I am currently a junior at a non-target school and am interested in banking. I spent my freshman and sophomore years as a biology/premed student until I switched into finance last semester. I have done well in my business core but I am afraid my past as a premed student will come back to haunt me, let alone being from a non-target. My Overall GPA is above a 3.0, and my business and Finance GPA is above a 3.5. I am also active in our finance and investment associations.
My question is do banks ever consider the difficulty of previous majors, such as a pre-medicine track, when hiring? Are there any other divisions at large banks such as Fixed Income, Equities, PWM that would be more lenient? Any advice would be great. I know I have found my forte in finance; it just took a little searching.
It is hard to say if everyone will be understanding but I have come across numerous recruiters and the such that have told me that they expect lower gpa's for certain types of majors like engineers etc.
in addition to this if you get a chance to interview with any of these folks and feel comfortable mention the fact that ur gpa represents your pre-med track.
Lastly if you think ur lower gpa may put u at a slight disadvantage of course bring it up the best u can but also concentrate on extras like the fin. & inv assn u mentioned and also know your stuff. I cant tell you how many people our age who are in late round interviews with bb firms and dont even know some of the very fin basics
First here will be the challenges you face... 1) Non-target school: Unfortunately, going through the large candidate pool is way more difficult than a target school's interview pool. 2) The GPA is one of the first things we look at (well I do at least) if none is disclosed, I might see if they interned somewhere respectable (doesn't have to be IB). I recruit for my alma mater and I have to flip 500+ resumes and as a UG lead I have to compile everyones picks and then discuss borderline people, so i spend less than 10 seconds on a resume, reading about 5% of the cover letters.
This is amplified by HR as a whole, since they probobly look at school, gpa, SAT with minimal judgement.
3) If you have any connections start branching out now, you never know who has a similar story...A guy I knew went to University of Arizona and ended up at MS (he is the only University of Arizona person I know in banking), the way he got in was he reached out to fraternity brothers from other chapters by going to target school frat events and networked with some alums. The only problem was retarded, kinda shows why University of Arizona isn't represented...If he performed well that school might have been a secret weapon like Richard Ivey was for some banks a few years ago.
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