When did recruiting get so bad
Let me explain. I'm actually in Wharton and I'll give my perspective coming from my own and my classmates experiences.
First off, people at Wharton, are some of the most competitive people to have ever graced the face of this world. It's expected, it's a top institution known for having the best business school in the world. People complain and ask why Wharton kids are so cutthroat and seem like robots. The issue is that Wharton is not a shoe-in anywhere as it shouldn't be. But at the same time, when you a lot of people arriving their freshman year having spent their summers grinding DCF's and LBO's to get into top clubs(it really is not a joke), it ends up making you a competitive person as well. Banks could probably fill all the BB classes with only people from Penn if they wanted and there would still be an absurd amount of people left over from the school who want to do IB. There's so much interest in IB and PE across not just Wharton, but a crazy amount of people in the college, engineering, and even nursing. The entire school is so pre-professional and a lot of people aren't aware until they realize how behind they are. They look around and see that they're friends have somehow landed JPM offers their freshman year summer and were simultaneously under the table recruiting for BX offers. That sophomore fall they start pumping out applications, but realize that a lot of top opportunities are already closed and it's already time to recruit for their junior year but they literally have no relevant internships(my roommate ended up depressed by this point). There's a reason that we were so stressed trying to get freshman and sophomore year offers, because compared to the rest of Wharton who have these experiences you legitimately have no shot trying for a lot of positions.
Our alumni network is also not nearly as perfect as people want to make it sound. There's only so many Wharton alums in "high-finance," and many are frankly tired of being hounded with daily emails from freshman who want to pick their brains and ask for referrals. Any alumni who is seen as friendly or even helpful often get bombarded once word gets out that they are helpful to undergrads. People from parental or fraternal(overlapping class) connections are the people mainly running alumni connections and even for them it's hard. Even an MD can only do so much when your resume is sitting side by side with 10 4.0, Wharton dual degrees, freshman year worked at a BB resumes, who also networked to have MD's backing them. I've spoken to people about this and the consensus is that even if you're very qualified, it's hard to give offers when people from your same school are so overqualified.
I can't honestly recommend Wharton for most people to get into IB or PE unless you're planning to start recruiting immediately and be in the top 1% at Wharton, which is already filled with 1% students. My ASO kept telling me how weird and cutthroat some of the other Wharton kids are and it makes sense with the way that recruiting works. Anyone I want to be able to grab a beer with and hang around is probably not spamming the alumni network their freshman year trying to secure internships while maintaining a 4.0 and trying to get a masters.
There's a lot of people who aren't aware of how incorrect the information is out here, or just reiterating incorrect information. We have these old ass mentors, who are parroting the "only your junior year internship matters," not realizing how accelerated recruiting has become. People are coming in with BB internships so early that if you don't get a internship your freshman or sophomore year because you wanted to hang out with your friends and parents before you become a corporate slave, you effectively have 0 chance to recruit. I'm not gonna condone this, but there's a little sigh I mentally give when I hear people say they spent their entire sophomore summers visiting family in Peru, not realizing that IB and PE recruiting were not even options when they get back to school for their junior years.
It breeds cutthroat culture because the same peers that will tell everyone that they aren't recruiting and that everyone should wait until junior year to figure it out are the ones who end up landing KKR and BX offers. You'd be surprised how many conversations I've had over bitter people seeing their friends get offers during sophomore year, only realizing that junior summer recruiting ended before they even began their junior year. For people that have always been over prepared their entire lives, it's pretty dark when they realize that the kind of opportunities they came to Wharton for passed them by before they even knew to look for it. It makes sense that there's so much depression at the school. Some of the smartest people end up jobless and ending up at some random bank in Delaware(too many people like this) after months of sitting at home after graduating because of how recruiting slipped by them, and frankly a lot of them can run rings around me in terms of finance knowledge.
It's not even that diversity is the issue with people getting offers. I personally know poc who have 3.9's with internships freshman and sophomore year struggle to get BB first rounds now and it gets me a little shocked too. It's hard to compare yourself to someone like that and think that your chances are even decent, especially coming to a top school charging almost 90K a year with supposedly "the best business school in the country."
To be completely honest, I don't think this bodes well for finance in general, but we'll see how the pieces fall 10 years down the line. Also for anyone considering Wharton, you might want to look at other targets/ivies, that still have great brands but much less competition.
Shouldve gone to harvard
Rutgers Business School is where it's at - great brand, low competition!
Haha
Am I reading this correctly? Someone complaining about going to Wharton?
Go touch some grass dude instead of writing long ass paragraphs
Lmao real the MDs now probably weren’t as 1/10 as prepared as everyone was for recruiting today
MD that spoke at my school said he didn’t do shit all of college except watching football and hanging out with his gf. Senior year he gave his resume to the career center in the spring then got an offer from BB
HOW is that possible
Lol most of the MDs I talked to did not even know what people do in S&T when they got the job. Some of them only had 1 non-finance internship and somehow got the job after applying in their senior year.
