Hope and Persistence- So long as one does not give up, he will not fail.
I have challenge myself by taking a grad course ( learning Matlab and Stata while having problem sets in which many of the PHD students were too busy to help an undergraduate student), being proactive, and learning as much as I can. My GPA went from a 1.8 and slowly grew to an overall GPA of 3.2. I went from the path to a dead beat and college dropout to a person who is motivated, confident, and ambitious.
Now comes the question of how I can break into the IB market. My experience includes managing and building a student funded company located in the Irvine Spectrum. I am mentored by a previous auditor who is now a Vice President at AlixPartners. I am involved in finance club in Irvine among other EC. Past jobs: (tutoring, Ikea) I understand some of the market variables including contango, backwardation, spot/forward, technicals, spreads ( iron condor, vertical, etc), and reading financial statements to understand a company's solvency, profitability, or liquidity. I also have some background in the forex market with mini lots and pip spreads.
How do I break in? I made cold calls to no avail. Should I walk into the firm, aggressively wait, and hand my resume to as many investment bankers there as possible? What should I do? CFA track? I talked to many IB's who say this is a waste, who even ridicule it to the point that it is only a certificate and nothing more. I have interviewed and been offered commercial banking jobs as a b2b analyst or a position as a financial adviser for wealth management firms, but I want more. I want to take the 2:2 route. 2 years of work as analyst- business school- then transition myself into PE as an associate . I have read A LOT about Ibank including collegeconfidential, this site, and among other "tippers" surfing through the google search engine.
The only thing I have not done yet is really apply on a mass level scale. I have only emailed to maybe 10 banks. I am still taking summer school classes as I just walked and graduated. I need to focus hard on these courses. Thus, the plan is to build my GPA, take the time to study for the GMAT ( as supposedly after college is the perfect time to take it as it is during your academia apex), and mass cold call ( again), and apply. I am going to break into Investment Banking even if I have to clean fucking toilets. Despite this progress, I still feel I have more to give on the table. I have not shown my full cards yet.
Any advice? Suggestions?
....this is such a long post. I only read the last couple paragraphs. The rest of it scares me... It actually makes me question your stability. I mean that without any offense, but just stating my initial reaction.
My advice is to not kill yourself trying to get into IB. Happiness can be found outside of an i bank.
Why don't you give us some stats and ask us for an honest opinion rather than writing a personal statement? I'm not entirely sure breaking into banking is the same process as getting into undergrad....
thank you for your comment, but is there tangible advice you can give me? you only live once, i am not that stupid as to do something harmful to myself over a job. My goal is to challenge myself until I reach my goals.
I did take the background story off after reading the forum rules in how I was to discover investment banking. Stats are 3.2 GPA, GPA trends upwards each quarter. Non-target UC Irvine. Apologies for the long post. I edited it down after 5 minutes, you responded very fast slacker. :)
This part of his quote sounds really funny. Contradiction much?
Anyways do what the above poster has said. Work up to 1 year (I'd say max 1 year) at a boutique and all the while search the banks websites form open positions. For instance there was an opening with Citi in Toronto for their analyst class and they were accepting recent grads or grads with 1 year of experience.
Yes you would have to repeat a year of hundo hour weeks but you sound toolish enough to jump on it
try get a boutique IB position in LA, newport beach, irvine, or SF then lateral out after 1-2 years
You don't have anything on your resume that would attract any BB or top MMs really, so you might have to work from the bottom.
I know several people who lateral to a MM or a BB with that route so that's something you can try.
I have a friend that graduated with a finance degree in a state school known for partying. He had no idea what he wanted to do and recently found an interest in investment banking because some of his buddies went out to NYC/SF/etc. He asked his friends for help/advice and eventually landed an summer internship at a boutique investment bank. He is doing well and developing meaningful connections that will hopefully pay off. I'd suggest you do the same.
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