Any ideas what to do here

So I am currently a High School Senior set the graduate in a few weeks. My college (Kelley) has recently informed me that the first semester will end before Thanksgiving, and will start again in early to mid-February. Is there any possibility I could do a finance-related internship with that little college education under my belt (only 1 semester). I was thinking either some real boutique bank in the m&a or s&t division or maybe a PWM at an mm or bb but I heard they are not as interesting anyway as they are seen as a waste. Any recommendations on what to do and how to reach them are more than welcome. Now I would just stay at home during this break but my parents would prefer I don't be there so I'm looking for something to boost my resume during that time. Thanks.

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It's good that you what you want to do this early, but it's also important to know that you have plenty of time to get some work experience. If you have some family/friend connections in finance, particularly in banking, its time to start leveraging them and building up your network. I'd say that's more important now than landing an offcycle IB internship after one semester of college. If I could go back to freshman year and tell myself one thing it would be to start laying the foundation for a strong and expansive network so when Sophomore summer recruiting came around I would have had my foot in the door and thus an early jump on post-grad IB placement

 

You're probably not going to get into a large boutique or BB as an off-cycle freshman unless you have family connections. PWM at a BB is a great freshman or sophomore summer internship, definitely not a waste unless you're turning down IB offers.

Cold email some regional IB/PE boutiques (30 people) once the semester starts to see if they'd consider an intern or shadow. You have plenty of time. Make sure you join the IBC and hopefully IBW at Kelley, those are pretty direct pipelines.

Array
 

After one semester any sort of finance related mini wintership would put you leap years ahead of your peers, doesn't have to be IB/S&T related, even a month of shadowing would be great. not sure how the IBW application process/timeline works but getting something on your resume will give you valuable talking points for a summer internship too. Ace your first semester which should be easy, freshman business classes are a fuckin joke, and start networking with family/friends. That huge gap is a really unique opportunity imo.

 

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