Start studying technicals? Focus on something else?

Current freshman 2nd term. I want to have my technicals down so I do well in recruiting interviews next year, especially to compensate for being at non target. Should I start studying now or is it too early that I'd forget what I learned? Should I be focusing on networking and landing a sophomore internship before I start studying?

Considering the following studying to prepare for IB recruiting:

-Training the street foundations and advanced course -Red book -The 400 -Maybe BIWS course? -Considering studying for SIE and putting cert on my resume?

Thanks guys for your opinions

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Yeah, you can start light reading now. I wouldn't bother really tucking into the guides until the summer. As far as networking is concerned, you want to time it right. Start sending emails right after this semester ends. You can start prep now though by making your list of contacts. Red book + 400 questions + BIWS guides is more than enough and if you rip through it in the summer and then reread through the fall, you'll be golden. Don't neglect behaviorals. People say not to take the SIE, but none of my friends have taken longer than 2 weeks to study for it and it's only 80 dollars. Some people in the industry have thought it's interesting/impressive for whatever reason, so I think it's worth it. Especially if you like capital markets roles, it's cool.

 

The most important way is to prep is to mock with seniors that landed. Nothing else really comes close

 

It's a clique, but you should do everything at once. Try to make sure to send several networking emails (once you have a template down, it shouldn't take too much time) each week and definitely start looking over those technical guide preparation. I personally liked the 400 questions, but it's really important not to blindly memorize but try to understand it. Maybe even take a look at some 10Ks to just see what the 3 statements look like.

I'd also say you should still try to secure that sophomore job. I don't want to discourage you from working towards that junior summer internship, and you should still work to lay the ground a little bit, but if that process drags on for whatever reason which happens more than you think, you not having that sophomore job is going to come back to hurt you.

 

This may seem stalker-ish, but create an excel file with all the people you plan to reach out to. I found that one of the toughest parts was constantly thinking I’m at a dead end in this regard. An easy way to do it would be to go to LinkedIn alumni of your school and write their (1) name (2) company (3) position (4) group or coverage (5) email, sourced from Apollo.io. Another thing you could do is go to the school library to access the Bloomberg terminal use the PEOPLE function and filter by school. This way you will have everyone with access to a Bloomberg. These individuals may not all be bankers, but chat with them anyway and they may help you with buyside in the future.

 

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