What to do sophomore summer? 3.9 GPA at target with IB & PE experience already
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Nope, I will still do a finance internship for the summer (but not sure if it is too late for you to get a good one; and I am guessing the reason why you are asking this now is that you didn't manage to get a good summer internship). I would try to get a IB internship at a MM bank, say HSBC, SG, etc. But again, I do think might be too late for that. If not, I would still do a IB internship at a boutique.
I think all these traveling and exploring can be done the summer after school and before you start FT. This is probably your TRUE final summer.
As long as you have a good relationship with the places you've interned, I would intern for about amonth and a half and travel the rest of the time.
Semester at sea
that actually looks really cool, unfortunately they don't seem to have a summer term
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It depends a lot on your career goals. From what I know from Stern, getting a top investment banking / buy-side job is hyper-competitive and your background has to be bulletproof.
The question is why not do both? Since you're not doing a formalized internship at any of the large firms, find a place to intern for 8 weeks from end of May/beginning of June to mid-July. Right afterwards, go travel and explore your interests until school starts up again in September.
I could try to do both, but I'm wondering if spending another 8 weeks at an internship really adds any value to my resume. I had to work my ass off to get a 3.9+ while interning at the same time, and I'm just looking forward to spending my entire summer traveling/having fun while also networking of course
Congrats on gaining some relevant experience during the academic year, that being said, I have several friends who go to / went to Stern and part-time internships at small boutiques are commonplace so these experiences don't make you stand out much from the crowd. Also, there's 3.8/3.9 students being dinged left and right for junior year SA programs, so truthfully the only bulletproof profile for junior year recruiting is one that includes a sophomore BB internship in a revenue generating role.
Much like everyone else said, I'd recommend you find an internship for the summer (may be too late to get an extremely impressive one, but you can definitely find something). You seem to want to go abroad, have you thought about interning abroad this summer? May be worth looking into (some travel / some work).
Agreed that boutique internships and a 3.9+ GPA doesn't guarantee anything, but most rising juniors, even at Stern, don't have a 3.9+ or 3 relevant internships (most have 1 or 2). I also have MM PE (2-5bn AUM) experience, so hopefully that helps me stand out.
Appreciate the advice, I just don't see a difference between 3 finance internships vs 4. I think I'm better off spending the summer doing something fun/interesting so that I have more non-finance stuff to talk about in interviews and dont come off as one-dimensional. Would be interested to hear more perspectives on this
Agreed that most students don't have a 3.9, but would disagree on the number of relevant experiences -- my best friend is currently a junior at Stern and she's had a total of 4 internships going into junior year IBD recruiting (3 finance: AM / IB / HF and one financial analyst in the fashion industry). She also did sophomore rotational (IB / S&T) at Wells. A friend in CAS has had 5 as of sophomore summer.
I don't think it's that hard to come across multi-dimensional at all. Granted most kids in Stern seem to be finance robots, but there's certainly opportunities to have more interested extracurriculars. She volunteered in Ghana through some NYU thing, is involved in the retail club, greek life, etc. Plenty of non-finance things to include on the resume if you look.
Again, the marginal benefit of a 4th internship depends on how meaningful your previous experiences were. If they were "investment banking fall/spring analyst" and you did absolutely nothing, then they're virtually useless "experience" to have. If you upload a resume then perhaps people can better gauge the value of your previous internships. I also never mentioned doing a finance summer internship....you could do something at a fintech startup, consumer technology company, etc. More interesting, slightly relevant if you go the fintech route, and something unique to talk about that might even help with group placement down the line.
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