application form, future, risk - europe: need advice

i'll be starting a MSF at Bocconi university (europe - italy). my application forms for internship will be fowarded by late august and i've pretty much made my mind about which division i am going to target. fact is that the course seems to be heavily geared towards Investment banks but, although i am very passionate about finance, formatting ppt/xls docs all day for 90h per week while being screamed repeteadly isn't exactly my thing. still starting at a large bank in a front office role is definitely good for my CV and since to me the real appeal of finance is researching and coming up with an investment idea (i am well aware the investment decision is a different story which will be told by some PM) i'll be applying to:
-equity research divisions
-Asset Management divisions
-AM outside IBs

nonetheless since my university's brand is more powerful for IBs rather than AM and that the asset management and equity research divisions inside IBs are small and extremely competitive worlds i was wondering:

1) am i doing the right thing?

2) am i wasting the brand of my university (obviously the application process is up to me and to me alone so i'll be responsible of a success/failure)?

3) is targeting this small and competitive world a high risk-high reward sort of bet considering that i am in europe (so the L/S HF exit op is rather limited) and that i'd very much like to receive a fulltime offer inside these divisions?

thank you very much for you time

3 Comments
 

less risky? i thought it was quite the opposite... could you briefly explain why?

also less rewarding? considering the sort of tasks that i'd be doing in M&A/capital markets (excel/ppt all day while having limited time of actual modeling and business analysis), i think the tasks you have to perform in AM/ER are more rewarding (obviously at the beginning there will be some monkey business as well but to a lesser degree than IB) in terms of understanding a company and making recomendations (more at analyst level i know). so could you spend some words here as well?

 

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