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Apply to as many as possible. Get as much interview experience as you can. You'll get better and better at it.
Just because an employer asks you how many firms you've applied to doesn't mean you have to tell him 50+ or 100+...
Apply everywhere that makes sense.
Pretty bad advice from your advisor. Apply to as many as you can until you get an offer. Recruiting can be a total crapshoot, but you just need one yes
Agreed.
Ditch your "advisor". Mass apply, give me one reason why not?
spray and pray
50 spring week apps (got 3 + a week in the summer) 205 summer internships (got 5 offers - around 20 interviews)
luck more than anything initially to get interviews then its your court to do well in the interviews.
There aren't 50 spring weeks, max 35 and that is counting stuff like Unilever and Big 4 accounting .
Can confirm there are - you simply didn't look hard enough. Big 4, IB, O&G, Consulting, AM, HF, few regional PE shops, Prof Services, Corp Dev and insurance (and a few tech companies - for bus dev)
you can also apply for law as well.
You know you could just lie and/or be selective about what you say when they ask you who else you've applied for
You can apply as many as you want to get the job; and you don't need to disclose the exact number at the interview. It is a fair game. I applied for 1,000+ jobs within a 18 months time frame and I got exactly what I want.
Those are rookie numbers, 50? you should do 50 a week man, your advisor seems about as helpful as a mirror to a blind man. There's nothing that says that you need to divulge the number of positions you applied to to anyone ever
Perfect advice, 100% agree and came here to say this. +1 SB
Edit: unless you're at a target/semi, odds are very high your career center is beyond useless and doesn't have the slightest understanding of just how brutal the process is.
Applied to 10ish in September of my Junior year. Would have applied to more but received a great IBD SA offer (think GS/MS/JPM) in Mid-October so stopped.
That being said, you should be applying to as many programmes as possible, even in industries you may only be tangentially interested in. Since applications are reviewed by HR in the order they come in, it's crucial to apply as early (and often) as possible.
I think it really depends on your preference/working style. I applied to 8 IBDs and got offers from 2, because I had clear targets & companies I wanted to go for. So I just preferred to focus on a few, but I've seen people applying to 50+ as well. Both methods can work- really depends!
Preference/working style has nothing to do with it. Recruiting is a total numbers game--the more applications you submit, the better chance you have of getting an offer.
Going into the recruiting process with the assumption you're going to have a 25% offer conversion rate is ridiculous.
Sounds like there's a reason why your advisor isn't an investment banker...
In an extremely competitive environment such as banking, what kind of moron with sound mind would ever advise not to apply to too many internships. Hit as many firms as possible and try to network with as many of those people as possible.
It's not always a bad thing to be asked about other firms. First, it shows you're serious about banking, I at least don't love when candidates say they're all in for banking but then are seeking internships at tech companies as well. We ask that question to gauge whether what you said you are looking for in a job aligns with the types of companies you mention you are interviewing with, as well as location (e.g. "I'm focusing on LA" -- followed by "I have 5 offers in NYC"). Having interviews or especially offers is also an indication of desirability - being able to say "I have an offer from xyz but would accept with you if given an offer" is a powerful weapon in your arsenal if available because you are vetted already.
For this summer, my sophomore summer, I applied to 134 places. For 2019 7, and luckily received an offer. It's a numbers game, apply to every single place you can.
For 2019 I only applied to one, got the bank I wanted and stopped.
Freshman summer , applied to every single regional boutique with offices in my country (small country, there are about 25 boutiques here) Sophomore summer, applied to every single PE buyout fund in my country + the Netherlands and some in France (about 30 firms) It s definitively a numbers game , even in a small western European country, like said above apply to as many boutiques, shops, bank, mm, etc as possible
I went through the process twice (once as a sophomore and then as a junior) and I would say do yourself a favor by applying to as many places as possible but try to be somewhat selective. More specifically, I laid down the groundwork by creating a running spreadsheet with the alumni that worked at the BBs, EBs, etc. I don't think I applied to more than 15 or 20 places because tracking this info signaled which places I might have an actual shot at. On the flip side, it showed me places that were potentially out of reach because no one from my school worked there (i.e. I might choose to apply to Moelis but not an Evercore just to save myself a bit of time). I found that I was able to get more or roughly the same amount of interviews this way as my peers who were applying to several more.
I'm UK, applied maybe 35? Got 4 Spring offers, have converted 1 to a summer and said no to the other 3.
Same advice as the above. Apply to as many as you can. It's a numbers game.
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