What were your stats in college?

Would be nice to have a thread of what people had in UG compared to where they are now to get a better sense of what is an average resume vs. great resume for IB recruiting.

School:

GPA:

Internships/Experience:

Where you ended up:

 

He didn't say what type of chicks, for all we know he could be getting action behind a gas station dumpster. Therefore I believe 62 is possible

 

The Wharton School of Business

3.7

EB. 1 interview -> 1 offer

 
Most Helpful

Stats for your ass:

GPA: 2.9, state school (obvsly non target)

Smashes: 25-50 range

Failed classes / retakes: 2

Total Semesters: 9

Lifting / Basketball each week: 10 hrs

Partying each week: 20-30 hrs

Bank: MM IB

Enjoy your college days

 

YOLO. 

In all seriousness, I'm not saying you should do what I did, but you can find a solid medium between working hard and enjoying college, while still landing a desired career. 

You don't need a perfect GPA, perfect college, or perfect technical skills to land an IB gig. So don't waste the 4 best years of your life (4.5 years in my case) striving for perfection. 

 

Network. 

I can't tell you how many people on these forums that are afraid to talk to people, or afraid to admit it. Nobody wants to admit their fear of cold calling. 

Once you transform nervousness into excitement, you'll never look back.

 

School: Top 5 Engineering

GPA: 2.85

Internships/Experience: Tech, BB IB

Where you ended up: EB IB

 

Weight: 220

Bench: 370

Snatch: 300

C&J: 350

Old and fat now, but I recently benched 401 which I was pretty stoked about.

 

Few friends of mine are in econ consulting and told me that unless you're a Econ PHD, the partner track is literally non-existent. Any truth to that?

The common exit opps they've told me include management consulting, data scientist (analyst), and MBAs. Was wondering if you could share some spirit of what your next plan is, thanks!

 

For the big firms, yes, for the smaller firms, no. I interviewed with a partner at Brattle who had just a BA. 
 

My future plans? I would really like to work at a BB macro research team after some time here. Also might to try to move to a long only, I think doing anything in fixed income AM sounds interesting, or really anything data sciency in AM. I also like the idea of working as a data scientist in a startup—ive heard of people moving from data science to ML stuff at smaller places bc roles were less defined there. Basically there are a lot of possible interesting paths that I plan to network for and see what sticks. If nothing does I’ll apply to grad school but Im less excited about that route. 

 

School: Sweaty euro eng school

GPA: 3.5 

Internships/Experience: exams in the summer, impossible to do summers

Where you ended up: depressed

 

Y'all aren't gonna believe me, but every word of this is true

GPA:

Cumulative GPA that rounded up to 3, but started with a 2 in STEM. "Target school" if such a thing exists in Canada (it does IMO, but this board says it doesn't).

Internships: 

No relevant internships during undergrad. Applied to probably 50 STEM focused ones, got none.  In 3rd year I was a fucking landscape laborer over the summer. I literally laid bricks and shoveled shit. Character building stuff. I meet a lot of people who would benefit from a few months of this type of work. I graduated without a proper job lined up, and spent every. single. day.  for months on the phone/in coffee shops trying to fucking find one.

Found myself an "internship" in something called investment banking, and converted it for nearly 3 years spent at a completely unremarkable bank. Recruited aggressively in my 3rd year and turned down a few laterals before I somehow got a PE offer. Which leads to...

Where I ended up:

Now I'm on my 3rd year at MM PE ($10bn - $15bn). Up for promotion (or so I'm told, who knows) but am considering leaving PE. This industry sucked the life and health out of me. Going on 6 years and 25 lbs later I don't like what I've become. I see what's ahead of me at VP and Director and it ain't pretty. Shit gets worse.

Misc other facts:

Smoked a shitton of weed - still dabble (and invest) in it now. Failed multiple courses. Skipped so much class in 1st year. Graduated a virgin despite being attractive, a good athlete, and playing in a band at house parties (I had confidence issues). Partied an absolute fuckton. Hit rock bottom a few times and came back. Also had some of the best times of my life. My best semester was a 4.0/4.3 in 2nd semester of 4th year. Worst was 1.7 (academic probation is 1.6) in 1st semester of 1st year. Learned a lot about myself. Met my future wife and my best man.

I have dealt with crazy imposter syndrome ever since my first day at that unremarkable bank 6 years ago. When I first got to my current seat, in a sprawling office spread across the entire floor of a beautiful building in a new city where I knew no-one, surrounded by EB/BB alumni... it was surreal.

