get to decide what dimensions matter to the decisions, gather data and arguments, and present the executive with a choice.
The executive skill is to have oriented you around the right topics, deciding whether to trust you and your analysis, and ability to stand behind the decision made.
The "assistants" do the work to enable this. It's a big deal.
Anyone can do that, it's Bob Iger.
Pay is seemingly great, you get to travel a lot, you're exposed to a bunch of different industries and companies from the highest level. The McKinsey/Bain/BCG prestige factor can open a lot of doors down the road, and you probably get a solid network of future titans of industry.
I haven't worked as a consultant, but that was the sales pitch we got.
And I've at least noticed that a many startups tend to have ex-consultants onboard as founders or executives.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_Unit...