Rank these divisions by how competitive they are for summer internships.

Hi everyone! I'm applying to summer internships next year and thought it might be useful for me and others to find out which divisions are the most difficult to get into. What do you think? The divisions (randomised) are...

- Risk Management

- Asset Management

- Compliance

- Private Banking/Wealth Management

- Equity Research

- Corporate Banking

- Sales and Trading

- Investment Banking

Looking forward to your responses!

11 Comments
 

Compliance definitely the easiest and most boring. Please don't apply to compliance jobs. You'll thank me later. 

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Thanks for the insight! What I heard about compliance they're mostly being made fun of by the other divisions, don't need that!

 

Personal views only. Related to my own applications and applications of my close friends. Take it with a grain of salt.

  1. Investment Banking
  2. Sales and Trading
  3. Equity Research
  4. Corporate Banking
  5. Asset Management
  6. Risk Management
  7. Private Banking / Wealth Management
  8. Compliance

2 through 7 may vary depending on who you ask. IB is definitely the hardest and Compliance is definitely the easiest. 

 

Interesting to see equity research being ranked so highly! Thanks for your insights. Other banks are also offering Merchant Banking internships (which is just a variation of PE, isn't it?), how would you rank those?

 

personal take:

1a. IBD (higher bar to internship, relatively lower bar to FT conversion - also most "popular" division, everyone and their mother wants to "break into" IB)

1b. S&T (lower bar to internship, relatively higher bar to FT conversion since less headcount etc)

1c. Research (similar competitiveness to S&T but headcount is few and far between)

2. Asset Management (assume OP is referring to real money shops)

3. Private Banking (at a BB - low bar to internship but VERY difficult to stay afloat)

4. Corp banking

5. risk

6. compliance (you're the black sheep and everyone hates you. echo above that its not a very viable career for peeps that visit this site)

7. "wealth management" (at a MLM shop e.g. NW mutual)

brotip: do something that you enjoy, not something that's the "most desirable" etc

"They say money can't buy happiness? Look at the fuckin' smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby!" - Boiler Room
 

Very interesting, thanks for the tip! How would you rank Merchant Banking in that list? Also, what's your take on starting out in a less competitive division and switching afterwards? 

 

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