'26 Recruiting Experience (offers from MF PE, EB, and HF)

Hey everyone, Now that 2026 summer recruiting has wrapped up, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my journey and write a comprehensive post on what I’ve learned and to help others avoid common pitfalls and navigate the process more effectively. Thankfully, I landed offers that I'm truly grateful for, but the road wasn't always smooth. I’ll break this post down to 3 prongs generally that encompass the recruiting cycle: work experience, networking, and interview preparation. 1) Work Experience Prep: Fundamentally, the best preparation for recruiting is to develop a solid understanding of what investment banking, private equity, and related finance roles actually entail. This means seeking early exposure to businesses and learning how finance professionals think about companies. Typical freshman year internships might include working at a search fund, in corporate development, or at a boutique investment bank. From my experience, working with a search fund is particularly valuable because it forces you to think critically about evaluating companies, understanding key business drivers, and performing diligence - skills that IMO are pretty directly transferable. That said, if you're at a target school with a decent GPA, don’t stress too much about prestige in your early internships. Instead, prioritize experiences that genuinely help you understand business fundamentals and strategic thinking - in general I think if you’re at a target with a decent GPA, your lack of prestigious work experiences isn’t what is going to hold you back at all. In my PE interviews, I would actually use a lot of the logic/reasoning in terms of how to think about business that I learned working with a search funder. For HFs, the things they look for a honestly a bit different -  a lot of them don’t even look for prior experience in finance (maybe w exception of Citadel CAP which seems to be very focused on you having done quite a lot of hardcore pitches. The opposite would be DESCO which has like summer analysts that have barely done much in finance). That being said, HF positions are few and far between, and as good of seats as they are, don’t optimize for them because you can easily luck out of the process. Banking and PE interviews are much more similar and standardized.2) Networking: First, let me put it out there that everyone sucks at the first call. It genuinely sucked for me. Networking can feel overwhelming, but in general, I think there are some straightforward steps to make it more manageable and effective. First, be deliberate about your geographic focus. Most banks only let you recruit for one office, whether that's SF, Houston, or NYC, so decide early and strategically (e.g., if you want to do tech it probably makes sense to target SF) and I would say don’t waste too much time like talking to 3 analysts in both the SF and NY office (they typically run separate processes). Second, when reaching out to bankers, keep emails generally short and to the point (no need to tell them your love for banking/finance, just mention maybe something in common and then jump to asking them politely for their time). If you’re from a target school, alumni typically respond well, provided your message is authentic and doesn't come off as overly formal or desperate. Remember, bankers are literally often like 3-4 years older than you and often just want a casual conversation to break up their day; they’re not expecting you to impress them dramatically. Think of networking conversations as meeting a friendly senior rather than attending a job interview and that your goal is to make a connection by discussing common interests, clubs, sports, or even small personal details. This was something that I definitely got wrong at the start - I always expected myself to really try to use the opportunity to impress them but that was completely the wrong approach. If you’re from a target, and have had a few finance internships, you’re good - no need to flex the work you’ve done at all/how knowledgable you are. Be personable and be curious. In these conversations, maintain a semi casual but energetic tone, expressing genuine curiosity without sounding rehearsed. Networking is about being likable and showing enough interest that they’ll remember your name positively. Also, they typically won't drill you on technical questions - if they do, no biggy but depending on when you actually network (esp as you do it closer to the interviews) they might start asking some technicals. I had this once done by DB… but not a common situation in my opinion. 3) Interview Prep: Interview preparation requires a structured approach. First, it really is a really manageable load even as someone coming from a STEM background with no previous coursework in finance, etc. You should break it down just like how the BIWS guides do it (in terms of like core sections to understand). For technical preparation, I strongly recommend thoroughly studying the Breaking Into Wall Street (BIWS) or WSO guides. Work through all the questions and understand the underlying concepts very well. Many people say that you need to know the guides like the back of your hand but I don’t genuinely think that is the case. I think my technicals are definitely on the stronger side but even I definitely would not know every single bit - there are definitely some obscure parts in terms of what would get tested (e.g., goodwill in M&A for example, but if you do apply to like say Qatalyst for example be prepared to answer these haha), but your understanding should be robust enough to confidently discuss key topics and apply them spontaneously during interviews. Initially, you’ll struggle to work through the problems and think that there is simply no end to really covering all the topics-  then you’ll realize slowly that it is actually a very manageable load - just make sure to start early with at least a month of like consistent reading and practice (treat it like a class) and your brain will slowly soak it all up and you’ll be a technicals legend by no time. The next step is understanding the concepts is not enough - I REALLY RECOMMEND PRACTICING. This might be the single most useful aspect because we’ve all had that moment where we understand what’s going on in the class but walk into the exam and are like what was that? The best way to do well in interviews is to literally have seen similar questions beforehand. We aren’t geniuses doing crazy things out here, we’re just applying rules and observations to similar situations that we’ve seen before (just like LLMs haha) I think there’s a few steps to this, one is doing all the problems in the BIWS guide (not just the 400, but the ones that are specific to each topic too), then what worked best for me was using two platforms: IBVine . io  and Marginofalpha . org. IBVine has tons of learning materials (which I don’t recommend, I think you should just do the questions). IBvine dot io also has a free pro subscription for a week so I just recommend using that - however, IBVine doesn’t really have that many up to date questions and recommend you use those questions as the first pass - to see how well you are retaining the concepts. I recommend marginofalpha to really test the limits of your understanding, as they're much more comprehensive and have leaked questions. They’re sorted by bank specific questions that have been asked in the past and seem to be updated quite frequently (e.g., I did my PWP super day and had like half of the questions repeated that I saw on the platform) - hate the game not the player. This site unfortunately doesn’t have a free trial but would say that it is worth the value. Some of the technicals in here are extremely hard, so I’d say that once you have these down, you are absolutely good to go - stop focusing on technicals and work on telling your story and being personable. Lastly, carefully track recruiting timelines. There are expensive tracking services like hoos helpers (which has gotten absurdly expensive for absolutely no reason but them trying to milk it) but these aren’t necessary. Instead, use free alternatives like the Bristol Tracker that are literally just as good. Staying organized with timelines and deadlines is critical since early applicants often have a significant advantage. Hopefully this post is helpful to everyone - would appreciate a banana if it has been useful! For transparency, I’m a non diversity candidate at a target that eventually landed offers at MF PE, EB, and HF. Saying this only to establish a bit of credibility and say that it definitely seemed to have worked out in my favor and that reflecting on my journey I think these are the largest factors/ways I would have approached it if i had hindsight. Good luck with those that are still recruiting and hopefully this post can be useful for all future recruiting classes! If anyone needs any help, I now have more time on my hands so feel free to leave a comment and I’ll try to be helpful in anyway and DM you.TLDR1. Don’t stress too much, just find general experiences that teach you about finance2. Be personable rather than trying to impress3. Study BIWS/WSO guides, use IBVine. io for simple practice, use Marginofalpha. org for bank specific past questions and harder questions, use BristolTracker to keep up to date with apps 

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