So most people dont do internships until their Junior year?
Is this correct...? Then what do they do in their summers after fresh/soph year?
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Go home
Get a job
Party/dick around
summer classes
etc
Getting laid is always nice. Im sure you can find something to do with your time.
i would recommend getting a PWM internship sophomore year to position yourself for a SA internship junior year. I know a lot of them are unpaid (BAML) or minimum wage (JPM, MS) and not very competitive.
Yea, guys won't be after sophomore internships as much. Take advantage of them to better position you for junior internships which are infinitely more competitive.
Travel.
I did back office--not even cool BO, think Compliance/Audit--at an AM shop. I was almost never questioned about it in my interviews, besides a basic "what did you do?" Although it gave me some nice 'problem solving' type stuff to talk about, as well as cursory exposure to a lot of sides of finance/investing, it was almost worthless in terms of experience and I don't think it added much to my resume.
Obviously shoot for better stuff--I know people who did BB S&T, boutique IBD/consulting internships--but know that 95% of folks won't get anything cool. I took the BO job 'cause it's all I got, it paid decently well, and it gave me the opportunity to live on my own in a city away from home where I had friends working.
I had a legit, well-paid PE internship (no-name fund) after sophomore year and got owned by the people who took easy summer classes to boost their GPAs for SA recruiting. Kinda b/s if you ask me but I guess that's how the industry works
I'm a kid with a low gps and good experience who got shafted for SA by kids win better GPAs, but I'd argue all day that they deserved it more than me. 4 years of hard work, or even three years, far outweighs an internship since it takes up more time, better shows your work ethic, and is more meritocratic since a connected but mediocre kid can't get a high GPA but can get good internships. Of course there's a big difference between class difficulty, majors and whatnot but it's still a better metric than 99% of other measures
Let's not have a pity party here... saying that "GPA > Experience" is terrible advice in my opinion. The bottom line is that if you want to get a summer internship with a bulge bracket bank in your junior year, you need to have both GPA AND experience. If you are getting "owned" by people with higher GPAs, maybe they were simply better fit for the job. You do NOT need to be a rockstar with a 4.0 -- I'm sure if you have a 3.3, good experience and a "can-do" attitude you WILL get the call for first rounds so long as you put in the time like the rest of us. After all, nobody wants some melvin sitting next to them all day.
If you are already at a target school, maybe all you need to do is get a high GPA and do some light networking. For me, I knew I needed a full boat so that's what I did. It is different depending on where you are in life, so reach out to alumni and figure out what exactly you should be doing to put yourself in position... simple as that.
Post-Freshman Summer: $7/hour Lifeguard. Taught private swimming lessons. Reeled in cash. Drove around in a Mustang, went waterskiing on the weekends. Life was great.
Post-Sophomore Summer: $9/hour intern working as a programmer at a CBOT clearing firm. 9-5 job, life was OK.
Post-Junior Summer: $XXXX/week SA at an NYC BB. 60 hour weeks. Life was really tough, even though I could now afford to eat out and drink more upscale domestic beer.
Prestige and cash are overrated; free time, reduced stress, and youth are underrated. I think most 25 year-olds working in banking would give up half their savings to spend the summer as a 19-year-old again. The one difference is that I wish I had learned about hang gliding when I was 19. :\
I know a kid who is 17 and doing PE at a boutique (unpaid). This is 2011 after all, gotta get on the ball quicker.
If you're at a target, then go home and get laid. If you're non-targ, do PWM.
You should try to be working both freshman and sophomore year, only a few make it into banking after "partying" over their first two years. Banks want to see that you are a motivated & hard worker, meaning you will take any opportunity that you can get your hands on, every time. What you are hearing people referring to when they talk about junior-year internships is that the 3rd-year internship is typically "THE" internship (AKA, the one you sign onto a year later). Make sure you get relevant experience throughout your college experience.
yeah... breaking in "partying" over your first 2-3 years rarely happens... but then again, not everyone can go to the best party school in the country and still beat out target school haters for jobs... when this happens you count your blessing...
I wouldn't say that most people don't do internships their freshman/sophomore years. Usually it's: Freshman Summer: BB PWM/Boutique IB Sophomore Summer: Boutique/MM IB Junior Summer: MM/BB IB This is typical for an "average" student who knows that they want IB since day 1, however many people don't know that they want IB and that is likely why they don't have these internships.
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