How to spend my free time in banking?
I’ve been incredibly blessed to have been given an IB summer analyst stint this summer at a solid BB group, as well as an off-cycle IB internship this winter. It’s been since the early fall that I locked these 2 positions up, and I’ve given myself these past 9 months to prepare for my summer analyst experience and take a relative break from the recruiting madness.
I want to get back on the grind, and my experiences so far (loved my IB internship) and conversations with alumni have convinced me that a PE career is what I’d like to pursue. However, since the recruiting cycle for PE won’t start until (the earliest) 1.5 years from now when I’m a couple weeks into an analyst program, I’m not totally sure where to put my efforts to boost my chances at PE in a few years.
Some obvious things I can work on are maintaining a high GPA and getting good experience this summer. But some other ideas I had were:
1) studying for the GMAT and take senior year
2) off-cycle, during-school-year PE internship (how would I go about nabbing this opportunity?)
3) starting some club/student venture that would show my investor mindset (any ideas on what I should be aiming for)?
4) contacting alumni in the industry (should I be requesting their help? How is networking different than IB)?
Thanks if you made it this far - any perspective is appreciated!
Cliche answer but just have fun and continue crushing school / the internships. Don't spend all your time preparing for the next thing but enjoy the moment as well - especially while you're in college.
After I got my internship / FT offer I pretty much just did school and had a blast with fraternity / other friends. Your banking stint prepares you just fine for PE and if you're very serious about recruiting, you can prepare on the job / in your free time then. Seriously - LBO tests are not difficult and the other half will revolve around your extremely limited full-time experience.
Can provide more color over PM if you'd like but I will say that I was planning on remaining in investment banking but was able to land a MF role. Not because I studied but because I found that a lot of the interview questions revolved around what I did on a day-to-day basis (M&A product group running execution and model for all transactions). Point being don't worry about getting too ahead of yourself right now and enjoy.
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