I've said this many times on this forum, there are so many banks outside of BB and elite boutiques and most people look past them. Hell, some of these banks will pay you more than what you would get at these prestigious institutions, and you may get work-life balance as a banker as well. I know a few people making 150k base and bonus of 100k as an associate, and they work on average 50-60 hours a week. They have the opportunity to recruit for the upper tier banks but choose not to because they like their jobs, and they love having a life while making pretty good money.
I went to a non-target and an MD wouldn't even pick up the phone or respond to my linkedin message. I was able to find my path into the banking career I wanted.
Keep your options open. There are hundreds of financial institutions in the world that will give you great experience and the ability to lateral into the role you want. If you can't break into banking, always consider other roles within finance that will help develop transferable skills that help you get the job you want. Example: Rating agency > IB. No banker, other than those who worked at rating agencies, will have a good understanding of the process. This is a huge value add when talking to investors/clients/ and dealing with rating agencies. I've seen many summer analysts convert their internship at a rating agency to a banking role.
Do you happen to work at Wells? I feel I might know you IRL lol.
Can u give an example of a bank paying 150k for 50-60hrs/week
not a bank, but private credit is basically this.
Honestly I probably work like 30 hours a week
Please tell me what banks you’re talking about with 60hr weeks because by god I would jump in a heartbeat……
You can always do consulting
My nontarget school literally sent nobody to NYC last year. Would you rather be in my position knowing that even if you are the top of your entire year you still might not place?
it's easier to be a top at a non-target than a below-mid at Wharton. that's the whole message of this post.
Totally false. I know a good number of very smart, very motivated, ambitious people from my non-target who got zero BB interviews.
I'm at Penn and I'm someone who came from a working-class family from bumfck nowhere. Contrary to your experience, the pre-professional culture here motivated me and pushed me to be a better, more-organized and learn the concept of networking.
This may sound mean but I have realized that at Penn that there are big winners and big losers. I thought of myself as a loser in my freshman year (which is natural because many freshmen do). Therefore, I tried my best to emulate the top 1% of students here, and tbh it has been working to benefit ever since. I am not an incoming analyst BX MF or YC founder, but I am very happy with my ib offer in NY next summer.
I understand that some might be depressed and tired of the competition but at the same time some students thrive off this competitive environment, especially when they are endowed with an abundance of resources. I sometimes hate Penn but I think we should be much much more grateful to be here.
.
I was also FGLI at Penn and now I work front office at JPM/GS/MS. Don't give up!
FGLI at a similar-ranked school—does anyone have tips on how to learn how to 'network' properly?
meanwhile non targets with non perfect GPAs keep getting better and better placements every year … weird world
diversity push includes schools these days.
lol that’s so retarded
Has more to do with diminishing target student quality due to competition with tech and nontargets becoming increasingly more competitive/knowledgable about the industry because of sites like this
my one credit to state schools is it is SO easy to be a big fish in a small pool - you just need to be the top dog
yeah obviously easier to compete among a group of 115 IQs than a group of 140s, not sure why banks don’t see it that way though
similar stuff to a lesser extreme at hyp. also, is the freshman bb intern thing true? i’ve never seen it at my bb
Highly doubt it
The way I look at it, if there's so few seats for BBs and EBs for JUNIOR programs, then sophomore programs should be less and freshman programs even below that.
I know people who did sophmore programs, but there's few kids with the experience of professional talking, soft skills, AND technical skills in their first year to consistently make up those sorts of classes.
And, those programs would be very selective as they only have your college name to go on, so why would they take a random state university kid who has 0 internships by the end of their first semester compared to the random UPenn kid who has 0 internships by the end of their first semester.
I don't know any, but there might be some out there. But what can you do at that point other than compete as normal.
Wanted to follow up and say the part about state kid vs UPenn is unfair, but it's just me putting myself into the perspective of these banks.
wharton sounds like actual hell - a student at a large state school
I'm undecided on what to comment on this, see my options:
Comment #1: Poor Wharton kids! They have it so hard (sad face)! - From a non-target student (think Kansas/Ohio/Kentucky)
Comment #2: Guy gets into university and realizes that a job isn't guaranteed and even less one that is highly desirable
Comment #3: Competition means that only the most fitted and the best players in the game (in this case recruitment) get a spot. So I see no issues here, it's just competition at its purest.
Comment #4: It became hard when the 2000s+ generations saw that no more a single man can buy a house, a car, and maintain a family as our parents and grandparents did, thus, more people aspire to be in high-earning jobs.
Comment #5: I won't say it's necessarily bad, on the contrary, nowadays the possibility of getting into Wall Street is higher than back then. Back then, in the 80s/90s, there were more names such as Eduard Salisbury Humphrey III, Jr. Generally Wall Street was more WASP full of rich families, and less middle class or lower class. Also, some sides of the business that were booming back then such as trading are now becoming less relevant so less spots or expansion of business lines.
