Is Harvard enough?

Definitely do more online research (try mergers & inquisitions to start) / search bar on this forum ... every question you asked has been answered in detail 4930202 times. It seems you're a little unknowledgeable asking if the major is enough to land offer senior year (most FT IB offers come from Junior year internships).

No. It is not enough. Even if you were a finance major and had a perfect GPA, and although coming from a target school helps, what banks are really looking for is previous internship experience. Also, while I am on the topic, I would say that you should either switch your major, or if you really want to keep doing the physics thing, and major in finance. You should def try to get an internship in finance, and yes PWM or AM are really the only things you can get into as a freshman, and even then you may have to wait until the summer of your sophomore year. To answer the last question, I would say that IB is a lot than physics on the math side, depending on what department you go into, but it is harder in that you will have long hours and may get treated pretty badly by superiors, due to the hierarchical nature if IB/PE. That said, you will have to develop a thick skin (if you don't already have one) to work in IB/PE. But the bright side to the long hours is that you get great pay. Last thing this is the right forum because you are talking about IB/PE.

Hope that helps and good luck!

Another good site to find out more on the topic is a site called MI.

There is something on that site called The Banker Blueprint, download that and read it. Great resource.

Why are you calling it a fucking badge

And one last thing lol.

Resumes for IB/PE have to be very specific.

hope I'm not overloading you with info haha

How about you just get real and ask it like this: Hey WSO, I am a Harvard student and I want to know if my preftigious piece of paper alone is enough to get me into IB/PE because fuck networking and internships, right?

You can land interviews with a high GPA and networking alone from Harvard. I've seen plenty of my friends from Harvard land them without sophomore summer internships. Trust me.

Honestly, I wouldn’t worry that much. I graduated from Arizona State with a degree in Sociology (exceedingly unimpressive, I know) and managed to land an offer from a BB IB by my senior year, which I assume was based solely on the internship I had at the same firm summer of soph year since my grades were certainly nothing to brag about.

Get a PWM internship if you want or just relax and enjoy your last stress-free summer...either way, you’ll be fine.

Overlooking the show off attempt, it's definitely possible to break in with a science degree from a target, as long as you network enough to land initial internships and prove your interest in finance via other ways. As for your question, no, your "preftige" alone isn't enough to land offers. You're competing with tons of your fellow classmates who have done everything above and also have the brand name on their resume.

Nothing is ever enough.

There are a bunch of students, people who aren't in the industry, and other jealous kids replying to you, so let me give you some advice from someone who is actually in the industry.

-IB is absolutely doable / attainable from Harvard with any major. With the H brand, you will be at an advantage to almost all of your non-Harvard peers, even those who studied finance-relevant majors at "lesser" schools. Major wise, physics will not put you at any particular advantage or disadvantage compared to say someone studying an "easier" major at another ivy; you get no extra points for hard majors. If you want to work in banking, I might suggest something that will be a little kinder to your GPA, unless you're just really into physics. Within a given school, GPA is one of the first filters that HR or a given team will use to narrow the pool. Only downside to Physics might be explaining why you chose that as a major, and why not Econ or Comp Science (two of the more common majors for IB hopefuls)

-Given the information above, you can pretty much study anything / do anything you want in college as long as you do the following: A) Have your technicals down for interviews (there are guides and answers to technical questions are very easy to learn) B) Have a properly formatted resume (there are templates) C) Get a finance related internship, preferrably the sooner, the better. Sophmore year is great to start interning. Leverage your school career website to apply for opportunities. Make sure you have a solid internship junior summer D) Can speak to why banking / why this bank (you will get these questions at every interview) Make sure you do your freaking research into why banking and what the job entails and what you are expected to do, because this is basically a check the box question people ask to see if you even know bankers do

Good luck