Please tell me it gets better
I don't know why I'm making this post but I guess it's a last ditch attempt for some hope. I'm in my final year of university at a non-target, and I am still struggling to accept the reality of my situation. I have been miserable over the past few years and have tried to make the most of my situation, but have ended up short. I have struggled with not being good enough and have had suicidal thoughts for a long time now, but have always distracted myself by pretending that everything will eventually work out in the end. The reality is that I will most likely graduate with no offers and I have nothing to look forward to, as I have no friends and my parents don't talk to me. I don't have anyone to talk to and this is the only way I can reflect.
I was always super competitive and had extremely high ambitions. Ever since I was 14 I was looking into this industry and I had a plan on what I wanted to achieve. Of course life never works out exactly as you would hope, and even though I had factored that into account, I still expected to be 'successful' and get a good job after graduation.
Unfortunately, I did badly in my final year of school and got into a complete non-target university. I pretty much knew right then that it was over and I wouldn't have a chance of getting a job in this field, but I deluded myself into thinking I could still make it somehow. This industry isn't completely meritocratic and your background does matter. Where you studied does matter. A lot of the advice regarding networking isn't really applicable since I'm from the UK, and networking over here is no where near as relevant as it is across the pond.
I have made previous posts about being rejected/venting my frustrations and it has been difficult to accept that I have failed. I haven't got a single offer over the years for a relevant internship, and I have started to receive rejections for full-time positions too. I have worked really hard during my time at university to learn as much as possible about the industry, but that has all been a waste now since I didn't get any offers. I have been applying for a range of different roles over the years - not only IB, but I only managed to get one random, unrelated internship at a small firm. After constant failure, I felt awful and I started to punish myself by not eating or drinking anything for a while after each rejection. My self-esteem is non-existent as you can probably tell.
It has been hard seeing my future crumble in front of my eyes and I haven't been coping well. I have tried blaming it on the fact that I am at a non-target university in order to cope, but maybe I'm just not good enough. Either way, it is my fault that I am in this position and I have woken up every single day for the past few years regretting not working harder.
Many people I went to school with went on to study at elite universities and have got the best jobs from the best companies. I feel so useless when I see them achieving what I have always wanted to achieve. What really hurts is knowing that if I had done things differently in the past, I could have also achieved what they are achieving.
It's weird because I'm only 20 and I should just be starting my career, but it feels as if my career ended before it even began. I am scared about the future because I don't want to kill myself, but I also don't want to live the rest of my life as a failure who didn't make it. Seeing everyone else doing great things when I'm such a useless fucking loser makes it even worse.
Do things eventually work out in the end? Or is all the time and effort wasted if I am never going to get a job in this field?
Relax man I know how you feel. My only advice is to keep smiling, force yourself to smile and keep staying positive. Keep cold-calling and cold-emailing every firm out there, start small and build up. There is a light at the end of tunnel I promise.
Remember, wake up everyday and go about your day smiling. Appreciate the small things in life and go for walks. Read a book. You’ll feel better. I guarantee it.
Once that goes up, you’ll notice things begin to slowly fall into place.
The feelings you’re experiencing don’t change even after you break into the industry, and for me they’ve gotten worse because now I’m ONLY surrounded by high achievers. Our minds will always focus on the people that are doing better than us, unless we actively work against it. And there’s always people doing better. Sometimes I feel like everybody from school is at better firms than me, working on better project than me, getting faster promotions than me. You just have to train your mind to not dwell on thoughts about others because a) usually they’re misleading and b) what someone else is doing has absolutely 0 fucking relation to you and your goals.
The secret is simple: focus on yourself 100% of the time, and focus on moving forward 100% of the time. ALWAYS move forward. ONLY think about your future goals and what actions you should be taking now to get there, and make sure you’re taking the right actions in the present. Focusing on the future will get you excited and energized even if you’re nowhere near where you want to be right now, because anything is possible in the future. We can set any goal and a plan of action to achieve it. You can’t problem-solve the past, but you can problem-solve around any impediment to your future goals, and I’m telling you that you 1,000% can get a job in this industry.
Ruminating on the past causes so much anguish because it’s fixed. You can’t change it. It’s only causing you unhappiness, and ANY more time you spend thinking about the past is time wasted, because you could’ve spent it moving forward. So start thinking about where you want to be in 5 years professionally, mentally, physically, fitness-wise, and relationships-wise, and start taking steps every single day to get closer, because in 5 years you ABSOLUTELY can change everything.
For context, you’re 22 and crying things are over? My rainmaker MD didn’t even break into IB until he was almost 30, and now he generates millions and millions of dollars every year for the firm and has relationships with every single top corporate and financial sponsor in our vertical (and has a couple houses, a wife, and kids, and works from wherever the fuck he wants). Imagine if he gave up when he was 22 because he thought it was over. The possibilities are endless for you kid, you’re just getting started.
ur a homie bro truly a good person
This dude knows what’s up. Great comment man. Need more people with that perspective. You’re an OG for sure.
Here's a graph showing you how much better it will get
This graph is more depressing than encouraging lol.
You’ll be fine. As a data point that hopefully inspires you, I started in community college before going to a Northwestern Mutual non-target and not even learning about IB until my senior year. I took a longer and more roundabout way to get there but got into IB at reputable banks and now PE. I was an absolute shithead in high school and college, and if I can do it, so can you.