Comment #6: Recruitment became so exaggerated that starting to prepare for IB interviews in kindergarten doesn't sound anymore as a joke. I've seen places recruit for 2025 when we were in Q1 2023. HR must be shot.
Chose the one you like the most, but all of them are relevant.
Non-target kids were never in the running for the types of careers we're discussing, but it's not unreasonable to be frustrated that at Wharton (which houses arguably the top several hundred smartest and most driven kids in the world of their respective age), recruiting is still unreasonably difficult.
It should be when you go to Wharton (once again, housing the top ~500 smartest and most driven kids in the world of their age)
This is how it always was and it should stay that way.
Considering you’re still a student (per your comment farther down the thread) I wouldn’t go saying “how things should be” in the industry. Neither you or I are in a place to be making those statements and it demonstrates an arrogance that students haven’t earned. I hope people reading your comments don’t think that’s how all Canadian finance students act (because they don’t). Lastly, not everyone knows what they want to do when they’re 16 or 17. Some people have never heard of these types of jobs either because they don’t have family in the industry or haven’t had the exposure. To say only target school attendees should be in the running for these jobs is close-minded and runs the chances of missing out on many smart, ambitious people (this is especially the case with Canadian schools as programs are “targets” rather than entire schools). With respect to this Wharton student, going to any school should not be your golden ticket to a job in NY. If there are better candidates that’s how the cards play out. I’d argue Wharton still offers the best chance at an interview anywhere. It doesn’t guarantee a conversion but even top students at semi-targets may not even get in the room.
Wharton does not house the top 500 smartest students in their age group and if you actually believe that you’re delusional. I’ve worked and gone to grad school with Wharton + Penn grads but haven’t found them to be noticeably smarter than everyone else. Most have been of average intelligence and couldn’t differentiate themselves from the pack in both work and school settings. If not for Wharton or Penn branding you wouldn’t have been able to tell where they went to school.
The common theme I’ve found among them and most HYPS students are that they’re very polished because they know how to play the game. They’ve taken the right classes their entire lives, joined the right clubs, 4.0 GPA, 1,600 SAT, etc. which in the real world doesn’t account for shit. The market can and will move against you, economic cycles come and go, etc. and you can’t control any of it. A Wharton degree will help differentiate you but isn’t going to keep you in the industry over the course of 30-40 years unless you have results to back it up and even then you’ll likely have to have the fortitude to overcome 1-2 exogenous events to have made it.
It also seems like you’re using the fact that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, etc. don’t have undergraduate business degrees to advance your argument, which is just comical and disingenuous. From my experience the smartest students I’ve encountered are studying hard sciences and applied math not finance or economics with a goal of working in IB. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not a goldfish could do the job of an IB analyst.
Ultimately, your post reeks of entitlement and shows how naive you are. You conflate grades and test scores with intelligence, which makes sense for someone that’s 18-20 years old because that’s all you know and was what led you to a place like Penn in the first place. You’ll find though in 3-5 years that the utility of a standardized test score, your GPA, etc. will be 0 unless you stay in academia. Your 4.0 GPA and 1,600 SAT won’t help you beat the market, start a successful company, get promoted, land a dream job, etc.
Also a Wharton student that went through recruiting for SA 24. Thank you for sharing, but I really don't agree with a lot of what was shared. On each main point:
Wharton is crazy competitive and pre-professional:
Completely agree, no debates here. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on how you interpret it or how it affects you in terms of performance.
BB freshman summer, general qualifications, etc.:
I think this point is highly exaggerated. I don’t know of a single person who has interned at a BB freshman summer, and the ones that did were clearly doing so via family connections or perhaps some niche diversity process. Recruiters obviously know that if their firm doesn’t offer a standard freshman summer internship, then these were obtained through non-standard means (in other words, they wouldn’t penalize someone for not having these). Literally none of the people I know who have the best offers in the school (P72, PJT RSSG, Bridgewater, etc.) have these on their resume, so whatever boost there is from these connection-based internships are clearly marginal compared to actual ability.
Also, I think it’s an exaggeration on people arriving freshman year having grinded DCFs and LBOs. I am in these “top clubs” that you are probably thinking of, and I can state for a fact that the vast, vast majority of new freshmen joining do not have such experience, but rather have a demonstrated interest in learning. To say in a way that implies that these top clubs are teeming with freshmen with such over-the-top experience is frankly quite disingenuous because it’s so clearly false if you are in these supposed “top clubs”.
General recruiting criticisms:
Sure, I agree that there is an argument that recruiting has gone too early. But, we go to the #1 school in the country (world?) for finance recruiting. If there’s people that should complain about this, it most definitely isn’t us. Also, I don’t agree on the point centered around the idea of competitiveness (e.g. “the consensus is that even if you're very qualified, it's hard to give offers when people from your same school are so overqualified.”) This is not a Wharton-specific issue—at any school, the offers should go to individuals who are “overqualified”. And not all offers should go to Wharton, therefore implying that some that may be qualified will miss out. This is just an observation of competition at work, not a Wharton-specific issue.
