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  1. You will not get into IB with a computer science degree. If you want to work in finance, get a finance degree (or business, accounting, econ, etc.)

  2. Being a pawnbroker and working in customer service before undergrad does not sound like good work experience that a business school will look favorably upon.

  3. A 3.0 GPA is below average, a 700 is average/below average, and your work experience is below average. The 4 languages is obviously impressive. Unless you have a crazy extracurricular/personal section, this would not be an attractive profile for top business schools in the U.S. or LBS. Maybe Said or Judge (don't know too much about those two), or other European schools.

 

I'm only a prospective analyst, so not the most qualified to answer this. I've been to enough interviews and know enough people in the industry to have a faint idea of what's required though. If you haven't done undergrad yet you still have the whole world at your feet.

Study finance. If you have the aptitude to get good grades in CS, you can take that as well. But without finance on your resume it'll be that much harder to demonstrate an interest when applying for jobs. Don't do business administration. Get good grades. Anything is possible, but with a 3.0 you'll really have to perform a miracle to break in. Grades won't get you a job, but if they're poor they'll keep you from getting interviews. A 3.6 or higher is what you should be aiming for. Take part in college stock pitch comps, and do well in them. For this I recommend you sign up to a decent financial modelling course. For about $500 you'll learn more than in your entire degree. Looking back on the quality of pitches I saw winning teams make, if anyone had taken a proper modelling course they would easily roll them. These comps are often judged by actual bankers, are great networking events (assuming you perform well enough) and sometimes have internships as prizes. Get internships. Finance internships are generally for penultimate year students, but in your first year or two you can just take generalist business internships (of which there are plenty). As well as looking far better on your resume than customer service experience, internships of any kind provide great answers to HR behavioural questions ("Tell me about a time when you..." etc). If you don't get an SA position in your penultimate year, apply to any and every micro boutique M&A shop you can. There will be hundreds all over Europe that you're eligible to apply to. Yeah it won't be as prestigious as a BB, but getting an FT offer without any IBD internship experience behind you is pretty hard (as I'm personally learning). Be interesting. Join a college sports team and stay with it all the way through. Become a bonsai master. Make short films, Interests is only a couple of lines on your resume, but I've found it is way over represented in interviews. I have a unique hobby that always gets asked about. If you do all this you shouldn't need to go to business school.

 

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