Goldman Sachs vs. Lehman Brothers

Go with Goldman, open up a lot of doors for you that Lehman can't compare to.

LB/GS has already given out summer offers to those they interviewed last week. Phone calls recieved within a couple of hors after interview, followed by HR info by e-mail within 24 hrs.

So if you already have had interviews and haven't heard.........good luck.

Pepper: I'm taking a slightly non-traditional process with both firms as I am from a non-target. I have my final rounds scheduled in a couple of weeks, so I don't think I'm out of the process yet.

I am curious though, which schools had final rounds for summers last week? I thought most targets didn't start interviewing for internships until late January, early February (or at least, that is what I was told by friends at those schools)..

Seanc, thanks for the input. Anyone have a differing opinion?

I think it depends if you are doing this internship for a full time offer.

If I was doing it to get a full time offer, I'd go with Lehman, from reading about it, and from things people said here, it seems that the quality of life is much better at Lehman than at Goldman(they have very high retention rates)

If was doing it, to have a bank on my resume for better full time search, Goldman will have a slight advantage there due to brand name. But Lehman is not a dog either.

Both are excellent choices, both will kick the doors down so that you'll be able to get interviews. But I think the experience at Lehman will be better.

But thats just my 2 cents, and since my opinion is worthless its all up to you

Disclaimer: The post above has been made by someone who is not currently employed in IBD, and has not had an interview yet...

Hank:

Will I be able to get into a good group at Lehman for fulltime if I have the opportunity to summer at GS, but don't end up getting an offer?

Taking into account the fact that this is for an internship, my main goal is to have an offer in hand at the end of the summer. My contact at GS has said that even if I do not get an internship there, as long as I have a fulltime offer in hand from a decent bank, I can be put through the accelerated interview process, and the contact can hire directly into their group (if i do well in the interview).

So, with that information, which firm is typically known for giving offers to a higher % of summers? I have heard mixed things about GS (that sometimes they have a high offer rate, and other times, it is around 50%).

Anyone know anything about which of these firms give offers to a higher % of summers?

FYI- last summer LB hired their entire 2007 analyst class from the summer intern program. They have two (8 week) sessions.

Dunno what percent GS hires from summers. Just know it is not very high.

It is for an internship---so go were you fill the best fit.

Didn't mean to sound discouraging--Sure you have a shot at it.

Just to mention "lots of people" go through "non-traditional methods and have been offered summer internships already by Fri night.

Next rounds at GS are today and tomorrow.

yeah I heard that too pepper that they only hire from summer analysts now.

btw if the guy said the "if you don't get in, you can always get in later"..means that chances are you were already axed from GS.

Oh and Hank...you are wrong.

Disclaimer: The post above has been made by someone who is not currently employed in IBD, and has not had an interview yet...

Pepper:

Thanks for the info. Any idea as to which schools these people who have already been given offers for the summer?

Have they always done summer analyst recruiting this early? When I interned last summer, banks didn't even come to my school until after the New Year.

I'd go with GS because after your internship you can probably turn that into an offer from any other bank (if you get the offer at GS). If you don't like the culture at GS, you can always go with MS, LB, etc. for full-time.

You don't want to have a "what-if" in the back of your mind if you turn down GS for LB. Go to GS for the summer and if you don't like it, then turn down their full time offer and go with LB.

Should have written- not as high as LB. GS tells you on the first day of your internship look to the person on your left, now look to the person on your right. Chances are at least one of you will not get an offer for FT--so make that roughly 66%--unless it is a scare tactic. But of those offered FT, almost 100% accept.

