How did you prepare for the investment banking lifestyle?

The first month of relentless work will be dreadful. Even 9-5 training M-F is exhausting when transitioning from 2 days of classes a week/sleeping all week. But your body will adjust and you'll have new limits. You'll learn how your body reacts when you're finishing at 3am, getting 5 hours of blackberry interrupted sleep. There's no easy way to do it. Keep caffeine for morning and save the afternoon coffees for truly painful days. Constant work/pressure keeps you running better anyways. I'm more energetic on an intense 9am-2am day over a 9-6 day.

The biggest tip I can give you is to keep your eating habits in check. Order sashimi with brown rice instead of 4 large pizzas, eat a salad for lunch instead of your leftover burger. Try and develop a workout routine (or some form of exercise) early on. Its very difficult to get into the routine if you haven't started from day one. Try and not drink during the week. Get out of the office during the day, even if it entails buying lunch out. I'll pay $15 a day for a lunch out every single day if it means I can get some fresh air and see daylight.

Find a video game you like so you can simulate sitting in front of a screen for 16 hours a day.

"I have read Monkey Business, Liar’s Poker, and When Genius Failed each 3 times and consider them my collective bible. I know I have the eye for perfection and artistic vision to create truly immaculate pitch books. I am a Microsoft Certified in Excel, and I know all the shortcut keys (alt-i then r, that will insert a new row). Furthermore, I consider myself a whiz with numbers. I know I would be able to build robust models and complete precise calculations for Lehman Brothers.

Most importantly, however, I want to stress how willing I am to do “anything for the team.” I realize the possibility of long hours exists in such a position, and I am ready to work as hard as necessary. I have been practicing staring at a computer monitor for extended hours, I can currently sit motionless in front of a screen for 28 hours, and I am improving daily."

1) Live close to work; walking distance if possible. It's well worth paying a premium for an apartment near your office for the extra sleep it affords you.

2) Eat smaller meals more often. In addition to eating healthy, try to spread our your meals out. Instead of eating your entire sandwich made with whole wheat bread at lunchtime, eat half now and half later on in the afternoon. It'll keep your energy level up by avoiding that post-meal "crash."

3) Realize it's quality of sleep, not necessarily quantity of sleep. 5 hours of truly restorative sleep is better than 8 hours of tossing and turning. Do whatever it takes to accomplish this (e.g wear a sleep mask, buy a high quality mattress, etc.)

Get good at PowerPoint.

To be completely honest, my take on this question is much different than the other "the first month will fuck you" answers. This is my first month in IB as well, and I was extremely nervous going into it because of the same reasons.

Now take this with a grain of salt because I just finished my 4th week on the job, and have not had to put out any late nights past 12 am, but, from my experience, the first 2 hours in the morning, and the 2 hours after lunch are the hardest from a 'staying awake' perspective.

In university, I was fairly lazy and didn't really do too much (still had 8am mandatory class that I had to attend every morning but usually came home around 2pm and crashed). But weekends were spent getting hammered (typical).

I will say this though; the hours seem much more intimidating than they actually are in reality. If you're falling asleep in the morning, an ample amount of water in the morning should do the trick. If not, I usually drink a can of coke and I'm pretty much wide awake. I have not had to consume a single drop of coffee yet, and I would highly advise staying away from coffee because if you become dependent on it, you're basically fucked. Reliance on coffee everyday will eventually take you to a point where 1 cup won't even wake you up, and water will probably put you to sleep.

Also, it is generally more difficult to stay awake when you're bored of the work you're doing (or if you're not doing shit). The best way to tackle those situations are to pop open Wall Street Journal, or work on something (create an operating model for a company you would invest in) that will engage you. NOTE: If you think the op model in spare time activity is funny, trust me, there are many seniors in the bank who don't have the time to invest and you doing research on the side and sharing it with them could go a long way).

Worst comes to worst (this probably won't happen unless the guys at your bank want to absolutely kill you), you should go to the washroom and set an alarm for 20 minutes after and take a nice power nap. That should wake you up pretty well.

Moral of this message: don't be intimidated by the industry or your job, the hours aren't too bad (they're fucking awful during the first week) but after that your body and mind adjust pretty quick.

Good luck.

learn how to take criticism with a smile on your face

For me? Nothing. I've worked in jobs that are worse before...imagine IB hours and an even more obnoxious boss, but doing it with terrible pre-packaged food, limited access to amenities like running water or AC, in one of the world's worst climates.

For everyone else I'd recommend doing some charity work. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen: you'll be doing service work for people who you probably think are beneath you and who will be completely ungrateful in many cases. It's good both for your stories and for your humility.

Expectations management. Come in expecting that you're life is going to be absolute hell for the next two years and that your never going to have free time. Then when you have that tuesday where you're out of the office at 7:30 or that weekend where no work pops up, you really get to enjoy it and feel like a real person for once.

You also need some sort of outlet that allows yourself to escape from work. It could be a creative one like writing or music, or it could just be catching up on your favorite shows on netflix; just something that you enjoy doing and allows your mind to drift away from work for a little while.

I also cannot stress enough to have friends outside the office. Especially if you are moving to a new city, its going to be easy, to only hang out with the people you work with. When you're out with office friends, the conversation will invariably always turn back to work and it'll never be the positive aspects of it. You spend 80+ hours a week with these people already, it'll be good to get away from them for a while.

Closing in on the end of year one so this brings me back to where I was prior to starting IB. Having a month and change in between graduation and starting was a blessing in that I had some time to get think about and prepare for work. I addressed a couple areas that I wanted to be at 100% in order to hit the ground running: critical thinking, physical fitness, and financial knowledge. I grabbed some gmat prep books and spent a couple hours a day during the week doing problems to stay sharp. I have always been a decent runner but I intentionally kicked up my miles per week from the high teens to mid twenties in the hope that some additional stamina would help when it came time to start sitting at a desk for hours on end. Lastly, my firm was kind enough to mail my training package months in advance so I got some practice in on the financial material that I thought would be most beneficial from the get-go. Looking back, the GMAT problems might have been a waste of time but I felt sharp enough that I would recommend doing some sort of puzzle/problem solving exercise. The running probably helped the most in combating working life fatigue so I would definitely recommend some sort of exercise plan leading up to start. And finally, being up to speed on technicals prior to start helped tremendously, especially when faced with a barrage of other topics that took brainpower. In all, everyone approaches the situation differently, its just important to know yourself, how you operate, and what areas you need to be strong in to succeed.