Career Advice needed for entry-level role M&A

Hello fellow monkeys,

I am having some trouble making a decision regarding my career (AN1) and would greatly appreciate your help / opinion.

Let me lay out the facts:

• I am a 24 year old Finance grad in Europe
• Went to a target for undergrad and semi-target for grad school (decent marks, 3.5 for undergrad and 4.0 for grad if translated)
• Have roughly 9 months experience in Private Equity and 6 months in M&A altogether. M&A internships were at a boutique and a MM shop
• Have applied to tons of MM and EB roles and so far have only been declined (mostly made it past any modelling test as my technicals are probably my biggest strength). I am aware that I am no BB material evidently
• So far the only full time position I have been offered is the equivalent of an AN1 at one of the Big4. Besides the poor salary, my ego would take a massive hit especially coming from a MM shop and having worked on deals of greater ticket size. Also you would have no control which group you are placed into so you might be unlucky and end up in automatives. In this case I would need an SSRI prescription before the start
• My alternative would be to continue my interview process for internships (think Blair/Baird/HL) and hope to convert (which is a gamble considering the current hiring environment)
• Ultimate my goal would be a good MM or EB at least until the Associate level

Hopefully this description was concise enough to give you an overview of my situation.

Frankly, I am at a loss here. My concern is that I pidgeonhole myself too much when accepting the full-time position in terms of an exit and being branded the guy from Big4 forever.

Again, many thanks to everybody who weighs in on this!