PE Associate/Snr Associate or VP MBA Internships
I have 2 years and 7 months of private equity associate experience at a ~$20B fund and am beginning my MBA. I've been looking at potential internships/summer roles, but only a handful of firms have "Summer Senior Associate" or "Summer Vice President" programs. How did you handle internships for those who went for the MBA with pre-MBA PE experience? Would it make sense to apply for associate roles? If that's even a possibility, did you join as a Senior Associate? My previous firm didn't have a senior associate titles. They just kept associates for 3-4 years before VP promotion. Happy to hear thoughts on this.
Many people with pre-MBA experience don't do any PE over the summer and recruit FT. They tend to do Tech, start-up, etc., route over the summer. But to your question, there are a select number of PE firms that do summer Sr. Associate / VP internships and they should recruit on campus for HSW, and a couple headhunters will also outreach for them. These are the ones you want. There are also Associate-level programs, but those are mostly for folks who don't have pre-MBA experience.
For what it's worth, most people don't go MBA just to do PE again over the summer so they do something "fun" before getting serious during 2Y.
I appreciate the feedback. I honestly thought so too but then "accidentally" came across a summer VP requisition at Bain and a few other Snr Associate roles. I panicked for a moment there that I might be too late.
Agree, skip those. Those internships are meant for those trying to break into PE, not those with pre-MBA associate experience.
I typically see people with top pre-MBA experience do single manager hedge fund roles or tech. A lot of firms that require MBAs pretty much exclusively hire VPs from former Associates given how few slots there are vs. the pool. The broader trend is to promote directly now without an MBA at firms who would not have done this 10-15 years ago, but in the old days, I can think of examples or firms who didn’t give any offers to H/S MBA interns because they had enough former Associates (who also went to H/S) to fill their few open roles. I think if I were looking at internships, I would try to understand the fundraising momentum. If a firm is rapidly expanding AUM, then there likely will be more VP slots and hence a higher likelihood of an offer.
Great points. Thanks.
I'll respectfully take the other side of the above feedback and say: talk to the folks from the MBA classes of 2023 and 2024. I heard the same advice (do an internship in tech/HF/VC/etc.) and I think that was the right move in the 2010s, but the fundraising and hiring market is much tighter now (and may still be when you graduate). If you want to protect your downside, you could pursue one of the (few) VP or even Senior Associate summer roles and then either accept it or shop it around in August 2025.
Note: I'm coming at this from purely a professional perspective. If you're trying to maximize personal growth or are comfortable with the risk, go try something new/interesting - you may never have a window like this again in your career.
This is also true these days. Graduated 2024 and still unemployed, but granted that's because of my own pickiness. These days, people gotta do the calculus of how badly you want / need employment in general, versus how much you want to get that exploration bug out of your system and find the "right" role for yourself...which for me and many of my peers is taking significantly longer than expected.
It's fine to try, but the odds of placement are very low. These programs are typically meant for those with atypical backgrounds trying to break into PE, with an emphasis on minorities/women/military for the most part.
Source: I did a PE VP internship during my MBA program.
Why did you pursue an MBA?
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