There is a reason why they offer straight-out-of-college kids and KJD's 6 figure salaries, and it is not because consultants are philanthropists.
The hours might not look as high as biglaw (questionable), but when you factor in time spent on flight/transportation, it is probably worse.
MBB is a demanding profession no doubt. If you factor in pure time spent working, then it's probably not too different hours-wise from biglaw. However, as everyone on this forum will state, the problem with biglaw isn't the hours as much as unpredictability for the most part. Consulting hours are usually very predictable - you work pretty hard mon-thurs, fridays are easier, weekends are usually protected. Also, yeah travel is annoying, but it happens during normal-ish business hours... you fly out early on a Monday and return late on a Thursday, usually. It's not like this adds a ton of time to your week really, though it is for sure a nuisance.
To those disputing weekend hours, I didn't say you will NEVER have weekend work (hell even as a summer I had some). But it's super, super rare that you will do a significant (>5hrs) of weekend work, which is certainly not the case in biglaw. Yes, it happens, but only on certain projects and only with certain deadlines approaching. I can say with confidence, at least at my MBB, it is almost never the norm on the project and if it were, the project is being very poorly managed and would be flagged.
