First year finance student, need advice

No idea about Canada, but I hear people on here talking about the 'big 5'. I'm sure if you did a search you could find something on here. I think you can answer all of your questions by searching, but i'd recommend by starting with "the vault guide to investment banking"; the "scoop books" to investment banking are also good (much more in depth)

Honestly, given the reasons why people get into banking, it is almost irrelevant to know what it is besides the fact that people use it as a spring board to career paths within finance (often referred to as 'exit opportunities'). The main exits are working at private equity firms (PE), hedge funds, venture capital, or corporate development.

But very simply investment banking has two functions, both taking a rather passive or not a very capital intensive role: 1) is a means of financial intermediation with respect to the public capital markets (broken up into equity and debt capital markets). Bankers are intermediaries between the buyside (institutions, high net worth individuals, companies etc. essentially anyone looking to invest money) and those who need it (companies). They offer advice to those who need to raise capital and help these companies market themselves to the public markets(i.e. road show in an IPO) 2) they advice on M&A transactions also. Here they essentially just run the M&A process, providing valuation expertise, and most importantly their expertise in the M&A process. They can represent the buyer or the seller.

So overall think of bankers as representatives or agents for their corporate clients. They forms relationships with companies, advise them on their capital structure and raising new money, and advise them during M&A or restructuring processes. The real value added of bankers comes from their familiarity with their product (i.e. M&A, equity capital markets, restructuring, leverage finance) and their industry knowledge along with their financial knowledge, which is why banks are split up between product and industry groups.

Read the vault guide, talk to people in the industry etc. to learn as much as possible. But, overall its irrelevant because its pretty much the best job you can get out of undergrad and you should try to get into an analyst program regardless of whether you can see yourself as a banker ten years down the road. Because a) you'll learn a lot and b) will have a shit load of opportunities. There are a crap load of jobs in finance, but its pretty undisputed that if you want to work in finance, the best place to start is in banking

Pay: 1st year analyst at BB or top boutique (blackstone, evercore, greenhill, lazard): $70,000 USD, $10,000 or $15,000 sign on bonus, and a year-end bonus generally in the range of $40,000-$80,000, although most recently probably around $25,000-40,000; when you start, who knows...