Why do you want to go into consulting?

I'm a biology major, and for two years I thought I'd go into research. Over time I realized the lab wasn't the right fit for me. What changed my mind was a project with our student consulting group. A local food bank asked us why its volunteer hours were falling. We did some research and found the cause was scheduling. We gave them a simple scheduling fix. I liked that it was a real problem for a real organization, and that we got to an answer in eight weeks instead of five years. Then I tested whether that was a fluke. I talked to six consultants, including two who came from science. So consulting is where I'd get to work on a new problem every few months. It's also where I'd get trained to do that well.

I'm a biology major, and for two years I thought I'd go into research. I spent last summer in a lab running the same protein assay for ten weeks, and I learned that I like the question a lot more than the bench work. What changed my mind was a project with our student consulting group. A local food bank asked us why its volunteer hours were falling. I built the survey and called 30 lapsed volunteers myself, and it turned out most of them had left because shifts kept getting canceled the night before. We gave them a simple scheduling fix. By the next semester their volunteer hours were up about 20%. I liked that it was a real problem for a real organization, and that we got to an answer in eight weeks instead of five years. Then I tested whether that was a fluke. I talked to six consultants, including two who came from science. I asked each of them what a bad week looks like, and the travel and the midnight slide rewrites didn't put me off. I also did a second project, a pricing question for a campus bookstore, and I enjoyed it just as much. So consulting is where I'd get to work on a new problem every few months. It's also where I'd get trained to do that well. What I'd bring is the habit from the lab of asking what evidence would prove me wrong.