Is Consulting really worth much more than a corporate role?

What year are you? If you're a sophomore F500 FLDP would be an incredible internship. If you're a junior it'd be good. IMO it's much more attainable to get interviews for FT than internships for consulting.

> What I'm really looking for down the road is a good pay, interesting work, and a good work life balance, like 5 years down the road. I'm down to grind it for the first few years though if it will help me grow/learn a lot more.

Depends on what you mean by interesting work. If you don't know what is interesting to you yet, consulting could be preferable because you'd have higher future flexibility with your career.

> What I'm trying to answer is if Consulting is worth it to forgo something like a top FLDP because I will grow more from it?

1. Not all consulting is equal. Would I forsake FLDP for MBB/T2? Yes unless you're extremely and specifically interested in the work that the program places into. For big4/Accenture? They don't really have much generalist consulting at Big4, so it depends on if you're interesting in the field you're specifically consulting within (e.g. Financial Services, Tech).

> I'd most likely break into a tier 2 consulting like MC at Accenture or Big4(at a non-target state uni) or a boutique. MBB or other top tier are probably a reach.

1. Not necessarily true - I went to a large state non-target and got interviews with plenty of top firms, for many as the first person they've interviewed in a long time. You just have to network.
2. At Accenture/Big4 you most likely won't be doing 'strategy consulting' as much as implementation work. This is still good work many people like. This is worth considering because plenty of people at my university had the idea of consulting as doing high level strategy work, got jobs doing tech consulting, and became unhappy over time.
3. General terminology so you can follow forum discussions better - MBB is its own tier, T2 generally refers to OW/LEK/ATK and Strategy&/Deloitte S&O/EY-Parthenon. The last 3 are technically big4 but they're usually referred to in the T2 category vs Big4 (they do more strategy and usually have totally different recruitment pipelines). Big4 is the rest of Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC. Accenture is often considered similarly to Big4 but isn't.