Paid Hedge Fund Internship vs. Unpaid I-bank internship

If the HF pay is very little I'd take the IB for the relevant deal experience.

If you want to do IB, then pick the IB one. It's very unlikely that you are going to ask you if you were paid during your internship when you interview next year. The only downside is having to pay out of your pocket. Also depends on the boutique, deal flow and location.

Take HF internship for your freshman and sophomore summer. IB for junior summer.

If you can't even find the IB's name on the top 25 list on Vault, do the hedge fund internship.

What's the reasoning behind that?

Kind of have to agree with KingKong, if the shops you're interviewing with next year have never heard of this boutique, its likely that anything you do there won't hold very much weight to them. However, they'd probably be pretty interested in hearing about your internship at a hedge fund.

I guess the prevailing opinion has been to take the i-banking shop because chances are both of the firms will not be known to the BBs I'll be interviewing with next year. Can someone with experience in terms of recruiting for SA offer their opinion?

What do you want to do long term? Realistically if your sophomore year experience is critical to you networking your way into a junior year ibd SA stint, then you should probably take the ibd role this summer. However, if you're at a target with a good network I'd probably take the HF internship.

I'd go with the HF one deff. Thats a nice size fund to make contacts at. Maybe you can intern there again and move in full-time. Plus if its some random botique, it may not be great.

Just my opinion

100% go with HF internship. 1, its paid, and 2, the HF is most likely a client of at least one of the large investment banks. Kill it, do well, your PM will get you a junior yr IB internship, if that's the path you want to pursue.

This is assuming you will get meaningful responsibilities at both shops.

I believe both of them are front-office roles. I'm at a top target so I'll probably have access to recruiting networks for next season. With that in mind, would the hedge fund internship be better? I'm pretty committed to doing IB next year, however.

Chances are, that IB internship will involve nothing more than grunt work with no modeling, no CIM-building, etc. At least that is my experience with these unpaid internships that "guarantee" you live deal work. I would still take that over the hedge fund internship, though. As long as you network and interview well during SA recruiting, you should be set.

I think the HF is better, given that it's a big fund with over $1bil in AUM. I like boutique too but given the size if the HF, you might be able to take on a more substantial responsibility.

I don't think it is that clear cut. Assuming that this is a simple L/S HF, as a soph, your chance of contributing at said HF is very limited. I am not even sure what you would do. At a boutique, at least you might learn about PPT or Excel or something related to the technical aspects of the job.