I'm one of those people that got a top summer HF offer. Recruited from a semi-target, no connections, no past internships. What impressed my interviewer was he asked me what I thought about Netflix, and I was able to say it was down 35.1% on the day because it had just reported earnings yesterday, explain that it was because of slowing subscriber growth, and that I wouldn't go long or short because its PE of 20 was justified for a maturing company. My interview was on Zoom at 4pm EST, so he knew I must've been looking at Netflix until the minute of the interview because I knew the change in price to the tenth of a percentage point. Interview was 20 minutes long and my only interview--got the offer the next day. There were other reasons of course (I think was able to give a couple nice stock pitches that showed I've done around 100 hours of research).This is for a firm with <.3 offer="" rate.="" all="" this="" to="" say="" i="" think="" they="" look="" for="" passion="" more="" than="" anything="" else.=""></.3>
Was this internship for summer after freshman year , sophomore year, or junior summer
Yo, read this thread from awhile back:
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/investment-banking/a-letter-to-al…
Synopsis, OP you are delusional and feeling sorry for yourself. It is not harder getting a role coming from Wharton, it’s just really hard to get the hardest jobs to get in the country. Your experience isn’t unique, it’s the same everywhere. Those that are trying to get roles at places that pay you a multiple of the median family income and set you on a life changing path require extreme preparation and natural talent. Many undergrads realize for the first time they might not have the natural talent to secure a role and they can’t handle it.
Now you are right that decades ago the world was less competitive, but for the last 10 years or so it’s been pretty competitive. Your junior internship is what matters, but in order to get that internship you need to be considered one of the smartest undergrads in the country and demonstrate some unique effort and personality. I know tons of kids who had great grades and test scores, but failed to network and were unable to secure internships. When interviewing for banks, a perfect test score and grades doesn’t cut it. For the most elite banks you generally need a 99th percentile test score, a 3.8ish GPA, relevant internships before your junior year, a business mind/ solid preparation, a decent enough personality, and usually something that makes you memorable. Many kids at elite schools do not have the personality to be able to land finance roles and it is a harsh realization that the rest of the world doesn’t give af that they went to an elite institution.
Look, your post reeks of entitlement. It reads as though you think because you go to Wharton, you should be a shoe in for roles rather than competing fiercely like every other undergrad in the country. Unable to reconcile how hard it is, your conclusion then becomes, “it must be harder at Wharton than at other schools”. I’m telling you it’s not. It’s easier. I’ve been on recruiting committees. You discuss how many alumni are bombarded by Wharton undergrads, so it is hard to network. Imagine having no alumni! You could always message a non-alumni and frankly because of the Wharton brand, people will probably pick up the phone/ answer your email if your resume is good enough. The same is not true for someone coming from a non-target.
These jobs are really hard to get and especially when markets are slower, there are less seats. Read that old post and the advice given on it and reflect on if maybe your entitlement is the reason the process is perceived by you to be the way it is, rather than the reality that every business student in the country is trying to get the same several hundred jobs.
OP is so trapped in their own head and overthinking everything. There’s an infinite amount of options and overachievers choose to be depressed anyways. During the holidays no less, I bet they spent the free time crafting this post instead of with family or hobbies.
It’s insane that these people don’t even talk about other jobs, like as if IB is the only career path in existence and all others are completely inferior. I’m sure most companies would be falling over themselves to snag a Wharton recruit. But sure, IB is totally the only way to go.
Nobody's reading all of that.
Congrats on the random bank in Delaware offer!
Tbh I think it's just the competitive nature of Wharton which is clouding your view. Guessing it's similar to LSE based on people I have spoken to. The fact is since everyone is so hyper competitive and comparing themselves to each other, if you got a strong MM offer you'd see it as a poor to mid outcome because a lot of your friends got BBs. In the grand scheme of things in your long term career, the difference is incredibly small but because you compare yourself to your peers everyday you feel like a failure.
In contrast to that, I went to a semi target where most people dgaf about careers, when I landed an MM offer first I was insanely hyped because pretty much everyone else I knew wasn't going into IB. After I landed an EB, which I only ended up taking because of what everyone says on here, but I would've been happy going to either.
Now if you only land an MM or low tier BB or small boutique you're going to feel like a failure but if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture its still a great achievement.
you don’t have to get a freshman or sophomore internship at a top bb. nobody in non targets that I know does, you get random work that is sometimes unpaid and spin it to make it relevant. learn how to hustle and grind
I’m not going to read this doctoral thesis you wrote. It’s too long and I don’t have the time nor the mental capacity (I actually can’t read).
