Hello, I am currently a high school sophomore and am highly motivated to pursue a career in finance. I have been succeeding in school and am in a solid position to attend a target university as an undergrad. It would extremely helpful if someone already positioned the industry could provide some advice to point me in the right direction for the future. Thanks
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Okay this has been rehashed a couple times on WSO so I will try to be brief.
You are a high school sophomore and years away from finance recruiting. The only two things you should be focusing on right now is having fun and ensuring you get into a target school. If you haven't taken the necessary standardized tests, start prepping for them now and get top scores. Get a plethora of out of school experience in activities YOU ENJOY (if this is an investment club then do that), not what you think will look right. Once you are in your senior year and received your college acceptance you can start looking for an informal summer internship, but not many people will give you that role right now
You don't even know if finance is truly what you want to do at 16. Hell half the ppl I know at my uni (target) gave up as sophomores when they realized what the application process entails, what the jobs are truly like, and meeting "real finance ppl".
I know this answer won't be appealing, when this advice was given to me at 15, I scoffed at it. But I truly hope you enjoy your life right now and understand you have years to do ridiculous networking/BS informal internships/rote memorization for IB interviews.
Get good grades. Cause some trouble. Hang with friends. Enjoy it kid.
At your young age you can still consider two paths to your goals. This website and damn near everything else is dedicated to showing you one path; Follow the rules, do everything right, be super linear and compete like a D1 athlete to get into a target, then the right internships, the right post college job, MBA, etc, bs, bs.
The other path is non-linear but taken by many of the titans of finance and industry. It's having balls and doing something outrageous; start flipping little Amazon companies, flip some real estate, roll up a few local businesses and sell them just to have the experience, develop some low risk investment thesis and raise a small fund, learn FX, etc,. Pick one niche thing (AI, InsTech, cross border trusts or blockchain or whatever) and become the world's expert at it. Shit, you're 16. By 26 you can be true expert level in a niche. You can know more about bananas, afghan minerals, US/Mexican cross border insolvency or ganja cultivation, or whatever.
Expertise can never be taken from you. A job can. NY suburbs are full of diligent and hardworking men who did everything right (SAT/GPA > Target > Wall Street > MBA) and they came up short. They get laid off in recessions, they get shuttled into other (overhead) departments of the bank and are blocked from the dreams which fueled them to this dead end. At the end of the day, the biggest hotshit an an IB is still an employee, still has to kiss someone's ass more than he wants and his star power is declining with age, like a banana. But the expert... the expert can't be fired because he's independent or infinitely employable. The expert's phone rings, people and money come to him. He's not waiting for his employer to feed him, his clients do that. The expert charges more when he has grey hair (experience), the employee feels vulnerable with grey hair.
Statistically it's bad advice to suggest having balls, taking risks, being unique and standing out when there is so a well-worn path (this site) telling you to follow this simple recipe (endless work and supplication) to your dreams. But it's the advice I give. Good luck
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