College timeline

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First of all, enjoy your time in college. It’s great to have goals and work your ass off for them, but have fun. Should start freshman year learning technical side( it’s what I did). Networking can never start too early, maybe not at places you want to SA at, but networking is a massive part of getting looked at and success in general. Sophomore fall should start looking at relevant experience for sophomore summer to set yourself up for SA recruiting your sophomore spring and summer. As for networking for SA, you can start in Jan/Feb for EBs and BBs if you want. Big thing is keeping contacts updated, but not too often (once every three months?) Have faith in yourself and prepare for everything. BIWS guides are great IMO for interview prep, I also did a fin modeling course too. Finally don’t overestimate your competition, so many kids who go to great schools have no clue; work hard, talk to a sickening amount of people, and be confident.

Just my approach so take it with a grain of salt. There are many different ways to approach it successfully. 

Freshman Year - focus on meeting as many people as you can, getting a wide social circle with a solid core group of friends. Go out as much as you can. Join greek life if that's your thing (great networking opp). Jump in to a few solid extracurriculars (apply to a lot since they can be surprisingly competitive). Take relatively easy classes and get a high GPA. Start getting to know upperclassmen, especially in a career area you want to target. Try to gain exposure to as many different career paths as possible through research and conversations to get an idea of what you want to target. Towards the end of the year, try to ask around through upperclassmen/family connections/local hometown firms about internship opportunities. Don't kill yourself on it but just try to get something respectable on the resume to make things easier in the future. Personally, I wanted it as short/chill as possible to be able to enjoy the summer. 

Sophomore Year First Sem - Keep focusing on GPA, keep it as high as possible. Don't take hard classes unless absolutely necessary. Try for leadership positions in ECs. Keep going out and enjoying life as much as possible. Keep learning about different career options. Towards the end of first semester start narrowing down what you want to do and try to start looking for a sophomore summer internship that will help you get there (i.e. if you really want IB, look for a small PE firm or if you want S&T look for a small S&T firm or hedge fund). Over winter break, start focusing on sophomore year recruiting (most probably will not have job applications, so send a lot of cold emails to small firms). Again, I wanted something short and chill for the resume and to also enjoy the summer. Up to you if you want to choose a grind of a small IB firm or something legit like that. Try to get this out of the way, then start learning technicals/get a plan of attack for recruiting.

Sophomore Year Second Sem - IB/PE junior year recruiting stuff can start in March of sophomore year, so if you want to be ready for that, get ready at the beginning of second semester. Start learning technicals, get grip on networking, talk to upperclassmen, and lock down what route you want to go. Not the end of the world if you are a little bit late to the game (plenty of people do not start till summer and it works out well). Apply to as many places as possible. 

Sophomore Summer - Keep grinding recruiting hard. Make networking calls and applications your job. I focused on this April/May/June and then basically stopped all networking. Enjoy your summer and grind for interviews when necessary. Try to lock down a sick junior year gig. 

Junior Year - Keep doing recruiting if necessary. Really clamp down if you are still interviewing/applying. Get that offer and chill the rest of the year. 

Senior Year - Maybe you took a return offer, if not, repeat the recruiting process. Get an offer, then chill and enjoy.