The world needs ditch diggers too
think this happens when your whole identity is tied to your profession, when 19/20 yos are depressed that they couldn't land an offer a x,y,z BB/EB that's a pretty big societal problem, i get that wharton is a super expensive school and it needs to have some roi on the back end, but there's more to life than becoming an investment banker, there's other industries to pursue, other ways to pivot into IB, other areas of finance.....i never went to wharton so don't know the school culture but certainly wouldn't invest so much in landing that "one" offer
The lifetime earnings differential between a IB/PE career and a "normal" white-collar career is in the tens of millions, before we even talk about compound interest from investing the differential. It's perfectly reasonable for 19/20yos to feel depressed that the trajectory of their 45-year career is drastically downgraded from what it should've been.
The issue here is that his career outlook is not downgraded…OP is just running for the best of the best banks. There are plenty of other banks, firms and opportunities out there especially with a Penn degree. Careers are fluid and he will have a great degree behind his back. Also, there are a fair amount of jobs outside of IB/PE that can amass great wealth in the long run, you just simply need to be at the top including IB/PE. I think attaching your self worth to your career is normal for high achieving students but it’s not the right approach to life in general.
Could have, not should have
Even by OP's own admission, you could fill all BB seats with Wharton alone and still have people left over. Wharton isn't even the only target. Just going to a target does not and should not guarantee a BB seat, or an IB seat in general.
This seems like a fine comment until you said “what it should’ve been”. No problem being sad that things could have been better if they prepped more/more amicable personalities/etc. if they are sad that they should’ve gotten the job cuz they “deserved it”, that is entitlement.
Nerd.
Use less words
You are so out-of-touch it's remarkable. Get a grip.
Wehhhhh my top target school doesn’t make getting a job easy wehhhhhh alumni don’t respond to my emails 100% of the time wehhhh getting into banking is hard wehhhhh some ppl have to go to a boutique
Want some cheese with ur whine bro? Plz learn to cope like everyone else.
Competition exists everywhere. If it’s worth it, it will not be easy by any means. Hell, if you’re as competitive as they come, wait till you start working. It’s worse. Then, you’re competing with the cream of the crop, which includes the son of the founder of the mega-fund you are working for. With that being said, if Brady can arguably become the best QB after rotting on the bench during his early years and Edelman can go to a Junior College and achieve what he did, then you definitely can achieve whatever the heck you want coming from Penn. Every neighbourhood kid in America wants to play football, talk about that as a competition. Most of them fall out of the race because the pressure gets to them. It is very much a race, it is cutthroat, and nobody gives an F about you in this industry. Have a thick skin, put your nose down, and keep at it. You sound like a freshman / sophomore, so let me educate you, 5 - 6 years from now, all your classmates who, if, are still in high finance roles will not give an F about how long it took you to reach BX or KKR or whatever as long as you achieve what you were set out to do. Trust me, successful people do not care too much about others. Stay in your lane. If you want to go the distance, you need to blockout the noise. P.S. if you do not watch the NFL, then maybe start there to increase your chances of landing a job.
Sounds accurate down to every detail, I'm at a Canadian target (so can't even imagine how intense it is at Wharton), here's some anecdotes to highlight how competitive it is:
- Kids are networking with club members while in their senior year of high school to secure a spot when they enter freshman year 8+ months later.
- Kids have memorized the 400Q BIWS (and then some) by freshman spring, if not even earlier.
- Having a high finance sophomore summer internship is the expectation and it's a death sentence if you're doing even Big 4/Fortune 500 roles (as opposed to PE/AM/IB) during your sophomore year. If you're not doing a finance-related role for sophomore summer (or worse, unemployed/travelling) then you're automatically out of the running for high finance in junior summer, even boutiques. I've never heard of anybody who placed in high finance for junior summer who has not had a PE/AM/IB/VC/High Finance internship in their sophomore or freshman summer.
- GPA is extremely important and you pretty much need to be in the top 5-10% of your class to have a shot at IB.
- Same with grinding out stock pitch competitions, I know kids who have won 5+ stock pitch competitions a year end up at some no-name boutique for full-time.
For Canadian recruiting? Most of what you said is completely unnecessary.
For the love of god, please get those kids with 5 stock pitch wins some hookers or just within proximity of a woman.
Please take a look on LinkedIn for people who have graduated from Canadian targets in the last couples years, excluding diversity, 99% will fit the profile I mentioned (top 10% GPA, 1-2 high finance internships in sophomore/freshman summer or off-cycle, multiple stock pitch awards, multiple finance clubs, tons of networking (although you can't see that on LinkedIn)), and that's just for generic Big 5 seats. BB/EB placements are a clear cut above the cream of the crop that I mentioned. The 1% that don't fit into this profile apart from diversity have other major accomplishments like being drafted to the OHL (one guy in particular at RBC from a Canadian target)
Do all this + find the cure of cancer
or
have an uncle who is the CEO the bank covers
To be fair some truth but major exaggeration.
Three classmates;
A) Did DCFs in high school.
B) Played varsity sports and maintained a high GPA.
