How many people are actually trying to get into investment banking?
You see posts everywhere with people saying they want to go into investment banking. Not me haha, jk. But like from what I can see there are actually not that many people that want to go into investment banking. I go to a very large school (non-target, don't know how much of a difference that makes) and most people don't seem to be targeting investment banking specifically.
My school's finance club, the largest club on campus, has about 1% of the number of students. This is a lot, but most of these people seem to not target investment banking specifically. If I had to give a number, I would say maybe a quarter of them at most are aiming for investment banking.
I read online that 90000 people applied for 1000 spots at Morgan Stanley which honestly seems very very little because this includes undergrads and grad students. Granted this was from like 7 years ago so there will be more applicants now, but I don't think MS hasn't been hiring more interns as well. You could say that's still very few spots, but there are tons of banks and I don't think they will have more applicants than MS, besides JPM or GS. Obviously, this 1000 includes other groups besides ib, but still (idk what to say, but still).
Also saw Jeffries hired 176 interns with 5000 applicants, so it's even statically easier to get into Jeffries than MS, but you don't need math to know that. Honestly doubt many people even know what Jeffries is, I sure didn't, but now I'm gonna be applying to them in the future because 176 interns were hired, but probably like 1000 were accepted. I'm just guessing.
So if you network, have a good gpa, know your shit, and are not boring, how hard is it to get an investment banking internship your junior year. Also, I would like to say, idk what I just wrote, I just said some shit and yea. It seems to me that investment banking isn't that hard to get into if you're just doing the right thing.
Also, if you know how many applicants a bank has and/or how many were accepted it would be great if you comment it.
Went to a top target, so will give my two cents regarding how popular IB seems. Really depends on the school, some schools like Stanford/UCBerk are more centered towards tech whereas others like ivy league/gtown/uchic have a bit of a more emphasis on traditional finance/consulting. At my uni when I was there, over my four years, I really saw the jump into IB/MBB decline. It may just be my specific school, but kids genuinely seemed to think a bit more about what they wanted to do specifically and if they actually fit the IB mindset. Nowadays especially at targets, IB is simply seen as a way to get to the more upper echelons of finance like PE, HF, VC etc. Over my time, I saw a lot more people decide it was not for them and make the jump to other more "chill" areas of finance like AM (like me), WM at a PB, consulting or try to make the jump directly to PE, HF firms. Obviously still have the kids who are IB or bust, but at least at my uni, saw it slowly shifting.
hopefully interest in ib goes down a lot more by the time i apply for internships so i have better chances lol
Imao it has not gone down that much. Say instead of maybe the 500 kids that instantly drop their app for an OCR interview with GS/JPM/MS/Citi/BAML, it has gone down to maybe like 450. Still very high and will always be that way at top targets like ivy league + UChic, Stan, MIT.
Off topic, but how well does AM pay? What’s you’re expected pay trajectory assuming you’re at your current shop for 5+ years?
P standard nothing crazy. I am at a BB in their AM/IM. From what I know standard 85k, 90k, 95k bases as an analyst with bonuses averaging out to anywhere from 20-40%, jumps to 125k for associate not too sure for second, third year. MDs can clear quite a bit though with some WLB (say around 50-55 hours most weeks, a bit more at the end of quarters). Overall, I am very satisfied and enjoy the work and can see myself staying and working towards the MD/PM level. Long term goal is to start my own side hustles/business, invest in real estate, gas stations, things of that nature as I am much more interested in operating my own businesses in any form, may try to get an MBA and switch to MBB/strategy consulting before jumping to industry if I feel that is a better fit.
The straight numbers don't mean much.
Okay so 5000 people applied to Jefferies. 4000 of those probably had a terrible CV, GPA or didn't know anything about banking.
The odds are actually much higher when you consider people with a serious shot of getting in
investment banking easy to get into? niceee.
But on a serious note, I wonder how many people got an internship offer and what the yield rate is. I bet you are right when you say a lot of people probably don't make the bare minimums.
50000 vs 30000 vs 10000 is the same difficulty.
The caliber of top 1000 candidates for example probably does not change much year to year.
true, but those thousand aren't all going to go to the same bank.
It's tough because you basically have 2 different tracks of recruiting going on.. The "OCR" (on-campus recruiting) track at targets and semi-targets where you're gunning for school specific spots and the the "other" bucket where non-targets from a variety of schools are vying for whatever is left over.
OCR track is limited by a) how many people are interested in banking from your school and b) how many interview spots / overall spots in the class are "earmarked" for your school. And even further, of those interested in banking how many are serious vs non-serious applicants.
"Other" track is kind of a free for all. Most firms will have 70-90%+ of their class come from the "OCR" pool. So if you're in the "other" pool you're fighting with a huge swathe of students across a whole host of schools (as opposed to just students at yours) to get a very limited number of spots, total. You either have to "out-merit" everyone else on resume points or "out-network" everyone else to bypass standard filters. But, all-in-all the bulk of the app to offer rates that bring down the average will come from this category.
OCR / target / semi-target kids can reasonably expect to get interviews if they're serious and have a decent profile / network a bit (not sure what the numbers are but let's say ~65-75% of serious applicants get a few interviews). And from there you can get an offer if you do well. "Other" track kids are pretty much not guaranteed jack shit and need to fight to get any kind of traction (maybe only ~5-15% of serious applicants get interviews). Which brings me back to my original point: the "difficulty" of getting into banking (and other "prestige" jobs post-college) will depend on which recruiting bucket you fit into.
Also re: your point about kids from your school not gunning for banking. It's because folks at most non-targets have no idea wtf any high finance tracks even are. Their idea of winning is getting into Big4 Audit or an FLDP at a local bigcorp. You need to have some exposure (be it family, WSO, friends, professors etc) to this stuff to even care enough about recruiting for it in the first place.
At OCR-track schools this shit is bread and butter. There's a literal fucking army of kids that all simultaneously move to NYC, SF, CHI etc every year to start careers in these fields. It's not "out of reach" or whatever, it's what kids simply go into (as well as the other typical routes like top law schools, med school, academia etc). Firms are basically tied to the hip to these schools and fund a shit ton of their careers services costs every year just so they can keep the flow of talent coming through.
It's silly that there is such a rift of experience and exposure to "success" between doing your UG at an OCR-track school vs a non-target (but probably still decent school) but that's just how the system is, I'm afraid.
I'm not saying you're wrong that non-targets probably don't know what investment banking is, but I feel like more people know about jpm or gs than they do of the big4. When I was in high school, I had never heard of any of the big4, but I have heard of GS or MS.
Your hs knowledge is irrelevant because prestige is largely dictated by your peers and social group. So if your friends in college think FLDP is prestigious, than that is what you are most likely to aim for. Same for B4.
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