Investment Banking Associate without Work Experience
Is it possible to become an investment banking associate without any work experience? My school (strong semi-target) offers a five-year MBA-undergrad degree program. I'd have an applied math major and an MBA coming out of school. With a 3.9 or a 4.0 and good internships, good alumni and wall street connections, and strong performances at investment banking / financial modeling competitions, how are my prospects for becoming an investment banking associate without any real work experience besides summer internships? Thanks.
Yes, I have seem one person did one of those Yale sliver scholar program, where you do 2 year MBA straight out of undergraduate. Got a summer associate offer without any real work experience. However, I don't know what you mean by semi target. I think if the school is top 15 b school, then you have a shot.
Thank you! School is a top-25 business school for MBA graduates.
Just to give you the correct expectation Top 25 isn't good enough with the exception from Georgetown, Emory & Chapel Hill for SE placement, UCLA and maybe USC / Tepper. However, keep in mind, even T15 schools have trouble getting associate roles. A close friend who spent ~8 years in AM went to a T15 b school had hard time recruiting for IB associate and eventually landed a gig at BlackRock. I'm also guessing associate recruiting is even harder for you given that you're not going to have the opportunity to do a summer associate gig and competing for full associate right out of the gate.
To give you stats on the guy that I know, he's top 5 European University, not some "strong semi-target". Did a 2 year MBA right out of undergraduate with strong internships. Now, he's placed as a summer associate at one of BB.
I’m sure it’s happened before but very difficult from what I’ve seen.
Had a guy like this in my MBA program. Did a 5 year undergrad/MBA degree and ended up having to recruit for analyst and associate positions just depending on the bank. He struck out with associate recruiting.
Another guy in my program had 2 years of work pre-MBA, and he also wasn’t able to land anything (I think largely due to his lack of work experience). From my experience, 3 years seems to be the minimum that banks like to see for associate roles (again I’m sure it has happened with
For the guy in your MBA program who did the five-year undergrad/MBA degree, was he eventually recruited as an analyst or did he strike out completely?
what program did u attend?
The 1 person I know who did an undergrad / MBA degree came in as an analyst (might've come in as a 2nd year analyst, but I think 1st year still).
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