SA internship during MBA?

Not sure if this post belongs here or in IB...

Went on a date last night with a woman who had gotten an IB SA internship after her first year in a southern MBA program (McCombs/Rice/SMU).

How common is it to have your first IB internship while in an MBA program?

She had a light financial background before going into the MBA, but don't remember the details.

She received tons of IB offers once she graduated but decided it wasn't for her and went into big oil business development instead. She said the IB internship opened tons of doors to choose other career paths.

I'm contemplating attending the same MBA program and wondering if I can pull off the same thing. I have a non-finance background.

5 Comments
 

I think it is possible. However, you may want to try and get some financial background first to help make yourself more competitive. Send some cold emails to boutiques ( HF, PE, or even asset management firms) and see if you can do an internship part time before you attend the MBA program. This will help tremendously. However, be sure to network above all. I hope this helps.

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From most people's experiences I have read about here on WSO, it seems more common to do a SA run and working a few years before going into an MBA program. But I suppose if you are doing school full-time you are going to intern somewhere in the summer regardless.

Although those folks had a strong finance undergrad education, I just had not yet heard of someone with so little finance education and professional experience doing an IB SA.

To help her efforts, she retook the GMAT even after getting into the MBA program to improve her scores knowing it would come up during interviews with IB, along with a strong GPA in the MBA courses to-date.

 

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