Choosing Between These 2 Offers...

Audit is hell (from experience) but tax is worse. For Big 4 Audit in the summer you are unlikely to be in busy season so your hours will be easy, think 9:30 - 5:30.

If you are interested in accounting and that is what you would like to do, I would definitely take the Big 4 audit offer, it is simply the gold standard for accountants. Even if you like tax I would still work in B4 tax or audit first and then transfer into industry as you will have much faster career progression and make more money that way. The Big4 has almost an automatic promotion method built in that you will not experience in CF (2 yrs as associate, 3 years as senior associate, manager for 2-3 years then senior manager, etc). Unless you are coming into a FLDP in CF it may take longer to move up and the yearly pay increases may not be as high.

If you are looking at working in industry and rising to the Director+ rank, doing the Big4 route will be your fastest way there..

Now if you actually want to do finance I would still recommend the audit internship this summer but to interview for finance jobs for FT recruiting. You won't be landing BB offers but you would still have a good chance for MM IBD, corporate & commercial banking, valuation, corporate finance, etc.

Summer earnings/lifestyle should really not be a consideration for you, you are a student and want to do whats best for your FT hiring/etc. With a tax internship for junior summer, your options for FT are more limited.

As for hours you should be working a 40 hour week unless you are on a year end client, I had a classmate who had a fiscal yr end client this summer and worked from 8 to 8. What is nice is they will pay you over time at 1.5x or so for that so making $35 per hour or whatever is a nice way to make some great money this summer.

Big 4 without hesitation imo, like the above said it is resume gold and with a cpa, if you choose to get it, will only help you down the road and make you more marketable.

From what I've heard industry does not really discriminate against the individual firms within the Big 4 but if you are looking to target a certain company it would be best to work for a firm that actually audits them. By auditing that firm you will be able to gain exposure to their leadership and network which will give you a better chance than someone who has not formed the same relationships. Also makes sense to specialize in the sector you eventually want to work there and develop expertise. I would pick the job based on the people as the experiences will be pretty similar. I did notice that KPMG had the weakest presence on campus and put very little effort into recruitment in comparison to the other Big 4 firms. Not sure how this applies everywhere else.

Former Big 4 here- KPMG is the worst by far unless you want to be an internal auditor (Pretty sure majority of KPMG client work is SAS 70/SSAE 16 related). During our meetings, they were never brought up or used as a peer comparison as they trail the other 3 firms in every single aspect (revenue, headcount, client prestige, client projects, etc...).

If you want to go into financial services, PWC and Deloitte have the most financial service clients (Deloitte is the PE leader, while PWC and Deloitte are split along the lines of VC/HF's, PWC may have a slightly larger market share prob 65/35). Also, Deloitte and PWC have the most international recognition if you want to travel abroad - that being said, EY has extremely prestigious tech clients (Apple, Facebook, Google, etc...)

Tax is an instant pigeon-hole. Unless you know you want to do tax for the rest of your life, it will be hard to transfer out of tax into any different role as the skill set you learn is extremely specific. Audit has the most opportunities to transfer into a different industry as you learn a much broader skill set.

Interns will only work 8 hours a day, no firm wants to pay overtime- they'll just dump your work onto the first year after you leave. Why pay overtime when the 1st year has a fixed salary and has to work until the manager says they can leave? (FYI, interns and first years get the same hourly wage based on a 40hr work week).

Lastly, let me correct your misconception about "get(ing) into the financial service industry at the Big 4 as I find it interesting and from what I am told, you gain the most transferable skills/knowledge to be broadly applied in the long run". This is 100% FALSE. If you get put on a bank, you will only audit one specific account as banks are huge, have massive teams and planning wise, for continuity purposes, they will stick you on one account and you will audit that same account for the rest of your life. You will essentially become an expert on one line-item of the financials (hence you will not gain a broad accounting knowledge). If you work in the investment management side of financial services (PE/HF/VC's), their financials are ridiculously simple - all they have is cash, investments, and unrealized/realized gains/losses, all accounts which are ridiculously simple to audit. The major risks are allocations/valuations. Valuations are mostly outsourced to the FAS team so don't think you'll be learning how to build models - you're just tying out cash payments and whatever else the FAS team needs you to do. Therefore you also won't be developing your accounting knowledge working on the investment management side.

If you really want to develop your accounting acumen, work on an industrial/tech company or something with inventory. Yes, you will be working way more hours than your buddy on the IM side, but in the end, when it comes down to your next interview, you will know revenue, inventory, and much more about accounting than your IM buddy who only knows how to audit allocations/outsource valuations to the FAS team.

Also, FYI, I was lucky enough to be able to transfer over to finance, got the job through a headhunter and one of their requirements that I learned while talking to the recruiter was specifically, NO PRIOR FINANCIAL SERVICES AUDITING EXPERIENCE.

It's complete bro-science when people say working in the financial industry will give you a better chance to immediately transfer over. No, think about what those companies do, they read the financials of other companies in a broad range of industries so they want to make sure you understand the footnotes and any accounting tricks that may be going on. They don't read other PE/VC/HF financials so whatever you know about those companies is completely useless.

yeah dawg, lets do audit!!!

Just out of curiosity, are there any advantages to having a big 4 on your resume for just a summer internship, even if you have no interest in pursuing a ft offer afterwards. I mention this because I think the work life balance would be much greater outside of the big four and if the F50 internship would offer the same ft opportunities as only a big 4 internship I would rather go with the F50.