I have a current Senior in a top public university who's interviewing for consulting jobs including BCG. He went to final round and got rejected. He assumes that it's due to "target school" reasons, as the offers went to Yale, Harvard students rather than a public university. Now, he wants to reapply next year and is wondering if it would make sense to take spring semester off and graduate next fall semester so that he can stay on campus for 2012 fall recruiting and interview with BCG again.Do you think this makes sense? I've never seen kids who delay graduation so that they can interview again w same company but he wants to do it. He's afraid that if she accepts another fulltime offer, he cannot easily back out and go for that BCG interview on campus in 2012.While taking school off for spring, he wants to take internships, add professional experience, practice more cases, etc. And would taking a semester off look badly to consulting recruiters? Does it look too desperate? ("I took semester off so I can interview with you again this year" kind of deal?) I would really appreciate any feedback.

- You don't fail interviews due to your school - especially at the final round. If your CV got you an interview, your school is no longer a deciding factor. - It looks terribly desperate to me, but then again, I've never understood the breed that absolutely, positively had to make MBB or their lives were over- A simpler, saner thing to do would be to just graduate, and then go get the extra experience. There's a 6-12 month window after graduating while you're still eligible to apply for a graduate position.

I have to agree with baykus. Your university helps or hinders you getting interviews with the top firms, but once you're into the interview stages the firms want to hire the best talent - not fulfil quotas. This will be a case - pure and simple - of other candidates having been more compelling at interview than this individual. Having an internship on their CV a year from now will have zero influence on whether or not they are made an offer; this only helps secure the interview in the first place, it doesn't then impact interviewers' perceptions of the candidates come interview time. Performance in the case study interviews was almost certainly the deciding factor, but there's no guarantee that taking time to improve here will make a difference - and there is a danger that they will not be interviewed again at all, given the application circumstances you describe.To play devil's advocate, if "target schools" was the issue here then your student would be just as likely to miss out on an offer next year, which would make it madness to go down the proposed route wouldn't it?!If they are set on reapplying then my personal advice would be to take a gap year and go and do something that the firms will really value - like learning a foreign language / gaining experience of working abroad - rather than hanging on at campus.Hope this helpsTony RestellTop-Consultant.com