What did I do wrong?
3.8 GPA, multiple ib/buyside internships, sophomore IB internship at a brand name MM, target school (think Stern/Cornell/Columbia), sent thousands of emails, 40+ chats across BB/EB with many being referrals from other bankers with great internal reviews. And then I didn't land a single first round in an BB/EB M&A process. What did I do wrong? The only thing I can think of is not being in our school's flagship finance clubs or having the misfortune of being born non-dei/first-gen immigrant American. Is that really all it is? I'm trying to wrap my head around what could have possibly went wrong this cycle.
Sophomore from target, 3.8 GPA with internships and experience, feeling the same. Still have some hope in the process but definitely feeling on edge, it feels like there are fewer spots this year then ever before and this January has been historically bad for jobs, wondering if that plays a role. Following.
if you are asian, you need a 3.95. its how the world works unfortunately.
del
u go to stern fs. feel bad bro. did u fuck up ur interviews?
what makes you say that?
was replying to person who made the post but, the club comment added up to stern lol
Congrats on Stern!
Blaming DEI after being at a super target is a bold move cotton
i think they're asking what, if anything else, could have been improved in this case
The misfortune of being born with college educated parents / grandparents? Such a misfortune. I can see why you couldn’t land an interview. Be better.
You’re probably just weird
Impressive how quickly you went from self-pity to patronizing low-income families & minorities. I can’t imagine how such a kind, innocent soul could strike out!
Sorry, meant to say that I am first gen American, non dei. Came from a pretty poor background with little white collar connections haha..
Honestly, the other comments might be shitting on you but honestly could just be falling victim to the fundamental attribution bias. Sometimes it's just purely bad luck. It's unfair, but sometimes you can do everything right, and still not succeed when it comes to getting a banking internship.
Maybe it really was something about you- in the chats maybe you came off as too hardo and not someone that bankers would want to work with, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Just keep working hard, land something at a smaller shop, and work your way up. Best of luck kid
jesus yall are fucking hate criminals.
I will say that there are numerous people like this every year and from my time at university, every single one who was sufficiently motivated ended up at broadly the track IB/PE/wtv with minimal delay.
If you are being truthful, its just bad luck (don't know the specifics of your process) that happens in the real world. On the plus side, over the first 5 years of your career, these divergences converge
But do they really? The person who got a BofA superday off the rip with minimal networking by luck, exiting well to PE is already compounding opportunities. I don't think there's any real way of converging with that trajectory in a meangingfully unless one person has horrible happenstance or the other has a miracle opportunity drop on his lap.
I’m going to be very straight up here. You check all the right boxes, but so does every applicant these days. Everyone has the GPA, clubs, knows technicals, etc. Your coffee chats probably didn’t go as well as you thought. 40 isn’t that high of a number, and if you didn’t get any interviews, it’s because nobody pulled for you.
But why? at some of these banks, I had more than 5 chats, with some going as far as saying all my reviews had been good and my name was known on call. So what happened? I just don't get what I did wrong to be dinged by every bank I networked with and only pulled into processes that were non M&A.
It’s not enough to have good chats. You need to have people actively pulling for you and pushing HR to interview. That means that you need at least 1-2 of those chats at each bank to go super well.
If I talk to 30 candidates during recruiting, I’d say about 20 of those chats at least are “good.” However, only a handful of those 20 chats are candidates that will get shortlisted and pushed to HR.
Recruiting is a shitshow and a numbers game
You need to maximize your chances of landing something, and 40 chats isn't that much in the grand scheme of things
On the bright side you are at a good school and will find an opportunity one way or another if you keep at it
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