Consulting and accountancy apprenticeships.
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At an accountancy firm the school-leaver route is built around a professional qualification rather than a degree. The typical shape is a Level 7 accountancy or taxation apprenticeship that carries the ACA, ACCA or CTA exams inside the job, so a trainee who joins at eighteen sits the same papers as a graduate trainee and is usually chartered at about the same age the graduate is. Some programmes start with a Level 4 accounting technician qualification and step up.

A few firms bolt a degree on as well. PwC's Flying Start is the best known, pairing the ACA route with a degree from a partner university, and it is the reason the label on this tab says degree apprenticeship even though most rows here award a qualification rather than a degree. Read what each programme ends in before comparing them, because a trainee with the ACA and no degree and a trainee with both are on the same track inside the firm.

The Big Four run a national intake with one window. The firms below them, and there are a dozen on this tab, tend to recruit into named offices with a small number of seats each, and a location closes when it fills rather than on a published date. That is why several rows here carry an opening date and no closing date, and why a row that reads Open can stop taking applications in the city you wanted while the posting stays live elsewhere.

The practical consequence is to apply in the first weeks after a firm opens rather than working back from a deadline that may not exist. For the firms that do publish a national closing date, the row carries it. The consulting graduate calendar, which these firms run in the same months, is on consulting graduate tracker.

The Big Four screen school leavers with the same early-careers assessment they use for graduates, and at three of the four it is a strengths and game-based format from a single vendor rather than a traditional numerical and verbal test. That changes what preparation means. There is no maths to revise; the assessment reads how you respond to situations and how you behave under a clock, and the honest preparation is to understand the format and take it rested.

Mid-tier firms vary more. Many still run a short numerical and verbal test, then a recorded video interview and an assessment day at the office you applied to, where the partner interview carries most of the weight. A school leaver is not expected to talk about audit. They are expected to explain why they chose the qualification over university, in their own terms, and to have an answer to why this firm and this office that could not be pasted onto the next one.

Outside accountancy, the consulting firms on this tracker that take school leavers are few, and they tend to run a Level 6 degree apprenticeship in business or technology rather than a professional-services qualification. Those programmes are closer in shape to the bank route described on finance apprenticeship tracker: a degree from a partner university, a three to four year term, and a screen that leans on UCAS points and an assessment centre. They also tend to open later in the autumn than the accountancy intake, so watch the row rather than assuming the Big Four dates apply.