I know how people feel about target kids complaining and I expect a ton of "thank god im not at wharton" comments, but I am getting incredibly worried when I see people get so many interviews and I get nothing. What can I do and are my chances at EBs just gone now?
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Wasn’t in any clubs at Penn and landed two EB offers last cycle
what helped you land these jobs when even some club kids would die for EB offers?
Had strong in-person chats in NY my freshman summer and got into a bunch of diversity programs
u go to Wharton man -you’ll be fine. Just keep pushing and slam those emails
Ur cooked bud. Might as well not bother applying to anything atp.
Just kidding, you go to Wharton, relax lol
I go to a nontarget and I got rejected from all of my school clubs. To make up for that gap on my resume, I just applied to unpaid internships. IMO they look better than any club ever will, given you land the right gig.
Clubs can help but not as much as you're own networking, school name in general (and you're at literally the best finance school), and work experience. Focus on building your network, leveraging that Wharton name, and trying to get some kind of internship experience, even if it's LMM unpaid, that's what I did and I got a BB from a semi-target.
clubcel
currently an upperclassmen. fuck it. network with the upperclassmen regardless of if you're in a club with them and re-apply in Spring.
if that doesn't work, fuck it again. just grind yourself. you can do anything you set your mind to and don't need X or Y clubs.
This is a clubcel mindset. Just grind on your own. Everything a club would teach you is available online for free. Be him. Absorb knowledge like a sponge.
If you grind and internalize everything in these books (and inevitably this will lead you to more books) + cold email ppl like a machine you’ll end up just fine. You could read all these books in one semester and you’d know more than the modal IB VP or PE Associate about corporate finance/investing.
I’d also recommend The Ascent of money by Nial Ferguson and everything by Benjamin Graham.
Reading Benjamin Graham is like learning how to use an Abacus to calculate a restaurant bill tip.
rise above from the herd mentality
on the one hand clubs are a good shortcut to show "demonstrated interest" in finance
but man the amount of times i've been on calls with WITG / WUFC / Case Comp kids that are just fucking clueless is insane. Being clueless is fine ofc, ur just a sophomore why would you know anything? but the switch up from giving off an impression that you know alot, only for their ignorance to show 30 seconds into a call is just wild
GPS kids almost always seem sharp though, but again correlation =/ causation
focus on the base level things that matter. like why do you even want to work at an EB? what do you think an investment bank even does? why do you even want to do that? you want to work at PE / HF after? why? you want to do x y z after? then why not do that instead of this?
Figuring out the personalized, granular answers to these will serve you much better than some getting into some fuck all club run by clueless brainrot Gen Zs. and it will show you when you go through recruiting
Best,
early 30s Wharton --> Top EB --> SM HF
I agree, the problem is that these clubs are pretty nepo now(GPS im not sure) so it's more whose in the frat of the brother running recruitment or who got the interview questions from their sibling in the club. did W with no clubs and I've considered only taking calls from kids who are not putting x investment analyst program on their resume. Also seeing the same at other good schools, my brother goes to uchi and is messaging me asking about how depreciation goes through the 3 financial statements because someone he met at a frat party sent him the interview question list
Just wanted to say lighten up. I'm WH graduated 5 years ago, did EB, MFPE now. Clubs really don't matter, didn't then and don't now. They're useful in the sense you might meet some folks in the years ahead / can provide some advice, but by no means necessary. Make sure you know your technicals down cold, and get linkedin premium and make it a goal to call 10 bankers a week at groups you're interested in. That's what converts to an offer
I would also add that it would be valuable to reflect on why you didn’t get in to any of these clubs. The whole club thing wasn’t around when I was in school. I was treasurer for our finance club, but all it took was raising my hand and meetings were open to all. It did nothing for recruiting back then. Is there a social EQ aspect that you need to work on, etc? Do you get overly anxious ahead of conversations and not perform well? Can you read the room? These are all skills that you can develop.
This could be true but its probably not his fault. It’s like how everyone’s advice to a guy who can’t get a gf is “work on yourself” / “get a hobby”. Some ppl are just unlucky and the dating market is harder than ever. The club stuff is completely out of control at every decent/top UG school b/c of how competitive getting a banking job has become.
For context, I’m BB -> MF PE -> SM L/S. Kids that I went to HS with (NE boarding school) do summer internships before college at family friends funds now and the clubs ask for a resume. It’s really not an even playing field. Also some of it is just figuring it out as a senior in hs and reading the right books (like what’s in the comment An3+ said above) and knowing how to say the right things. Most likely neither the interviewer nor the interviewee really understands ROIC but just bringing up that concept cause you read it once gives you a leg up. And it’s gotten so competitive, the egos of the kids in investment clubs is also crazy high nowadays. I was in the “best” one at my school and occasionally go back for various things and meet them & it’s just a different animal. I didn’t go to NYU or one of those NJ Indian / Asian heavy schools where you’d expect that behavior either.
The only real takeway is just grind away on your own / build your own network. If the EQ issues are real, you’ll figure it out quickly b/c the networking won’t work out. Then adjust and move on.
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