OP,

my thoughts follow:

*People/Culture/Environment i have heard very good things about the culture and the people at LB. however, the same is true for GS which is notorious for treating its employers very well - see bonus figures to this year (avg. comp at GS is 633k and avg. comp at Bear and LB is mid 300k) This is not the case of JPM vs UBS where the culture and the people differ significantly. Are you going to have fun or make a career? Probably both but what are your top priorities down the line? * Type/Amount of dealflow GS is superior * Exit to B-School GS is superior * Exit Opps to PE/VC/etc GS is superior, ESPECIALLY, to top HFs and PE shops. Unless you are the top analyst in the top group on the street like Lev Fin. at JMP you can not compete with GS analysts. PE and VC shops often have one or two spots at most to fill. Their partners do not want to live and they have to choose among hordes of young analysts from BBs. Assuming you will do an average job, they would rather take an avg. analyst from #1 bank. * Outlook 2-3 years down the road not sure here. did you see the new league tables? Citi, CS and JPM are closing in fast. GS is still number one but the traditional ML/MS/LB combo is allowing the above to chip into their market share. time will tell but you can not go wrong with GS in terms of future career growth. Having said all of the above, LB is also a great place. If you have an MD that loves you there and they want you in their #1 group, it will be a tough choice.

In any case, you seem to be concerned about your chances of getting the offer at the end. GS and LB must be equally competitive and even if we look at the overall stats and see that GS gives like 5% less offers or something along these lines, this is insignificant if we weight this against your chance of getting the offer at the best bank. If you don't get an offer at GS, chances are, you might not get one at LB as well so you might as well go for the "overall best".

The firm that is famous for giving out a ton of offers and hiring something like 90% of their analyst class is Bear.

This group of purported "experts" in investment banking, and here's the easiest question ever on this board and there's no consensus. The answer to the original question is: Goldman - always, now, forever, Goldman is the #1 bank with the greatest exits, the highest level of prestige, it's just a no-brainer. Lehman is a great bank - so is MS, ML, Lazard, JPM, Citi, etc. But, none of them are the equal of Goldman. Just go to Goldman if you get an offer.

Completely agree, higher_energy. Especially about weighing culture vs. priorities. Let's face it, having a "tight knit" and "collegial" group is nice and all, but it's 8-10 weeks. Maybe the group at GS you land in is full of type-1 assholes, but most likely you're doing huge deals that you can speak to later. And if you get an offer later, and realize you hate GS you can always shop around.

What is the culture difference between JPMorgan and UBS? I also thought that all targets had interviews in early February, and just students studying abroad next semester got to apply and find out early? Thanks

Thanks all, for the advice. Much appreciated.

I think you're insane if you think a GS person will get into business school over an LB person. At that level, it's down to the individual: work performance, grades, gmat scores. You do know that people from outside of banking get into top B-schools, right?

If anyone was questioning getting an interview from a non-terget was too late, I was just contacted today to set up an interview for GS I-Banking summer analyst position.

MB00:

Which stage of the process are you in (what round)?

Do non-targets have completely different schedules?

I would say go with the better fit, except that this is a summer internship. In this case, I would recommend going with Goldman. You can leverage this into a Lehman full-time or you can look at other options at well

go with GS. no more said.

it truly depends on what groups/what area you are going into. As a senior in college having done all this recruiting, I've found very different qualities about all the areas of both GS and Lehman (and I received offers at both). My friends who interned at Goldman pretty much had horrible experiences and declined to go there full time, even after receiving offers in the IB/S&T/ and GSAM. TTHey have signed offers with McKinsey, JPMorgan, and Lehman, respectively. They hated the way they were treated through the process and observed that much of GS, especially in the Summer interns, is a bureaucracy. I'd venture to say that 50-75% of kids had some sort of connection to GS that gave them the jobs. For example, my friend's S&T class had one kid who's dad is the president of Barclays, another who's dad is a partner in BlackRock, etc. She said that the first week was ridiculous because the HR people knew some of the kids so well.

Of course, some kids can't get over the name and prestige of the bank, which is definitely something to look at, especially if you don't plan on being in banking forever. I guess if that gets you through the 100 hour week, then you'll be okay. I am making a generalization, I realize, about the different groups. If you are super lucky, you might have a very nice and easy summer and still get an offer (one GS intern in GSAM was sent to Milan, Italy his second week and spent the rest of the summer there). But, most of the time, you'll be fighting tooth and nail with all the other interns for limited spots.

