Am I Cooked for Not Being a Perma-Hardo?
Rising senior doing banking this summer.
A lot of people around me have banking too, but also do a ton of extra finance stuff. Stock pitch competitions, finance research, student funds, PE fellow programs, modeling comps, etc.
Meanwhile I mostly just have the internship and some prior experience. I’m not spending every week building a finance brand or doing 5 extracurriculars at once.
For FT recruiting and exits 1-2 years after banking, how much does that college stuff actually matter?
Do recruiters for PE/HF/etc still care who won stock competitions or did research in college once everyone already has banking experience? Or does actual work experience, deal exposure, modeling ability, references, and interview performance completely outweigh it?
I know these things help people get internships initially. I’m asking whether not doing all of it now can actually hurt you later on.
Feels like everyone around me is permanently recruiting and I can’t tell if that’s actually necessary or if people are just feeding off each other’s anxiety.
Commercial insights come from consistent work in industry, not pitch contests and school funds. Pitch and case contests to me are to help with scholarship funding and have no barrier of entry. I think the real winners in those contests are the ones who can participate without making an AI slop post about it.
Funds are a bit more meaningful as you may follow an investment(s) for 1 year which can build some familiarity and understanding and they usually have higher barrier to entry (applications and interviews). I loved my fund during school, learned a lot about basic modeling, got familiar with CapIQ and Bloomberg to a limited extent. The insights about industries I had were hot garbage looking back. Maybe one out of my five or six pitches was even remotely close to accurate. The best thing that happened was there were highly qualified alums who observed and absolutely roasted every pitch because we all had zero commercial judgment. The alum feedback was the single greatest feature, not our insights or experience.
But no, I’m honestly happy you enjoyed college and still got an offer.
Top bucket and got an awesome PE job and wasn’t even in a finance club in college. Know a few super sweaty kids who are underperforming. Enjoy school literally none of that stuff matters.
Did you go to a target school?
Semi target. the clubs and stuff do not matter. Coming from someone who interviews interns, I could literally give a shit if you're in any clubs and when i see that sometimes i question cultural fit. when interviewing these kids, I look for 1) good GPA, 2) college athlete, 3) understanding of business and technical capability, 4) personality / fit. I dont know what any of the good vs bad clubs are at any given school and dont know how I would. Moreover, you seem like a nerd loser if you do this stuff. Go touch grass
Fair enough honestly. I wouldnt call myself a nerd but i have definitely gotten a little stressed with recruiting coming this fall. I was thinking of joining a club because of my bad ~3.3 GPA freshman year. I also go to a semi-target that is kind of weird for IB. I'm also a college athlete. Have mainly just worried about getting screened out of interview process.
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I reject anyone in a finance club. Won’t be a cultural fit and is stupider than the classics / history student.
Congrats on MD at lincoln international
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