How I broke into Private Equity/Growth Equity?

So, this message is for all enthusiasts, current students, high school students, university students, and people who are generally interested in shifting their careers from IB to PE/GE or just getting into PE/GE in general from other roles within finance, banking, consulting, corp dev, etc... I just wanted to give my personal two cents about how recruitment went, my personal reflection, how I assessed it for potential sophomores to handle recruitment to potentially secure a summer internship in PE/GE which could eventually lead to a full time role hopefully.

So, I started off high school thinking I was going to get into engineering or CS because I thought it was a career where I might have liked to explore further. I got into college and then saw that I should be in finance so ended up doing finance at a complete non-target school in Florida. A school that is completely out of the blue, and people out there that make posts about not being able to get offers from non-targets, its absolute bullshit. and, im not saying that because hey i got an offer finally for 26 but because its actually possible. you see, recruitment season was coming to an end and I was lucky and smart enough to start opening up my apps from just IB to PE, GE, and VC because why not shoot my shot at anything at this point since it mattered to me to get into a relative field.

I ended up getting like a bunch of superdays at mid tier and solid banks but also at some small and good MM SaaS PE/GE shops. I networked a lot over the summer, the fall, and during the spring which was when we had interviews and answered almost every single technical question to me right at all my interviews and nailed several superdays at a bunch of banks. yet, the only thing holding me back was my school since it was a non-target. What I realized was that some banks or PE shops favorably targeted specific schools like wharton.. dartmouth... columbia... harvard... etc and if I even aced the superday back to back and even if they all loved me, it would come down to school ranking. 

I will admit, I absolutely botched my second superday which was at an EB shop, but after that, every superday I've taken, I've aced. Technicals to the T, behaviorals prepped to the T, even after hours of effort in front of a mirror or empty zoom calls. I think what I was lacking was the school's reputation (Which i wont blame since it was my choice) since I had around 3 IB internships + a corporate development internship + my schools investment fund & equity research club as my EC's on my resume so I definitely knew that was not the issue. Therefore, I saw that time flew by and a lot of people around me who worked half as hard as me got offers and I was like you know what, its time to change.

I started applying to PE/GE roles and a little VC roles and did not network at all. Yes, believe it or not, you might think I somehow hit the jackpot but, I think for some of these MM PE shops or just PE/GE shops in general, they care about how much experience you bring in, whether you can present your own investment pitch + LBO case study, and resilience because working in GE/PE with a lot of founders or early-stage/matured startups causes you to be answering questions on the spot without much doubt so you need to have resilience and character. Another thing that helped me was the fact that I applied to a lot of shops around Florida so they would favor students from colleges nearby. However, I landed my role in New York in a decent PE/GE firm where they target MM Tech companies specifically. 

I ended up landing a superday after sooo many rounds. Had a hirevue with 10 questions then got to the first round LBO case study (live on zoom), then a second round interview 1 on 1 with an analyst all technical, then a third round interview which was a take home assessment to create my own investment pitch deck, and then a final round superday for 2 hours where I talked to the Director, SVP, VP, and an analyst and I pitched my investment pitch deck to the Director. The SVP was all behavioral and he only wanted to know about all my IB internships and what I did there and how it could translate to PE/GE. Then, the VP was more oriented on technicals + behaviorals about specific scenarios that could happen in PE/GE. Then the analyst was a full technical assessment and did not care about TMAY or why GE... he just wanted to test me about "walk me through a LBO," calculating IRR, calculating debt remaining upon exits, common multiples, exit equity proceeds, and hell he even through an options pricing question in there for absolutely no reason. Funny thing is, some of these recruiters or analysts try to see if you get some questions wrong because if you get some of these random ones right and haven't done WSP yet, then your either using AI (Chat) or just cheating somehow. That's what I was told since the guy was chill after and said nice, it's fine if you got 1-2 wrong because we've had people that said robotic answers that were straight off gemini or chat probably. 

So, I felt like I aced the interview, the Director loved my formatting and said my investment pitch deck was on the top of the pile of all the other prospects (prospective investment interns) that put in an application and I pitched it well, the SVP gave me no emotion and seemed like he did not give two shits, the VP was flexing his IB experience from before becuase he did a SA at Ducera, hated it, and then went full time at JP Morgan for IB, did it two years, and then broke into PE/GE and worked his way up. However, all went pretty well and I thought I was not getting the role since they hired a lot from BC, Dartmouth, and Wharton. One week went by and I sent out all thank you emails and got a whopping 2 responses other than HR. One of them was very kind and said they enjoyed talking to me and enjoyed talking to me about football and the VP replied back with the coldest line ever... "Nice talking to you." I was like yeah I'm for sure not getting this offer.

