When I was an undergrad, I spent a lot of time reading forums like WSO, M&I, and Reddit to understand the industry better. These are great sources of information but they also gave me a very black-and-white view of the world when it comes to recruiting and careers in finance.
If you spend too much time on these forums as a prospect or in your early career, it's easy to think you're completely screwed if you don't go to a target school, don't get a sophomore internship, don't get a junior internship, don't participate in on-cycle, don't get into H/S MBA, etc. The real world is not that simple and people with non-traditional backgrounds find their way into great opportunities all the time.
As one example, I have a friend who went to a complete non-target, did no internships, started his career in transfer pricing at a Big 4 firm, lateraled into an IB analyst role, and now works at a MM PE fund. Now obviously this isn't a typical case, but the point is that he got a late start, didn't have a blue chip resume, missed the 'golden path', but still got there eventually. What if he had read a forum post that said it's impossible to break into banking from transfer pricing?
Just wanted to give this advice to all the prospects and young people on here -- don't ever adopt a self-defeating mentality if you miss the traditional path. You don't need the perfect resume to gun for an opportunity.
I first visited WSO a while ago in the early 2010s. The one thing that hasn’t changed between then and now is the amount of ego (eg bashing schools and firms they know nothing about to make themselves feel better).
New users reading this post would be wise to avoid “ranking” posts: they tend to be garbage and frankly a waste of server bandwidth.
mad cringe post lol how about fucking stop lowballing yourself and go chase that golden path without getting attached to it fucking retards
You appear to have poor reading comprehension skills as that's exactly what the post says: don't lowball yourself. I'm not saying to go into transfer pricing, I'm saying that if you do find yourself in a less-than-ideal spot, you have the power to change it and get back on track.
Due to the Wisdom of Crowds, the site is usually pretty accurate. Especially with the Banana/MS system. You can come from a non-traditional background and make it, but you have to exhibit some excellence in your life and if not that, a strong ability to network. I wish WSO was around when I was in college - it would have made things much easier for me. I came from a non-traditional background and didn't know much about finance until my senior year of college. I thought finance people were all accountants earlier in my life. I knew nothing of PE/VC until junior year; Shark Tank wasn't around and learned mostly from talking to alumni and industry professionals. One alumni in particular took me under his wing in NYC and brought me into his shop and helped to arrange interviews with some major players while visiting NYC. We were a small school, but had a really good Finance and Investment club when I was there. One of the people in that club when I was in school is now an MD at MS/GS.
WSO arms you with the knowledge of how to be successful and which area of finance you like the most. You have to work hard on your own, but to know the way is an important first step to finding your life's passion.
You have to admit there are a lot of college nobodies handing out advice as if they are a principal at a PE. The advice they give is recycled from other wso nobodies which further the echo chamber of target school or loser land. Top 10 mba or forget it. Intern at a bulge bracket unless you're a loser at a boutique. And so forth.Like most things in life, cream rises to the top even if one is not networked/connected/mobbed up like the caboose of Wharton.
haha yeah true
does it make you wonder a lot if you had known about the whole IB path from the first day of college
Yeah the thing I didn’t know was coming from a non-traditional college that I needed to make a 4.0 or close to be competitive. I ended up with a 3.64 and largely was under the radar for interviews. I frequently was asked “why the low GPA.” I wish I knew I had to bust my ass from day 1 in college and if I knew the pay it would have been proper motivation.
I actually disagree with this pretty strongly. Most of this site is teenagers, college students, and very very junior analyst type folks. They know very, very little, despite what they may pretend
Yup!
Yeah I know what you mean, but most of the young people are listed as interns so you know the weight of their words.
I find advice on here really to be pretty poor. Have seen many comments highly ranked or shitted on that I know to be the reverse of reality. The monkey shit system doesn’t work for comments that well because so much of the crowd is ignorant. My recommendation is picking specific users that are highly rated and posts that are the top of all time. If someone has been giving advice on this forum for 5+ years, they likely have at least been around the hoop for that long. Maybe they started as a sophomore in college giving bogus advice, but 5 years later they should at least be done with an analyst stint. Also, the resources on this website are better than the forums.
WSO's main strength is dating advice
Wrong.
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