As someone who never went through the recruiting process I'm curious to know what you guys think the actual acceptance rate for IB is. Like they always say 'x bank has 1% acceptance" but we all know that includes some kid who just randomly filled out an application and has absolutely zero chance of getting in. So let's say all else being equal you have candidates who (with no connections) networked a ton, got good GPAs, were involved, basically did everything they're supposed to do. Now the last thing it comes down to is what school they went to and their interview. What do you think the acceptance rate is for non/semi- targets who do all of the above? Targets? To clarify, I mean that what are your chances of receiving an offer, before you do your interview (obviously that's the deciding factor) if you went to Wharton? IU? Additionally, even if the acceptance rate given your circumstances is like 5%, shouldn't you have an expected value of at least 1 offer if you apply to like every known bank? Or is that not feasible given the time it would consume? I understand there are still so many variables but I wonder if you guys would be able to give a rough estimate of what you think it is.
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Varies widely depending on how you define the IB universe. Something people don't realize is just how many random boutique/mm firms there are. I'm currently working FT and have college first and second years reach out to me, and no joke almost all ~50-60 kids I've talked to during the past couple recruiting cycles have had "(incoming) investment banking summer analyst" at random boutique places all around NY, Boston, DC, LA, etc. Based on that I think the success rate for someone who "networked a ton, got good GPA, was involved, basically did everything they're supposed to do" is pretty high. Whether they accept a random offer versus pursuing another career path entirely is a different question.
If you define it more narrowly (BB/EB), acceptance rate nosedives. I'd say for BBs the acceptance rate is lower because although they hire many more people than the EBs (usually 2-3x more per analyst class), you get way more people networking and "doing everything they're supposed to do" for these firms, versus EBs many people don't bother applying in the first place since there aren't as many alums, don't have the same recognition, etc. (nothing to with the quality of hires, which I think is actually higher for EBs usually). Based on your criteria I'd probably put acceptance rate around 5% with very wide error bars based on what I saw at my semi-target. 150 or so people at each event, of which probably 100 did all the stuff they were supposed to, for roughly 5 spots per firm. Obviously Evercore is going to have a much lower acceptance rate than UBS or something but on average I'm guessing 5-10%.
5-10% is what I thought, which like I said if you're applying to 15 banks you would expect a decent chance of getting at least one offer
anyone can land at a region boutique given enough time.
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If you’re qualified (high gpa, relevant work experience, practiced interviews) I would say it’s 70-80% of people will get in. Significantly lower as an international student
??? you are disillusioned. 70-80% of the entire applicant pool would dwarf the number of spots actually available at respectable banks. And it's a low bar to be "qualified" for an ibd analyst position so i imagine most applicants are actually viable, if they are good at interviewing or if there resume goes straight to the bin is a different story though.
I guess I mean at target schools
I’m at an EB - apparently there were 3,000 candidates for the 8-10 spots in my offer for a summer analyst position. Hard to know how many applications had to be thrown straight in the bin because of visa requirements etc.
Or how many are extremely under qualified. I guess that half of those can be tossed without even looking at them.
What would you describe as extremely underqualified?
I saw a stat somewhere that 7-10% of first-year analysts are international students, so if we assume 10% is the rate to get in for everyone, international students probably have an acceptance rate of 0.7-1.0%.
That's not how statistics work hahahah.
I mean, under your conditions that they have a good GPA, are involved, networked, prepped etc, its going to be pretty high. I went to Wharton every American I know who met those conditions and wanted to go into IB got a banking job. The ones that were serious about it got top groups. I'm sure at other schools like Harvard, Yale, etc, anyone who actually wants to go into banking (which is obviously not majority) can get an analyst position. Now, that is for investment banking in general, but it's difficult to say the likelihood of being accepted into a specific bank because there is a good amount of uncertainty/luck in each individual process.
For nontargets, i'm honestly not too sure, but most people at nontargets aren't very qualified. If you're a top candidate at a semi target you'll definitely get a banking job.
Honestly, there's just so many banks and spots that if you can't break in, it's on you.
“Most people are non-targets aren’t very qualified”
FYI - interned at top 3 BB a few years ago, the average non target kid SMOKED the average Ivy kid.
Lack of opportunity =/= lack of qualification. I have seen first hand (people at my firm) openly say that they take it way easier in interviews on target students. So what you see as not qualified, I see as an asymmetric game. But it’s the game we play.. nothing against target kids, they had to work their asses off (most of them at least lol) to get into the target and they 100% deserve credit there
I can only speak from my experience. Im at an EB RX group and the nontarget kids we interview typically perform far worse than the target school kids. The interviews we give are highly technical for both targets and nontargets (pretty much ask them all the same questions). Although the group still takes in some nontargets, the target school kids typically come in better prepped and ready to grind. Have spoken to my college mates who are at other EBs and they have noticed the same. Likely varies from bank to bank, but I've always seen better talent at Ivies.
Bump
Depends on:
So basically.. it depends... Total applications to offers tells you very little information about what's going on under the hood.
If you're at a target and knock-out everything your chances of interviews are pretty close to 100%. If you're at a complete non-target and do the same, I'd trim that down to maybe ~30-40%.
