Got to Round 5 at a Boutique RE PE Firm. They Gave the Offer Away Before I Could Interview. CIO Told Me to Read a Textbook to Familiarize Myself with Real Estate Terminology. I’ve built models from scratch. What Do I Do?

I’m a junior at a LAC in Maine. I started recruiting for SA 2026 Internships in December 2024 with a 3.7 GPA and Econ/ Comp Sci Double and have been on the hunt since. I headed into those with one internship from Nike (Corp Strat, unpaid). I ended up getting one interview and was fully screened out by all other firms. Ended up changing majors to Econ with Math so I would have more bandwidth and ROI. The Alpha was there (next paragraph), especially since I’m open to all roles in finance.

Since then, I was able to do work/ programs in growth equity (~2 B AUM), real estate PE (~20 B AUM) + work spanning in house M&A + infrastructure development, PE Consulting, and Economic Consulting. I ended up switching to London for this year to see if geography could help me land something, and I guess it has since I’m still in process.

I need help and/or advice because I just had a process at a West Coast regional Real Estate PE office conclude for a 5th round interview that got cancelled because my someone else who interviewed a day before me got the offer before I had a chance to interview, although I had a couple advocates in the office vouch for me and my interview that was supposed to be on Thursday was pushed to Friday and really became more of a consolation conversation where the CIO of this firm told me “familiarize yourself with real estate concepts” and linked some Wharton textbook (I built RE models from scratch last summer, overcoming more than a couple #REF errors) and told me that they look for high SAT scores in candidates (I got a 1520 but I’m in college so I hardly think it’s relevant anymore). He told me to keep looking MIND YOU MY FINAL ROUND WAS CANCELLED BEFORE I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO INTERVIEW and this while people interviewing me at that same firm said it was interesting I was looking at their firm since my profile looked like something that would be sought after in a more dominant market like the northeast or SoCal rather than the PNW. Felt like glaze but whatever I just need to put one foot in the other I just got the roles I got because I kept putting up shots.

The CIO said to keep looking and let him know if i haven’t landed anything mid May. They may just take me but tag me along as an unpaid intern, all while I’m doing the same work as the other guy.

What do I do? I'm running out of time.