bb commercial banking to investment banking

Ivy league engineering background- worked as an engineer and hated it. Last minute spam applied to a bunch of finance roles without knowing what they were. Landed commercial banking gig at top 3 bank. After learning a little more about finance, I want to do IB. Any advice on how to approach my junior year summer commercial banking internship to maximize my chances of starting off as an IB analyst? I really wish I considered finance earlier lol. I am already attending networking events and coffee chats that I have been invited to, but the job market is so shit right now.

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I’d like to be able to say you could use your commercial banking experience to get into IB full time, but it’s just not realistic in this job market where candidates that are perfect on paper (Ivy League, BB IBD internship) are struggling to recruit full time even for MM firms.

It seems like the easiest way would be to do a few years in commercial banking/any other finance role you want (fp&a, treasury etc should be pretty manageable) and then use your ivy undergrad and experience to get into an m7 MBA program and come in as an associate. You only “lose” (by lose I mean not work up the ladder in banking, you’ll still probably be earning close to six figures and gaining good experience) a few years over recruiting from undergrad, and maybe you find out that you enjoy commercial banking more than you thought. Good luck!

 

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