Banking chances?

Hi all, I am coming to hopefully gain some insight and advice on banking right now.

I just finished my sophomore year of college at Michigan studying Economics with a 3.64 gpa and no offers for summer 26’ yet. I have a gig as a private equity summer analyst this summer but don’t know how to navigate my next year as a junior. I already have the knowledge and stories (ie interview prep) done and learned, but don’t know if I can fully commit to recruiting like I did last year, I would recruit but because of hard schedule as it’s my junior year, I can’t commit as much time as I did nor do I want to because I want my social life to be existent. I really want to go into investment or corporate banking but have already applied and networked at a lot of these banks. How can I traverse the networking aspect with some type of grace, should I just reapply and hope the people I spoke with forget or mention some change of heart or just be honest and say I didn’t prep enough… etc? Also, I understand some investment banks come out this summer as well, should I start networking now and, if so, what banks are going to come out? What is the timeline like?

Thanks all!

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That’s a lot of questions in one post so I’ll try to tackle as many as I can. What I will say is that if you landed a PE role this summer, you could absolutely land a boutique role somewhere for 26. If you don’t, then I would try to get something in valuation at a big 4 or something that is related to banking. The more related to IB the better (obviously). As for networking, you need to be doing that religiously. Hate to break it to you but this shit isn’t easy breaking in, say goodbye to social life temporarily. You’ll likely only have time to hang out with people once a week for the time being (what I managed during recruitment). Don’t give up bro, you’re closer to making it than you think. From what I heard this year’s recruitment was brutal so you’re not the only one scrambling right now. This part of your college career is make or break so don’t waste it.

 

Thank you, I kind of figured that, but man at this point I don’t even know if I can do that. Got a good relationship and a few good friends but they got pretty strained after sophomore year and had to put in a lot of effort to bounce back once everything started to close towards the end of the year. Would you recommend any few certain banks in specific? Or just boutiques, MM, BBs? If I can eliminate some based on probability that would save a tremendous amount of time.

 

BBs and most MMs are for the most part done with SA26 recruiting. You’ll have to target smaller MMs or regional boutiques and network your ass off if you’re dead set on IB.

 

If I were you I would just ignore BB and EB. Some people might say otherwise but don’t listen. It is genuinely not worth your time or effort (given the position you’re in) to try to break into those when other people who are coming from much more privileged backgrounds are gunning for those roles harder than you could imagine. I would focus on any MM or boutique. I think specific shops are going to depend more on your area, if you wanna talk gameplan shoot me a DM I’m happy to help!

 

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