Breaking into London Investment Banking as an International student

Every bank has their own standardized process for summers, usually starting in July/August. Some banks also offer offcycle placements, but I wouldn't recommend focusing on them as the conversion rates tend to be abysmal. Being an engineer isn't at all a disadvantage. You could even say it's an advantage for some teams (TMT for example). What will be a disadvantage is not coming from a very recognizable school, and HR tend to not know a lot about engineering schools. But as long as your school is a target school, you'll be fine.

For this summer, you can always try. I think your 0.1% chance sounds accurate, but it's still better than 0%.

Main guidelines I would provide to anyone, as an International Student who got a summer in London:

1. Reach out during the early months of summer to alumni from your school / friends of friends / nationals from your country / etc. so that you can find a name to put down on your cover letter for each bank, and hopefully so that they can ask HR to invite you to an interview. If you're studying at a target, you'll know someone, or someone who knows someone.

2. Apply as soon as applications open. Seriously. Went to my first assessment centre in September, some firms have ACs even sooner.

3. Get past numerical and verbal tests from the internet and learn them by heart. Especially the verbal questions, one of the main databasis banks use has less than 100 different questions, getting dinged on a verbal is really easy to avoid. Getting past numerical and verbals is the simplest hurdle in the process: the expectations are very clear and measurable, it's just meant to eliminate insufficiently motivated applicants from the rest of the process. A hint: just find a phrase from a verbal test, copy past it to google with quotation marks, and you'll find pdfs of every verbal question to train on.

4. Don't think that you can allow yourself to be a bit hesitant in your technicals during the AC because you know how to project great fit. At this point, most nails their technicals, and most decisions are made on what "extra" you can bring. So, be absolutely prepared to answer to the 50 to 70 questions that make the rounds every year ("describe the impact of 10 of additional depreciation on your financial statements" / "walk me through a DCF", etc.). There are guides compiling them, you can start know to read the guides and try to answer / read 10 questions before bed each night, and it won't be so painful memorizing them. You'll even start to understand the logic used most of the time (e.g. the "apple to apple" argument: only use comparable aggregates, if your EBITDA has associates income in it, then your EV should take it into account).