First job - what to do with my life?

Hi, I don't know what to do with my life for my first job, here's some background:

I am mexican, 24 years old, I graduated last month from a top mexican school with a 3.6 gpa, I love finance, I invest and trade, and I have this job offer:

DC boutique investment bank specialized in cross-border deals, they do M&A, reestructuring and some consulting. It's small(15 employees). They need people fully bilingual that know latin culture cuz cross-border transactions are picking up. This is what they are offering:

50k with a 20-30% bonus
80hr week tops
25% time travel to Latin America

I want to work for 2-4 years and then go to a top 5 business school in the US, at the end I wanna come back to Mexico and start a HF/PE/VC or work for one, there are only a few players here and I think that in the future is going to be a good market.

Some points:
The money is not that much, altough is much more that what can I expect to earn in Mexico.
Being a small and specialized bank I could get a lot of deal exposure and get some great contacts.
I know DC well and I don't like it at all, the girls are stuck-up, clubs have a horrible ratio(3 boys for 1 girl), expensive and the winter is coold.
80hr week is not as bad as 100hr, or I think so.
I love investing and the markets but I don't know if I am going to like banking.
On top of that, I value my friends, my girl and my family back home.

In MX the best that I could get is a PWM/ER gig, earning 30k a year with 10% bonus, altough that's more than enough to live comfortably here.

So, what's your opinnion? If I accept the job is it realistic to get into a top 5 b-school with a great gmat and everything? Is it worthed?

Thank you guys, really appreciate it.

 
Best Response

Question for betote or anyone else:

What is the HF landscape like in Mexico or LatAm more generally? I speak Spanish and used to live in Mexico, and would love to get back to LatAm at some point. The fund I work for now invests everywhere in the world except LatAm (I guess because the PM is worried about businesses getting nationalized in shitty third world countries or whatever). I assume Mexico is a relatively safe place for capital but don't really know. How hard is it to get a job at a LatAm focused HF (within LatAM) if I am fluent?

The salary doesn't really matter. Take the cross boarder job, do well at work, slay the GMAT and you will get into almost any b-school. Being Mexican with international experience will really, really help you in the app process.

 

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