How do Freshman IB Consulting Internships Work?
Another random post from one of those HS seniors whose trying to figure out how stuff works. Quick summary of my profile: entering freshman to Caltech (I should have probably not put the exact school, but eh, too late to hide it), have multiple internships at a materials company, some serious research in a non-major related field. Entering with Business + CS.
I've seen some people talk about freshman internships, yet I've struggled to find anyone talking about how they did them, To that extent, I have a bunch of questions I'd like to ask, relevant to any field. If you have the time, I'd appreciate answers to any of them!
- When do internship applications open for consulting? IB? The million of other relevant industries I can't think of?
- How would someone typically go about looking for internships? Linkedin? I can't think of anything, but I assume there is more.
- Do internships / research / whatever from other fields (non-finance) help with internships even a bit at any of the fields I mentioned above? Or is it just fluff?
- What did you do with your summer other than internships for any who didn't do one till sophomore year?
- What is expected out of freshman interns considering most will be doing gen-eds? Is there some laxness, or do they look for prior experience to make up for the lack of actual courses?
I've probably missed a bunch of obvious questions, so feel free to add anything you think is relevant! If you want to swear me off IB (this was one of the only two responses in my last post), feel free to look at my previous posts for some additional questions or context.
Big banks and consulting firms don't have freshman internships - I know you're seeing people above you posting that they are going to Google freshman summer, it is not that way in finance. Even sophomore year, banks take only a tiny handful of diversity sophomores for a short rotational program. The internship you are aiming for is junior summer and it'll recruit soph spring (need to start networking soph fall).
For freshman internships you want anything finance that you can scrape together. Boutique IB with 10 people? Great job. Local wealth management internship with a BB brand attached? Fantastic experience. Even "finance intern" at a local company is useful for the resume. Linkedin is a start, Handshake at your school, for freshman internships they are usually self-arranged so a lot of cold emails asking people if they could use an extra pair of hands over the summer. Given how early IB recruiting is, it's advisable to have an internship freshman summer (or a part-time one during the semesters) just to have a job on your resume and something to talk about... but people have certainly landed top-tier SA roles without one.
Internships and research are useful but I'd be careful going too far down non-finance paths. It's fine to say you were exploring different career paths as a freshman but people will start to question if you have 4 extremely different internships or a ton of research in a different field. And HS internships are fine to leave on when recruiting for freshman summer, but when recruiting for your "big boy" SA I would try to remove anything from high school.
Also CS major is a huge hindrance for finance. There's threads on here but 1. GPA is absolutely king, you should aim for a 3.7+ and the CS major will eat that and 2. CS takes a TON of time that is better spent networking or on part-time internships. If you're still deciding that is fine, maybe push some of the harder CS classes until soph spring or later so your GPA isn't tanked for recruiting. But if you're set on IB/finance I would leave the CS major, there is no benefit.
Thanks for the help! Yeah, most of the stuff that's not related to my career is simply due to the fact that it was the best opportunities available near where I lived, I don't intend to jump around in college. As for the CS GPA part, this is ironic, but at Caltech its basically considered one of the easiest majors available (with a median GPA of 3.8) because all of the majors are so technical and difficult. When would you typically start sending messages? Based on what your writing I'm thinking January or so, but should I perhaps wait until near the end of official recruitment (so around March, early April) so people know for sure whether they have room for a spare set of hands? Again, thanks for the advice!
can confirm, cs easiest major - doesn't mean you aren't gonna be boned spending 60 hours a week on sets tho lmao
These small firms don't participate in official recruitment and if they have any interns it's likely unstructured - Jan is fine though
Makes sense on CS major. Although if the business major is reasonable enough I would just stick with that alone and take some gen eds to boost your GPA, CS major will still be a big time commitment even if ultimately a GPA boost
There are some good VC firms around caltech you can reach out to and try to intern at
Any you know of in particular?
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