MBB vs D.E. Shaw

Hi all!

Wanted to post regarding some advice as to what opportunity I should pursue for the upcoming summer. I'm a penultimate student at a target university in the UK studying a liberal arts/social sciences course.

I've been lucky enough to receive an offer for an MBB summer internship for 2018 (in London). When beginning my internship search, this was my dream gig - but, after receiving the offer, I found out that I had made it to the reference check stage (after final interviews) for a "generalist" internship at D.E Shaw in NYC. I had not heard much about D.E Shaw but from all my online research it seems like a great place to work and ridiculously selective in its hiring process. I also have been told by friends that D.E. Shaw's reference stage is quite substantive, and so am not yet sure whether I have an offer. However, if I do receive this offer, I would be really torn between the two opportunities.

It would be really great if I could get WSO's opinions on

1) The work/life balance for each job 2) The nature of the work I'll be doing at D.E Shaw (the website is a little vague, I know I'll be doing something corp.dev but I have little idea what this actually means on a day to day basis) 3) The exit opportunities (will the DES corp.dev job pigeonhole me into HF/finance work?) 4) The compensation

Thanks!