How many of us actually break into IB?
I know that IB has a really low acceptance rate so I was just wondering what you guys think the percentage of people breaking into IB is. I'd say like 10%
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Out of people who *really* try? I’d say like 40-60%. These are people who had a strong resume, networked hard, had a great GPA, practiced interviewing, knew their technicals, etc.
I’ve met plenty of people who said, “yeah I applied to IB at XYZ and I never heard back!” Then I found out that they didn’t network, didn’t have any previous IB internships, had an abysmal GPA, etc.
So including these people? Less than 10%. I believe it’s 2-5% from past statistics I’ve heard (GS has ~5,000-10,000+ applicants to IBD every year, and they accept ~140 across all offices). It’s like applying to Harvard - everyone does it, despite 50%+ of the applicants never doing anything to work towards it.
GS has way more than 140 seats in the US.. try adding another 100.
If I added another 100 (240 total) and chose the low end of applicants (5,000) then you’d hit 4.8% of applicants getting an offer. I said the offer rate was between 2-5%.
You’re just nitpicking now. I was giving broad numbers for a reason (to make it semi-accurate without trying to hit the nail directly on the head and broadly missing the mark). Hiring numbers actually fluctuate in any given year depending on a multitude of factors.
of the active people maybe 50% are in/ will make it in. Maybe 10% of the total user base. However I bet less than 10% who make it are actual BB/EB bankers. Not that that is any different but
Jefferies had 8k+ applications for about 63 IB spots in NY for SA 2021. That’s an acceptance rate of about 0.79%.
That's fucking nuts. How do you know it was around 8k?
HR
It sounds crazy, but BBs have that sort of acceptance rate even in BO/MO.
Yes but out of those 8k+ applicants how many applied to every bank across the street? I would guess that it is probably a majority of them. AKA We probably have to look at the total spots and then the apps at the JPM/GS/MS take some average of this number to get true acceptance rate.
You can look at Ivy acceptance rates. They have gone from ~15% to sub 6% from the class of 2007 to the class of 2025. Driven by the fact that it is easier to apply to every Ivy in a matter of hours if everything is prepared.
Is it really that competitive? This forum may have made my perspective jaded
i got an offer and maybe didnt realize how insanely competitive it is lol this is crazy to put in perspective
You have to realize the amount of selection bias here. Most of the folks who come to WSO are extremely driven and usually end up with something good.
Also, unfortunately, you're going to hear about the success stories, you're going to hear about the the non targrt kids who hustled their ass off just to not break in
True
I really doubt getting into ONE bank is that hard especially if you aren't looking at EBs/BBs in particular. If you put in effort you will almost surely get something even if it is LMM so I would say for those who try to break in will about 85-90% of the time. Particularly for the top banks I'd say around 20%.
Honestly it feels closer to 80-90% for people to get "something" in IB (even if not group/bank they wanted) considering those like you mentioned who don't give up and keep practicing and networking
Maybe for the BB/EB banks its closer to 30-ish% but there are so many spots across all the MM that I think a lot of people end up breaking in. Seeing how unstructured all the processes are compared to regular corporate processes I think it forces extreme self selection anyway
Honestly don’t think it’s that crazy to say 50%+ assuming the individual just wants to break into IB and isn’t only looking at BB/EB but broadens their horizon with good grades and EC etc. Where it becomes extremely jaded however is buyside recruiting straight from Undergrad which can be
You can’t think in Terms if acceptance rate. You should think about acceptance rate by school tier. I.e. 40% of Harvard students who apply and want it find a BB/EB job, 10% of Northeastern students, etc.
Been thinking of the same thing. Like others have said, plenty of people applying to these jobs are not competitive at all. For people who actually try hard I would say at least half make it in. Going by schools it varies greatly, though. From my non-target, anecdotally, my freshman year I knew about 20 kids who were even moderately interested in IB. Now that I'm a junior I only know three other guys who secured a summer analyst spot. Probably only four or five of us even tried to network and study technicals, so it's about 80%. If you count the people who fell off the boat it's maybe 20%.
