Consultation Letter: Fill & Download for Free

I'm a nurse, not a doctor, but I my master's degree was focused on preparing me to be licensed as a nurse practitioner. (For the record: while I finished the degree, I am not a NP as I am not licensed. I teach nursing.) I have two stories about zebras.One wasn't me exactly, it was my preceptor. I examined a patient with hip pain and my preceptor noted that the patient also had a cough. The patient stated she'd had said cough for three months, and she also had some mild back pain. My preceptor decided to order a chest X-ray, which she said is a standard practice for a cough lasting longer than 6 weeks. She also ordered some hip and spine X-rays. Now, when it comes to coughs, the top three causes of cough are asthma, postnasal drip, and reflux. Your first thought when looking at hip and back pain is usually that it's a muscle or other soft tissue problem. Nope. Sadly, X-rays showed lung cancer with suspected spread to the spine.The other was one where I was actually quite proud of myself for figuring it out. A girl came in to the clinic with vaginal bleeding for several weeks. She'd had a baby a couple of months prior, got a Depo Provera (birth control) shot a few weeks before, and hadn't stopped bleeding since. My preceptor suspected that it was likely just down to the Depo shot as this is apparently a not uncommon side effect. I decided I wanted to order an ultrasound, and she said that was fine with her - she thought it a bit overkill, but if I wanted I could do one. Good thing I did! Turned out our girl had retained placenta - when her baby was born, a piece of the placenta didn't come out as it was supposed to do. It's a wonder she didn't hemorrhage prior - retained placenta is one of the causes of postpartum hemorrhage. Once we got the results, I wrote the consult letter for her to get a D&C to remove the placenta.

It’s definitely worth it to pursue both investment banking and management consulting while in college, rather than just one industry or the other.I was in this position as a student and I’m glad I interviewed for both banking and consulting jobs. Here’s why:It’s hard to tell the actual difference between the two industries while you’re in college. As a student, it’s easy to think that you know the difference between banking and consulting. After all, there are lots of resources out there on what these two jobs are like, and top schools have strong alumni networks in these industries that are receptive to student questions. But that’s all theoretical. It’s impossible to tell what it’s actually like in these jobs until you complete an internship or at least lean hard into the interview processes and really try to figure them out. So limiting yourself to either consulting or banking as a student likely means you’re making an uninformed or at least not-fully-informed choice.Banking and consulting interviews are both informative and good practice. It’s important to do a lot of interviews while you’re a student — most students haven’t done a lot of serious interviewing, and real-world practice is always helpful. Banking and consulting interviews are particularly good practice because a) they’re relatively involved and b) they give you a sense of the personalities in each industry and the business world. The reason I think you shouldn’t limit to either banking or consulting interviews is that you’ll want to be informed about the other. Suppose you try a consulting internship and hate it — you’ll be glad you also interviewed for banking internships so you have a view on that industry, what it takes to get a banking job, and whether you want to try for a full-time banking position.The positions are competitive, so it’s important to cast a wide net. These jobs are hard to get, and it’s not always obvious whether you have a good resume and background for consulting, banking, both, or neither. Given that you’ll likely have low visibility into your chances of getting one of these jobs, why not apply to both industries to test the waters and increase your “shots on goal?” It doesn’t hurt to apply to both, as long as you set aside enough time to prepare for both job application processes.Once you’ve applied to one investment bank and one consulting firm, it’s relatively easy to apply to many more. Many schools make it incredibly easy to apply to lots of banking and consulting jobs with minimal incremental effort. Once you’ve written one investment banking cover letter and one consulting letter, it’s easy to make slight tweaks and use those documents to apply to multiple firms. It’s just not that hard to apply to both industries and to apply to many jobs within each industry.Most importantly, it’s not like pursuing banking as an undergrad is that different from pursuing consulting. These industries don’t require a specific major or coursework; it’s not like you’re choosing between pursuing pre-med or engineering. The interview processes are different but you should have time to prepare for both. So pursuing both jobs shouldn’t be that much more effort than pursuing just one.

It is not wise to continue when you are under the impression and/or realize you are being mislead. If you are not sure, ask for clarification in fairness and transparency.