East versus West Coast Difficulty

I am a rising junior at an Ivy looking to go into IB. All of my classmates seem dead set on going to New York for internships the following summer but I really want to go to the West Coast. So I had a couple of questions about it.

1) Is it easier to get a top internship on the west coast versus the east coast (Moelis, MS Menlo, etc. rather than a MS M&A or like GS TMT NY)? 2) Assuming that I would like to stay on the west coast FT/forever, would getting a west coast IB internship be better than a NY internship?

Thanks to anyone who answers.

7 Comments
 

When I recruited, an ED I interviewed with at JPM said they had more trouble filling spots in their SF office whereas their NY office was always ridiculously high in demand. Although I doubt it'll make a material difference, he made it seem like putting SF at the top of my list would increase my chances, although fwiw I was gunning for tech banking at the time.

 

SF/LA tends to be focused in very narrow set of industries (SF: HC, Tech, LA: Media, REGL for instance) whereas NY is the HQ for most industry/product groups with the exception of tech. I don't necessarily think the level of competition for BB/EB should be different, as there obviously would be more applicants aiming for NY, but far fewer spots are available in the West coast. Its really all about what industry interests you have.

 

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