Corporate Finance Summer Internship for Freshman

Hi guys,

first time posting here. I was wondering if I could get some feedback on my current situation. I'm a freshman at a target school studying economics with a minor in theology and currently have an offer to work for 15 weeks this summer in a corporate finance department in small town in Michigan for a large international F100 global company. The plant I will work in will not be the American HQ, but it has roughly 3000 employees and produces a bulk of parts for worldwide distribution.

My job will entail doing a lot of accounting work, it seems, as well as some FP&A and assisting the managing controller. I will be contacting many places next year looking for a more finance-centric job, mainly banks and investment boutiques/hedge funds, but want to talk positively about my experiences and much more importantly, be relevant. Besides doing this for experience, I am motivated to do it also because I will be getting paid $4000 a month which is a decent amount to me and a motivating factor.

The question is, does a corporate finance internship that mainly deals with accounting look extremely good, very good, good mediocre, bad or terrible when looking for summer internships sophomore year and junior year? If you could rate the internship out of 5 for a rising sophomore, that would be extremely helpful.

The big goal is to hopefully land a great junior summer banking position through OCR, but I know I need to beef up my GPA (right now 3.4, get it to 3.5+) and be able to talk about my work experience and club leadership.

PS - I know any job is better than no job, but I want to gauge how this compares to say, private wealth management at ML in a small city (had offer, but unpaid so I rejected) vs PWM at MS/ML/UBS in NYC/Chicago/DC (didn't pursue but felt I could have). This is all relative to a freshman, by the way.

Also, I am very grateful for this opportunity, please don't misinterpret my post. Doing something productive this summer is awesome experience no matter what and especially working a in a top 100 global company means I will get good corporate experience regardless. I just want to know the general consensus from some bankers or peers in college going through the process.

 
Best Response

I assume you're looking to get in to IBD at a BB? This internship is neither very good nor very bad. Your GPA is your limiting factor. This internship is basically irrelevant in that everyone else who is legitimately competing against you has as good or better of freshman internships, and definitely a better GPA. I say legitimately because there are obviously a ton of people with real bad internships and worse GPA's who have very slim chances. This internship would be middle of the pack for legitimate candidates. Work hard this summer, and boost your GPA. You'll have a good chance for a better opportunity coming from a target college for next summer.

 

thanks for the response. Yes, I'm looking into BB IBD, and just want to know what would be "more relevant" experience for freshman out there. I feel like PWM is a grind that is neither useful or interesting. I am heavily involved with investment clubs and I actually have a boutique investment management firm internship during the school year, but I felt that corporate finance would be a good starting point.

I know many people get connected into positions freshman summer so without that, I feel very limited. I guess I'll try my best at a NYC boutique IBD/hedge fund/VC firm and try do an unpaid internship that will garner more respect from future interviewers? I'm confident I can raise my GPA, although I will probably need to do less club stuff. I just don't want to BS a resume full of random experiences that employers will look at and see that I have no real focus.

 

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