30 year old interns in UK
Looking through UK equivalents who have the same analyst job I do and I am baffled. These people intern 7 times and do 2 masters degrees just to land the same job an American gets straight out of undergrad in the US. It’s kind of pathetic… not to mention it probably makes it unnecessarily competitive for undergrads in the UK to get a SA role at a reputable shop.
Assume this is a function of there being less seats and cost of edu being lower..still looks sad for these geezer SAs tho
what a username
you can be 30 but can you be 40? what happens after the thing comes from no where?
YOU WILL AGE , 
YOU WILL AGE, YOU WILL AGE
YOU WILL AGE 
the tombstone is coming 
Trust me it's pretty much just the Europeans doing that, the Brits have same experience as in the US lot of the time
crazy right
Why are you upset about it? Jamie Dimon is 67 and still running the show. Someone can enter IB at 30 and have 37 years of experience at 67 yo
Found the 25 year old spring week intern
George Floyd died before he could become a celebrity
Funny how whoever follows IB because of the crowd and focuses on how early you get in burns out and goes to some random CorpDev role in less than 5 years.
Okay asset management intern
The thing is that in Europe for any slightly reputable job as a graduate, you need a masters. There is no other way around it. Plus, the way masters are structured is for you to do a gap year and do two off cycles for work experience (in France I believe this is a requirement to graduate, correct me if I am wrong). As such, students have to study 5 years minimum before getting a graudate role. Plus, Europe recruiting is much selective.
As for London SA, I believe that most firms (at least all BB) discriminate between a European Business School student vs a British Undergrad. They have ddifferent quotas for a summer class of interns and therefore have different processes too. For example, people studying in continental Europe have crazy technicals whereas in the UK it is not that hard. Also, people in let's say France applying to London have to go through the Paris office for interviews apart from maybe the AC.
This is what I know and might be off here and there but essentially what is happening.
Interesting insight
This is spot on, though I'd caveat Europe as EU countries, since UK doesn't have this requirement generally.
Yes of course. Didn’t clarify my bad.
lol you def go around preaching how America is the greatest country in the world.
Give these guys a break. 99% of the summer interns are <25. It’s not different from here in the US. And yeah the Europeans sometimes do a shit ton of internships and do a masters as well. That’s just their culture. Education is a lot more affordable there and you know what? For some people it’s actually worth taking a fourth or fifth year to do a masters just to get into IB. In the US, you don’t see these ppl. If they don’t get in at college, they just do smth else instead of having to spend a shit ton on another year in college.
also mba’s aren’t a thing there as they are in the US. You don’t need to go to biz sch to make it in PE in London. So it’s give and take.
note most UK undergrads are 3 years not 4 like in the US. So actually a vast majority of UK interns will be younger than you as an analyst. And on top of that don’t have to do biz sch. So they’ll actually make principal in PE younger than you.
bottom line is this is a dumb silly thing. The Korean guys have to do military service for a couple years. So they’re older in the workforce. Are you gonna say that’s pathetic too? The tone of your post is terrible.
It’s definitely greater than >1% and good catch on the tone, it’s meant to be demeaning. Otherwise, some good points in there and appreciated your insight!
fIRsT oFf lmao stfu up. You got owned
The other side of the coin is kids that are too young for IB.
Pretty pathetic in my opinion when you're applying for an internship and are doing it because your friends or mom/dad told you to but you really have no clue what IB is or what you want to do with your life.
I’d rather join the industry at 25 or something than 21. Feels like 21yr olds are still immature, havent figured out what they want to do in life and dont know what they get themselves into
100%. When I think about all the cool trips and great memories with friends while at uni, I am glad I started working FT at 24.
True tbh. Even work wise, I'm a lot more mentally mature and disciplined, as well as knowledgeable about the world at 24 than I was at 21 and I'm pretty sure this has allowed me to perform better.
Less concentration of immature retards creating a troll post of having an affair with a female MD every 5 seconds
I would definitely say that a 30 years old know why he sits there meanwhile the 20-something recent graduate sits there just because that's what his peers and society told him it's the thing to do. Apples to Oranges.
people are shitting on OP but as someone in the London/EU recruiting cycle, he’s not wrong. obv exaggerated (no one is interning at 30) but the truth is there are a large population of Masters students, mostly out of the EU targets (HEC/HSG/other french schools etc) who end up completing 3-5 SA/OCs before even considering a full time role. And before people say ‘oh they didn’t convert/there is a lower conversion rate for OC vs. SA’ etc, I can name off the top of my head at least 5 people from these schools who have spent cumulatively 6-7 years via their Bachelor + Master completing SA and OC and have received multiple FT returns, and i’m talking BB, EB, reputable MM IB and even UMM PE. They just don’t want to ‘settle’ - can remember 2 kids who had returns to decent BB (Citi, Bofa, Barclays etc) in a group and geography they liked who didn’t take their return offer to only target the top 3 BB. They’re now hitting the SA application portal and my guess is if they don’t land the top 3 BB, they’ll do it again for 2026 summers next year (one of them will turn 25 in a month).
