Internship before MFE: Data Mining in a Fintech Company? High-Frequency Trading in a Futures Company?

[Chris_Ren]

Dear all,

I will go for Master of Financial Engineering Degree at UC Berkeley in 2021 Spring, and I intend to find one internship to enhance my hands-on experiences in the second half of 2020. I am struggling between two opportunities and I appreciate your suggestions.

My Background and Goals:
Major in Applied Mathematics.
Familiar with Python, C++, SAS, Java.
Aim to get into investment bank/buy-side as a quant, but only have a little knowledge of what they are doing.

Internship Choices:
<1> Data Mining Internship in a Fintech company: The task is to help build machine learning algorithms for banks to facilitate their decision-making process. Need to use Python / SAS. I have always had a passion for machine learning.
<2> High-Frequency Trading internship in a Futures company: The task is to help build high-frequency trading strategies. I have no experience in futures trading so it seems I could learn a lot. I could also open my trading account and play around with it.

Which one do you believe can help me better prepare for the MFE degree and give me a higher chance to get into top banks/buy-side?

Any information provided would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[binomial-torrent]

is (2) a reputable company? if so take it else (1)