What to do summer before undergrad for BB/EB

Touch grass.

Practical advice is to develop a stock pitch (a for real stock pitch). Read up some pitches on Value Investor Club to see what a good one looks like.

Just start getting in touch with alumni, but not those in finance. use apollo.io to find the emails of corporate executives from your school. Use AI to get smart on what those companies do. Write messages saying that you want to learn about their industry because you're deeply interested in the space they operate. Finance people are honestly d bags and constantly sizing you up to see if you're worth their time and get bombarded by kids constantly, these people generally don't. The goal would be to form relationships with people and then call on them to introduce you to other people when the time comes. If you prioritize reaching out to the c suite, trust me, there are bankers crawling up their asses and will be willing to give you an interview if one of them shoots over your resume in a year or two. Be willing to go meet them, tour their offices/factories/worksites and actually form relationships. The outlook for super technical people in finance is bleak relative to people who actually have relationships. There is no alpha in a 10-K for the vast majority of companies, but there is alpha in calling the CFO of one of their customers and saying "would you switch if you could?" and getting an honest response because they're rooting for your success. 

Enjoy your life 

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Figure out how to get into the top finance club on campus. Once you’re in, upperclassmen will basically lay out the path for you.

Honestly just go do something that’s interesting and makes a good story. You’ll have plenty of time to look at a 10-k later. Find something where you’re outside if possible and speaking to new people. I picked the 15 people my team was going to interview this year solely based on their interests (granted I had HR send me a resume book of T50 schools, gpa cutoff, location & group preference so everyone looked the same). In a superday, I ranked #1 the person who gave me a restaurant recommendation when I mentioned I was flying to Prague that night for vacation. I don’t think you need to spend a ton of money, just something memorable as this a sales job at the end of the day.

• Highly recommend a Euro trip (literally pick the cheapest flights and stay in a generator/st Christopher’s hostel. Dirt cheap, safe, full young people) Do a solo trip if your friends can’t go. Get a random job to fund it. Alternatively do woofing, au pair, workaway etc or a local camping trip
• Camp counselor (sleep away, day camp, sports camp)
• Volunteer (museum, old folks home, farm etc) and learn as much as you can
• Some super random - bowled everyday, got a beehive, learned to unicycle

Why not explore a part time internship, even if it is remote? There are multiple options out there, what is important is you show drive to get some real world exposure and make your resume stand out.

With the way LLM improvement and reach is going, I am more than certain the ecosystem in banking is going to change a good bit before you ever hit the desk. Staying on top of things like that is probably helpful.

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