undergrad student seeking advice for future career path in finance

Happy belated new year everyone,

I am an international student (kinda fobby!!!) currently enrolled at a top-50 U.S. school. I am a senior studying finance and accounting. I decided to join WSO because I really believe it can accelerate my learning curve, since it is full of successful professionals. I would love to start in IB, DCM or ECM, but at this point I am not picky about any specific finance jobs, as long as I get a foot in the door.

For the first two years of college, I prioritized partying and joined a fraternity. I was immature and not driven. I did not join any other organizations or make any connections with professionals or professors. During my junior year, I really got into finance and started applying myself very hard. I started doing well in school (I will be graduating next semester with around a 3.6 GPA and a 3.8/3.9 concentration GPA), reading finance books, I bought a financial modelling trainer and got a bunch of certifications (excel proficiency, bloomberg, financial modelling). However, mainly because I started applying myself very late in my college career, I was not able to land any major internships and I have therefore very mediocre (still finance related!) work experience on my resume.

I am a numbers guy. When I was 16, I made around $60k playing online poker and coaching players (over 1.5 years). I have no problem on working 85+ hours/week ( I played poker 70+ hours/week before, I probably averaged around 30-35/hours week, only because of school and sports) and I can pick up numbers related/analytical as well as anyone else in the industry.

I would love if you guys could give me some piece of advice on how to try to get into finance. How can I leverage my poker skills? I acknowledge the fact that I am not in the best shape, that there are thousands of better candidates and that requiring Visa sponsorship lowers my chances to something around 0-5% of getting a job in the US (I started applying to jobs in london).

Thanks a lot,

D4Gr1nd3r

3 Comments
 

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