This is exactly how I did it. Going to piggyback on this with more detail:
→ 1.4 GPA in high school, total glue huffer
→ Community college for two years, then went to a large state school that shuffles accounting and finance kids into Big 4 audit or mortgage banking
→ Discovered IB my senior year, finished with a sub 3.0 GPA and zero internships of any kind (worked retail jobs throughout college to afford fun summers)
→ Cold-emailed everything in my hometown + 30 minutes outside of my hometown that looked like it brushed shoulders with M&A or capital markets and eventually got an unpaid internship with a small group of ex-consultants doing the independent sponsor thing for themselves (literally only 4 MDs, no VPs/juniors)
→ Applied to Vandy's MSF with a weak profile, they doubted letting me in but I begged my way in and pointed to my new internship as a signal for grit/whatever you want to call it
→ First internship experience snowballed into an internship offer with a real fund, which snowballed into my acceptance to Vandy
→ Old habits die hard, I fucked around too much at Vandy but still locked down an IB offer (not as good as I likely could have gotten had I locked it in more) with a "shitty" (to use WSO terms) boutique
→ Flipped shitty boutique experience into BB IB experience and flipped BB IB experience to MM PE (although I still could have made it out to MM PE with just the boutique experience)
I felt like I wasn't going to make it. In the middle of my year at Vandy, most of my classmates had secured offers while I hadn't. It sucked, and I was beginning to write off IB entirely and began looking into corp finance/commercial banking opps. I decided to shift my focus to smaller boutique banks and ended up with three offers. Look where others aren't looking, you can still climb your way up if that's what you decide you really want.
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Try getting laid man, can change your whole depressive mindset. Working out helps too.
I graduated undergrad a year late and with a ~2.3 gpa in premed and made it. Just keep trying. You can get a job in audit at a crappy consulting firm and break in after a few years.
Get rich or die trying.
Oh yeah bro get laid 🤟🏻🤟🏻
I am a few decades out of school, went to a complete non-target (I think we were ranked in top 5 of "national party school" by princeton review at the time), I got a shit first job out of university. But somehow, over the last two decades, I was on a PM/trader team at a top brand name asset manager, and now run a very successful crypto fund for 5 years now (no, we didn't blow up with FTX cause we're not morons and don't keep assets on exchange unless they are being actively traded).
Also, the whole "I'm in London, there isn't any networking" is complete BS. I have a feeling since you dropped the fact that you have "no friends", you probably just have zero networking skills in general, so probably something to look into as you move out of university.
Basically, my advice here, is quit being a victim/p**sy/whatever, start working out to get your head straight and gain some shred of confidence, and go figure things out. In today's day and age its never been easier to make a bunch of money, and the college diploma from a target school isn't nearly as important as it used to be when I was coming up.
So buck up, man, life is gonna throw a lot worse things at you than not getting into the right college.
Holy fuck dude.
Didn't see anybody else say it so I'm going to. Don't take yourself so fucking seriously. Getting ready for IB at 14??? Upset about a nontarget placement as a freshman in college?? Dude state school girls are way more fun - enjoy what life gives you.
Go to the bar. Host a party. Get laid. Play a sport. Make an impulse decision to travel for the weekend. For fucks sake you're 20 years old, you're not supposed to have literally anything figured out. You think IB people do - hell no, we all are trying to figure out what we're doing the next year after we get bonuses. Your pit of anxiety will not get better until you realize there's 8 billion of us not knowing what the fuck we're doing, but shit works out.
Aside from this, there's way more to life than work. You work to make a living, you don't live to work. Too many young people forget this - at the end of the day it's always just a job. I get this may sound like it's easy for me to say being an associate, but trust me it's true. If I wouldn't have made it in this industry I guarantee I would have found another spot in sales elsewhere and never looked back. Maybe would have made more money even, who the fuck knows or cares. Money affords a lot, but we also give up a lot to get it.
TL;DR - nobody knows what the fuck we're doing anyway, so don't feel ashamed for not knowing also - and enjoy what life gives you (including non-target liberal arts girls)
As someone who lost my best friend to suicide a couple of weeks ago (he also had recently graduated and was feeling a bit lost), I can promise you that no problem is unsolvable. Suicide just takes your pain, multiplies it by 100x and then distributes it to everyone who cares about you most.
Look, I graduated in 2018 from a non-target, with a non-finance degree with no internships. Took a shitty accounting role and was paid £18,500 base with no bonus. 4 years later my all in compensation is over 5x my starting salary, and I’m working on the buy side in a role I genuinely enjoy doing with very reasonable hours (45-55h/week).
Your luck can change over night. You need to just look objectively at what are the requisite skills that you need and how do you get them. For me, I thought I need to learn to build models. Modelling requires accounting and excel. So I became a chartered accountant and did modelling courses. I then applied for a tonne of jobs until one landed.
People our age (20’s) assume life is a straight line and if you don’t get that banking job upon graduation then life’s over. Reality Check: this is so far from the truth. Just learn from your mistakes, learn about what is truly important to you, and put the work in by networking and up skilling at every opportunity.
Hope this helps