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I want to be brutally honest with you. Your question is so absurdly broad and vague that no one can give a reasonable answer to this. There are so many variables at play here.
First this is going to vary by firm and team. Second, how are you weighing all these factors / what are your preferences? For some people, network oops are more important than COL and what you find interesting others might not.
If I was forced to answer, I would say NYC and SF are known as the T1 (aka most competitive / prestigious cities). These cities will have (generally speaking not always the case) the best networking opps and highest quality team members with the trade off of HCOL. If you want better COL you gotta make sacrifices when it comes to networking etc and go to a smaller city.
Just to illustrate how weird all of this is. In the consulting world, LA is considered a T2/T3 city, but it’s T1 for most other industries and the only other official T1 city in the US besides NYC in the traditional sense (city >10M people).
Thank you for your brutal honesty! This was essentially a preamble to building out a tool that would create the different factors that go into making a decision.
Personally, I’m at the stage of my life where I’m considering whether it’s worth it to slug it out at one of the top consulting firms for 2 years to build the network/credibility OR use my existing network/startup success to go independent as a consultant right from the start of my post-MBA career.
I’m 30+ with 3 kids under 5 so If I feel like I have to go to a firm first I’d rather go somewhere where COL isn’t high, life is easier for the family etc while I slug it out for 2 years.
But that’s just my personal situation. I still think a tool that puts all these factors into account could be extremely helpful for those trying to make a decision.