Rising College Freshman Would Appreciate Any Advice about IB Summer Internships
Hello, before I start, I ask that you please be patient with me. I'm a first-gen college student, who has a father that works in the trades and homemaker mother, who didn't know the first thing about finance until a little less than a month ago.
At any rate, I'm an incoming freshman at Yale who is interested in IB. Somehow, I secured a private equity internship at a search fund--without knowing what exactly private equity or a search fun was--which I am currently working at. It is a pretty well-regarded firm with around 40 or so undergrad interns, most of whom are rising juniors or sophomores from t20s, except me (; I've been working my butt off and have been learning a ton about finance. Some of my fellow interns are in the midst of applying for IB internships for next summer and one person recommended that I start applying for internships for my sophomore summer.
To me, it seems insanely early--I haven't even entered college or earned a grade--but what do I know. The person also told me that having a PE internship this young would be a strong plus. So what should I do? Should I start applying to IB internships now while I have the free time, wait until the fall, or wait until the winter after I receive my first semester grades? If I should start now, how important would networking be? And how would I go about that?
Thank you in advance for any guidance.
You will apply for sophomore summer positions from April to August during your freshman year, not sure what the fuck your friend is talking about haha. PE internship is sweet and I think you are more than well-off for where you are. Only piece of advice I’d give is to have fun during your summer and freshman year and maybe read some books on finance, it helped me a ton. Good luck
Great advice! I enjoy reading, so I'll try to find a solid book finance.
Your friend is apparently unaware that you're a rising freshman and doesn't know you haven't even started college yet. They probably think you're a rising sophomore, because those are the students recruiting right now for sophomore summer internships. The IB recruiting process is early, but never two years before the internship itself.
Having a search fund internship this early is a major plus, and going to Yale puts you in a great position for recruiting. Don't stress about it. Focus on getting good grades (3.7+ ideally), having a good time, and slowly preparing for IB recruitment (get an idea of the finance career landscape, see what you might be interested in, and start developing your key behavioral question responses, especially your Walk Me Through Your Resume, for soph summer recruitment). Freshman summer internships don't matter at all.
Start applying in freshman summer for sophomore summer internships. Bulge brackets start recruiting then, but most normal firms recruit later in sophomore spring. Just get anything related to finance (PE, search fund, whatever) for sophomore summer.
It's a great idea to apply for bulge bracket soph summer internships even if you don't expect to get them. It's a valuable experience to know exactly what to expect from a HireVue, superday, etc so that it isn't your first time going through it when you apply for junior summer internships.
As a freshman, find and connect with upperclassmen who have banking offers and are willing to help and give honest feedback and advice.
Sophomore fall is when you have to take recruiting preparation more seriously, from networking to interview prep. Sophomore spring is the actually important semester because that's when most of junior summer internship recruitment happens.
Thank you for the in depth response. You've really simplified things for me. I'm glad that I'll still have time to figure things out!
No problem and best of luck. I'm no well of knowledge, but feel free to PM down the line if you have questions on IB recruiting since I finished the process recently (a few months ago)
Apply to the finance clubs. They all recruit in the first two weeks. Very hard to get into, but YSIG will set you up nicely. That being said, just keep your GPA high and become an interesting person outside of finance. Don’t be that hardo.
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