Offer is largely down to individual performance. A solid candidate on paper could bomb everything whilst a hungry "slightly less accomplished" applicant could destroy every interview they get.
This. Understanding the subjectivity is absolutely crucial.
Largest two variables here are (Target or Non-Target), (ORM, or URM).
Black women at target school's probably have 25x the odds of landing a job compared to a qualified Asian male.
If you go to a target, I would say odd's of landing a banking interview triple compared to non-target too. But that clearly doesn't guarantee a spot.
My guess is 18% chance of acceptance from a BB. Lots of assumptions, but here is my thinking:
1. Based on data from some articles I saw online, let's assume the acceptance rate for a single BB is 2%
2. If we assume an average class size of 100, there are 5,000 candidates in the applicant pool.
3. Since there are 9 BBs (GS/MS/JPM/Barc/Citi/BAML/CS/DB/UBS), there are ~900 analysts in each class, give or take 50.
4. Since the applicant pool was 5,000 and 900 get BB offers, the chance of an offer rate at a BB is 18%.
Note, the biggest assumption here is that everyone is applying to all 9 BBs.
If I were going into banking I would apply to Goldman only and tell the rest to fuck off
and you would get rejected and end up in asset management instead?
900 just for ibd positions can't be right. this must be broader investment banking services - cap markets, trading, er, etc.
Honestly there's probably more than 900. Especially if you add in EBs and MMs
I assumed ECM/DCM as most banks put those in IBD. If you include all of the services, its way more than 900. Might be that much or more in one bank.
Mate GS alone has like 250 kids across IBD in the US. There are a shit ton of IBD analysts across all of the street. Easily 2000-3000+ in the US every year.
Not really sure where you're getting 5000 from. Not entirely sure the reliability of this but estimates at 15,000 + https://www.wayup.com/guide/community/the-bottom-line-land-a-summer-ana…;
But this is one BB alone. While there is overlap, because some of the firms have a limited number of apps you can submit per cycle (BAML, GS, MS off the top of my head), I would argue people are less likely to throw in an IBD app unless that person is at least remotely serious about securing the job. I would approximate the number to apply to be at least 20,000, more likely in the neighborhood of 25,000.
100/2% = 5,000. Ave. IB class/acceptance rate. Assuming 15,000 applicants, there would be 300 offers and the GS class is definitely not more than 150 max. Not that reliable.
Getting into IB is as difficult as you make it either thought having poor prep, narrow scope, or weak background. If you've ever looked at college acceptance rates you know how deceptive they can be and how hard they can be gamed. You'll hear that GS has a <2% acceptance rate but most applicants had a 0% chance and just threw it in bc they wanna work at the Goldman Sachs.
JPM IBD SA 2020 Ldn
~ 20k applications
~ 4k video interviews
~ 750 final round
~ 300 intake
Numbers can be way off, I’m drunk and don’t recall them correctly
The hirevue for JPM isn't selective...
All the places I had offers from were like 200-500 applicants per slot with most being around 350.
So you're saying the acceptance rate was .2-.4%? Damn
Yea I think it's important to note that a large percentage was probably not very qualified. That being said, most high finance jobs are competitive. My current role (commodity trading program) had 400 applicants per spot too. As long as you have been working hard and doing well, your shot of landing something is more likely than a 1/400 would make it seem.
Sounds similar to the EB I signed with which I believe said there were ~8000 applicants for the ~20 SA positions in this office. Applicants is definitely misleading though since it costs nothing to just do a resume drop.
When I interviewed with a particular firm, they said "after reviewing hundreds of applications, they liked my background and wanted to interview me". I was the only one to get an offer at that interview cycle (and it was the last interview cycle for the group, and happened some 5-6 months after the previous one), so I would guess it was, at maximum, 1% if we assume they reviewed exactly 100 applications. My guess is it was closer to 3-400, which puts it in the 0.33-0.25% range.
Not exactly IB but just to give you guys an extra reference point this year I received a 1st round invite for a SA position at PIMCO and in the email they said that my application "has been reviewed by the hiring team, and has been identified as being in the top 5% of applicants. ". Assuming that not all candidates will get to the AC stage and receive an offer, you're probably looking at a 1-2% acceptance rate.
I would say around 40-50% if you include BBs, MM, Boutiques and across multiples cities.
It seems high buy you narrowed the pool of candidates significantly. Someone who networked a lot, good profile, is a serious candidate (not a random applicant), etc. Most applicants don’t actually put in the work to even network so there you eliminate over 50% of pool probably.
Also my percentage is not based on 1 interview. 1 interview I would say 10%. But to put a number on probability of breaking in, at some point, after X amount of interviews and being qualified as you said, 40-50%.
Edit: again this is not breaking it at GS TMT. I mean breaking into IB period. In any city, type of bank, etc. People quote places like JPM having 30k applicants and only 300 got in, but out of those 30k, 10k are random applicants with absolutely no qualification, 17k people who just resume dropped and moved on, and 3k people who have put in the work, networked, have some relevant experience (in college or whatever). That’s how I look at it.
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