Classmate summered at Big Tech in SF from ultra non-target with no exp, how?

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21 Comments
 

ooo you jelly

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Isaiah_53_5 💎🙌💎🙌💎

ooo you jelly

not really as we are targeting different fields, I went into finance and got my return offer but I can see why many people would be jelly. Just trying to determine in hindsight if my classmate should have gone for something more local and attainable for a FT return than gun for something that seems too good to be true because it was unprecedented in our school's history.

 

Non-target for finance or for tech specifically? Looking at non-US schools strong in tech beyond the obvious (ETH/EPFL, Imperial/Oxbridge, Waterloo, TUM, IITs etc.), there's a decent number that would not get a look in for finance but are very strong for FAANG. University of Bucharest comes to mind, often sending interns straight to Silicon Valley, but a number of Eastern European schools score well in this respect.

It's definitely not unheard of for people from top target international schools for tech to intern with FAANG in California. Would be interested to know if your definition of target is based on finance/QS World Rankings or on actual FAANG targets (or Tesla or whoever). If it's the latter and there's no FAANG recruitment there, then do you mind sharing where that school is? Some places (e.g. Middle East) connections are likely to get you further.

 

Thanks for a proper response. It's non-target for both tech and finance actually. The undergrad university is named after a small town that many have not heard of. they are mostly known for farming and agriculture since the university is surrounded by farmland. It is ranked probably in the 50th percentile in the country  

 

Seems bizarre then. As said, I know of a decent number of people from some of those target universities that I listed who have interned there, often having interned the summer before in their home country but sometimes directly (or directly through an industrial placement). So there's definitely foreign hiring. But for example in the UK, the Californian internships seem to be pretty much restricted to Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford and (sometimes) Edinburgh; even UCL and Warwick seem to be impossible. So seems really strange that a student at a low-ranked university would get it.

 

Nah, we were really jammed during our first-year curriculum with school-assigned extracurriculars and volunteer work. Plus, there would be students who have their own side projects at T15/M7 as well. 

 

It was a non-tech managerial role (no programming/engineering) geared towards graduate management students. The other interns in that cohort were all from ivy or T15.

 

Yeah, you're definitely jealous mate. Or else why bother creating a whole thread on your classmate?

 

Yeah, you're definitely jealous mate. Or else why bother creating a whole thread on your classmate?

The thread is more understanding why firms pull stunts like this. 

 

This thread is pretty cringe. 

Maybe your friend is a stud who went to a non-target undergrad for financial reasons? 

Maybe your friend just interviews super well and networks aggressively? 

Maybe your friend's dad is important, or at least knows someone? 

Most importantly, maybe you should just be happy for your friend and work your ass off to get something similar for yourself. 

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CRE

This thread is pretty cringe. 

Maybe your friend is a stud who went to a non-target undergrad for financial reasons? 

Maybe your friend just interviews super well and networks aggressively. 

Maybe your friend's dad is important, or at least knows someone. 

Most importantly, maybe you should just be happy for your friend and work your ass off to get something similar for yourself. 

Those typical US reasons don't apply here. We have a pretty generous government-sponsored student loan program and tuition fees are dirt cheap to begin with, plus her family is financially comfortable but not anything influential. She didn't network aggressively (this type of behavior is not taught at her school and program). I am happy for my friend, in fact I helped prep her for her interview to land it (shes a new grad, I have work exp). I just feel terrible that the firm got her hopes up only to let her down. Now she has artificially high expectations and its either FAANG or unemployment post-grad... Given her non-target backgrounds and international status, the latter seems inevitable. PS, it was not a tech or finance role, it was in HR but it still pays 3x more than the average graduate wage in our country after conversion.

 

Because tech isn’t finance where your connections and prestige get you a job rather than your actual ability and intelligence lmao.

 

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