Feeling Discouraged From FT IB Recruiting (Need Advice)

I need some advice. I'm a senior from a non-target big state school looking to land a FT IB role. A little bit about myself: 3.75 gpa, have had 2 internships; one with a small consulting firm and another with a large pharma company in a FP&A role. I work during the school year and started my own company with a friend freshman year scaling it up to a couple thousand monthly users as well as producing a podcast alongside it. I received a return offer from the pharma company for their FLDP rotational program in corporate internal audit.

Over the past year and this summer I really pushed myself to utilize the resources on WSO to prepare myself for IB interviews/technicals. I made a spreadsheet to keep track of everywhere I was applying, application status, and contacts I have (not many). All in all I applied to around 50 firms at the end of July/beginning of August. I heard back from a few (most the analyst classes were full), did one on campus interview, and did two hirevues but nothing past that. When preparing for the interviews I created mock interviews and did my research on the firms.

As far as networking goes I'm from the south in a growing city but unfortunately there isn't any investment banks in the area. Most of the people I've connected with are in tech, start ups, or a corporate role, and commercial banking. I've built relationships with them who then introduced me to people in Energy IB (analyst classes full). No connections in NYC unfortunately though. There's not many alumni at all in IB from my school but I did reach out to all there were.

With recruiting starting to get late I'm really starting to stress about not landing a job in IB. I really don't want to work in internal audit at the pharma company. I'm just weighing my options about what to do at this point. I could go into commercial banking but I know that is also tough to transition into IB from. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

1 Comments
 

Corrupti autem dolor qui ipsa quia non aut. Consequatur dolorem excepturi doloremque. Non ea laborum nostrum voluptate aliquam rerum suscipit nihil. Et expedita eius ducimus in.

Autem nesciunt autem quisquam aut id. Reprehenderit velit quia ipsam et debitis.

Atque et eum veritatis tenetur. Quia explicabo tempore at officiis quo. Possimus tempore alias et eligendi soluta in et. Dolorum cum asperiores consequatur ipsam optio explicabo. Suscipit nobis perspiciatis quos qui. Facere unde tempore ab nulla. Rerum repudiandae nostrum voluptatem ea.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.

Career Advancement Opportunities

July 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.4%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • JPMorgan 01 98.3%
  • Morgan Stanley 08 97.8%
  • Goldman Sachs 02 97.2%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

July 2026 Investment Banking

  • Moelis & Company No 99.4%
  • Evercore No 98.9%
  • Morgan Stanley 01 98.3%
  • Banco Santander 02 97.8%
  • BMO Capital Markets 12 97.2%

Professional Growth Opportunities

July 2026 Investment Banking

  • Evercore 01 99.4%
  • Moelis & Company 01 98.9%
  • Morgan Stanley 06 98.3%
  • Goldman Sachs 01 97.8%
  • JPMorgan 01 97.2%

Total Avg Compensation

July 2026 Investment Banking

  • Vice President (16) $429
  • Associates (46) $258
  • 3rd+ Year Analyst (8) $210
  • 2nd Year Analyst (23) $182
  • Intern/Summer Associate (14) $159
  • 1st Year Analyst (82) $151
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (73) $101
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
3
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
4
kanon's picture
kanon
99.0
5
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
6
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
7
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
8
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
98.9
9
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
10
Linda Abraham's picture
Linda Abraham
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”