C) Off the charts smarts, 1% gpa, test scores etc
…
A) landed at hf internship sophomore summer, PM by 28, raised own fund by 34.
B) landed hf and top bank offers sophomore summer, did banking, partner of a PE firm
C) took basic internship sophomore year (was risk averse type), landed EB ft, pe/ge and now start-up founder major vc backed
Now, my friends in EE/CE studied 5x as hard as these three above. Many went on to work at facebook or so, some top 7 us mbas and so on. Some switched into finance roles later on.
So yes, if you want to be a PM by 28 probably doing DCFs in freshman year will not hurt. But many people still find their interest/passion later on. In general if you want a shortcut to being senior level by early 30s, it is really not that much to ask someone studying basic finance/econ to have a top gpa and strong internships starting sophmore year come on now. Especially when the comp eng grad with a top20% gpa and 3-5 years at a top tech firm followed by top mba is reporting to you at an associate level when you are VP or higher.
Might want to try walking into Evercore HQ in your Wharton sweatshirt and wave your Penn color-coded resume high and proud. I think they might have accidentally not read that you were from THE Wharton, and immediately correct their mistake.
The hiring market in finance in general is just bad right now and has been since 2022. With rate cuts and the deals in the pipeline coming out, hopefully it picks back up and eases these kind of stressors.
How quickly people forget. The pendulum will eventually swing back and we'll have another great year of recruiting at every level, stratospheric bonuses, etc. Then it'll swing back again and people will get laid off, recruiting will dry up, bonuses will suck, everyone will suddenly have a passion for RX, etc.
Such is finance.
Do you think things will improve next year?
Lol it’s the exact same at LSE - copy and paste finance/economics students who join the same societies and do the same thing.
In the UK, students have to compete with the masters students too - the (usually European) MSc Finance student who speaks 5 languages, did a 4 year undergraduate and has the financial backing to attend a £50,000 programme (this is crazy in the UK). This is worsened by the fact that networking is not a thing, so applicants look literally identical through CVs and CLs.
Like others have said above, I am not personally concerned as I’m fine being ‘behind’ on the prestige curve. Big 4 is seen as good in the UK, and it is fairly achievable to move to BB/MBB from Big 4 M&A/Consulting from what I’ve heard.
Also keep your eyes open for opportunities abroad - I hear LSE (and presumably Wharton) grads are worshipped in Asia if you would be open to moving.
Also worth noting that if you are more ‘normal’ you will probably progress faster in the work place. At some point I imagine the hardos will flame out through burnout or lack of ‘culture’ so to speak. Same applies to DEI (if you believe that those individuals are ‘less deserving’ for whatever reason).
This sucks to hear as someone planning to apply for springs next year. Hopefully things improve. Do you think not being fluent in a European language is a big deal? I haven't touched Spanish since gcse haha
Honestly cannot comment, but if hypothetically it is you could probably get away with lying. Highly doubt you would be speaking Spanish in a spring week.
Word of advice too - do the insight days as some of them can be seemingly converted (everyone who did one seem to get a spring week).
Finally, they really don’t matter that much - only a few (maybe 3-4) have decent conversion rates and many aren’t division specific.
Unfortunately meanwhile some BB group heads start to lean toward non-targets who are good enough to get the jobs done and less likely to go PE/HF ASAP...
Middle Market firms deserve more love
I figured it would be a dumb post from the title then read a few sentences and confirmed
Fr he really wrote the revelation “The issue is Wharton isn’t a shoe-in anywhere”
Good thing he caught himself by adding “as it shouldn’t be”
It has always been like this since the 1900s
I mean this is just why it sucks to go to Wharton - the entire population of the school (plus a lot of the college) are geared towards a single set of jobs. The environment is therefore hyper competitive, the kids you meet are similar and become one-dimensional, and the market is so saturated with Wharton grads that your alumni network is diluted and employers expect a huge amount from you. Unless you’re targeting one of the single-digit opportunities that only hire H/W (and realistically you should not base your college decision on things with tiny probabilities) you’re better served going to another Ivy or top school where you can achieve the same employment outcomes without directing your whole college experience towards it. You can go to PJT RX from Columbia or Qatalyst from UChicago or Blackstone from Cornell.
Might get MS'd into oblivion but all this is simply not true in my experience. Two disclaimers: I went to a top target, and I graduated in 2023. The job market has gotten *way* harder since I was recruiting for my junior summer in 2021, and of course, it's a completely different story for non-targets.
TL:DR; my experience is that most people who are recruiting obviously have 0 actual interest in investing, but if you have even a modicum of real interest in investing, and go to a target, recruiting is just not hard. People spend way too much time getting hung up on this weird recruiting game instead of actually turning into someone who would be a good hire. Charlie Munger once said that the best way to find a great spouse is to be someone worthy of having a great spouse.
I walked into freshman year not knowing what Goldman Sachs was, didn't realize I wanted to do finance until freshman spring (did a completely unrelated school project over freshman summer), and eventually ended up as a MF PE analyst as a non-diversity candidate (don't have rich / connected parents either - went to public school my whole life).
