Ivey MBA 2025 Employment Report: The Consulting Rows

Four Ivey MBA consulting percentages, four populations

The report is not at fault for the confusion. It labels every table correctly and it warns about rounding. The labels are simply easy to skip when a reader is hunting for one number.

The 12 percent is the one most exposed to being quoted as a placement rate, because it is the lowest and because it sits beside the class statistics. It is the intake. Twelve percent of the class arrived from a consulting industry, and 24 percent of accepted employment was in one.

Resist turning that into a ratio. The 12 percent sits on the 169-student class and gives about 20 people. The 24 percent sits on accepted employment, a base the report never states. Two percentages on two undisclosed bases do not divide into a multiple, and saying the program doubled anything would be arithmetic we cannot show.

The 26 percent is subtler. Its column header reads "% share of total reported salaries", and the report states that "Salary data in this report is based on a 78-per-cent salary reporting rate from our students". So 26 percent is a share of the 78 percent who answered the salary question, and 24 percent is a share of accepted employment. Two points apart, two different denominators, and neither is wrong.

There is a fifth number for the same idea. By function rather than industry, Consulting and Corporate Strategy took 34 percent of accepted employment. A graduate who joins a manufacturer as an internal strategy manager counts in the function figure and in the manufacturing industry figure. The ten-point gap between 24 and 34 is roughly the size of the internal strategy population.

What the word "seeking" is carrying

The two headline rates read: 82 percent "of those seeking, received at least one job offer three months post-graduation", and 89 percent at six months. Seven points of improvement over three months, which is itself worth knowing.

The report then defines its own exclusion in one sentence. The rate "excludes students returning to school, pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, rejoining former employers, or not actively seeking employment."

That is a defensible definition and the school explains why it uses it. What the report never publishes is the resulting number. The class had 169 students. Fifteen returned to a former employer and three pursued entrepreneurship, both stated elsewhere in the same document. Nothing states how many of the remaining 151 were actively seeking, so 82 percent has no headcount and neither does 24 percent.

One more date matters. "All data, except where otherwise noted, is captured as of September 11, 2025." Every figure on this page is a photograph taken that day.

What the consulting rows pay, in Canadian dollars

Ivey reports in Canadian dollars and states the rule on every salary table: "Where students have reported roles outside of Canada, all salary details have been converted to Canadian dollars." That is the cleanest currency disclosure of any school report in this batch, and it means the consulting figures already include the international placements.

The consulting industry median of C$160,000 is 60 percent above the class base median of C$100,000, which is plain division: 160,000 divided by 100,000 is 1.6. The averages are closer together. C$140,738 against C$114,984 is a ratio of 1.224, so about 22 percent.

That difference between the two comparisons is the interesting part. The consulting bucket has a median well above its own average, which happens when a cluster of high identical offers sits above a thin tail of low ones. The C$45,000 floor in a bucket whose median is C$160,000 tells you the report's Consulting label is covering more than strategy firms.

The one place the report contradicts itself, and what to do about it

Look at rows two and three of that table again. Same minimum, C$45,000. Same maximum, C$199,500. Different average, C$140,738 against C$130,409. And a median C$50,000 apart, C$160,000 against C$110,000.

Two buckets with identical extremes and different centers contain different people. The industry bucket and the function bucket overlap heavily and are not the same set. The report publishes no headcount per row, so there is no way to reconcile them from outside, and we are not going to guess.

The practical rule that follows is short. Quote C$160,000 as the consulting industry median and say so. Quote C$110,000 as the consulting and corporate strategy function median and say so. Do not average them, and do not present either as the salary an Ivey graduate gets for going into consulting, because the school does not publish that number.

If you need a U.S. dollar comparison, use a rate with a name and a date. The Federal Reserve H.10 weekly release dated 28 September 2026 gives 1.4140 Canadian dollars per U.S. dollar for 25 September 2026.

Each is rounded to the nearest ten dollars. 160,000 divided by 1.4140 is 113,154. A market rate on one day is not a cost of living adjustment, and Toronto is not New York.

The employer list legend, which is the strictest one we have read

Most schools publish a wall of names and leave you to guess what it means. Ivey publishes a legend, and it is precise enough to be used as a decision rule:

"Below is a list of companies that engaged with Ivey's MBA students in the last three years through networking, hiring, formal or informal job postings, and/or on-campus recruiting. Companies that have been among our top hiring firms over the past three years are bolded. Those companies denoted with an (*) have hired at least one Ivey MBA grad in the past three years, based on student reporting."

