Is Early Start Worth it in London?

Do the off-cycle. It will benefit your profile if you decide to recruit buyside. Furthermore, staffers really appreciate what you can do unweighted by your past experience from my experience, in a best case scenario you’re a well perceived analyst if your comp is a 21 year old who just did a summer.

The argument for joining early is ‘hitting the ground running’ and ‘getting a headstart’, but first impressions are everything and I would suggest hitting the desk relatively polished and letting your off-cycle be your training ground so you can really start with your best foot forward in your full-time role.

You’re in a wonderful position. I’d go for the buyside internship.

I’d also do the OC in this case. It’s good to have some buyside experience, this will count a lot later on on buyside interviews. Early start isn’t beneficial really from a promotion / pay perspective but could be good if you decide to stay with the firm long term as you’d be a top performer more easily as you’d have a 6 month head start compared to your class. In my firm, early starters usually rank the highest.

People telling you to start in January are smoking something. You'll never get that time back. 

Do the OC

OC 100%. Early start is a scam, the bank just wants bodies so they are trying to make you start earlier. The less time you spend as an analyst the better

Unless you need the money for whatever reason; I’d go travel for 6 months. Very marginal additional work experience won’t make a difference to your profile in 1-2 years when you try to exit.