I think many of the people using this website need to recognise that not everyone wishes to be a consultant and remain a consultant for the rest of their lives. One of the very attractive attributes of the profession is the variety of skills that it allows you to pick up which are skills that can be used in almost every other industry. Many people choose consultancy as a stepping stone to a good business school so they can do an MBA to learn about business with future aspirations of running their own businesses. In fact there are not a great deal of people who ever remain with the same consultancy. I started off at acn, hoping to learn about business, to eventually own a business. So then I did an MBA at INSEAD, but I found myself enjoying consultancy so much that I stayed in the industry and moved to Bain. So although to a committed consultant, the act of enquiring about sponsorships for MBAs (in attempt to move on from consulting) may seem like freeloading, every decision one makes in ones life is a means to an end. So if someone asks for advice about something, give them the benefit of the doubt about what their future aspirations may be, and answer the question to help them, as supposed to presuming that they want something for nothing.
