Breaking into PE for dummies

I’m 26 yrs old, just graduated this May with my bachelors in Finance. I did pretty well in college. Senior securities analyst for my university student managed investment fund for 4 years. PE Internship in real estate. Investment analyst internship in energy impact financing. Took a gamble and moved to NYC with no job offers because I thought it would be easier once I got here. Realizing now after 3 months of applying for hundreds of positions over LinkedIn that it won’t be as easy as I thought. I’ve been told that LinkedIn is pretty much useless, and because I’m trying to break into the “elite” of finance I’ll have to shake hands and flirt with analysts to get inside one of these firms. So, I’ve essentially abandoned LinkedIn like an orphan child and adopted aggressive networking as my new strategy. But, I’ve hit a new barrier. These events are either private or impossible to get into because you have to be company/invited non-company or know somebody and that defeats the purpose in my opinion of trying to get in if I already know somebody. But, I digress. I’m trying literally just showing up to banking events. Like for example; the Deutsche Bank hosts conferences for investor relations/work shop/seminar type deals to get their pockets greased up and I’m going to just show up and try to shake hands and see where it goes. Besides that, I’m essentially floating dead in the water. Not sure what the most effective way is for mingling with other banking/PE folks in NYC and I was told the WSO community may be of help. So, for those who successfully “broke in”, what did you do? Open to any serious suggestions at this point, you might have noticed I’m pretty desperate. Not desperate enough to do any weird stuff so don’t bother DMing and trying to seduce me. It WONT work.