I meet lots of people, including many from top targets, trying to get IB / PE / HF jobs who very obviously have no real interest in finance / investing (and frankly next to no intellectual curiosity in general) and are only in it for the money and prestige. This is ok, especially for IB where you're (A) a disposable cog who'll be gone in 2 years and (B) you're not in an investing role that requires (some degree of) intellectual honesty, but of course you're never going to compete with someone who has a real interest in the business.
I (and this is consensus among other MF PE people I work with) can see within the first 15 minutes of talking to someone (e.g., tell me about a company you've looked at recently? is XYZ business model good or bad? what really appeals to you about XYZ sector or XYZ strategy? what have you read recently?) if they have a real interest in and curiosity about investing vs who memorized the guides and skimmed WSJ headlines yesterday, even if they spent 150 hours on it.
People on WSO love to hype up how hard recruiting is to make their accomplishments seem greater than they are but IMO from any target the recruiting process is really not something to stress about (I wasn't in any of the top finance clubs). Good talent is actually quite scarce, and even if you only start getting into finance sophomore fall, actual knowledge about / passion for the business will shine through. I cannot think of a single person at a target I've met that who actually likes investing who didn't end up with a buy-side or top banking job. At targets, the counterfactual (people who are diligent box-checkers but mediocre at finance getting good to top banking jobs) is 10x more common, honestly.
In sophomore fall when I had nothing finance-related on my resume, the response rate to my cold emails was pretty low, but my calls generally went extremely well. I'm not particularly charismatic but impressed them with my actual genuine interest in the business and intellectual curiosity. I got three different internship offers in investing roles at 2bn+ hedge funds after 1-2 cold networking calls with senior people.
My Wharton friends were definitely more stressed about recruiting and the culture there definitely makes it seem a lot more competitive / stressful than necessary. I did not at all know / care about which of my classmates had gotten offers or were recruiting where. Funnily enough, I actually spent a decent amount of time freshman spring / summer on WSO (I was truly clueless!), so I know some of the stress of feeling like you're falling behind your mass of hardo peers, but I think it's completely unnecessary if you actually are recruiting for the right reasons. Frankly if you just want to make high six figures a year and live a comfortable life (i.e., one of the people recruiting for Goldman because it's Goldman) just go become a SWE.
I'm at MS/GS/JPM IB and it's crazy how many people have zero interest in actually learning finance, investing or even reading a fucking book about anything. Like as soon as they graduated college they shut off the learning switch. Sure they'll learn 50 excel shortcuts, but only so they can leave faster.
I don't think they were ever interested in finance, just optionality, brands and chasing things that are elusive. They're high-functioning, hard-working and overall good people, just not intellectually curious or creative.
When I was in IB, the people who actually cared about finance were the most insufferable people on the planet. Very keen to here what intellectually stimulating tasks they are giving analyst 1s at GS
A lot of kids in Wharton are interested in investing as a career since their HS. Honestly not 100% sure if this is a good thing or not as college / education should be the place where you explore different fields and possibilities
Agree. It's so obvious who's passionate about finance vs who isn't. I'm personally super interested in M&A so learning technicals was interesting to me + I enjoy keeping up with markets so whenever MDs tried to grill me on anything in interviews I handled it fine.
I also think this is why hyperfocusing on prestige is stupid. Like if you are actually good you will succeed in your career in the long term irrespective if you landed GS or UBS. However I feel a lot of people are only grinding due to the urge to compete with peers for prestige (these are the people who burnout a few years into their career because once they landed the top bank or PE fund they have nothing left to work towards anymore)
I think ur central issue that spawn all this can be solved by getting laid
Wow
Knowing I had a 2.3 undergrad gpa at an Ivy that’s not wharton and still got in, I love reading these posts about cry babies being in the 1% still not breaking in.
Thanks man.
Needed a pick me up after being depressed about all the money I had to waste on family this new year’s holiday.
Smoke Frog and his misery showing everyone why he has 2,800+ MS
Notice this tool didn’t mention I have more upvotes than MS lol.
Smoke,
May I ask what you would have done differently or had known differently - this could be about college or careers or anything else - before going into college?
Without knowing your general situation in high school, my high level advice would be:
Be an active participant in picking a college and major. I kind of just chose the best college I got into and let family guide my choice of major, which I ended up hating. It’s okay if you don’t know what major to choose, just declare undecided. But don’t pick a major based on outside advice or vague notions of salary or prestige. Try to really think about what excites you.
Navigate the social scene thoughtfully. It’s very easy to join a frat or latch onto a big group of friends and just party and drink and smoke. It’s a lot of fun, but do it in moderation. The party doesn’t end after college, I still lived like a college guy until my late twenties. Many people act like college is the last time to be carefree, but that’s not true. I believe adulthood doesn’t really start till you decide to get married and have kids.
