Banking is great... but is it that great?

I've done both. What you have to separate is the:

* on-paper trade-offs between each (which are very well known at this point, though I'll summarize them again)

* and the more important question, which is your personality type and your interests.

Banking and consulting recruit at the same places, but attract different personality types/working styles, and this is true both for those who just want the stamp on their resume then gtfo, as well as those who drink the Koolaid and stick around for a while.

Tradeoffs: 

Money: IB wins at every stage of the game (it's not even close) except for Partner/MD, where consulting finally catches up.

Hours: IB usually works more sheer number of hours, but there's plenty of down time. Consulting hours are actual work the whole time. I say usually because consulting varies a lot more by office, client/industry, project type, etc.

Culture: different strokes for different folks. In my experience, the average banker is much more of an asshole/douche than the average consultant, but the standard deviation is much lower. The average consultant, conversely, is much friendlier and easier to get along with, but the douchebags in consulting are orders of magnitude shittier than the average banking douche.

Skills: there is one core difference: banking clearly gives you a skill (financial modeling), whereas in consulting, it is the act of being hired (acing the case interviews) that signals your talent. Otherwise, both give you solid exposure to Excel, Powerpoint, working through email, and managing stakeholders. The way you use these tools will differ. In banking, you use Excel primarily for financial statement modeling. Some banks use templates; this hinders your skill acquisition. In others, you become adept at building three-statement models that flow through, from scratch. This is valuable. Consulting will have you build models if you work on a DD, but otherwise, consulting Excel is much more about putting together ad hoc analyses, and/or wrapping messy corporate data neatly into a bow (lots of index(match), sumifs, etc).

Outside finance, this is the more valuable skill to have, but within finance, consultants always have to play catchup to bankers for buyside recruiting. The divergence is wider for the other tools. In consulting, you cannot express a thought without putting it in a slide. Tree that fell but no one heard; work was done but no slide was made. Slides are basically the proof that work has been done. To be clear - consulting is meeting-heavy, and in meetings, you go over slides: if you cannot, on a daily basis, pump out slides that reflect the client's priorities, you will struggle. In banking, email takes precedence over meetings. The art form of writing crisp and soulless emails that deflect work onto the mid/back office and make them work for you is vastly underrrated in banking. As a junior in banking, your stakeholders are internal (your stressed out VP, your stressed out MD, the all-important support staff like EAs, the people in the print room, etc) whereas in consulting, it's client-driven from day one (constant client exposure, and senior consultants care what the clients have to say about you - they're the ones who get yelled at if a client dislikes you), but if your firm has a team that makes slides look pretty for you, you definitely want them on your side.

Your own personality:

Your interests: if you're naturally attracted to markets, or to deals, or to debt/equity ratios, then you're going to enjoy IBD more. Plenty of consultants go through their 2-year stints without ever touching these topics. If you're more interested in how the pie is made rather than how it's sliced, consulting is probably going to satisfy you more. Or in other words, if your interest is how to grow EBITDA, choose consulting. If your interest is what to do with EBITDA, choose banking.

Long term or short term: if you're absolutely sure you just want to fatten the bank account quickly and get out ASAP, IBD is the better bet. For one, you're paid more. And the expected value is higher: to get paid, you just need to work at one of the dozen or so BB+EB firms out there. Once in, it's hard to fuck up, so just get the seat. Even if the total number of seats recruited for at your school is the same across both industries, in IBD they're divided across those dozen firms, and all you need is one offer, to get that prestigious stamp on your resume. That's 12 chances to meet people and get them to like you. Tons of seats at MBB, but you only get three attempts to seduce an organization.

That said, if you want to gtfo of IBD because you hate finance itself, then you're better served from consulting. From IBD, your main skillset will be financial monkeywork, and so will your exit. From consulting, you can bullshit your way through more functions/industries. For the long-term, banking is the better bet. While it is true that at the senior levels, consulting has caught up in pay, it just so happens that in banking, as you get more senior, your hours improve. In consulting, they actually get worse. You'll spend more time at home as a banking MD than a consulting partner. That said, if you hate your spouse/family, then by all means, be a consulting partner.

Process vs problem-solving: this one is a big deal, because it's about the way of working. At its very core, investment banking is about running a process. The process may be more or less stressful at varying stages, and sometimes might even require actual skill, but it's still just a process. Some folks thrive at this, others would rather drink formaldehyde. Consulting has processes too, but you're more likely designing them (hint: you don't implement much in consulting). Usually, shit lands on your desk, for which there isn't an immediately obvious answer. Figure it out. You might get a pat on the back for it, or get yelled at, but you have to deal w/these curveballs on a daily basis. 

Money or making shit look pretty: what matters to you? In both jobs, there will be moments where you wonder why the hell you're wasting away your youth to put up with this nonsense. Trust me, both professions place you in absurd situations (you take a step back and realize it's a circus). In banking, the answer (to why you're tolerating this crap) is money. In consulting, it's because you've convinced yourself that you provide clients your brainpower, and brainpower can only be expressed through pretty slides; making the slides pretty means you're adding value. There isn't a right answer, because the way you price your own happiness isn't universal. But it helps if you know which one works better for you.

My $0.02:

• I found watching paint dry more exciting than banking, but I still swallowed it for years. The money was just too good, and my hours weren't bad (my specific group etc). I was at a bulge bracket, which impressed people outside my crowd (Tinder/Hinge, folks at regular corporates, etc) much more than those in my crowd  (other bankers, other consultants, other MBAs etc). 
• I exited consulting really quickly. Consulting was more intense, worse-remunerated, more psychotic. Was at an MBB. The prestige factor was a force to be reckoned with, just as long as you were speaking to people in business, about work, etc. Outside of work, no one cares. They haven't heard of consulting. They don't care about your frequent flyer miles. You stay up late making slides, how cool can it be? Anyhow, a neat exit option came by much sooner than anticipated, and I was definitely in a "life's too short" state of mind, so I ran with it. 
• My fiancée, my parents, my childhood friends, etc know the difference between both jobs, but don't care; what matters is they see me a lot more often now that I moved on, and we talk about real things, not work. People who care about you just want to see you happy, and not lying in the gutter somewhere. 
• As an ex-banker and ex-consultant, I "use" my consulting skills more often. But it's sometimes also very convenient to be an ex-banker. You casually insert hookers and cocaine into conversation, and people always find it funny (try doing that as a software developer). 
• If you're really in doubt, recruit for a banking summer internship your junior year. If you like it, stick with it. If you don't, recruit for consulting your senior year. 
• Don't overthink this shit. Just get a job you won't hate, won't make you hate yourself, and pays you reasonably well for learning something transferable.