Giving up MF PE offer to try to be in a city/bank/group with friends?

Something to think about too is that even if you switch into a group with your friends, most of you will be gone doing other things within the first 2 years. May be better to broaden your network as your college friends will still be your friends when you're looking for a new job the second time.

vista?

You are young and will make new friends. I would advise taking this offer and giving it an earnest shot. This is the best time to move to a new city and try something different, completely out of your comfort zone! I wish I could do that, but if I want to maintain my relationship with my gf, it's off the table.

Also, you have no idea if you will actually remain friends with these people, relationships change after college.

Don’t be scared and make new friends. I see my college buddies a few times a year at most. Once your get married chances are you won’t see your buddies much at all even if you live in the same city. 

Agree with above. Unfortunately a lot of “maintaining friends” has to do with proximity — I’m sure you can relate to having a tough time keeping up with high school friends once you get to college. I’d highly recommend staying with the current firm and being confident in yourself that you’ll make friends wherever you go. On a related note, you definitely don’t want to feel the regret/“what if” that you might end up feeling if you change your career path for college friends at 20 years old.

In the same way should shouldn’t be picking where you go to college based on your highschool friends, you shouldn’t be making decisions in your career based on having friends. Your friends will be moving in and out of the NYC as time passes and you’re so young that it’s not too hard to put yourself out there and meet new people.

Been in a similar spot before and decided to go with "friends" and it turned out to be the wrong decision. Life is long and you will make plenty of friends along the way, the important for now is to grind and position yourself for your long-term career

Disagree with above. I am still in college but those of my friends that went to the west coast were miserable during their SA with small intern class sizes (5-10 people) where they don’t click with interns and can’t find a balance between social and work life. Apart from this small class, everyone around you is much older and you won’t make good “outside of work friends/true genuine connections” fresh out of college with people five years older.

Granted if you only have this one offer you take it, but if you can pull off a decent NYC IB offer I would do it. So many friends who went to NYC IB/PE or whatever else could handle the long hours because they could grab a drink with their friend after work, and have plenty of kids their age to make friends with who are in a similar job and understand what they’re going through. Other people might say otherwise but genuine friendships that last a lifetime if you sustain them will make you much happier than prestige or a “dream job” that you haven’t even worked and don’t know you like. Life is all about happiness at the end of the day.

It's an internship not a FT move, and even if it were FT the hiring market is a blood bath right now and 1 in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush (you possible "alternatives" which are not guaranteed). MF offer in terms of difficulty is much higher to secure than a banking one and choosing to follow your friends for work/internship is really short-sighted. If you are really friends you will be able to stay friends regardless of where you are based. You should 100% prioritize optionality for your career which this offer gives you right now. If you decide to recruit FT for banking I would argue they will look more favorably on your MF experience given how much harder it is to get in the first place, especially if you get the return offer and turn it down which would give you a compelling story for why you want banking > PE. 

I agree with the comments above that say you need to stick with the MF internship offer. This is a critical moment in your career and to compromise it in order to spend the summer closer to friends is very shortsighted. It is just 10-12 weeks. You’re going to want to spend the first few weeks, if not the entire internship, putting in hours to ensure that you’re learning as much as possible and contributing. Think of this like cramming before an exam. While I absolutely agree with the idea that you need to enjoy your life and be happy, this is a very limited sacrifice with tremendous upside.

Look, you’re getting closer to graduation and life changes post college. Ya hanging with the boys on the weekends in NYC post college would be fun but if y’all are all at Moelis or Citi or whatever then reality is maybe you can grab lunch twice a week and maybe go out one night a week in the early days. And then someone will start dating someone who basically takes them out of the group, and you’ll be lucky if you’re not on projects that take over your life all while you’re trying to claw your way out of banking. Things will realistically fizzle out much more quickly than you’d hope.
 

You got a shot to skip banking and to decide if you’ve got what it takes to make PE a career - you’ve already won. Don’t sacrifice major career decisions because of what you think might happen. I guarantee that if you go to the MF and hate it after a year or two then you can find a way to make it to NYC or Miami or wherever you want to go. You’re not the only young person who doesn’t know anyone in your new city, you can make friends wherever you go. I could go on and on about how important diversity of experience is but you might find new friendships even more beneficial in this next season of life because it will expose you to something different and force you to get outside of your comfort zone.