Tech -> High Finance, Need either reassurance my plan could work, or a brutal reality check

Posted here about a year ago asking whether a high finance/IB path was realistic starting from a tech degree apprenticeship (for those who've never heard of a degree apprenticeship, it's a scheme where a company chooses you to work for them 4 days a week, and you study 1 day a week, for the full duration of your undergrad degree). Never got a real reply, just the forum bot, so here's where things actually stand now – hoping for a real person to reply please.

Quick background: Commercial Degree Apprentice in one of the UK’s largest Tech firms (university I'm studying at is not a target), Chartered Management degree, one of six selected from around 4000 applicants. Before this I'd done a week work experience in HSBC Sales & Trading, a first year uni insight scheme at Janus Henderson Asset Management, one week work experience with Fitch Ratings, online IB and wealth management programs through JPMorgan and Fidelity, DCF and LBO modelling bootcamps, and three years trading forex, commodities, and ETFs. A-levels were AAC, not the strongest, but never actually the blocker people assume.

Since then:

Y1 Rotation = AI Innovation and Implementation – Specifically on LegalTech, built the business case for this innovation (£22m), worked on the programme management side of things as well as training the model

Y2 Rotation = Bid Finance - locked in, starts September 2026. Six months working with a senior manager on major deals with hyperscalers for EG Datacentre compute, cybersecurity deals etc (Deals worth anywhere from £20m - £1.5bn), then six months owning smaller deals (£500k–£10m) with full P&L and client exposure.

FMVA Qualification- finishing this month, on track for end of September.

CFA Level 1 - registering now, sitting May 2027, roughly 13 hours a week from November.

AmplifyME Summer Internship - starts next week. LIBF Level 6 Finance Diploma with a Morgan Stanley fast-track component if I perform well. The internship is comprised of 1 week in Buy-Side, 1 week in Sell-Side, and 1 week exploring Quantitative finance/trading. It's mainly simulations and competitions ran on the same software that Citadel, Brookfield and other companies train their analysts on. Placed top 1.2% in a CME futures trading challenge the first time I did one of these.

Networking:
- Dedicated to meeting every director in the company since my first day, almost there. 
- I have strong relationships with Investor Relations, who have said if they have space once I graduate and if I can get CFA L2, will bring me onto the team onto graduation (Non-official offer during a conversation with a director in IR) 
- Have a super strong relationship with a Director in Investor Relations who has said he’ll introduce me to the MD of Investor Relations who’s ex head of Morgan Stanley Global Telecoms Research, Ex-Lehman Brothers, Ex-Barclays, Ex-Redburn Atlantic, hoping to impress him once I achieve my CFA L1 and get some real deliverables from bid finance
- Super Strong relationship with the Director of Corporate Strategy (Ex-BCG, Ex-Formula 1, BsC and MsC at Oxford, PhD at Cambridge), he has been mentoring me since December 2025, and has offered support for applications to Oxbridge, LSE Masters etc but has advised me to not do it
- Director of M&A (Ex-Hedge fund, Ex-IB, ESSEC Masters), not as strong of a relationship, but have done 1 call with him and worked on a £1.5bn deal in M&A – mainly creating a pitch deck and finalising financial model accuracy
- Director of Strategic Partnerships (Ex-Amazon, LSE Masters), had first call a few weeks ago, looking to maintain this relationship as she works directly with the firms partners like Anthropic, Nvidia, and OpenAI, bringing in 9 figure deals

Also worth mentioning, I trade my own portfolio using a long-only, thematic approach: picking second-order beneficiaries of secular trends rather than the obvious first name. Applied it to AI infrastructure buildout last September, working back from compute demand to networking bandwidth to optical components, into names like AXTI, Lumentum, Fabrinet, and AIXTRON before the theme was priced in. Up 90% since, against a S&P 500 return of roughly 20% over the same stretch.

Year 3 rotation is still open (Corporate Strategy, IR, or a client-facing Sales rotation). Apprenticeship ends December 2028, targeting Sept 2029 grad roles or an off-cycle move before that if the right door opens. In terms of rotations, I’m stuck on what to target for Y3. I spoke to someone who went from my firm, they sat in Sales to Banking & Finance clients, to Barclays IBD, he strongly encouraged me to pursue a Sales rotation in my final year, his reasoning was banks can teach the technical finance (which I’m building already), what they can’t teach straight away is the ability to communicate with clients, manage clients, and front office experience overall. Based on that, I’m thinking Sales in Banking & Finance. I would go for Investor Relations, M&A, or Corporate Strategy, but there are certain regulations in place preventing apprentices from rotating in those teams.

I’m not 100% sure on what I want to do, all I know is I want to work in high finance, which is a huge umbrella term. I really, really enjoy markets and would love to work in AM or PWM, but I understand that my experience aligns more so with financial modelling and therefore IB. As of right now, and subject to change - end goal is mid-market IB or Big 4 Deals, eventually mid-market PE, not necessarily bulge bracket, and not treating an MBA as a prerequisite. I am considering an MBA or Masters but would ideally like to make it without the huge financial commitment.

My main questions: 
- Is this realistic and should I continue with these goals?
- What would you prioritize for Year 3
- What's the biggest gap in this plan that I'm not seeing?