Ivy League Student - 3.30 GPA with Non-Finance Internships - Career Prospects
Heres the story :
I am currently going into my junior year and I am sitting at a 3.30 GPA (cumulative) and 3.8 (Major). I am doing a Financial Engineering major and Computer Science minor. The reality is, I do not perform well in academic environments which has caused me to drop a lot of activities to compensate but I do extremely well when Im doing applications hence strong work experiences - hard work over natural talent I guess.
Experiences: I am working at a FAANG company this summer on the operations side. I have also had two other operations roles in aerospace and education along with being the head of an engineering group for a race team. Each experience I have been able to get amazing recommendations from superiors and work on projects that stand out. I however do not have very much finance experience besides my major and a summer program.
What I really hope to do is move into PE in the future by whatever means. I have been looking at IB but to date my only success was a superday at an Elite Boutique which I was rejected. Are there any other divisions such as PWM or GCM that I should checkout or more boutique firms? I feel like I can apply but really discouraged after going through the past 4 months and I know its already late for a lot of firms.
I am now thinking heavily towards consulting as my best shot with late recruitment; however, will my prospects basically be limited like in finance? Would my previous roles in operations be enough to overcome gpa?
Lastly, my least favorite option is switching to SWE. I am pretty good at coding, do it for hours and love it. I will be working across divisions at the company this summer and already have been able to connect with higher up people during my interviews who loved me and I have been keeping up with since -- been getting lunches and they have invite me to evening event with their colleagues. I am sure I could network and wiggle my way into a swe internship for my junior-senior summer at the company if I showed interest and performed well during this current internship. Then I would imagine sticking to the SWE role and moving up the ladder - maybe MBA and then PE at a tech firm.
I should add - I do have the option to take a year off and work for a real estate investment firm. Would do property management for a sem and then work on valuation - company has 2B+ assets under management.
Not in a position to advise you but can share that I have seen LinkedIn profiles showing a Big 4 to IB transition. So that's an option you can research further. And the SWE option is good, if you are open to moving away from banking.
I think you should start trying your look with quantamental hedge funds. They love candidates like you and many of them give IQ tests that should benefit someone that is intelligent but gpa doesn’t necessarily show it.
interesting. I was in similar position to OP, I found it very hard to break in to HF without financial experience. share more?
Already tried my luck at Millennium and a few others in CT. Never heard back unfortunately. Any names I should checkout?
Why do you want to do PE so badly?
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