Anyone who used to be dumb?
I used to be a dumb kid getting sh*t grades and went to a non-target. I always had a chip on my shoulder because of this (not blaming anyone but myself)
Despite this I grinded out technicals and networked a lot (had to learn social skills to network as those were also lacking)
And no I didn’t have any family/friend connections.
Nevertheless I have a FT offer for IB at a decent bank with a large balance sheet.
Seeing linkedin I am doing better than the people that used to get much better grades than me.
I am not smart at all, I thought I was too dumb to study CS and that’s why I picked finance. But with hard work I managed to get somewhere
This might seem like a humble brag but I wanted to share
In my experience, the kids with the best grades and hottest internships generally put up a poorer work product/deliverable compared to those with a better work ethic and interpersonal skills.
What do you think the reason is?
It's multifactor - when I sat in on recruiting meetings, sometimes we'd pick a candidate purely based on how they fit into our team culturally and their sincerity over a candidate who might be better accredited on paper but have an ego (or give the impression that they want to leapfrog to another firm climbing the ranks).
It's also a question of translating academic knowledge into practical know-how (the guy with the 4.0 GPA probably won't be any better at PowerPoint formatting). You also need to be presentable, especially when it comes down to getting in front of clients and bidders.
Entitlement
we use a mix of personality, skills and sales appearance. can they deal with a difficult client, are they willing to learn what's missing, and do they have presence.
I used to be smart until I got to college
lol yup. 2.6 non target. I don’t like to compare but I think I’m making more and have a better trajectory than the kids who got way better grades and internships than me.
How did you pull it off? Did you get into banking directly from UG?
Nope. I worked for one of the banks clients. Sold the experience well and lateraled in. I got pretty lucky.
I talked to a MS/JPM MD last month who said he had a 2.9 GPA in his undergrad. Worked a dead end job for 6 years, got into a target MBA and made MD in 10 years after.
So, depends on your grit and what you let define you.
Yup totally same situation
Congrats. There are two types of people in this world
Hustlers and non hustlers. Welcome to the hustler club
That's because IB isn't rocket science lol. You don't have to be smart, you just need a strong work ethic, ability to focus for long periods of time, and necessary soft skills to manage office politics.
Dumb is the wrong word here. You can't "fix" stupidity. You were likely lazy and did not apply yourself.
I've seen all types. Kids who did well in school doing well now, kids who deemed "smart" not doing so hot now, kids who were not great in school and continue to not be great, and kids not great in school but doing great now. Not saying everyone went into banking, but I know people who I went to 8th grade with doing better than most would think.
School is important, but a lot of it now is just teach to a test and memorization. Not everyone is good at that. When you get into the real world and you can ask people questions or write stuff down, it's somewhat a different skill set. Also, as said above, have to be hungry to do it. School is somewhat easy because it's basically do a task, get a grade. Sometimes people in life don't tell you what the task is. Sometimes people in school had their parents holding their hands, and don't know how to be adults. I know kids who probably couldn't read in high school, probably can't read good now, but got into the military as like a military firefighter and are doing better than people perceived to be "smart" in the same grade.
Parents can’t hold their hands once in college
That's true, but I don't even think it's that. I think just school is easier for some than others. I know people in school who were "smart" enough to get good grades, but it wasn't a disciplined approach, i.e., good at guessing on a test for 8th grade, or class wasn't that hard, or they copied a bunch of stuff. To put it into sports terms, they were kind of like the 6ft kid in 8th grade who was good at sports only because he was tall, but in high school once everyone caught up he didn't have the skills to stay on top.
As I say, school doesn't mirror actual real life. School is really just a test of how fast you can run, real life is about where to run to. So okay, you can remember 8x9=72, or know the whole periodic table, but you can look that up in the real world.
Nah I was a winner.
Rated most photogenic in high school and likely to succeed. A quarter of the girls in high school wanted me. Still get proposals from millionaire families and dated girls who looked like Vogue magazine cover girls.
I put on a few pounds since and lost form but I realized attraction/reciprocity/winning is based in barter-ability. Have what other people want and good things follow you.
That means if you act dumb, you hang out with dumb people. If you at least act sophisticated and say no to some people, a different crowd comes in. That's true for other roads in life.
We are what we settle for.
2.89 GPA / 1200 SAT in high school. I spent a lot of time in detention and in-school suspension. Home life was tumultuous at the time. I have ADHD. The administration and a few teachers figured I would wash out into delinquency. Through it all, I always had supreme confidence that I was smart. I just did not have any proof points.
Sophomore year of college at my state school, I tripped an eigth that unlocked access to my subconscious or developed a small anxiety disorder or grew into my brain? My goal in life was to be well off and I started to give a shit. I finished the next two years extremely strong and landed the highest paying job out of my business college that year.
I remember at a fraternity late night, a brother was inferring he was smarter than me because his major was more challenging than mine. Those sorts of slights, up until just recently actually, used to light my fire like no other. I'm now in a place in my career where I have executed every work product at the highest level. In my domain, there is little I have not already done. I feel "senior" in what I do with no imposter syndrome.
I'm going for 2000+ USCF OTB Chess Rating and eventually, National Master at 2200. I never had the grades, the standardized test scores or anything that I could point to prove that I am smart. It won't mean anything to anyone at this point in my life, but I'm doing it for elementary / middle school / high school @dedline who always believed in himself but never had a quantitative metric to prove it.
Be careful to not fall into the trap of thinking it’s always the non target hustler who beats the entitled target. Those aren’t mutually exclusive and as much as we like hearing a rags to riches story, most of the time it’s the target kid with more social confidence and more work ethic that crushes the non-target
Look I'm gonna be honest with you. I.. I'm kinda retarded
we all knew this already, little cheng
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