Cornerstone Research Reviews

Pros

The people at Cornerstone treat each other uncommonly well, are extraordinarily bright, and work very hard. The cases that I've worked on (securities, retirement plans, merger antitrust) have all been interesting, and the level of technical skills used in the job is satisfying for someone who likes coding in R or Stata (though it can be avoided if you don't like that). I've worked on multiple front-page WSJ cases, but I didn't get to tell anyone about it because of confidentiality. Working on multiple cases at once can be stressful, but is good for varied experiences. The staffing system works well for a small firm, and I was able to consistently get on cases I was most interested in. The pay is pretty good for the number of hours that you work relative to management consulting and finance, and scales well at the analyst level past the first year. For people who are like me coming out of undergrad, I can't recommend it highly enough. From my perspective, Cornerstone has the best culture, highest pay, and most high-profile cases of any economic consulting firm. Exit opportunities are excellent and cover a wide range of options, including tech, data analytics roles, law school, econ PhD programs, and (most commonly) MBA programs. It didn't close any doors for me out of undergrad, which was important as my long-term interests weren't clear when I graduated.

Advice to Management

-Pay analysts 20% more: most of them can get jobs in tech that are less econ-focused (boo) and have fewer hours (yay)
-Work to build consistent practices firm-wide regarding data management (Git, R). Part of the practice areas are using them and other parts aren't, but the knowledge and familiarity among analysts should be uniform.

Pros

Good and smart people, generally interesting and challenging work, high quality company

Pros

*some interesting cases and good managers
*coworkers are generally good natured and culture is collegial
*work with very smart people: analysts, colleagues, professors, lawyers from big law firms
*get to take leadership of cases very soon
*pay is very competitive to the consulting industry , expect $170K (base) to start for associate and if you stay and make it to first year of Principal (generally 7 years) on average expect to make $450K (including bonus). Base pay doesn't increase very much from Associate to Principal but the normal bonus % will increase from 15% of base pay to 50% of base pay.
*good benefits and flexibility to work from home as needed
*very little travel required

Pros

Smart coworkers, great analyst pool.

Advice to Management

Need to have better work life balance.

Pros

Great people and good out-of-college experience.

Pros

The people are very intelligent and create a bridge between academia and business.

Pros

Great culture
Incredibly intelligent, humble coworkers

Advice to Management

make sure the growth is managed such that analyst culture is preserved

Pros

-Great pay and benefits
-Depending on your advocates, opportunities for growth and progression
-Mid-size allows for lots of room to interact with individuals at all levels
-Financially stable organization that rewards hard work

Advice to Management

-You have smart people here who want to help the company grow...listen to them; you're not always the smartest people in the room.
-You've hired very smart opertaions staff in recent years and they know what they are doing, so let them do what they know how to do. Again you're not always the smartest people in the room.

Pros

An excellent firm to work for with a friendly atmosphere, commitment to its employees and quality of work.

Pros

*Great compensation and benefits
*Opportunity to work with smart, fun, dedicated teams
*Interesting work
*Senior people are very engaged and approachable
*Lots of room for growth and advancement

Advice to Management

Don't overthink decisions.