Against All Odds (Hope to Non-Target & Non-Diverse Students)

just wanted to share this for all my non-target grinders. Signed my offer today from a (top BB firm). I attend a non-target state school (over 40% acceptance rate) and non-diverse.

High School: I didn’t do shit in high school other than take some difficult AP courses, work, and have fun. Especially when school went online, all I did was work my part-time and chill with friends. Applied to my state school and luckily got in to be honest.

Freshman Year of College: freshman year, I partied essentially every other day downtown. Had a shit load of fun. Landed an internship in a smaller accounting firm freshman year after shooting random applications during Spring Semester.

Sophomore Year of College: I actually joined clubs on campus relevant to finance, joined some other things for fun like IM sports. Learned more about investment banking in finance based clubs, sent hundreds of cold emails to alumni and from others who went to similar state schools. Also, grinded technicals from BIWS guides.

Spring Semester Recruiting: Luckily maintained a 4.0 up to that point, landed a superday with a upper MM firm over Zoom, my apartment wifi shit itself and I missed the superday. Was so fucking bummed of missing that opportunity. Constant rejections from banks, made it to two more superdays with smaller MMs, got offers from both. Leveraged them to get a superday from a top BB firm, prepped a lot for it and got the offer. Legit cried when I got the offer, grinded my ass of in sophomore year for it.

Overall Message: if you from a non-target and non-diverse you can still make it to a solid BB firm or bank in general. Gotta grind technicals and network a fuck ton. Cold emails everyday. What I believe got me offers from these firms was having a personality, do not make your whole life revolve around finance. Have some hobbies, go out. Well I am officially done with recruitment, gotta crack open the Don Julio now. Good Luck to All.

9 Comments
 
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I think the problem is that many people scrambling to get an offer at this point don't know which banks are still active in the networking/early recruiting stages. Most of the BBs are close to filling their slots for 2024 and I think most regional and MM banks are getting to that point too. I know a lot of peers who are quitting the process right now because they think it's too late and they don't have time to network and get an interview with a regional boutique. I don't know if anyone can shine some light on potential targets at this point because I know a lot of panicking sophomores would appreciate any info on that.

 

Congrats though. Definitely has been a hard recruitment cycle, especially for non-target and non-diverse candidates, so this is totally something to be proud of and blackout to considering you did better than most target candidates as well.

 

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