How Competitive is the Program?

I'm a diversity sophomore from a non-target looking to break into IB. Does anyone know how difficult it is to get into the program? I'm pretty lousy when it comes to writing personal essays. Would greatly appreciate insights from anyone who has participated in or is at all associated with the conference.

Also, since the conference takes place in April, would it be too late to leverage the conference to get an interview for a 2023 SA position? Or would I still be able to do so pretty easily? I assume any summer 2022 opportunities would be filled by April. 

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I attended O4U (virtually) this past September and April and the conference was phenomenal, 100% recommend it. You really can get out of it what you want, it was super helpful to meet other lgbt students going into finance and consulting and the panels are great, in person apparently it's a massive party at night with panels during the day.Recruiting wise: I can't speak to summer analyst recruiting but I recruited full time after attending and it really helped; I managed to land a ft gig without any banking experience. At the career fair, you get a LOT of interaction with recruiters and it directly led to me getting interviews two separate places. Ultimately, I'm joining a firm that recruited at o4u but idk how big of an impact it had on my profile. Also, people you meet at the conference are so much more likely to take your follow up calls, introduce you to people and generally just want to help you out. I really think the contacts I made there will help me throughout my career.In terms of admissions, to be honest I have no idea. The essays are important for explaining your story and why you really think the conference will help you. For me, I loved all my finance classes and was really interested in the field, but I was worried that being queer at a firm would be a problem. People working at the firms that sponsor will honestly tell you about their experience and not sugar coat it (ie, a girl at an EB straight up told me it that her hours were awful and I shouldn't recruit there). Just be honest about what you want out of it but like maybe don't say you want an easier path to banking or anything like that lmao.If you want any advice or anything I can help with, feel free to DM! This forum helped me a ton with recruiting so happy to help.

 

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