This is fine not to want to settle - even if I think it’s crazy to delay a FT job at a peer-ish firm for more education and for potentially convertible internships - but it ABSOLUTELY unnecessarily raises competition for students not wanting to be 25-26 applying for internships. Again if they want to strive for the best first FT job possible out of uni then god bless them, it just creates a cycle that incentivizes more education for no reason and pushes everyone’s timeline back. This isn’t to say you can’t make it out of a UK/EU undergrad because you can, just is the product of a system of students who are willing to not work for 3,4,5 years by product of taking internships instead until they hit 25 and realize ‘ok it’s time to finally start’.
Also I see some ppl commenting on stuff like this saying ‘oh it’s cuz Europeans want to travel when they’re young’ or ‘why not do more education if it’s cheap’, while that’s the case for a minority of these people, most cases it’s much more a product of stacking internships to leverage the best possible FT/final SA option even if it takes a 3-4 year Master program.
Surely that's just an insane risk to take given how competitive/randomised london recruiting is. Even with a stacked CV a top 3 BB is not a given (alongside converting it) so risking a FT alongside a year of income seems insane to me personally (although I too know of people who have done this)
This is the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard. Who in their right mind would decide to do internship after internship, sacrificing salary and job progression for the sake of a ‘better’ brand name on their CV?
It’s real, you can go look in the LDN SA threads where ppl discuss their profiles.
Tough out here as a UK undergrad.
Germans / French are notorious for doing this
Have been on both sides of the pond (London and NY) so can comment. So much over exaggeration here. It is indeed fucking stupid to delay getting a job at BAML for example for a shot to get a job at MS for example. But that isn’t common lol. There are a lot of salty UK students who are just finding it hard to compete with these European guys on experience (rightfully so).
Something that isn’t as common in the US is the plethora of off cycle internships that don’t convert. People know it’s extremely tough to get a summer at BB IB since that’s basically your ticket to getting a job. So you try to beef up your experience before that. Off cycle internships are a way to get that. So you take 6 months or whatever off from college to do an off cycle (sometimes it’s part of the course). A lot of times this doesn’t convert and are way less competitive because duh it’s during school term and you have to take time off. But for those who are gunning for IB and want to leave no stone unturned- they do these internships and delay their graduation sometimes. Small trade off if this helps you get a summer at a top IB group.
this obviously creates “experience inflation” where people who are in rigorous academic courses like engineering or whatever, can’t compete with the EU guys who are mostly business/finance majors. Can’t see this stopping unless banks cut the off cycle internships - but it’s such a good source of dumb labor for them that I can’t see it anytime. Also a Bocconi could apply To the Milan office which is less competitive vs London and imagine everyone from Their respective countries doing it. It’s dumb. Doesn’t happen as much in the US even tho there are other offices like Boston or whatever. Just not the same vibe.
I mean just get good son. The crux of this debate is simple: there are less good jobs to go around in Europe (across all fields), so they are more competitive, hence why people need to grind harder to get them. Not that complicated.
I dont know where you got your source from. The cost of education is clearly not lower in the UK
Are you living in a bubble? It’s like £9k/yr for British students in the UK. European unis like St Gallen is basically free. HYPSM is >$50k a year
you don't include the cost of living : rent, travel fees, electricity, learning material, etc
For LSE, Cambridge, Oxford, and so on you get the same cost
it’s actually 45k USD per semester for HYP but yes
Just two questions:
1) Will a 30-year-old intern with two master's and three or five internships do the work better than a 23-year-old?
2) If no, why?
Maybe but it’s still gay
Dumb qn. It’s the employers luxury of choice - and obviously if you have the choice, you pick the one with more experience (on a like for like basis).
It's just a question to provoke a thought process of all "baffled" that a 30-year-old IB intern is a reasonable choice for an employer. As long as it is reasonable, it's a fair game.
30 years old is just below MD level...
just saw someone on linkedin, 32 years old and started an internship this summer. holy shit
I’m 19 applying for internships and this is what I’m competing with make it make sense
Your time will come little bro😂
What is wrong with that? I am at a MBB and started at 27/28 full-time.
I did a bachelors + masters and had a gap year to get my foot in the door with internships (which alone took ~6 years). On top of that I had to do nearly 1 year military service (common even in places suc has Switzerland and Austria). I also did not immediately begin to study after my school since I wanted to work and save some money for my studies.
In my region (DACH) this is not so uncommon, albeit in recent years more and more the anglo-saxon way of people starting to work at 22-24 yo has become prevalent. ~15-20 years ago it was almost unheard of that anybody would start to work fulltime in IB or consulting below 26-27.
Why not just start working after your bachelor's and fit all your internships (you don't need more than 1) in the summer break before last year of your BA?
Because the consulting firms there prefer to hire Masters over Bachelors
I am French, and this no way you can find a good full time position without doing a master's degree + 3 (on average) internships. That just doesn't exist here
I can just talk for Germany, but to land a spot at a BB you mostly see people to have done 2-4 prior internships. Prior experience is much more valued than academic excellence or networking. You see people from non-target unis break into good banks regularly by doing a lot of internships. Most of the students start with an internship in Audit/TAS, then a MM bank, or EB, and lastly 1-2 BB internships. It’s because the banks tend to hire interns that can basically start as A2 analysts from a technical level compared to the UK where banks are more looking for the potential of candidates than their current level of technical skills.
Crazy how ppl want to get into IB because it is “competitive” and then complain about it being tough.
It is supposed to be tough - otherwise it wouldn’t be valuable.
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