I've never worked in consulting, but, so far as I know, the big, MBB consulting firms tend to incorporate most of the advised measures in tokenadult's post when evaluating potential employees. These measures include GMAT cut-offs, GPA cut-offs, very lengthy interviews that incorporate questions like the one discussed here, and they ultimately prefer to hire people who have previously interned with them, and what better work-sample test is there than an internship?

That sounds like a pretty solid vetting process to me, yet there's a lot of pessimism surrounding big-name consulting. I'd like to hear from anyone who's worked there or gone through this process to hear why they ultimately get such a bad rep.