del

IB

I disagree, I think the real estate business is the way to go. Your freshman summer is all about your experience. Getting to do actual work and see the process would be great to talk about and an awesome learning experience. 

In my experience, freshman year internships hold very little weight unless it is something truly unique. In most cases you will be doing more training/grunt work than any actual value add stuff as your experience is so limited. With that being said, having IB on the resume in any capacity will likely be more helpful for IB recruiting than RE. At the end of the day it is unlikely to make a big difference either way, go with whatever shop you would prefer to work at and think will give you the best experience.

IB if you're sure you want to do IB, but RE if there's even a possibility you want to end up in RE.

I interned at a small boutique like the one you mentioned my freshman year and didn't do anything. Literally, I did nothing. I think I spent 10 hours the entire summer on some bullshit market research and an easy project. These shops tend to really struggle with deal flow.

With that being said, the IB experience in addition to knowing technicals allowed to to talk myself up in networking calls/interviews. I embellished a bit, but focused on the boutiques general overview and steered away from specifics on what I did.