In college I was set on investment banking for many reasons that I’m sure would be redundant to post here, but along with recruiting for that I also recruited at the few PE shops that hire undergrads (few as in large PE shops, there’s prob a lot of small shops that do). I figured out that PE had all the things I liked about banking (pay, optionality, exit ops), but it also had more interesting work. The work isn’t client based, so I get to sort of plan my schedule more (I still have a lot of work, but it’s more of a zero sum game and there aren’t many fire drills). Also, even as a first year, my opinion was not only allowed in the day to day but they actually wanted my opinion on stuff. The successful analysts were the one that went the extra step to give their own analysis and opinions on their work. This is a contrast to banking where most of the work is grunt work and pitch decks and reps of models. Of course I do some of those things too, but my work also has a lot more fundamental business and investment analysis too.