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I'm still wondering if "consulting" is shorthand for:

"I don't have a (airquotes) 'job,' but people will SURELY want to pay me money for my opinions anyway."

Which might well explain why so few of the graduates seem to think that they'll be doing "consulting" long term, and so many think that it's a short-term answer.

The successful consultants that I know in the (actual) working world seem to have done things the other way around; building connections over a period of time in industry before striking out as freelancers. Because in general terms, people pay you better if you have a series of work-connections with people who already know that you're competent.

Consultant must really mean "temporary employee" as consulting is what you do after a decent length successful career when you actually know things as opposed to theory.

You appear to unfamiliar with how management consulting firms such as McKinsey and Bain work. They hire graduating seniors from elite schools and have an up-or-out system where most consultants are asked to leave after after a few years. Since the elite consulting firms are prestigious, having their names on your resume help you get into business school and to find other jobs.

Because young employees command smaller salaries, are far less likely to consume medical benefits, and are more tolerant of poor management.

No.

It's pretty much the BigLaw system for elite school undergrads.

It's an insane inhuman system for the simple reason that it's an insane inhuman system.

Dysfunction is embedded into its organizational DNA.

This.

Management consulting can be a wonderful, engaging career, but there is a lot of compensatory switching going on between personal and professional lives. As in, you fail in your personal life, so you throw yourself into your career 16 hours per day, 6.5 days per week instead of the 13-14 hours you were already working.

I was in strategy consulting for one of the major firms until I was 8.5mos pregnant with DS. It's exhilarating, but it leaves no room for a life outside work, let alone parenting. Every partner I know has a stay-at-home spouse or is divorced, and my sample size is, shall we say, statistically robust. It's great when you're in your early to mid 20s and are single or, as I've seen before, you hate your spouse so much that the hours are worth it, and you don't want to be bled dry on alimony.

Bostonian hit the nail on the head. MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) open doors everywhere. A 3-year stint as a post-MBA consultant at one of these firms can land you in a senior officer role anywhere. Doubly so if you worked in private equity. It's fast-paced, offers years of conventional experience in one, and is both intellectually and politically challenging when done right.

All that said, it's got nothing on parenting an HG/+ child full-time.

Finance is definitely a different world. I see that. Puffin and Dude are more familiar with "consulting" as I know it in STEM, I see.

It's not finance.

In fact, prior to finance, I'm pretty sure that it was a primary track for the children of the elite who sought professional success.

It may become more important again as we enter the sunset days of STEM as a viable career option for ambitious people.

In IT, "consulting" just means "I don't work permanently for the organization I'm currently working for." In some situations, it's just white-collar jargon for "temp agency." In other situations, you're paying for well-developed and/or specialized expertise. It depends on the firm, mostly.

And sometimes you think you're hiring well-developed, specialized expertise from a highly-reputable company, only to find out the person hasn't got a clue.

Sometimes you even find that one of the many consultants working on a major project submitted a timesheet for 21 full work days, in a month with only 20 work days, and the logs indicate he never logged on.