Did everyone with top offers get lucky with timing?
I’ve seen a ton of posts along the lines of “should I take this CS/Citi/Barclays exploding offer or wait for my other processes with GS/MS/Evercore but risk getting none?” How does the timing work? If GS is always after lower BBs, has every kid going to GS passed on previous offers because they were so confident they’d get another offer that they were willing to risk it? Or do kids get GS as literally their only offer right at the end? I know I’m missing something, but I’m not sure what it is.
2 years ago GS was the first bank to go and last year evercore was the last to go. This year GS was slated to go last with BofA, then they jumped with their early process and got a few kids in during June. Evercore was one of the first banks to go this year.
Recruiting is a massive crap show where everyone outside of the top targets who gets an offer is lucky to some extent. It’s not about the timing - there are some solid candidates from my school who would’ve gotten GS/MS/JPM if they waited but accepted Citi SF/UBS non-tech/GHL types of banks when they got an offer instead. I’m not saying those are bad banks - I have no offer, I’d gladly take anything right now.
But they are definitely not on GS/MS/JPM level. Nobody is lucky in this current situation. Banks who jumped early got some top candidates and some candidates who totally sucked but were one step ahead in preparing themselves. Banks who are going later will get some top candidates that took a longer time to prepare/took the risk, as well as some less-stellar candidates because there aren’t enough of the absolute best candidates left. Some candidates who got early offers were strong-armed into accepting, while others were lucky to have gotten an offer and were glad for anything.
On the flip side, candidates who didn’t get offers yet are being kept up late at night wondering whether they should continue recruiting or call their mother one last time before buying a fake passport and traveling to Bolivia under a new name where they can make a new life for themselves... a life with less stress, good food, and where you can live the life of a king on a typical American minimum wage.
Sorry, got distracted for a second
Hey man I know firsthand how stressful and rough the recruiting process can be, but banks do this for a reason. Trust me the stress you're feeling now about recruiting is nothing compared to what you'll experience once you're on the desk (esp in a live deal scenario). Think of the recruiting process as training the mental fortitude you'll need once you start.
Also, the harder you grind for an offer the more you cherish and appreciate it once you get it. Makes a big difference on your attitude on the desk.
Takeaway: nothing is ever wasted
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\>Gets 1 MS
\>Gives life story and stats he was dying to share
Sorry you had to go through all that bro, but tbh pity on WSO isnt gonna help you, and neither is the chip on your shoulder
This is why recruiting is such a shit show. I know a kid working at JPM that got rejected from all the other EBs/BBs he applied to, but somehow he landed at JPM at the end of the summer. On the other hand, my friend who was incredibly prepared and had really deep connections at all the top BBs ended up accepting an offer from a top MM shop and withdrawing his apps from the top BBs just because he didn't want to gamble on landing those.
The schedule does move around every year with every bank trying to game the process to maximize their own odds, so I don't think its the case that it's always GS/JPM that start last, but its sort of a constantly shifting thing.
I really think their needs to be some organization in this process- all Ivy League schools should make a rule about recruiting before the summer starts or something and not give banks access to OCR until sophomore year ends for kids, that's really the only way to reign in the insanity. Banks have shown they have ability to manage it themselves, and even now with GS and other BBs agreeing to push back, most EBs and MMs went way earlier to try to pick off kids that would otherwise go to top BBs. Then if EBs are going in the spring to try to beat the BBs, you end up with smaller shops like Union Square and SVB Leerink recruiting in like January to try to beat the EBs and lock kids into an offer. Sophomores in college are woefully unprepared, most don't even have an internship yet, and its incredibly unfair to lock them into an offer that is most likely going to dictate where they end up working full time, even though they are more than two years away from that. If I had my say there would be a week at the end of the summer when all banks opened and there would be a month long recruiting season where all banks did all of their recruiting (similar to college applications). Never gonna happen though
All the absolute best candidates I know from my target ended up at EBs- places like Meolis, PWP, Evercore, etc all landed what I would say is the top talent from my target just due to the timeline, because no one is turning down an offer from one of those to gamble on GS. It will be interesting to see if top BBs end up taking a hit because of recruiting, but realistically I don't think a marginal difference in analyst talent will make any difference for any of these banks in the long run.