Lehman did hire a ridiculous percentage of their summer classes. Apparently that is what most banks are moving towards these days because it's easier for them, having spent 10 weeks with the interns. I think the thing that struck me the most when I was at Lehman, was that I found that the VPs and MDs that I e-mailed with had been with the firm 5-10 years, without leaving once to go to B-School or whatever. I figure it must be a pretty nice place to work if people aren't running for the hills after their two year analyst stint. Plus, this is a stupid thing to look at, but Lehman has their offices in mostly the midtown area, which is hell of alot nicer than being in the dungeon that is Wall Street...

If you are planning on B-School post-analyst stint, you may want to consider how the culture of the team you work with will impact your overall application to B-school in the sense of being able to obtain solid reference letters etc.

The majority of folks on the forum will say that you are guaranteed admittance into a top B-school of your choice if you come out of either GS or LB. While experience at either firm certainly makes your application to B-school attractive, there are other factors that will round out your application profile as well, and a reference letter is one of them. Since most B-schools require more than one this is a key aspect of your profile along with essays, gmat score, overall GPA, professional experience etc.

If you deem the culture to be better at Lehman, then it might be a good "fit" for you long term as you apply to B-school. You'll most likely be able to grab a solid reference letter from a VP or MD at LB that you will work with. GS may be regarded the more solid "brand", but what if for example you wind up working with "the devil himself"? You may risk not getting as solid of a reference letter as you would like. Ditto if you work for "the devil himself" at Lehman.

Bottom line, only YOU can gauge the cultures/teams/fit/deal flow once you've been thru the entire process with each firm.

Having gone thru the B-school application process in its entirety a few years ago, I can tell you that I've had friends who were analysts at CS/MS/GS who DID NOT get into a top tier B-school. I also had friends who did public service careers and got into Harvard, Kellogg etc. Go figure.

Anyways, consensus on the forum will inevitably be that an analyst stint at GS/LB/CS/ML/MER all but guarantees exit opps into B-school, PE or what have you. The reality is that it's not as cookie cutter as that for A LOT of people.

streetbuck, the guy who says that he got a phone call from GS is in the stage of the interview called i-have-a-persona-connection-that-was-finally-able-to-pressure-HR-hard-enough-and -now-that-they-are-done-with-filling-the-analyst-class-from-bbs-they will-get-to-me type round

or at least thats what i think. It doesn't really matter does it? more power to him and i hope he gets promoted to MD within a week. i am also from non-target by the way.

aadpepsi, we can dwell on this forever. in fact, if you have some free time, we can publish a little paper. I am done with school in a few weeks. We can make a model, do a regression analysis and figure out which variable have more weight when candidate A is applying to Bschools - connections, GPA, GMAT, experience, references etc. When I saw we, i mean, i will do the model and than you will write the abstract, since you are the senior person in the team, and than we can sell it for a ton of money.

ok seriously though......its just an internship. GS is a no-brainer. Nobody is guaranteed anything - Bernarke had really high chances to make chairman but it was not a 100% lock.

I completely agree that HBW can not just fill their MBA programs with Wall St analysts. Peace Corp is a shoe-in into HBS so if you dying to fry your brain there, consider that instead of GS.

BUT, GS is just better. I mean, the group at LB and his connections/relationships with MDs and people in the firm have to be incredible in order to outweigh the opportunities that GS will give you.

ok...this is getting long and i have work to do but let's break it down: money - money is irrelevant. it will come. don't worry about it and don't chase for money. It is still kinda important and GS will pay you more than LB. I will take an offer from GS for 30k a year of total comp in NYC. exit ops/career/deal flow/personal ass-wiping assistant and the rest will be provided at GS and in a vacuum it is "better" than LB.

