Capital One Summer BA vs. Société Généralé SA

financetechconsulting:

Hello all,

I'm a student with a 3.5-3.6 at a semi-target for IB/target for consulting. I have gone through the recruitment process for various things, and have come out with offers for two summer internship positions: one at Capital One, and one at Société Généralé, and was hoping to get some advice.

The first is Capital One's Product Management and Analytics BA role. This is basically quantitative business strategy for specific Capital One products. Pay is good (prorated from about $80k, with a small signing bonus) for reasonable hours (I've heard 40-50/week). The interviewing process was similarly rigorous to management consulting - on-campus first-round case, followed by a super day with 2 x 1-hour case interviews and 1 x 1-hour product interview on the Capital One corporate campus. From my school, it appears that there's a fairly direct pipeline from this program into MBB, Deloitte, and tech companies like Facebook and Amazon. The pros of this role are that I would really get to hone my analytical capabilities, and the culture/professional development at Capital One seem fantastic. My concerns lie with a possibly too laid-back culture, and a focus in the consumer finance space, which I find less inherently interesting than corporate finance.

The second offer is with Société Généralé in a non-NY office. I applied through our school's career portal to the Investment Banking Summer Analyst role, and got interviewed for CORI, which is their coverage group focusing on pharmaceuticals, healthcare, food/retail, and industrials. The interview process was surprisingly chill - a phone screen with an Associate and VP, and then 2 x 30-minute final rounds with the MD and another senior person on the team. The questions were all behavioral, pretty much. My school sends relatively few people to IB compared to consulting and tech, so there's not a lot of historical data to draw from in terms of career progression, etc. The pros are that SocGen is seemingly chasing some large and interesting deals in the U.S., and is making a concerted move towards becoming a major player, especially on the LevFin and DCM side of things. However, my concerns are that the role seems to be quite sales-y, and doesn't really entail any financial modeling or quantitative analysis. Similarly, I understand that IB internships can be more of a mixed bag in terms of doing actual work, just based inherently on the business.

The factors I'm concerned with are maximizing my professional development opportunities, utility during full-time IB/consulting recruitment if I choose to re-recruit, MBA admissions, and MBA sponsorship. I'm relatively unconcerned with pay, location, etc.

I'd really appreciate any insight into what you'd recommend!

Societe Generale.

Are they sending you to Paris?