Goldman Sachs Coffee Chats IBD

To be honest, it's EXTREMELY rare to have a sophomore summer internship by December. Most top achievers start landing sophomore internships in ~February; I landed one at the beginning of March, and I am in no way one of those top achiever students. I'll tell the full story to hopefully help you glean meaning from it.

Around October, I started thinking that I might want to do IB. I was a third-year student who had recently found out that he liked finance, had no idea what he wanted to do, was partially intrigued by the idea of working through grueling hours (true story). Looked more into the job description and realized an advisory role sounded cool, and decided to go into banking. I took a remote IB internship with a firm (call it Firm A) for the next semester, starting in January, and I got set up with it by reaching out to a random guy at my school who was going through that internship at the time. Kept in touch with him because he seemed like a cool guy.

Fast forward 4 months or so, I'm scrambling in February to get an internship. Flew myself to New York to network at the beginning of March, feeling dejected because I wanted to land an internship before then. There were 3 firms I had talked to about getting an internship near the end of February (1 PE shop in the NY/NJ/CT area, 1 VC shop in my area, and 1 IB shop in my area), and I was only in the process for 1 of them (the IB shop) by the time I flew to New York. The other 2 didn't accept me. I had an interview for the IB shop, let's call it firm B, the day I flew back from New York.

Flew back, killed the interview, had 1 of the current interns at Firm B vouch for me. That intern put my name in the running to even be interviewed, he pulled for me during interviews, and he was in the room when I had my final interview. Know who this guy was? The EXACT same guy that got me set up with my FIRST internship at Firm A.

If you want a job/internship in the finance world, you can only get it through building meaningful connections with people. There were people who had far better GPAs than me, had better IB experience than me, were further along in their understanding of finance than me, and were more well-put-together than me. I got the job because I had a friend, I made friends with all of the interviewers, and I showed genuine interest by learning about the firm and responsibilities of the job before the interview.

As for the second part of your question, I'm not entirely sure. That's a unique situation you've got, being at a community college. Is it a widely-known community college? Because if not, I'd purposefully leave that detail out during interviews because people give a bad rep to community college for no reason. Also, if I were you, I wouldn't bother with trying to get BB or EB experience right now. They accept ~20-30 people each year, you could rub people the wrong way while networking if you aren't prepared and don't have a solid résumé.

For you, I would start right now by A) getting a freshman summer experience in anything finance related. The closer to IB, the better. If you can get in at a local IB shop, that would be awesome. Keep your grades up next year, try to get as close to a 4.0 as possible. Continue gaining relevant experience that you can put on your résumé by joining any IB clubs at your school, doing case competitions, doing an online modeling learning program like Wall Street Prep and get the certification, etc. Also, if you qualify for diversity programs (I personally did for some firms) then apply to those like crazy. I wish I had applied to more - I decided to do so when it was too late. These programs give you early super days, more opportunity to network, and potentially something you can put on your résumé.

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B) starting everything else I mentioned. Become polished, show that you're a good candidate, stand out from the crowd. Anyone can breaking if they have the personality and are willing to do it.