To be perfectly honest, i hope that you are joking when you are asking for a comparison in deal flow between GS and LB. You should know this yourself - Google league tables. If you don't, I am not sure if this is for you.

You are young, out of college and have the energy to work 24/7. Work hard, learn, meet new people, build a career and make money for the firm. Work is not meant to be fun straight out of college. Nice people are amazing, but its a bonus. When you are going to be starting your own HF, hire nice people. When you are going to be staring at Excel sheet and practicing your alt+tab skills all day, you will be on your own.

talk all of this with a grain of salt and please keep in mind that i have nothing against LB. It is a top-tier firm with great credentials. I know some people, albeit traders, that left GS for LB, BUT, in this case GS is the right choice.

A few of my buddies summered at GS NY as well and one of them was at a top group, TMT. He said after his summer about 70% of the class came back with the rest going to Blackstone, McKinsey, Bain and BCG along with some going to product groups at MS/JPM.

The culture was the main reason he said most people didn't come back. Honestly, after my summer the 2 analysts that didn't return in our summer class of 10 both went to McKinsey, so I don't see this as being Goldman specific.

To make a long post short- go to GS, get an offer and no one will blame you or call you stupid if you decide on Lehman after. At the end of the day, being in College people think that brand prestige is the most important thing, however, culture is just as important I think. You want to go somewhere you are comfortable. Prestige should be the deciding factor for a 10 week internship where you can leave however.

About the midtown comment. Lehman brothers is right by times square. I would rather work in Financial then in the zoo you call times square.

My office will be in Greenwich village :) Yay

Someone was wondering about GS Summer Analyst recruitment timeline/dates.

For my school: Resume Submission End Date January 22, 2007 11:59 pm

MB00,

just like gametheory said. go for it. of course you have a shot and you have nothing to loose if you apply. additionally, i was under the impression that we are talking about full-time ibd offers.

if you are applying for a summer internship than this is the time to do it. good luck and i hope that you kill it.

just to clarify, i believe higher_energy's posting is a joke. It is filled with false info.

What was the talk at the start of this thread about summers already having offers...my school is as much of a target for GS/lb as any, and apps aren't due and interviews don't happen for quite a while. Are you all talking about the early process for students who will be abroad next semester or what?

also --- everyone is mentioning goldman's positive being that having worked for the summer there will make it easy to get fulltime offers anywhere else if you decide GS isn't the right fit.

What I'm wondering is, if they only give offers to two thirds of the summer class, then how is having worked for goldman any good if you're in the third that doesn't have a fulltime offer to leverage? Having a fulltime to leverage from gs might be marginally better than having one to leverage from lb, but surely having a full time from lehman to leverage is much much better than having to admit in full time interviews at other banks that while you worked for gs for the summer you didn't receive an offer to go back. If the odds of getting the offer from lb approaches 100%, while the odds at goldman are closer to 60%, then the expected value of the two summer offers might be very competitive...and it would all come down to your risk tolerance and confidence in your own ability to impress people in 10 weeks. Then again, if you don’t have high self confidence, you probably won’t have offers from both lb and gs to compare in the first place…

elevatemelater:

I think the poster that was referring to people getting offers was talking about full-time positions. I know of only one person so far who has already gotten a summer offer from GS, and she went through a special program (one of those that identifies the top students in ivies, and allows them to meet high ranking people in business, etc.)

Non-target recruiting and superdays occur from Mid-January to Mid-February, and offers are given out anytime between then. Unsure of the process for targets, but friends at ivies have told me that GS doesn't even start first rounds until the end of January, so I assume offers aren't given out until February.

Someone please correct me if this information is inaccurate.

No, the whole debate is whether he should go to GS or LB, given the fact that he wants to get a full-time offer at the end of the internship. Elevatemelater's post makes sense.

GS interviews for first rounds in late jan/early feb, I remember interviewing w them in Late jan last year for the SA position.

