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.

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