While I agree that a lot of people who'll try will get in, I don't think we should sell ourselves short. Try, the keyword in the previous sentence is a lot of things combined. Namely:
- Resume (which itself is previous experience, GPA, involvement in clubs/activities)
- Networking (you have to talk to many different people across banks and need to have good conversations with every one of them at a bank to get an interview)
- Interviewing (you get tested on not just your qualitative stuff but also your quant. stuff. You speak to multiple folks across multiple offices. I personally spoke to 12 people during the interview process that got me my offer).
Any one of these parts takes a good amount of effort. To get them all in order and ready to go takes even more effort. Most of the folks I know who didn't get an offer from my non-target school didn't have one of the components listed above from my limited sample size. They either gave up on networking or didn't practice interviewing (if you don't have your resume in order by the time of recruiting, you can't do much about that). Those of us that got the IB offers put in a lot of effort to get here.
I think it's unfair to discount the difficulty of getting in by stating everyone or x% of people who tried got it. No one says 2000 people were accepted at Harvard out of a strength-adjusted number of 10000. Everyone states that 2000 people out of 57000 people got in. Similarly, we should take actual acceptance numbers at face value and not adjust them for the strength of the candidate.
Anecdotally at my nontarget I would say 100% of kids who work towards it. I'm only counting kids who have done 200+ hours of studying, networked a lot, etc. Not all the kids place at EB/BB either.
Kids that don't study a lot/network have a 0% placement rate.
I know so many individuals (UK) from various Universities and there is a clear difference between those that 'know' what they're doing and those that don't. E.g. applying for Springs early on, polished CV/CL, knowing basic technicals and preparing for application tests etc.
From my friends at Uni (target) that 'know' what they're doing, I'd say about 80-90% get at least 1 internship, whether it be in FO IB or Consulting. Obviously this is quite a small sample of just my friends so it might not be entirely reliable, but if you go to a target, are in the 'well-researched/prepared' category and have decent social skills you should have a fairly strong chance.
Anyone know any duds that seemed to prep really well, have high GPA, good clubs, networked well, and didn't get any good offers? On LinkedIn I sometimes see target school kids with good internships seem to not get a "top tier" gig and that makes me worried.
Happens all the time at non-targets. Baruch College in particular is what I'm familiar with. I know a few "strong" non-diversity candidates that didn't end up getting anything in IB even though they were gunning for it and objectively well-prepped with good resumes. The interview process is a crapshoot for this group, typically.
It’s also worth noting that the stats from HR are misleading because everyone applies to a ton of banks. I applied to probably 20 different banks because why not? Didn’t take the time to network with anyone other than a handful of BBs/EBs (got an offer at a BB early in the process and never even tried to network with any of the random places I applied) but there’s no harm in at least dropping a resume and cover letter at every firm. So while every bank got thousands of applications, how many total candidates are there really? Lot of overlap.
I believe that if someone like me can land an offer at a top EB and a top BB coming from a non-target background with a 3.4 GPA then the chances for anyone that preps well and networks like crazy are quite high.
Agreed. 5-6 months on a networking grind and being a component, personable person who can adapt to different social settings seems to go a long way
Holy sh*t, the amount of interns and prospects in this post throwing out BS numbers without any basis of fact is hilarious. You have no value add here children, just sit in the corner and shut up.
... but you chose not to add any value man. Either contribute or shut the fuck up loser
Providing misinformation is worse than providing no information, I don't actually know what the percentage of people breaking into the industry is so I'm not going to pretend like I do as most on here have. I would also argue that I am actually providing value and contributing by pointing out the inaccuracies of the information that has been provided thus far. It's just been a bunch of "well I think...", which is not helpful to anyone other than to give people false information that will spread across WSO. Fyi, I didn't throw MS on you, apparently someone else thinks you need to sit back down.
I would argue that the very low percentages are related to buy side roles / top EB/ top groups at BB / top RX roles
getting an IB role in general is not that hard if you put in the work
It depends on what you count as IB. If it's only top-tier EB/BB then probably 1/4. If you count EB/BB/MM/LMM then probably closer to 3/4.
What's more difficult: getting into a top 10 undergrad school or getting into a BB (both the legit way...)?
T10 hands down.
This is more of a case of stratified random sampling than simple random sampling. As others are saying, there are quite a few different types of groups that apply to these firms that aren't alike each other at all. There are many different types of firms as well. This will give you a more accurate probability.
By types I mean high correlation within groups and low correlations between groups.
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