Non-Target to Dream Restructuring Shop

I wanted to give a mountain of thanks to everyone on this forum. I'm currently a rising junior at a non-target school with a little bit of representation at some specific BBs, but not a single alumni in restructuring.

The people on this forum helped me prepare for my interviews, understand the industry, and get a 2021 SA offer for my absolute number one choice restructuring firm. There aren't any alumni that I could reach out to to understand the industry, but everyone's insight made up a ton of ground that I would have been lacking otherwise.

I've been putting most of my spare time since the end of freshman year towards preparing myself for the process. It was disheartening at times, getting close to a 5% response rate for my emails, going without proper sleep for months trying to make myself the best candidate that I could, and not knowing if all of my work would be for nothing.

Thanks to one amazing person who responded to my email and ended up seeing how much effort I put in and their faith in me, I was able to get a first round. I was beside myself and realized that even if I didn't get the offer, it was the most encouraging feeling to even have been considered.

I went through the process fully and ended up getting the offer for a top-tier restructuring group (PJT/LAZ/HL/EVR), and it's been the most inspiring and worthwhile experience of my life. I'm going to be the first person in my immediate family to have graduated from college, and I'm overjoyed that I overcame both that and being from a non-target school to have the opportunity to not only do something that I enjoy, but will make sure that I can support myself and give back to my family.

Thanks again guys, stay awesome.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who commented for the kind words!

As requested, here's a bit of insight into what I did that helped me prepare:

1 ) Understanding Credit:

Getting a solid foundation in vanilla credit analysis is an absolute must. How yields are determined, what price reflects, and understanding how to pinpoint and understand risks rather than drivers. Understand the implications and importance of leverage, coverage, loan-to-value/the equity cushion, liquidity, and the ability to generate liquidity.

2 ) Learning about the Restructuring/Bankruptcy Process:

Most people say Moyer's "Distressed Debt Investing" is a must-read, but I think that the only time that it's useful is if you don't have a lot of time before recruiting starts. It's a great book that does a great job putting everything in plain English, but it's pretty surface-level.

Reading "The Art of Distressed M&A" is a much, much better choice in my opinion. It's incredibly thorough and the chapters are very well organized. In its own words, "[The book] is organized in a question-and-answer format, moving from general to specific questions in each topic area. What is your burning question of the moment? It may be as basic as “What is Chapter 11 bankruptcy?” or “Why do companies fail?” or as arcane as “What is a bankruptcy remote entity?” Whatever you want to know about distressed mergers and acquisitions, you are likely to find the answers here—or at least a useful reference.. A drawback is that it's more of a practitioner's guide, so it's REMARKABLY dry and there's a lot of information that is FAR beyond any interviewer's wildest expectations.

Houlihan's "Buying and Selling the Distressed Company" is a great read, and reading it is sort of comparable to following a bankruptcy.

3 ) Showing Interest
3a) Following Bankruptcies

Whereas #1,2 help a ton, following bankruptcies is the number one way that you can differentiate yourself and your understanding. I've heard people say that reading articles about old high-profile bankruptcies (Sears, Enron, and pretty much anything from '08) is the best way to show interest, but I completely disagree with the idea that it's the best way or even a good use of time.

Following ongoing bankruptcies where one of the parties is advised by the place you're interviewing is a great way to show interest (the chance the person you're talking about it with will know about it too is greatly increased if the bank advises the debtor or the fulcrum security). For high-profile bankruptcies like the huge retail and oil companies going bankrupt now, there'll usually be a few articles on what's going on in the process online - they all say the same thing and are absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, useless.

3b) Following Bankruptcies

To really show that you're interested enough to follow a bankruptcy and have the capacity to understand it is to READ THE DOCKET. The docket is the list of all court filings in the bankruptcy and has 100% of the public information. The documents in the docket are 90% administrative/content-less stuff that's just required by the court, but the other 10% (motions, objections, statements in support of . . ., etc.) is all useful information that shows what's going on and its reasoning. (I didn't explain that perfectly, but hopefully you get the gist)

What can make you really stand out is following a large but front-page-worthy bankruptcy. There'll be little news written on it, so knowing the ins and outs of what's happened is worth more.

A bankruptcy's docket can be found by googling the company's name and then the word docket. The largest cases will have their dockets on sites like Prime Clerk, Epiq11, KCCLLC, or Stretto. The only sites that have a non-frustrating layout are Prime Clerk and KCCLLC,