Three tiers, then. Listed means engaged. Asterisked means at least one hire in three years. Bold means a top hiring firm. Checked against the consulting section, the strategy and advisory names carrying an asterisk include Accenture, AlixPartners, Bain & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Kearney, McKinsey & Company, Monitor Deloitte, EY-Parthenon, Oliver Wyman, Strategy&, Guidehouse, Wavestone and Nous Group. Names present without an asterisk include Roland Berger, Analysis Group, ZS, Gartner and IQVIA.

The gap between listing and hiring is quantified elsewhere in the same report. One hundred and fifty companies posted jobs to the class, and 75 companies actually hired from it. That is exactly half. Of 314 employer events, 80 were exclusive to Ivey, which is about a quarter.

Firm pages are the cross-check on all of this. Bain publishes its Toronto office and its global office list names Toronto and Montreal for Canada. That page says nothing whatever about Ivey, or about any school, which is the normal state of affairs and worth saying out loud.

Twelve months of Ivey MBA, and the January 2027 change

Ivey runs a twelve-month full-time MBA in London, Ontario. Its own site currently carries a banner reading: "The Ivey MBA is shifting to a January start beginning in 2027!"

That single line changes the preparation problem more than any placement statistic on this page. Here is the reasoning, in the order it bites.

1. A twelve-month program has one recruiting season. There is no second autumn to fall back on and no summer internship in the middle to convert.
2. Recruiting therefore starts before you do. The case skill has to be functional in the first weeks, because the firms' deadlines arrive while you are still learning where the library is.
3. A start-date change moves every deadline relative to the firms. Consulting recruiting calendars are anchored to the North American academic year. A January intake meets them at a different point in their cycle than a March intake does.
4. The school has not published the revised calendar. The banner announces the change. No page on the site sets out what it does to the recruiting timeline.

Point four is the one to act on. If you are applying for a 2027 start, the calendar question goes to the Career Management office directly, because it is not answerable from the public site.

The Ivey MBA internship that begins after the program ends

The word internship on an Ivey page does not mean what it means at a two-year American school, and the distinction is worth ten minutes.

The school states that "Students complete all MBA academic requirements before beginning the internship. Students who opt into the internship stream complete their internship from January to April, extending their program timeline." It runs 12 to 16 weeks, it is optional, it normally takes place in Canada, and the page adds that "Internship opportunities and placements are not guaranteed."

So the Ivey internship sits after the coursework rather than in the middle of it. Our reading of those published dates is that it cannot serve as the audition that converts into a full-time offer, since a twelve-month student has already worked the full-time season during the program. The school does not comment on this either way.

The published focus areas reinforce the point. Ivey names two, Technology and Capital Markets. Under Technology it lists Technology Consulting. Strategy consulting appears in neither, and none of the eleven internship employers the school names is a strategy firm.

Compare that with the format the large firms publish. McKinsey's own MBA careers page describes a Summer Associate role of 8 to 10 weeks on a client team, and the entry title after an MBA as Associate. The Ivey January-to-April window does not sit inside a North American summer. A candidate who wants a strategy internship has to find one outside the school's own stream.

Where the preparation time should go

A twelve-month clock rewards diagnosis over volume. Running full cases returns one impression per hour and never tells you which of six skills lost the interview.

Run one drill of each type first: math, structuring, brainstorming, exhibit reading, synthesis and market sizing. Each names the dimension that cost you the most. Work that dimension alone until it stops appearing, then move to the next.

These weights are ours and no firm publishes a rubric. Structuring is scored here on Coverage 45, Separation 25, Depth 20 and Concision 10. Closing carries Answer first 35, Evidence 25, Risk 20 and Next step 20. The reasoning behind each sits on how an answer is assessed. The structuring drill returns the first correction instead of a grade, and the free drills run without an account. They teach no business content and they do not play an interviewer.

For the season in general, our MBA consulting recruiting timeline covers it, and the twenty-six MBA programs compared on consulting sets out the basis each one publishes.

What Ivey does not publish

The report is one of the more transparent we have read, and four gaps remain.

It does not publish the number of students who were actively seeking, so none of its rates converts into people. It does not define what goes inside the Consulting bucket, and its own company list mixes strategy houses, audit-led advisory arms, local boutiques and services firms under that single label. It does not publish headcounts per salary row, which is why the industry and function medians cannot be reconciled. And it does not say how many graduates joined any named firm; the asterisk states at least one, over three years, based on student reporting.

One note on the school's own archive. The 2023 employment report is still served at its file address while the index page no longer links to it. Anyone who lands on that file through a search engine reads a two-year-old vintage with no indication that a newer one exists. The address of the current report is in our source ledger below.