One week goes by and I get the offer call from head of HR on a Tuesday morning at like 9:30 am ET. I was super excited, with base comp being 110k for an analyst and I was like sick! why not sign. I signed the offer and here I am, with a 2026 SA now. Now, that's my story, but here are the pointers I learned from banking to PE/GE recruitment and getting a SA so late (in May of 2025 which is considered super late in banking recruitment). 

Tips:

1. always be open to any options... u might wanna work on the sell side first in IB but be open to PE, GE, or VC opportunities... why not go to the buy side automatically??? so ask yourself theres money everywhere...be open about your career, you can always try to go back after making connections and meeting new people... theres nothing wrong with that.
2. networking helps a lot. i genuinely think that I tryhard sweatted the interview sessions, my resume, previous internships, and still got lucky for hitting the jackpot in getting the role...networking really helps because at the banks I networked at, I was lucky to see one or two of them during my interviews... like the person I networked with interviewed me...which is an upper hand
3. know your technicals (I know this is another cheesy one like networking but know your basic + mediocre technicals... study LBO guides.. evercore guides.. 400 M&I guide... do all of the WSP Premium package problems because I did all of them, its worth the money in my opinion and other technical prep from websites like coursera, quizlet, etc. I know its vague and cheesy to say but trustttt its worth it in my opinion, especially if you are from a no name non-target school or even a semi-target school.
4. Talk with friends and keep each other updated. I had someone who kept me going. I had times (around 50+ times) where I was about to go into fumes and give up because of working so hard to get to a superday and do a superday for 3-5 hours just to find out I was rejected for a girl from an Ivy league school who openly admitted to know knowing how to go from Enterprise Value to Equity Value -_- that had gotten the acceptance letter somehow. By the way, she was from Cornell (so I don't know how thats even possible). Stay up to date with friends who are also in the process to help keep them motivated so that they can also keep you motivated because it helps a lot in my opinion.
5. dont overdo it. when you get to the superday, and you have a lot of IB experience or corporate finance or development intern experiences dont overdo it. They know most of these experiences are either BS, nepo, or just not the real deal. Keep it short and brief. I noticed that halfway through my interviews for some of these banks, to the point I noticed a banker yawned in front of me lol. Just keep it fresh and brief like you're new and curious in the sector and did this this this internship with one or two things that you think would be good to point out from one of the internships that could boost you up a bit.
6. talk less, listen more. listen listen listen to whoever is on the other end of the call which is important because you want to give them little but enough room to judge your character but not too much so they can't see your bad side. everyone has a bad side so try to avoid talking too much to show that. dont be an egotistical person.
7. lastly, never lose faith & hope. always be faithful. you're going to end up getting something, somewhere, somehow, and some point. and never stop applying to multiple roles, never stop networking, never stop recruiting, never stop doing anything. just keep going as the applications keep coming. There's a lot of banks that are open this late... oppenheimer recently wrapped up, Ziegler started recently, theres a power & renewables bank named PEI Global that had apps open for a while, Deutsche bank recruits again in the Fall, Cohen & Co. Capital Markets (insane boutique bank that pays above street) recruits in the Fall and is super overlooked since a lot of juniors don't know about them other than the Ivys, Stephens IB (opens up in August), Stifel Fixed Income, FTI Consulting (restructuring M&A for their IB department), etc. There's even a couple buy side shops that open up like Warburg Pincus (great PE/GE firm), PSG Equity (great GE shop for MM SaaS), etc. rule is, never stop, keep going, keep applying, slow down on networking (sure thats fine), but keep going, because the more interviews, the better it is for you. and eventually, you can get an offer and use it as leverage for another firm.

Overall, I hope you guys take this story as advice and also ways to see it the way I saw recruitment and how you can optimize or add to my list with other factors and tips or pointers you guys may have but I just wanted to leave this here for other future candidates. Feel free to reach out if you want to network with me and how I got into the PE/GE firm of my choice and could potentially help you out with how to apply and tackle the questions at this firm.