Buyside Sophomore Internship Advice (Couple of Q's)

I'm struggling to figure out how to go through the internship application process as a sophomore for a couple of reasons. Soph at a target btw.

1. Internship application dates are varied. Last year, as a freshman, I saw stuff on my career portal In April about 10b+ PE fund internships. Waiting that late however for a brand-name PE internship seems like quite a big risk. There's many smaller PE programs and stuff that are already recruiting. Anyone else have advice on how to manage my risk and expectations and apply for the right position, but not too early?

2. I want to try to get a buyside internship in, but I'm not sure what to go for. Generally, the kids who land a brand-name PE internship sophomore year (Think top MM, UMM, or MF) are the same ones who land MF PE for junior summer. However, I'm not sure how much of this is self-selection and more kids just going into PE in general. I know PE is regarded as relatively (compared to HF) stable, and you can get really good brand-name seats out of undergrad, which is why I would like to ideally target it for junior summer and an analyst role. However, I'm more interested in the HF side long-term. Would it be bad for me to intern at a $10B or $20B Long-Only AM/HF my sophomore year in a buy-side ER-type position, or even perhaps a credit fund or L/S fund with a couple billion dollars AUM? Would UMM/MF PE look favorably upon something like this for junior summer or would I be SOL there (or at least placed behind candidates who went to a brand-name PE firm instead). Also, I would assume top EB and BB have a preference for kids who interned at PE firms over kids who interned in AM/HF? Thoughts?

I understand that I'm talking about very different industries but as a sophomore, I'm still not sure what I want exactly and I think that I still have a lot of optionality at this stage, because its a sophomore internship after all. Please let me know your opinions and if you think I'm wrong.