Senior With Bad Luck- Should I stop trying for IB?

I go to a semi target with a GPA in the 3.85-3.90 range, and I have a lot of leadership roles on my resume. My sophomore summer I was supposed to intern at a great AM firm but because of covid they cancelled the summer intern program. For my junior year, I had an IB offer early on so I didn't recruit elsewhere but they ended up cutting down their program and I scrambled to get a different one at a tiny bank. For FT recruiting I have made it to first rounds and even some super days for EBs, but I don’t have an extensive technical background, and every time I go through the technical round even though I study so much they always ask something I don’t know and I have 0 offers. I know it's not way too late and there are still some recruiting processes but I feel like I've interviewed at 5 separate EBs now and every time it gets technical beyond DCF and LBO, I get dropped. I'm taking a class next semester that teaches the questions asked on technicals, but recruiting will probably be impossible by then. At this point in the year, should I just give up on investment banking and finance entirely? Networking to get to SDs is practically a full time job by itself and I just don't know if there is even a chance

4 Comments
 

Sounds like you know where you are messing up, so study technicals harder.

Also, don’t despair I know many colleagues who have succeeded in banking that went to crap state schools or had bad grades. I had a 2.3 gpa in college and got into a BB analyst class.

If you don’t land a coveted gig, just spend a year at a crappy bank and then lateral to a better back as a first year. I’ve seen ton of people do that and you only lose a year. If you want to make it in banking you can, you just may get off to a slow start.

 

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