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Can't offer too much advice on your career, but I do suggest you work on that personality of yours and network. It's not just for being successful in your career, but successful in life.

edithc

The advice around WSO for low gpa seems to be to network, but unless my personality does a 360 overnight, it won't be helpful to depend on that. Without experience, what are my prospects if I apply after graduation?

Your personality makes a 360 every night. Since you wake up the same as you went to bed. FYI if you can't talk to people this is not the business to be in. In fact there isn't really any business to be in. You have to talk to people in every business.

Seems a little extreme heister, he could work his way up to that but I think he should focus on having normal conversations with adults and build up to that.

Don't bother submitting your resume through any resume drop or online system. With a 2.4 you'll get dinged everywhere. You need to network and you need to have a good story. Your best bet would be to cold email MDs (preferably who went to your school) and ask to have a conversation with them. If you can get them to agree to a phone call and then tell your story before they see your 2.4 maybe you have a chance.

I'll tell you right now though, a 2.4 looks lazy and if you don't have a good story to tell, don't have the hustle, then you have no future in finance.

Also GET AN INTERNSHIP NOW. Phone every Merrill Lynch in your area and say you go to "target university" and you're willing to work unpaid for 2 days a week. It's not too late if you do this now.

I'm a girl. I don't think shy is the right word for it. Mildly antisocial might be a better fit. People seem to like me well enough, but I just really like spending my time alone. I can fake it and interact, but it's harder to fake the more people there are. I'm perfectly fine conversing with people on a smaller scale say less than 15, and I'm not going to die if I'm around more people, but I'm realistic enough to know that I'm not one of those charismatic and winning personalities that will be remembered at info sessions among the hundreds who attend and my acting gets worse the larger the social interaction scale becomes. I'm prepared to "network" and go outside of my comfort zone to interact, but there's a limit to how far that can take me.

Just as a reminder, I don't have a clear idea of what area in finance I would like to be in yet.

My question was, in this remaining time, what sort of certification/skill should I study to make myself more marketable in general.

The previous poster mentioned the unpaid route. Would it be possible to name a few more firms that might be allow this arrangement? I'm also wondering what sort of finance internships paid/unpaid would be possible around a 2.8ish gpa. I won't be applying to internships yet, since I haven't done any related coursework. My gpa will be around 2.8 when I do, and my major gpa will be higher than that. So what can I do before then? A friend of mine was aiming for ib internships but ended up going to a manufacturing corporation's finance division to intern instead. I'm not dead set on going anywhere in particular.