Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE)

The Program at a Glance

​One innovative way Babson develops well-rounded managers with practical business experience is through the Management Consulting Field Experience (MCFE) Program. The MCFE program and Babson College strengthen and develop relationships with organizations by offering undergraduate students the opportunity to work with companies as consultants.

Since 1976, students have worked with local organizations in providing solutions to business challenges. Recent MCFE sponsors include: Puma, BayState Games, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Cradles to Crayons, The Nature Conservancy, Middlesex Savings Bank, The Boston Bruins Foundation, Emack & Bolio’s, and Clarkston Consulting, among many others.

How the Program Works

Students gain practical experience by acting as consultants and solving actual business problems. Students also develop marketable skills by learning the consulting process and working in growing fields. These skills are applicable to any career choice.

The Center for Career Development recruits sponsor companies and offers projects to students prior to the start of the semester. Interested students select their top three project choices on the MCFE application. Students can apply for a project either as a team or individually. (If they apply as a team, there is no guarantee that all will be accepted.) The students are then interviewed and their application with attached résumé is reviewed.

Projects are conducted during the fall and spring semesters for a period of approximately two and a half months. Fall projects begin in September (the application process for fall begins in March of previous spring semester) with final presentations in December, and the spring projects begin in January (the application process for spring begins in October of previous fall semester) with the final presentations in May.

Business leaders understand that a strictly functional approach to management education is no longer useful in today's complex, global, business environment because real business problems do not come in discrete, functional blocks. MCFE is a team-based academic program which allows students to transform the analytical skills they learn in the classroom into valuable, practical work experience. As First-Years and Sophomores, undergraduate coursework is structured to develop Babson's core competencies:

·         Leadership and Teamwork

·         Entrepreneurial and Creative Thinking

·         Critical and Integrative Thinking

·         Ethics and Social Responsibility

·         Global and Multicultural Perspectives

·         Rhetoric

·         Quantitative Analysis

The MCFE Program gives students the opportunity to further develop these competencies by allowing students to see themselves in a real-world environment.

Some of our MCFE projects take place at nonprofit organizations. By helping a nonprofit company reach its goals, the students also give back to the community and gain valuable insight on how nonprofit organizations take on social responsibility. MCFE projects are team-based, therefore students learn the necessity of working together to achieve the best results. Furthermore, the team setting gives students the chance to refine interpersonal and communication skills by learning how to give constructive feedback to group members and how to interact professionally with the client. MCFE provides students with first-hand experience which will put them steps ahead in the competitive business world.

The MCFE team consists of three to five students and a project leader. Students are selected for teams based on academic performance, willingness to work as a team member, and individual strengths relative to the project, as well as, initiative, leadership, responsibility, and reliability.

All students will meet with a speech consultant and will be trained in the fields of project management and report writing. At the conclusion of the project, the MCFE team’s findings and recommendations are presented to the MCFE sponsor company in a detailed, written report and oral presentation.

A Project Leader (an MBA student) supports each MCFE team. Management selection takes into consideration the major project issues and the project manager’s individual experience. During the course of the project, the MBA student provides technical support and guidance to the student team and determines the students’ grades based on quality of meetings, feedback, deliverables, final report, and presentation.

During the course of the project, the sponsor interacts with the team on an as-needed basis and provides all necessary information to team members on request. Furthermore, the sponsor supervises the project and facilitates inter-company communication.