Having success with IB networking for the first time ever...

Last year and this past summer, I tried networking, and it went absolutely terribly. No one got back to me, the calls were awkward, and I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere.  Flash forward to today, I had my 4th good coffee chat this month where I didn't feel like I was wasting someone's time and honestly I'm kind of shook right now in a good way

I'm a junior at a semi-target (think Indiana, Wisconsin level) and have been networking for IB since last semester. Had probably 15-20 total calls that were all pretty surface level, got the "thanks for reaching out, stay in touch" type responses but nothing that actually moved forward. Started to feel like maybe this just wasn't gonna happen for me.

Anyway I reached out to this MD at a MM bank (not gonna name it but its one people on here would recognize) and we hopped on a call this morning. I was expecting the usual 15 min "tell me about yourself, why banking" routine but we ended up talking for almost 45 minutes. He actually seemed...interested? in what I had to say about a deal his group worked on last year. I had done a stupid amount of research on their healthcare practice and I guess it showed.

But here's the part that's messing with my head - at the end he basically said "we don't have our SA class finalized yet, let me intro you to the recruiting team and one of the VPs on my team." He literally sent the intro email while we were still on the call. The VP already responded saying he has time this Thursday.

Is this actually happening or am I reading too much into it?? I did something I don't normally do, and I actually invested in a few tools to help like LinkedIn Sales Nav and RecruiterBase now this is the first time someone's actually pushed me forward in a real way instead of just being polite.

My roommate thinks I'm being naive and that this happens to people all the time and doesn't mean anything. But I don't know anyone else from my school who's even gotten this far with an MM bank. Trying not to get ahead of myself but also like...do I actually have a shot here? What should I even prep for this VP call that's different from the MD conversation?

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb post but I genuinely didn't think I'd get to this point... like I don't know if this is normal or maybe it's just a better time of year to be networking, and that's why the first time when I tried it didn't work?

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