Nothing in sophomore summer

It's sophmore summer and given that you go to Western and you were in AEO I assume, you actually are only entering Ivey in the fall. HBA has plenty or resources for you to get you the kind of internship you're looking for (assuming you keep up your marks) between HBA1 and HBA2. Just focus on learning, reading, prepping yourself academically for next summer and HBA.

I had a summer internship doing economics research at my univ. my soph summer. I took 5 years for my undergrad, but the econ research helped me get a VC internship the following summer, and an IB internship the next. IMHO, interviews are all about how you spin your experience and how hard you are willing to work to get a position - not necessarily about how much work experience in finance you have. Of course, having experience can only help, but if you're proactive, interested, and not willing to take no for an answer, I don't think your lack of experience will stop you from landing an internship next summer. More concretely, if I were in your place, I would use my free time to do something that will differentiate you from all the other applicants next year. Start a business, do some trading, take some exams, become GOOD at something your interviewers will care about.

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I'd personally re-start the website and milk the experience for all it's worth if I were in your position.

I agree, spin the experience. Best of luck and see you in September, Ivey class of 2012!

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How about keep applying to finance or any business-related (even marketing) internship? You can still get something more relevant for the summer than bagging groceries brah.

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Doing trading in a meaningful sense would likely involve a pretty heavy time and energy investment if you 1) don't have much capital to invest, 2) aren't trading already. I would say try and stay away from buying a share of Google and a share of GS and leaving it at that. If you have a good amount of capital (at least $5000), you can construct a pretty solid portfolio and generate some tangible results. Just make sure you do your research. The "meaningful trading" basically comes from knowing exactly why (from some quantifiable, or otherwise academically grounded perspective) you have invested in that portfolio. Of course, this should be backed up with good returns come interview time. I saw this great tutorial online recently for people who are just beginning to trade. Will post the link if I can find it again.

Anyway, unless you are already trading/have a stock portfolio, I think you should probably re-start your business. At least you have the groundwork done and you obviously have some personal equity invested in it. Who knows, the entrepreneurial experience could open up more opportunities in consulting, PE, VC, etc. Always better to have more options than less!

Yeah, in that case trading may be out of my reach as an option. However, I definitely will look into restarting the business as suggested (we wanted to restart it anyway this year, so this just gives the decision more impetus) and stressing my "co-founder" role; thanks guys.

However, say worse comes to worst, what would be my chances of at least getting an interview through OCR (saying I just have a 3.8 GPA at a target, no other experience at all)? I'm fairly confident of my ability to perform in the interview, the question is just getting it in the first place.

Oh I understand (and will definitely take you guys' advice very seriously), but I guess it's just that reading all the posts on WSO.com about similar rising juniors have really got me worried (if only I had found this site six months ago...). I mean, should I be?

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