What should I do? (EU/UK)

Hi everyone, this is gonna be a long post. For context, I am a final year student (bachelors) at a top Dutch university, with ambitions in working in PE. I am at a crossroads in terms of (i) doing a gap year for internships and then a masters, or (ii) doing a masters directly, or perhaps (iii) taking the risk of not doing a masters.

I know that you can break into PE from both an IB path as well as an MBB Consulting path, and I am struggling to figure out which route to take, and which one will assist me best to be able to work at a good PE firm later on. 

Ill go over my experience and thinking. In terms of experience, I have an internship at a consulting firm and currently work part-time at a financial services firm. I have (most likely) secured a boutique consulting internship for January, however I already have an interview for an MBB this summer. I just need to get the offer at the MBB, but I have been fast-tracked skipping a few interviews and will be prepping hard for the few rounds ill have. 

Now, my question is, what do I do? Do I decide to gun it with the MBB, hope I get the summer and then the full-time, thus skipping masters and getting into PE from there? Do I take this January internship at this boutique consulting firm, or do I drop it and try to get some intern position at a small investment firm? I'm thinking there is no real point in doing this consulting internship if I already have an MBB interview coming up. Alternatively, do I start grinding masters, or is taking a gap year for internships a good idea and then maybe doing a masters after? 

If I take a masters, I would do a masters in Finance in London, to then break into IB and then take the IB path. Considering that, then maybe gunning for an internship in January as an intern at some investment firm might be a better idea?

If anyone has any recommendations or tips I would really love to hear it. Thanks! 

2 Comments
 

Sure you can make your way into PE via MBB, but BB IB's will always have a stronger pipeline into PE. If your ultimate goal is to break into PE I'd say go for investment banking. Take a look at French B Schools plus LBS,LSE,Imperial for Finance masters and filter them by post and pre-experience ones. As an example if you have 2+ years of experience you are not eligible for LBS MFA anymore, so you should go for their Mfin which requires experience just like an MBA.

 

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