What About the Freshies?

Do you mean college Juniors? I highly doubt high school juniors work as analyst.

You can apply for internships during your freshman and sophomore year summer. Some banks have special programs just for freshmen and sophomores.

With the exception of minorities, but where could one apply as a rising freshman or sophomore?

The ones I've seen making it in very early come in two types: the trustfund Park Avenue babies with the parents on Wall Street and well-oiled backdoors into success, and the bitterly determined, self-sacrificing "go-getters" who already have the recruiting process figured out by their first summer and have every recruiter on the Street on speed dial already. You'll certainly get some raised eyebrows as esp. a Freshman, but do spam your resume out there and you might land something.

Anyone willing to hook me up with an internship? =)

I would recommend a daily summer regimen of beer pong. Rinse and repeat until blacked out.

Talk to family and friends in i banking or finance. I had a friend who ran a hedge fund and he let me work as an intern for a summer in between my junior and senior year in high school. It was bomb.

badass, brah

I hope everyone realizes that IB isn't a fun way to spend like 4 summers in a row...getting finance experience is important, but I would only start worrying about gaining great internships after soph year

Companies could prefer some experience even if it is a small internship in different places (e.g. accounting, wealth management, trading, etc.). You don't have to worry about IB now to get it later.

how easy/hard is it to get into pwm (i dont really care if i get paid or not)? do they look for prior finance experience or just an understanding of finance?

easy for unpaid internships. just apply to regional offices.

unpaid pwm is typical summer-after-freshman-year internship. its garbage. you work 40 hrs a week for no pay, you dont learn anything, you just cold call , make copies, get coffee all day long. i interviewed with my moms friend at a local branch office for ML and even he said it wasnt a very good internship.

id shoot for something better for that. im an incoming sophomore, and this summer (and fall for that matter) im getting paid 12/hr making a bunch of spreadsheets for a major investment research company. its a great experience for someone my age and i got it without any connections. i sent my resume out to 30+ places between March and June before i finally got this gig. just stick it out and you will be fine

Some banks have summer banking assistants which are responsible for pulling research, printing 10-Ks, etc.

i understand what pwm is in theory, but what exactly do pwm interns do, and why do people say its not very intellectually stimulating?

from what i hear a large amount of it is bitch work manning the phone, copy machine, and coffee maker (possibly not quite that bad, but you won't be doing any sort of actual work, very little real finance exposure)

depends where, too. i know someone doing pwm at ML in nyc and hes really enjoying it. hes learning a lot about the market, they have a lot of fun activities, and stock market contests with play money. doesnt sound like my ideal post sophomore year internship (or even post-freshman, for that matter) but some might find it enjoyable and its not exactly bitch work. but i interviewed for pwm at a suburban branch office of ML, and that definitely seemed like bitch work