You say consulting, or you say banking, sometimes in the same sentence. McKinsey on one side. An investment bank on the other. Both names sound like success. They are not the same desk.
They are two neighbouring careers. Two maps. Strategy consulting is helping organisations decide: a firm sends teams onto a problem, then they move to the next one. Investment banking is different work, later, on transactions between companies. They can be mixed up at the table. They are not prepared as if, at fourteen, they asked for the same faculty and the same country.
Your child does not choose this from a ranking poster. They do not have to decide, in 4e, between a grande école and an American university. The faculty comes later. So does the country. Through the bac, both paths pass through the same door: a bachelor’s degree at a Top 50 university.
Two maps, when the child is old enough
The desk where someone sits after their studies is not a detail. It decides, when the time comes, the kind of faculty and the country. A course of study that prepares someone to reason about organisational problems is not automatically the one that prepares someone to read financial transactions. Both ask for a mind. They do not ask for the same depth, once the career is confirmed.
That choice waits. It waits until the child has grown, until the family still knows which career it confirms, and until the money for the path is real. Choosing it at fourteen, because a ranking put two logos side by side, is carving a faculty before there is a file.
Where finance actually sits, and why investment banking is a job after the degree, are two other pages: Where finance careers actually sit, Investment banking: a job after the degree. We do not redraw the map of cities here. We do not redo the job. We only say that the fork exists, and that it is not decided in collège.
The shared work, from 6e to the bac
If your child leans toward consulting, or toward finance, the shared work, now, is the same.
Reasoning. Holding a problem, taking it apart, saying what was done. Consulting, later, lives on that. A selective university already reads it in how the child works. Maths, because banking will ask for them and because the admissions test measures them. English, in order to follow classes: IELTS or TOEFL, often a high level, nothing promised. An activity held over time, with duration and a responsibility. A Top 50 bachelor’s file: the SAT, or the UAT if the destination asks for it, and a funding plan beside the report card.
Liwaza Familles prepares a child from 6e. Later, in 4e or in lycée, a family can still enter: the diagnostic says what is still realistic. In collège, these habits are set. In lycée, they become a file a university can compare with others, from other school systems. Grades and the bac matter. They are not enough.
Why this rank, how we prepare this without discouraging the child, how entry works after years, and why an employer is not a university: the Top 50, preparing this with your child, after Liwaza, Tesla, Samsung, BYD.
The destinations stay in that set: the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea — and a Canadian university only if it is truly in the Top 50 that year. The specific country is chosen when the career and the money are clear. Sending a child “to study abroad,” especially for a France or Belgium plan, is a different project. We do not build it.
A French grande école is not the shortcut
The reflex, in many families, is the French grande école. The name is known. It circulated at the table long before the child had a project. That reflex does not become the plan.
A French grande école is not the door we build toward consulting or toward banking. It is not the default step between the bac and these jobs. The door, through the bac, is a bachelor’s degree at a Top 50 university. The faculty — economics, mathematics, engineering, another — is named when we know which desk the child still aims at, and what the family can fund. A poster does not do that work. A ranking places nobody.
The money for the file is prepared at the same time. Outcomes depend on the profile, the scores, and the rules of the university and of funders. Liwaza prepares. Liwaza does not guarantee a scholarship or a loan. Admission is not guaranteed. Even after years, a place at the very top of the top is missed. Those years are not wasted.
When you say McKinsey
McKinsey, like a bank, is an employer. Saying so does not give anyone a seat.
Offices are not interchangeable. An office in Casablanca or Lagos is not the London office. London, for these firms, is a tight market: many applications, few seats. An office on the continent is another market, with other needs. Neither is a promise. Neither is chosen at fourteen. We do not tell a child in 3e that they “will do McKinsey.” We build a university file. The firm, if it one day looks at that profile, looks after the studies, not instead of the studies.
BCG or Bain, if those names circulate too, are of the same order: employers, not schools. We do not publish a salary here. Without a source, the figure is not written. We do not promise that your child will get in.
Where we start
We do not start with a poster. We do not start with a faculty already carved, or with a country “because the ranking says so.”
We start with a diagnostic: where your child stands, how they reason, their English, what draws them, what is realistic through the bac. That session does not decide between consulting and banking on their behalf. It shows the file that has to be built, and it leaves the faculty for later. It does not give you the manual to do it all alone.
If your question is “consulting or banking,” the next step is the shared door: a Top 50 bachelor’s degree, from 6e, and the career named honestly when it is time to choose the faculty.