For those who ended up going to EB/BB after college, did you prepare everything by yourself or hired a tutor? And how's recruiting difficult for US citizens/international students?

Will be enrolling a target school as a freshman (not a prestigious ivy school but a public school with great business program: UVA)

I'd love to pursue a financial career after college (BB/EB/whatever), preferrably in Wall street lol) and I knew internship is the key to the answer. Banks offer internships during the summer vacation between sophomore and junior year and some bulge brackets have sophomore programs that students would work between the summer vacation of their freshman and sophomore year (with higher selectivity, of course).
I know the entire recruiting process as well as the technical/behavior knowledge preparation can be pretty tough but how many of you guys broke into banks on your own without hiring a tutor or agent for preps?

I knew an agent that coach students and many of them ended up with some decent offers like GS or BLK but I don't know if it worth the cost (40k usd). I wanna land in some decent companies and even receive the highly selective sophomore internship program from a big name BB and I'm kinda confused. How possible will my dream come true if I just join the school investment club/interact with ppl or alumni/self study all the behavioral and technical stuff by sources like WSO?

By the way, what the tutor mentioned is that applying interns from local middle-small sized securities and banks that are not famous right now (so I'll be having interns during my school time in my first year) is a way to boost the likelihood of receiving the sophomore BB interns. Had anyone has similar experiences like this?

And how's recruiting (possibility of receiving offers) difficult for US citizens/international students? Will that vary a lot or it's not a big deal?

Thanks guys. Your reply will be really helpful.