2023 Internship- Rising Wharton Freshman

Freshman summer internships tend to be purely based off of networking. Unless your last name is Solomon or Gorman or Dimon you’re not getting a freshman internship in GS/MS/JPM IB. Network with local firms if you have in your hometown or small boutiques (read: not Evercore or PJT) and see where that goes. You have plenty of time to cultivate those relationships.

Sophomore internships tend to be for diversity only (a few banks like BofA and MS if I remember correctly don’t exclusively have diversity soph internships) so do some research in anticipation of that.

The above is accurate, you cannot get name brand IB internships your first year summer without nepotism (unless there are any super cracked out diversity programs that I don't know about). I'm a rising sophomore doing a boutique IB internship right now. A lot of places like mine run processes that range from solely networking to relatively formal with application drops, and they start as early as the summer before and run all the way through until a few months before the summer term. If you want to get boutique IB experience, focus now on a) polishing your soft skills and being able to interview well / make people like you (being an intelligent freshman usually doesn't cut it, if they're going to take you, you'll want to be a solid cultural fit), b) actually understanding the role. For M&A advisory shops, do you fully understand the deal process, the different marketing materials that are used, the hierarchical structure within the firm, etc. and c) building out your resume to have some substance. I don't go to Wharton so I don't know if having the name alone is enough to get you looks from boutiques with no other experience, but I would encourage you to get club experience, solid marks, and (this helped in my experience) potentially something like a search fund internship during the school year if you have no other finance-related work experience already.

Last piece of advice is not to obsess over it. Good internships as a freshman are great, but they are not the end all be all that freshmen like to make them out to be. You'll interview much better if you understand that your success is not contingent on how sick your first year internship is.