Story of a 2.7 GPA in a Russian BB: «Misconceptions, lies and money»

S&T intern for one of the largest and prestigious Russian banks with a return offer, but planning to reject it. 
Truth is just a few years ago I had no plans whatsoever to tie my life to any finance related career and I sure as hell couldnt have imagined that I would be able to break-in with a 2.7 GPA once I started to learn about the industry. 

So, what is the backstory and why am I thinking of rejecting the offer? 

childhood - 2020:

I have been passionate about sports pretty much my whole life. 
Eventually I got pretty good at a certain sport which I will not name for privacy reasons.... I mean really fucking good. 
Won the city championship, then the country championship, got into the national team and even managed to get a prize place in the European championship (minicadet category aka < 12 years old).
At those levels you get pretty good recognition within the community and as far as I remember I even got payed pretty well at a very young age from my club, the federation and tournament prizes. Also had brand contracts, but they pay nothing when you are that young. 
Long story short, earned myself a very bad back injury and my dreams were crushed forever (17 years old).

After months of apathy for my future, spending all my time partying or doing god knows what.. I realised that it is time to start finding my new passion for life. 
At first it was of course other sports which did not give me so much back pain, but I quickly learned that it is far to late for me too start. 

Additionally, it did not help that I was supposed to graduate from school in a few months and not only did I not know which uni I wanted to go to, but my subjects knowledge was probably around 8th grade level. 

2020 - 2021:(HERE IS WHERE THE S&T JOURNEY STARTS)

Sometimes then trading (in general) caught my attention. 
I liked how it gave me similliar emotions as sports and digging deeper figured out that S&T seems to be a very performance oriented industry like sports (I am skipping a bunch of details here cause obviously it took me a lot of time to understand the most simple aspects e.g. what does a trader actually do in a firm). 

After a few weeks I started to act aka locked in my intention of breaking in S&T. 
Not only was I able to pass my exams (Russia has USE exams) and get accepted into one of the best if not the best finance-economics faculty in the country, I started trading equities and did pretty well. 
 

time skip 

2020 - present: 

Summer break before last year in uni.

My level of understanding finance (specifically things you need for S&T: products, models, excel, etc) imporved insanely due to uni, reading bunch of wall street books and trading on the side. 

Btw my trading hobby turned out very well and bad at the same time. 
Idk what my total profits are, but at one point I was earning way more than the average salary in Russia (around 900$ per month) consistently from equities, crypto and small ipo/ico investments. 

However, my grades were/are absolutely trash at a staggering 2.7 GPA. 

Some losses, some expenses...I realised it was time for me to finally try and break into S&T. 
Hearing that having a high GPA is an absolute necessity my hopes were pretty low. 

After a few weeks of interviews here and there for an internship, everything went suprisingly well as I got three offers and ended up accepting one of them a few more months and I secured a return offer for Junior Sales position. 

END OF STORY 

................................................................................................................................................................................

So what is the issue? 
Well the truth is things are not really as they are told to be, especially in the books. 

!!! My first thought was that it is due to specifics of Russia which is why I have decided to write this in the first place !!!

Below I will list several aspects and would love anyones input on them, the story and the industry in general:

MISCONCEPTIONS, LIES AND MONEY:

• "Interesting day routine and bright people"

There are days when even VPs do nothing or only administrative work. 

Majority of people are in just for the money (ofc there are exceptions) and are not really interested in the culture whatsoever. 

I remember reading Liars Poker and being amazed by the culture... it is non-existent. 

• "Best of the best" 
  After numerous inteviews with different banks and people, the one and only thing I can say about the process is that is shit. 
  The amount of lies told by the interviewers, in CVs, etc, is insane. 
  At one point I was competing with fellow students who have lied on every aspect in their resume. 
  What irritates me most is how no one is able to distinguish that bullshit and employees/hr is to lazy to fact check. 

Everything above is tied to the first aspect... there are not that many bright people in here. 

Also, so should you just straight up lie on your CV to maximize your chances?  

• "Fast career path opportunity" 

I would say that is true, but does it really depend on your performance as much as people think it does? 
I think its more of a how well do you get along with the higher ups. 
 

• "Money" 
  Perhaps my biggest issue. 

Making a lot of money is not treated the same way as in the books. 
Its more of a sin to be paid out huge bonuses even if you performed well and the amount of envy from colleagues is ridiculous.

No one likes if you are making good bucks for yourself 

and much much more... 

(not a native speaker, but hope I got my point across.. would love to discuss)