Hey,
So I've posted my situation on this site before but the long and short of it is that I'm a rising junior at a Canadian non-target university. I have more or less perfect marks; 4.0/4.0 (N.B. It's hard to express humility via internet), and believe it or not I actually scored a 2360 on my SAT I 3 years ago. Anyways, certain non-academic issues made it impossible for me (a Canadian) to attend school in the US. I've tried to make the best of my situation by keeping my marks up, and last year working at a Canadian boutique IB as an SA (albeit mostly grunt work). This year, fearing the complete lack of campus recruiting at my school I decided to venture into entrepreneurship and now am running a business (think 400-600K revenue) and am making a decent (again not mindblowing) amount of money. This business is not by any means my passion and I am still seeking to pursue a career in HF, but am unsure how to escape the spiral of being at an unrecruited school. If I want to take a shot at internships next year I will have to start immediately shopping for potential buyers for my business and I suppose I don't want to take a blind first step without knowing if I have a chance.
Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated,
i dont know what the F the first poster was talking about
anyway did u try networking with alums? you have a pretty good story that sounds like you could sell it well--maybe if you can get into a BB in toronto for SA you can push for a NYC FT
If you think the business has potential to grow, stick with it. You will regret not running with it the first time you ever find yourself spreading comps at 3am.
I appreciate the feedback. "breakinginnew", I definitely have networked with alumni and have alot of opportunities at Canadian institutions but have run into two walls; first that most of the opportunities are in corporate finance, asset management and investment banking rather than HF and secondly that I'm a little lost as to how to make the cross-border leap. Is it possible to apply to American HFs for internships from outside the country. Is there a precedent for this? Also would it be best to cold-call Canadian/American HFs or to stick with CF, AM, and IB positions for summer 2011 and try and make a jump to HF?
Thanks again.
P.S. "Sickofassociate", I don't have any idealistic notion of the financial world but I really do enjoy all the math and "mindless" modelling. My business would likely glean my a much tidier profit at the end of the day than a career in finance, but it's just not my cup of tea.
If you had such good SAT scores/Grades it's hard to imagine you can't transfer to a target like Queen's or Ivey.
Thanks again for all the advice to everyone... recent development; I will be transferring to a Canadian target (one of the two you mentioned above) this coming fall. What kind of recruiting will be available to me there (if anyone knows)? What should I expect? Canadian BBs (Big 5, Canaccord, HSBC Canada etc.)?
"youngmonkey", only part of the story that's simple. I started out in engineering (which my school is known for) and by the time I switched to finance and completed a year, I had to many credits complete to transfer.
Lots of ex-Americans intern in the US, Canadians in particular. Also, lots of Canadians intern in London.
If you want a career in a HF, it will be very, very difficult to get in to a good role at a good fund without prior finance experience, which sounds like the type of opportunities you have available for you.
Not knowing the business, would it be possible to take 10 weeks off for an internship? Or to hire someone to run it for you?
Thanks alot "drexelalum11". I definitely understand the challenge, but hopefully one year of SA IBD experience (even at a Canadian MM firm) should serve me well, in addition to marks and a somewhat entrepreneurial nature. My main question at this point is what types of firms should I apply to. I've spent alot of time reading WSO in the past month or so and I've gathered that HF internships are incredibly scarce. IBD again or PE, S &T, AM? I'm referring to summer 2011 internships of course as this summer is more or less set in stone for me.
It depends what type of fund you want to go to. The advice I was given when choosing between S&T and IBD was, if you're sure you want to do S&T, go for it; otherwise, IBD will give you more future flexibility, including going in to trading if that is what you decide you want. I'd say most of your basic L/S funds would prefer IBD or ER to S&T, but it really depends if that's what you're interested in - a macro fund, or a quant fund, etc..., will have no use for a banking analyst. AM is an option, depending on the type of place - Fidelity or any of the other big managers are obviously great, but if it's relevant, that's the key - PWM falls under AM, and that is definitely not relevant to getting in to a HF, unless you want to work in IR. I know guys who've gone from PE to HFs (and vice-versa), but the calibre of PE firm you'd be able to get in to with one MM internship is similar to the calibre of HF you can get in with the same experience, so if you wanted to go to a small alternative-investor for your summer internship, it'd make more sense to go to a HF.
Anyway, as much as thinking ahead is a good thing, you should really be focusing on this summer right now - if you suck at your job because you're looking ahead to the next one, all the plans in the world won't help you.
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