Allen & Co - 2016

I'll paste what I wrote in another thread (http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-for…) that people seemed to appreciate:

APAE:

Allen & Co. hires connected kids. That tends to be the clean, fresh-faced kids from good families who go to good schools. This isn't the scrappy hardworking second-generation kid who broke his back to get into Princeton. It's also not the old money like the Brahmins or families from the Social Register.

It's the kid whose family has been going to Stanford or UVA for four generations. The ones who come from quietly strong political families in Arizona, New Mexico, and California; who went to Andover, Choate, Thacher, Webb, and instead of going with their classmates into the Ivies, went back to the flagship state school (U of Arizona) because great-great-granddaddy was one of the first student body presidents ever before going on to be a senator or ambassador or something.

What I'm trying to paint here is that a lot of really qualified kids who sent in an application after finding out the firm's strong dealflow and reputation are always mystified how they never got an interview there while they wound up with offers at GS, Evercore, and JPM.

It's less about 'who are the very best interns we can hire' and more about 'who comes from the right people' and 'how can we get the kids who will best fit'. Since like attracts like, it's very often the sons and daughters of past or present employees, clients, or people otherwise economically or politically connected to the firm.

From what I've seen (on resumes from summers trying to lateral for full-time) and heard, summers don't get really technical work; it's a real resume-builder in that the firm's name carries a lot of weight and chances are you can put a headline deal in your bullet points, but the exposure you get is often qualitative and on the strategic advisory side rather than the execution side.

The ones who succeeded trying to lateral (e.g. the girl who went to BX PJT after summering there) self-taught modeling and/or were able to really spin their story favorably.