I graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a 3.64 GPA in Economics & Accounting. I am 7 months into Audit at Big 4. I know I want to work in Investment Banking. For the last few months, I have been spending all of my free hours studying technicals, building models, and networking. I have gotten a couple of interviews but didn't work out. I need advice on what the most effective use of my time would be between the following, and which ones I should forget about:
1. Get CPA (in order to move into M&A TAS in my firm it is necessary, but would also have to stick around for a couple more years in audit)
2. Get CFA
3. Networking
4. Online Courses (CFI, Wharton modeling, BIWS, etc.. to put on resume)
5. Study for GMAT and go MBA asap (if you think this is the way to go, please elaborate on what you think I should do to be a good candidate for M7)
6. Get a masters in finance from a prestigious university
7. Keep studying finance from various sources online for free and building models
As I said above, I am asking for your opinion on which of these activities are the ones that I should be focusing the most effort on, and which of these I should forget about. Thank you very much.
Getting your CPA is only going to help your resume, but understood it’s a time constraint. CFA level 1 could prove to be valuable to recruiters. If you can’t get into IB right now, you should set your sights on trying to get over to the TS group as soon as possible to get transaction / deal related experience, which will help you at least get past resume screens for some banks. It’s definitely a hard path but you should just continue networking be a top performer and get early promoted, and these can all help you look better. I did The CPA, Audit>TS >IB for reference and that took 4 years
I would consider taking the GMAT as a call option as well, that way 3 or so years from not you can start applying to schools. if you're in TAS or still in Audit in 3 years, you're probably better off going the MBA route and coming in as an Associate. And with an accounting background, getting a summer associate position should be fairly easy for you.
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