UNC Chapel Hill is Paradise
Sure, the ED1 rejection from Penn and the ED2 rejection from Stern stung, but UNC — with its ultra-competitive 7% out-of-state acceptance rate — is prestigious enough.
You wasted no time updating your LinkedIn header to: "Student at UNC Chapel Hill | Kenan-Flagler Business School Assured Admit." Meanwhile, your parents still can't quite pronounce "Kenan-Flagler" correctly.
You rush 180 Degrees Consulting—because nothing says "future banker" like pretending to care about nonprofits and apply for the UNC Portfolio Management Team, fully prepared to manage millions of imaginary dollars. You’ve memorized the entire history of Bank of America (founded in Charlotte, don’t you know?) and can calculate WACC in your sleep. But you don’t get in.
Instead, you have to settle for BlueBridge. “It’s basically the Robertson Scholarship of finance clubs,” you tell everyone.
Sophomore year rolls around and you've made it into the Investment Banking Bootcamp. You're still getting rejections, and you don't know why (even after 2 school-year search fund internships). Your club’s exec team (going to prestigious organizations like Goldman Sachs, Evercore, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) keeps giving you the same advice: “Lean into your diversity more.” You’re confused.
"I’m about as diverse as Franklin Street during rush week", you think. But hey, if that’s what it takes to land an internship, you’ll give it a shot.
Without thinking twice, you mass-apply to every diversity summit you can find… Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank… any program with “diversity” in the title. On the applications, you breeze through the demographic questions. For race, you hit “decline to answer.” You’re not lying, just keeping things vague. Then for sexual orientation, you pick “bisexual”—no one can really verify that, right? And for good measure, you check “disabled” too. If your basketball team is disabled, then so are you. Seems like it worked for the rest of the upperclassmen. After all, who’s going to check?
Suddenly, you notice a trend: all the execs have started "Diversity in Finance" initiatives. You realize it’s time to level up. "Excited to announce UNC's most diverse diversity organization" you write. Your mission statement is a masterpiece of buzzwords: "We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment for underrepresented minorities in the high-stakes world of finance, leveraging intersectionality to drive equitable outcomes in recruitment and beyond."
Miraculously, this works.
Bank of America, impressed by your "commitment to diversity," invites you to their diversity summit. You spend a couple of hours preparing and practicing your "overcoming adversity" stories. At the summit, you get through the obligatory networking cocktail hour, smiling and dropping lines like, “I’m all about intersectionality and inclusive leadership.” The Managing Director you say this to looks bewildered, probably wondering how you ended up at a diversity event, but that doesn’t matter. Elaine, the HR coordinator running the event, loves you.
Soon enough, you're fast-tracked to a Zoom superday. They hit you with the classic "How do the three financial statements flow together?" and then ask for your take on Carolina basketball. You nail it.
As you update your LinkedIn header once again, this time with the coveted BofA (BofA logo, of course), you can't help but feel a twinge of guilt. But if anyone asks, you'll just say you're diverse in thought. After all, isn't that what the Kenan-Flagler experience is all about?
UNC Chapel Hill is paradise
Shitter
golden
surprisingly good read
Very good points! We all agree.
Do the initials “BK” mean anything to you, by chance?
What about “KC”
KC. BK. We forgot about BK’s son — BM. BofA’s finest non-diverse soph summer analyst.
.
BK says he’s Hispanic. Take a look at the whitest kid possible 😂😂
It really is a shame that UNC’s clubs have all been seized by these weirdo striver-types. Used to be run by normal, chill kids who were looking to get into finance. Now it’s all about DEI, ESG, buzzword BS and how many random clubs you can create. Sad!
It’s the doing of out of state kids who rejected from their top choices. The in state kids don’t strive like this
KC/BK
no in-state kids do too lol. Especially the ones from wake county or the charlotte schools
In-state kids aren’t the ones faking sexual orientation for internships, obsessing over DEI, or creating a bunch of random, fluff organizations.
Interesting
Good work. Enjoy that public education 😆
So many disability and diversity clubs that it makes you wonder if it's a special needs school
It is
It’s all encouraged by those mentioned above. Ruining the school.
The only reason UNC is a somewhat decent school is because of out of state people like the Indians you mentioned or chinese people. They're mostly the intelligent ones lol. Otherwise, UNC would be another Bama if we just left it to the white population with the exclusion of parts of wake county/charlotte and some out of state. Lowkey carrying the school. No way UNC would be able to compete with Vandy/Emory/UVA/WashU type schools without that demographic
A bunch of insufferable and insecure hardos who try to make themselves feel better because they can't go to a better/target school.
My guy those hardos are annoying but it makes sense. I’m not Indian but I went to high school in the Bay Area and because of my academic leanings I was usually in the East Asian/Indian friend groups. I can tell you that they were some of the smartest and hard working mfers I’ve seen. They had insane high school stats just to end up at schools like Purdue or UCSD or some flagship engineering program. The bar is ridiculously high for that demographic Indian-Chinese upper middle class public school. It makes sense why the hardo mentality is there and why they’re salty about rejections
UNC Neurodivergents in Finance club inbound
unironically real club exists lol ... diverse abilities in business !
The most accurate description of UNC I have seen thus far
its been more than a decade since I went to Uni (and UK at that, not USA) - are all these low effort DEI clubs finance related? back in my day if you wanted to fill up your CV with some club leadership you just did something interesting. Vice President of Finance for the Obstacle Course Racing society or Vice President of Social Events for the Ice Skiing Club....then talk about your interest / involvement in more finance stuff but at least you looked well rounded / interesting.
It’s all finance related. They’re called stuff like “Diversity for Finance,” “Finance for Everyone,” and “DEI Finance Taskforce.”
It really reflects just how much all of recruiting has changed. To your point, you used to have to be multi-dimensional - centering your life around finance and being a complete hardo would ding you. That was because banks’ employees actually had say in recruiting processes, and deep down, no one wants to work alongside these DEI-obsessed weirdos (and FYI, they’re hardly actually from diverse backgrounds). But, recruiting has just been completely taken over by HR, so they love this BS.
There’s a diversity on Wall Street which I don’t think has helped a single minority lmao
Says a lot about the state of DEI when things are run by white women and diverse-in-thought men.
Grifters gonna grift.
None of their organizations actually try to reach out to true minorities to help them learn and break into finance. They literally just serve as teaching grounds as to how one can scam their way into banks’ diversity programs.
Congrats! Would love to meet you! And tell you how much of a loser you are and excited for your colleagues to despise you. Wheels up!
Piece of advice to anyone thinking of going to UNC, don’t act autistic on campus and piss off the entire IBC.
How does that happen?
When you don’t follow what the IBC tells you to do
Does the initials JB and AK mean anything to you?
lmao
AK? undergrad or MBA?
lol this post so accurate
So these “diversity clubs” truly are a big thing at UNC? That is incredibly bleak holy shit. Going through college right now must be weird as hell
They’re from the white women from Colorado and white/brown guys from California and Ohio
Went to UNC and unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, this is not true at all. Actually one of the easier semi target type schools to break into IB from. Not a ton of competition and network is great. Was not club run at all. Fewer banks recruit than they used to. BofA and Wells are the big targets with JPM, MS, and GS possible, but very tough. Barclays and Citi are very tough with little to no recruiting nowadays.
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