Deciding between two funds. help?

Hello,

I am trying to decide between 2 hedge fund offers (only have 1 yet, but likely to get both very soon) and would really appreciate your help. I graduated from a top university in 2009 and for some reason (stupidly) chose to do economics consulting at a well-known econ consulting firm over banking for the past year. I've worked on a number of valuation cases and decided to try to get into the fund business. Basically I want a place where I can learn a lot but is also big-name enough that I can get into b-school, pursue other opportunities...etc. Both are entry-level positions.

Fund #1 is a pretty well-known legit distressed debt fund with approximately $2.5bn AUM. The official position title is called research assistant, and according to folks there I will basically be helping out the team of investment analysts. The fund also utilizes an activist-based approach and tries to litigate during bankruptcy court. Basically I think it is a great opportunity, but given the title of "research assistant" I'm not positive what the track is. The position is relatively new so I don't know whether they would try to groom me into an eventual analyst or whether I am going to be stuck doing mundane research whenever an analysts needs it.

Fund #2 is a very small fund, and unfortunately I am not positive how big their portfolio is (I'm guessing around $500 million). It is kind of strange because they are not open to outside investors but manage the portfolio of a group of rich European families. Basically besides back-office and traders there are only 2 or 3 investment professionals in the entire team. They come from good backgrounds but it's such a small place. In addition they invest across asset-classes and are generalists. In the past year they have invested in equities, currency, investment grade, real estate, and even managers. It seems like a fairly unstructured environment so I'm a bit worry how much analysis I'm going to learn. Basically if their investment decision is just to pull comps from Bloomberg and make a decision on a whim, I doubt I'll be learning much. I'm also worried about being a generalist at a fund - should red lights be flashing? I'm worried that I'm going to know a little about everything but not learn enough about a specific asset-class or industry. The position title is investment analyst and it seems like I could make some great contributions to the firm. In addition they were talking about some day perhaps opening the fund to outside investors (instead of the only investing the assets of these 6 or 7 European families).

So, basically I am a bit torn between the two. I think after 3 or 4 years I may go on to b-school, but I want to break into the industry before my MBA and get some useful experience.

If anyone has any comments or advice I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!