Info sake: Which MBA field has the best work-life balance?

I disagree with your off-handed assumption that IB is the worst. My personal view is that it would be worse to be away from home 4-5 days every week (definitely a part of life with some consulting firms). Beyond just the travel and the fact that you'll most often be in terrible cities where you have no friends or family and the best meal you can get is at an Applebee's, my friends in consulting tell me that some senior execs view them as on-the-job for the duration while they are on the road, doing things such forcing everyone to have dinner together or scheduling daily "team meetings" at 10PM or 7AM. Not cool. I also think that quality of life would be terrible if you took a job that forced you to be stationed someplace like Detroit or Cleveland or frankly lots of other places; this varies according to each individual, of course, but I'd be 100% happier walking out of an office each night at 10PM into the streets of SF or LA than at 6PM into the streets of Tulsa or Toledo or some place like that. Yuck. Finally, I think that people too-often give management rotational programs a free pass in terms of quality of life. Some of those programs force you to move every 6 months to a different city (Chevron has one like this, but it's pretty common) for some period of time, usually two years. To me, this type of deal is about as bad as it gets. You get to move somewhere where you have no choice and don't know anyone, and just as soon as you get to know people, it's time to move again - to some other place chosen for its business appeal (it's cheap for the company). If you're married, your spouse is gonna love finding a new job every six months.

But, the sacrifices involved in each of these cases varies according to the individual. True story, my best friend from college (he doesn't have an MBA) is now a senior manager with a big consulting firm (not Big 3), been there 8+ years. He just had a kid last year, and wanted to spend less time on the road, but stay on his career path. A few months ago he agreed to be relocated to Detroit from his beach home in LA because they had a position there that required a lot less travel (car companies and affiliates need a lot of help these days). You can't tell me that being on the road constantly doesn't suck worse than just about anything imaginable when people are willing to accept relocation to Detroit to cut down on travel. Seriously, I'd volunteer to work every weekend for a year to avoid getting relocated to Detroit.

Work-life balance is about more than hours. Jack Welch had a webcast (I bet it's available online somewhere) where he talks about work-life choices, rather than work-life balance. Actually I found a link to his article on career management, although originally I heard it in a webcast. According to Jack "hen you choose to work 35 hours a week in order to [more of your family], you’re also choosing to take yourself off the fast track to senior management." Read the rest here:

https://www.welchway.com/Management/Care ... oices.aspx

I think a better question to ask is what sacrifices will you have to make to participate in the different common MBA professions, and what benefits will you experience? Will it be long hours, grueling travel, low pay, slow career advancement, mind-numbing work, undesirable locales, and certainly lots of other things. Will you get high pay, a location popular with young professionals, fast-track career advancement, lot's of prestige/cred that you can take with you, or other nice benefits. You should take everything into account when you make your decision, not just hours - unless that's the only thing that you're concerned about (in which case you should probably take the civil-service exam rather than apply for an MBA).