How important is your SA choice really?

Depends on which BB. Is it JP?

Depends on your career goals. Wanting to be a career banker gives you flexibility on how prestigious your SA experience is. However, the bank you do a summer analyst program at kind of sets a baseline for where you end up full time. Let’s say you get an offer at KeyBanc or BNP and you want to re-recruit full time. You may want to go the route of going for reputable MMs and solid regionals/balance sheet banks like Mizuho or WF. Not to say you can’t get a BB/EB offer, but your summer analyst experience does hold you back even though people like to say it doesn’t. This comes from someone who didn’t have the most elite SA offer and did re-recruitment.

Do your summer analyst stint and then look into FT lateraling. Also of note, if you are at the following groups at the banks you mentioned, UMM/MF is possible from the group itself: 

UBS: LevFin/Sponsors and MAYBE Tech(though these all seemed to be previous to SVB exits by seniors, so perhaps no longer, but historic reputation should be there so experiences may vary)

Barclays: PU&I, Sponsors, Tech, Healthcare, and Industrials(Barclays is by far the best bank here as evidenced by the number of groups with good exits btw)

RBC : PU&I and MAYBE M&A(terrible hours though)

DB: REGL and MAYBE LevFin/Sponsors

I will be SA at one of these banks mentioned and want to recruit FT. I was wondering, how should I go about answering "why not stay at the bank you did SA at?" question. There is really no other reason than getting to a better bank but how should I frame my answer?