I've been offered a place at both the above firms, and am struggling to decide. The offers are basically identical, and I got great vibes from both offices during the interview stages, so culture seems a good fit either way So my choice basically comes down to reputation and long term prospects. Can anyone offer some advice

FROM your question I understand youre a graduate. the answer is monitor hands down. They are considered one of the worlds best consulting companies, were you will be doing REAL strategy work - in competition at times, with Mckinsey et al. Capgemini is a tier 1 IT consultancy, tier 2 consultancy. Ranked number 36 on the charts - monitor is number 5. I hope this question was a joke.

Noob,May I ask how you applied to Monitor and howmany rounds the application process entailed? Iam interested in applying and would really appreciate any help/insigh u culd offer

I agree with popo. This is not even a fair fight. Forget about Crapgemini and plump for Monitor. Both in terms of brand and the type of work that you'll be doing. Congrats on Monitor.

It is extremely shocking to see people stupidly inferring that real consulting is only strategy consulting and if one is not doing strategy consulting, then one is inferior or not good enough.There are a lot of highly intelligent consultants that have no interest in doing strategy consulting. And there are a bunch of bandwagon-following fools that are striving to enter strategy consulting irrespective of the fact that their obvious skills would be better in other parts of the consulting industry.Noob, I think an intelligent person would first have asked you what type of consulting you want to do.If it is 1st Tier Strategy consulting, Monitor wins hands down.If is 1st Tier Change management, process consulting, Transformation consulting or IT consulting, Capgemini wins hands down.If you don't want to get down with the grind of implementation and you want a percieved intellectual prestige and do blue sky thinking, go to Monitor.If you want to experience a wide range of consulting type of work and want to do implementable strategy, go to Capgemini which has a Tier 2 strategy division.Cheers, and I do work for Capgemini.

I think that's what you call false conciousness.