>>One question about the consulting gig - is it common for management consultants to be fresh out of college? And what advice will you impart?>>

Firms spend plenty training kids just out of school and they are highly supervised (I guess-except in the WorldCom case). The best one's stay with the firm, and the rest are hired away by clients.
And frankly, sometimes business owners are so set in their ways, they can't see the forest from the trees. I know, on one of my first jobs when I was a snot just out of school, I noticed a client had consistently taken $200K in bad debt losses yearly. Without telling my supervisor I forced my way in to see the President of the Company, told her she was nuts for not taking credit cards to cut her losses. So, she let me set up the program, and the next year her bad debt losses were under $10K. And then, I got in trouble because she screamed at my boss for not suggesting it 5 years ago.