Q&A: Target to megafund Straight out of college

Hey WSO, I'm posting this in a new account because i want to maintain my privacy but give back to the community. Happy to take questions. My story: I went to a target school and wanted to be an engineer at first. All my friends started to drool over investment banking internships so I got lured into finance as well by my sophomore year. Sophomore and junior summer, I worked at a real estate private equity firm and then a top tiered hedge fund. I happened to luck into the sophomore summer internship and it was a blast learning about basic investing principals and reading the books the partners recommended. They happened to be value investing books, which made a lot of sense given the cash and tangible nature of real estate PE. Junior summer, I recruited for IBD, S&T, ER, and consulting. However, I failed at banking, ER, and consulting interviews because I guess I couldn't convey my passion for those fields. One interviewer actually told me to go "follow your passion and work on the buyside." I applied out of fear of not having an internship and applied because of herd mentality. In the end, I was choosing between a BB S&T rotation and a HF. The decision was particularly difficult because all of my peers told me that it was important to have BB on your resume for "pedigree" or "training" or whatever. Ultimately, I chose a credit hedge fund ($2 billion or so) where I liked the people and was impressed by their strategies. For some reason or another, I was put into structured credit, which I knew nothing about. I guess it was probably because I mentioned that I liked residential real estate. The summer wasn't too busy in terms of deals that we participated in but I had to furiously read primers on CLOs, CDOs, RMBS, specialty finance, and general credit primers provided by our friendly BB brokers. I think I even asked a friend at a BB structuring group for his training material. In the end, I did not receive a return offer and was crushed because I thought a return offer was crucial for FT recruiting. While bulge brackets did not come onto campus for FT, I was shocked by the amount of quality buyside shops that recruited. In the end, armed with a recommendation from my supervisors, I was able to secure a FT position at a top manager in a long short equities role. WSO was a tremendous resource for me while I recruited so I hope to be able to answer some questions for all my fellow students hoping to break into finance. Particularly, I hope I can dispel the myth that it is impossible to break into a top HF/PE shop straight out of college because quite a few top buyside shops have reached a critical mass where they can host & train sizable analyst classes.