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Don’t do mba post analyst stint
Why not? I know this is conventional, but what’s the harm in this?
It's an uphill battle if you don't have buyside experience pre-school. This year is probably even worse just given where the market is, but there's such a large number of people coming from PE backgrounds that it's almost impossible to be competitive. Some firms, like Vista, have programs that are aimed at people who have no PE experience, but those are exceptions and not the norm.
LMM funds do a lot of spring internships for first years and there are a few search funds that do spring / summer (But unpaid).
I think LMM / search funds are risky summer internships especially if they historically don't hire FT (at least at my school, the 2 of the 3 that recruited on campus were strategy / PE ops roles not the deal team). But I know at least one person who was able to land a deal team spring semester offer for a family office / MM sized fund ($1-2B) but I'm pretty sure this person cold emailed a ton of people after finishing up recruiting this Fall for the summer.
FT PE recruiting is near impossible unless you go to HSW and 'maybe' Booth / CBS (not so much the other M7s).
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