How should I best prepare for a career in investment banking as a high school senior?

Hi everyone,

I'm currently a high school senior highly interested in pursuing investment banking as a possible career. I've scrolled through some of the other threads with HSers asking and I know that the gut reaction is going to be to tell me to rethink going into IB and have fun as a high schooler, which I would typically agree with, but this quarantine has made me incredibly bored and wanting to do something productive. I already spend the vast majority of my day doing basically nothing and would like something resourceful to do relevant to IB.

Anyway, for reference, my goal is a FO position at a BB at a major IB city (not NYC), think Chicago, LA, SF, etc. I am going to a target school for my region/industry. I have no familial connections relevant to IB.

So, here's my question: what do I do now? I know that after college starts I'll be looking for internships, joining finance organizations, maintaining a good GPA, etc, but I have a long time before that happens (maybe even longer than this year if corona delays college). I really wanted to pick up some useful skills pertaining to IB in the meantime. I've considered learning a second language (my spanish is mediocre at best), buying one of those IB interview prep books/guides online, learning Python or some other relevant programming language to finance, etc. I'm generally a pretty academically inclined person and would like a challenge.

Thank you for your time!

 

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