"No previous finance background is necessary" BS

I completely disagree. I was geared for law school and had a lot of internships related to public policy and government organizations, and decided to take the finance route my senior year and received offers from 3 bulge bracket banks and 2 consulting firms. At all of my interviews, they asked why I was interested in finance but did not seem to care that I had no prior experience.

Also, I did not major in finance (political science), had a decent gpa and great ec's/recs, and did not come from an ivy.

makes no sense --tons of ppl here come from non finance backgrounds (math, engineering, history, english, etc).

honsetly with a 4.0 at a top ivy you should get 1sts with every bank

While there's no doubt that having a previous finance internship makes a HUGE difference, it's also not necessary to get a FT offer or SA position. I've seen people get BB jobs without a finance internship before... admittedly this was at a target, but it's still possible.

I think the difficulty you ran into this year was likely because hiring slowed and a lot of banks did not do much hiring beyond their returning summer analysts.

If this were 2005 or 2006, you probably would have had a much easier time getting hired.

what else did you do during your summers? maybe it was your resume - not experience on it, just the format

ive seen many kids get offers without a finance background.

Recruiting was down a little this year, but with a 4.0 from an ivy, even if you majored in picking you butt, you should have gotten a good chunk of BB offers. I know it is late now, but I would have suggested that you apply to some MM, Boutique and Consulting jobs as well as the BBs. Did you apply at the right time? (early fall) If you were much later that could have been the problem, especially this year.

Oh yeah, I also know a number of non-finance kids who are working in ibanking.

4.0 ivy math major? Forget banking is all I can say. You'd get bored out of your mind. You should look into trading or pursue graduate studies to become a quant.

I agree with what's been said. It was probably more due to the hiring market than anything else. Banks first hired from their SA class, then from kids who were SA at other banks, then they'll look at everyone else, although most likely looking at kids with other finance internships first. The math major isn't going to hurt anyone, but it also isn't going to move your resume to the fron of the stack.

Were you applying for SA or FT? I thought interview session for summer analysts starts only in Feb or late Jan depending on the school.

is FT, i could see this happening. With no credible experience in finance and the way the job market was this year, many students of your nature/caliber did not get jobs. "No finance background necessary" is not complete bs as I had many friends who were 3.5 english majors with no econ/finance experience. The difference is that they had interned at a BB or what not the summer before.