Im a physics undergraduate at decent UK uni (not LSE or UCL) but still top 15. Trying to get spring weeks/ summer internships. What do you guys this is the best way to learn technicals, ideally without spending any money. Ive been trying to learn off YouTube but idk if that's the best way. Any advice?
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First off, I think Physics from a Russell Group semi-target university will give you a good shot at getting looks. It is considered a strong subject in the UK market, alongside some other non-econ or finance courses - at my bank we had people from natural sciences, chemistry, engineering, etc.
In terms of prep, there are a fair few sites which offer great free content. For example, Wall Street Prep, Breaking into Wall Street, Mergers & Inquisitions, 10xEBITDA, etc. In terms of the level of content, these sites (+ many others nowadays, I'm sure) will cover everything you need , however, the paid courses will save you time by covering all the right topics (e.g. interview questions, DCF, comps, etc) in a structured way. Going the free route will just mean you need to figure out what curriculum to study and then find the resources for each topic manually.
From my experience when recruiting for IB, once I watched a couple tutorials, the best way I found to learn was actually to pick a company and build the models and valuation from scratch, rather than just following what the videos did step by step. That way you understand the process and can answer questions on the fly rather than just memorising pre-written Q&A.
Lastly, and as an aside from your question, given your non-finance uni background, I'd recommend getting relevant experience to the extent possible through your university e.g. university challenges, societies which actually do a project (e.g. investment society), pro-bono consulting, finding non-formal internship work experience, etc.
Thank you for responding, just another quick one. Im not too worried about the work load in IB tbh, I can sort of come to terms with working crazy hours but what I'm more concerned about it just doing absolutely mindless work that whole time (aligning logos and basically spell check), is that was all of being an IB analyst is or is it more skilled. If it is just mindless work, do you know of any other positions within IB that would be more suited?
Fair question. Firstly, I don't think IB Analysts anywhere are only doing logo pushing and spellcheck (although there will be elements of this). But there are other mundane tasks such as preparing internal memos, comments from seniors, n'th iteration on a model (a lot more mundane than actually building a model).
Tbh I think the % of boring vs. intellectually stimulating work depends on the bank itself. I've only worked at one bank, and there you were expected to do the value add stuff from day-1. Rather than mindless work, people were complaining about the hours as they had a long to-do list of the "real" work to do. However, I had friends who joined banking at the same time at some other banks who didn't get to build a model from scratch or get client time until their senior analyst years.
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