Thanks much for the confirmation Seanc. My school is a top target, to clarify, which is why it didn’t make sense to me that others could have already gone through the interview process unless it was because of unusual circumstances like studying abroad.

My second post, as fp175 pointed out, was about the value of the two summer offers in terms of leading to full time options. I was asking whether an offer to go back from lehman wouldn't be worlds better than a summer internship from goldman that resulted in no fulltime offer (even assuming you weren't interesting in accepting a fulltime offer there anyway and just wanted to leverage it), and whether everyone had overlooked this point (and its relevance in light of lehman’s high rate of extending fulltime offers). You can imagine this heading into some kind of game theory situation: all the analysts that assume they can be top two thirds go to GS (which ensures they can’t all be top two thirds, making the competition even stiffer) whereas the more relaxed types go to lehman, making the truly savy strategy to go to lehman and be aggressive and confident in your abilities, leading to the kind of support that leads to great placement in business school, pe, straight to associate programs, whatever you want to do after your two years.

That said, I think the whole thing is just something interesting to think about, and I personally won’t factor in these criteria in my own decisions (whatever options I am in a position to decide between), which will be purely determined by my personal respect for the firm and feelings about its culture, knowledge of its reputation and presence in market areas I am interested in, etc. Wherever I go I assume I will need to do go work to get a fulltime offer, and wherever I go I assume I will be capable of doing work good enough to get that offer.

The percent of people who get full time offers is actually very similar among the various firms (or so I hear). I attended Lehman's presentation for my school (a target), and they did say they were going to hire almost exclusively from their summer analyst class. However, I have a friend who interned there, and I know that they had 2 eight-week IB summer sessions, so almost double the number of people at other banks. She said that about 70% of the class got offers, which since the class was so huge, was sufficient to almost fill it. I should also mention that people at my school who'd interned elsewhere did get banking offers at Lehman during full-time recruiting, but I believe you were required to have interned at another bank in investment banking in order to get an interview with them.

I do not think there is any difference in the full-time offer rate between GS and LB, just that GS (like every other firm on wall st) had a normal sized summer class and thus had to go back to recruit for their open positions. An HR woman at GS told me that 70% of interns are given offers, and of those, about 70% accept. So, that means that approximately 50% or greater of the full-time class is open at the end of the summer (assuming that full-time analyst class size is equal to or greater than intern class size).

I do not think you would find GS or LB substantially different competitive wise. Both firms hire strong candidates - it usually comes down to fit when deciding to hire, so you're not going to get a bunch of 4.0 geniuses at GS and 3.5 average students at LB.

I agree with the general consensus that there is a significant difference between GS and LB in terms of exit opportunities and prestige. For 10 weeks, it is worth it to rough it at GS rather than go to LB. Your initial perceptions of GS may be wrong anyway - I bet you haven't met the specific group that you'll be placed in yet. However, if you do get a summer offer from GS and really don't want to go there, I would call up/e-mail MS, Lazard, Greenhill, Blackstone M&A, and UBS LA (if you don't mind going to LA) and let them know you have a summer offer at GS and are extremely interested in interviewing at their firm. I think the decision to go to LB over GS for an internship is not smart, but the decision to go to a firm like Morgan Stanley or Lazard over Goldman is not a huge deal. Goldman is the king of banking, but firms like MS and Lazard and very very good as well. I just don't think Lehman stacks up against Goldman. You would probably have the best chance at getting an interview at MS since a lot of the smaller firms like Lazard or Greenhill are a bit snobish in terms of taking people from non-targets, but with a summer offer from Goldman you may be able to get in there too.

for the sake of evaluation for someone from non-ivy league math background.

I interned at Lehman and then went to Goldman for full time. I will give you more detail over PM, but ABSOLUTELY go to Goldman. No questions asked.

An internship with a BB was not required for LB interview, Yall stop being such elitists.

Goldman over Lehman for sure

Hopefully this guy ended up choosing Goldman....

This is one of those instances where the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" applies.

GS