Which brings me to my next point, think long and hard about seriously dating in college. Obviously, don’t be a dummy and get married or have kids in college, but also don’t rush into a relationship. I saw lots of kids who clearly had zero luck in high school rush into having a gf. If you find a super cool girl, that’s great. But seriously dating another young 20 year old rarely works out and limits your ability to meet new people and discover what you really want out of a long term partner. 95/100 people who I knew who dated in college, ended up breaking up and it was almost always messy. And almost 100% of people I know who got married and / or had kids before 25 are divorced. Early marriage and having kids early is highly correlated with being poor, so keep that in mind.
Always be aware that gpa is highly important. A kid with a 4.0 at North Carolina state will be viewed more favorable than a kid from Yale with a 3.2 gpa. Don’t take hard classes just for the sake of “learning”, make sure to research which classes are easy. Take courses that pique your interest, but always be aware of the effect it could have on your gpa.
It’s never too early to start thinking about internships, so be careful taking summers completely off. Do something you can at least embellish on your resume.
Finally, don’t worry if you first job out of college isn’t a top bank. It is absolutely staggering how many people I work with that went to crappy colleges or had crappy first jobs. Just browse LinkedIn and you will see how many high finance professionals went to schools I would never even have applied to or started at jobs I would never have accepted, but are now doing much better than me. The only thing a top college and gpa does for you is give you the chance to get an amazing first job, but that it. Thats all it does. The rest of your career comes from your work performance and business network your build. No one cares I have two Ivy leagues degrees or even knows my academic background, they only care where I worked and what finance knowledge I have.
So don’t get depressed if you go to a crappy school or only got a job offer from Moody’s. I’ve seen so many random people break into finance with bad college pedigrees and mediocre first jobs, it’s unbelievable.
And my final point is to always remember that college and your job is only 50% of the equation. The other 50% is life man. How’s your relationship with your parents and siblings? Who did you marry? Are you a good father? Don’t be one of those guys that gets blinders on from high finance and forgets that half of life is your personal life.
Ive met many of my superiors’ spouses over the years, and I'm always surprised how many of them choose so poorly for a spouse when they are so good at their job. And it’s not like it’s a fat and ugly MD marrying a hot chick who clearly only cares about his money, those marriages are obvious. It’s normal guys choosing so horribly, like they put no effort into such a big decision.
So make sure you are just as thoughtful about your personal life as you clearly are about your college and career. It’s cliche, but the woman you marry is the most important decision of your life. You think JP Morgan will be there for you when you’re depressed or have a health issue? You think your friends at Area will be there for you when the chips are down?
Musings above are what came to my mind when I thought about your question, but let me know if you have a specific scenario in mind you wanted advice on.
How is MBA recruiting then? I suppose a Wharton MBA should make it easy to land a decent offer with some networking effort, good LBO modelling skills and being just normal not awkward?
MBA place well to IBish...however UG peer pressure is to the moon and you'll feel bad for yourself for not landing Top BB/EB or MFPE analyst...
So as someone who transferred from a non-target to a traditional target (not Wharton), I can say that this post reeks of entitlement (no offense, OP). You get to cut your teeth among the brightest minds in the world who are interested in the same thing that you are. Having seen both sides of the coin, I can promise you that the students surrounding you have an ENORMOUS impact on you professionally, and academically. By attending a school as hard to get into as Wharton, you are automatically placed among a pool of intelligent, MOTIVATED people. By default, by attending class alongside them, by studying with them, by competing with them (i.e. club positions, internships, etc.) you are subconsciously learning every second of every minute of every day. Succeeding in this kind of environment will make you more successful in the long run than you can ever understand from where you are in life right now. It will push you, and in so doing, you can (and will) be forced to learn more, and develop a level of resourcefulness that you would not be pushed to among the students at a no-name state school (this is coming from personal experience, and is no way intended to disparage anyone who did attend such a school, heck, I did for a year). You will also make useful contacts, not primarily because of the connections people at top schools have, but because the type of personality who is driven enough to maximize their capabilities and be admitted to this kind of institution will, by default, have a higher percent chance of going far in this business and being a useful contact down the line (this is not to say there aren’t exceptions, but in the grand scheme of things, those are trees, and I am talking about the forest). As an aside, I know plenty of people who have go to/have gone to Penn and absolutely adored it. They are passionate about their alma mater, and had (or are having) a blast there. The point I am trying to make OP, is that you are, in the grand scheme of things, incredibly lucky. This business, and life as a whole, is about succeeding under pressure, and you are fortunate to be at a place that will OVER-PREPARE you for your future. I’m not trying to shame you, just trying to provide some perspective. Here’s to a great new year.
extremely well thought out response
Have friends that got fired in M&A IB in June 2023, they are still looking for jobs
In NYC or Europe? Rings true for Europe but had thought US had picked back up
In Europe/Nordics
Do u think things will pick up soon in London?
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The worst individual in my group this summer was a girl from Wharton lol.
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