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Do you have an offer from both?
If PE is your goal, you should absolutely go with GTCR and avoid IB. GTCR is a great fund and dream exit opp for many people. You will learn a ton going into PE directly (more practical investment skills versus the IB analyst routine), and you will avoid the gamble of PE recruiting
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"and you will avoid the gamble of PE recruiting"
Is this even true though? All of the PE Analyst programs are either new or so small that you really can't tell what a typical career progression looks like. There are a lot of great selling points about the PE path, but higher certainty of outcome is not one of them.
Like another poster said, I would due some serious due diligence with GTCR to find out: what the training pipeline looks like, what exactly you'll be working on, how you'll be staffed within teams, how you'll build an equal or better skillset of an incoming PE associate, etc.
I didn't even know GTCR had an analyst program, but I'd choose Evercore marginally over GTCR with regards to exits, learning, geography, and pay. GTCR is amazing however.
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I would do the GTCR analyst program.
If you want to do PE in the future: the experience will be more relevant and make it much easier to become an associate there or elsewhere.
If you want to go to business school: you'll have a more unique profile.
If you want to go to a hedge fund: neither is perfect, but at least you'd be an investor at a fund.
Chicago is not exactly a wasteland - I wouldn't worry about fun vs NYC. Likewise, face-to-face meetings will be tougher for recruiting in NYC, but far from impossible (especially if you're already succeeding in an analyst program at GTCR). It's also worth pointing out that you may not need to bother recruiting at all since you'd already be at a great fund.
No idea as to pay differentials, but unless you never want to go to the buy-side it seems likely that you'd get much better experience at GTCR, which is very valuable early on.
Regardless of what you pick, congratulations on an excellent pair of offers. Tough to go far wrong with either.
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