Vantaggi
All of the benefits - work/life, healthcare, great team mates - are pretty much as described. Pay is comparable to competitors, particularly when you factor in that many projects only make you work ~50 hours a week. Good training opportunities, if you take advantage of them. If you do exemplary work consistently you will be recognized for it, and there are a lot of opportunities for internal mobility if you prove yourself.
Svantaggi
There are too many recent college graduates who have never had a "real job" and do not understand the realities of corporate America. For instance: - No one cares if you went to an Ivy, there are a lot of kids at the firm who went to your school. You are not special. - No one cares what your "interests, skills, or personal needs" are. If you want to be on a certain type of project, it won't be given to you. Do good work on your current stuff and use it to network your way into a project that you are interested in. - Consulting means doing some boring work, so you can get an opportunity to understand the client better and be able to bid on interesting work. Deal with the fact that when you are 22, you won't be advising CEO's on corporate strategy. - You are promoted when you meet the very-well-defined criteria for promotion, and anyone who claims the process is vague is misinformed. Years do not matter. When you are meeting the competencies or you are bringing in enough business (for Senior Associates), it is time to promote you. There are too many recent grads or people with ten years of experience but no business case who are upset that they aren't being promoted immediately. Deal. - If you are on client site, you should take responsibility to network and be more connected to your team back in McLean. The firm is doing a lot of work to make people feel more connected, but don't expect people to hand it to you.