Secured an IB Offer - What Next?

Hi, I am a junior at a semi target university and secured a MM offer last spring for 2025. I spent this summer doing fck all and not thinking about finance. I know everyone says to "enjoy yourself" after you get the offer, but is there anything I should be doing during my time in college to prepare myself for private equity recruiting or my upcoming SA role? Would it be a good use of my time to get really good with LBO modeling? Should I start networking for PE? Should I do the WSO PE course? Should I prep for the Gmat? I know it is important to enjoy my time in college, but I also feel as though I have so much free time now I might as well use it to my advantage and get ahead on prep since I will be much busier once I hit the desk. 

Please let me know if any of you have any advice/experience with this. As much as I want to keep enjoying myself, I also don't want to fall behind and not use all this free time to my advantage. Thanks. 

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

(1) Chill and enjoy having the job lined up.

(2) Continue to develop your finance skills. This doesn't mean spending 40 hours a week doing models and whatnot. Just don't get rusty. You want to be able to hit the ground running. You can cram at the last minute if you like, but it is much easier to not lose your skills if you do this over the school year. It is especially useful to do this over the full school year if you are interested in moving to a buyside role as it also gives you time to develop those skills too. 

(3) If you are interested in a buyside role, start networking now. It doesn't need to be having a phone call with 20 people a week. It doesn't need to be what you likely had to do to get this IB job. But you should begin talking to whatever buysiders you are interested in sooner rather than later.

---

Moral of the story, enjoy having a job and appreciate this time. However, that doesn't mean to slack off. 

 

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