Courtesy of Elizabeth Lee

I’ll admit I was slightly skeptical when I first sat down with Jack Fletcher ’26, one of the two leaders of Bowdoin Consulting Group. The goal of this column is to spotlight different clubs around campus, but I assumed a consulting club would be hard to “discover.” The club is typically overflowing; in the meetings following Sophomore Bootcamp, there weren’t enough chairs for everyone. Surely, I thought, every overzealous aspiring consultant had already joined and was meticulously plotting how to leverage membership into a future job offer.

Within minutes of our conversation, though, it became clear that Bowdoin Consulting Group is less of a pre-professional pit stop and more of a community built around helping students navigate a notoriously daunting process.

Fletcher and Julie Janssen ’26 took over the club as leaders last year with the goal of reshaping it into something more structured and accessible. When they joined as sophomores, meetings were held monthly and functioned more like casual office hours.

“Everyone’s doing their own thing, and then we would just chat for a minute,” Fletcher said.

Since stepping into leadership, the pair has worked closely with Career Exploration and Development and expanded the club’s programming. Now, they meet twice a week—Mondays and Wednesdays from 8 to 9 p.m.—with lesson plans and a curriculum designed to make even the most consulting-averse student feel marginally capable.

Why dedicate that much time?

“We like to say that we have been helped by a lot of people throughout the years,” Fletcher said. “To really be successful, you rely on a lot of people to get you there, and we want to pay that success forward to other people.”

That ethos was immediately apparent when I attended their meeting on Wednesday. The room hummed with casual conversation before everyone settled in and the slideshow began. All of the leaders—each of whom will be working as consultants after graduating—walked us through their own recruiting experiences. We covered common case interview mistakes (you want to be practiced, but not overly so, or you’ll sound mechanical), how to structure a strong case opening and even how to be a good mock interviewer. Previous sessions have included “Consulting ABCs,” “Case Openings and Frameworks,” “Market Sizing” and “Introduction to Networking.”

After the presentation portion, we broke into groups of three to practice presenting cases aloud before being asked to present a case in front of the entire group to practice public speaking, an essential skill for consultants. As terrifying as the experience was and as uninspiring as my presentation may have been, it was ultimately rewarding to simply try. We have a tendency to fear industries often perceived as exclusive and elitist like consulting. But with guidance from the leaders—who circulated, offered feedback and gently redirected us when we veered off course—we figured it out. In a way, it was empowering to realize that I, and consequently anyone, could do this.

For context: I have never taken an economics class. I entered college swearing I would never take a math course, then begrudgingly enrolled in an introductory statistics course to fulfill a requirement and promptly forgot everything I learned. And yet, I left the meeting feeling strangely confident—like I could maybe survive a mock case interview, or at the very least cheer someone else through theirs. (Given the seemingly infinite number of Bowdoin students interested in consulting, I will not be advertising these services publicly.)

What surprised me most was how intentionally the club has built infrastructure outside of meetings. There’s a partnership program that pairs members for mock interviews. Their website  houses casebooks and curated prep materials. They have plans to host a Bowdoin alum working as a consultant at Bain and Company in March.

The organization extends beyond the hour-long slideshow into a network of shared resources and mutual accountability.

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend attending if you have zero interest in consulting. But if the industry feels opaque, hypercompetitive or reserved for a certain personality type, Bowdoin Consulting Group complicates that assumption. The room didn’t feel cutthroat. It felt collaborative.

Consulting may still intimidate me. But thanks to Fletcher, Janssen and a surprisingly patient trio of peers, it no longer feels impenetrable. I won’t promise I’m ready to estimate global paperclip demand on command—but I can now pitch plans to the president of the Salt Lake City International Airport. And I’d bet that if I go back next week, I could help SLS Oil and Gas Services rebuild their Mumbai office.