I have been tossed out of recruiting processes as recently as 6 months ago due to my GPA even though its not at all indicative of the type of person I am today. If I'm ever in the position to make hiring decisions I won't filter by GPA. I've worked with absolute brochure candidates who fucking sucked in banking and in PE. In my limited experience, people like me who you wouldn't have hired out of school can sometimes be quite interesting (or they can be exactly what they appear - complete duds).  

 

How do you like direct lending? Any thoughts on where you go from here?

 

I feel pretty lucky I got to the buyside from a non-traditional background, so I don’t plan on leaving for the foreseeable future. Given higher deal volume, private credit is a great space to get exposure to many different companies, industries and transaction structures. I like that I get to frequently interact with sponsors / management teams and follow along with portfolio companies post-close as an investor, while not having to deal with the tedious, heavy-lift operational initiatives. As for comp, it seems to be all over the place dependent on firm and where they’re able to invest in the cap stack. Some firms pay in line with PE, my firm probably pays below market - but I like the people I work with and am given as much responsibility as I prove I can handle so I’ll call it a trade-off. Hours can definitely still be long, but if you make it to partner it seems more relaxed vs. PE. Overall, I think it’s a decent lifestyle / comp balance for a buyside career. Personally, only thing I can see myself leaving for is a lower key corp dev or strategy type role - would happily take a pay cut for even better hours once I’m married and a mom. Others are the opposite and try to move into traditional buy-out PE funds, which is doable but requires some networking, proving out your equity investor skillset and being realistic about the prestige of funds you apply to.

 

School: LAC Target

GPA: 3.2 (athlete)

Chill-to-Pull: 5/5

Associate at an EB

 

School: LAC athlete

GPA: 3.5 

Chill-to-Pull: 3/4 (simplified)

Analyst at boutique

 

School: HYPSM

GPA: 3.98, but very fuzzie major 

Internships: A) prestigious but identifying, B) start-up 

Mid tier BB coverage

Didn't look at finance till fall junior year

 

I don't get this shit. You're litterally posting anon? Do you think someone is going to stalk through your anon account and find furry porn or something?

 

Response

School:  HYP

GPA:3.1 Political Science

Internships/Experience: Large mutual fund family for one summer (worthless), Camp Counselor for the rest.  Ability to hit a softball 375 feet

Where you ended up: BB (Floor NYSE, NYMEX)

Namaste. D.O.U.G.
 

Petition to get all the non-target/state school/post your job acceptance on linkedin/finance-or-die hardos off of this site

 

Pretty sure most of WSO is nontargets. I mean, it’s mostly helpful for them, whereas target school kids dont really need an online forum to tell them to study/network/prep

 

School: Bottom-Tier PAC-12 *added 10 to body count, went out 4 nights a week, was in a fraternity, but still partied a lot less than my counterparts

GPA: 3.99

Experience: 2 boutique investment banking internships (freshman and sophomore summers)

Where I ended up: Top 3 BB TMT coverage group for summer analyst (junior year) that I converted into full-time

 

School: Number one University in the Middle East

GPA: Econ Major, transferring to Finance, 3.85

Internships/Experience: Part of the Student Investment Fund (1M+), Cabinet in 2 of the largest clubs, Offered an internship at the Central Bank (HELL NO!), currently interviewing for Citi for CorpBanking and PrivateBanking.

Where you ended up: To be seen, I might look to transfer to the States, or go to Law School

 

lateral as in like after you did a year in s&t or as in you did full time recruiting into mm m&a

 

Non target ASF : 3.0 ( freshman year was really bad due to family issues.) Experience : three internships in CRE finance / brokerage Body count: 36 Where I will end up: just accepted offer to a major lender analyst program. Network hard and grind.

 

My senior year slash line was .320 / .435 / .380. That's right - I was an on-base machine, with less power than a triple-A battery. I made up for it with some stolen bases, but let's be honest, I was a table-setter. The consummate leadoff hitter.

wait what kind of stats are y'all talking about

"Son, life is hard. But it's harder if you're stupid." - my dad
 

Well if you think about it full time recruiting mostly consists of people from worse banks trying to move up, people from better banks who didn’t get a return offer, or people outside of IB trying to break in. Out of the 3, sometimes the candidate from a lower bank trying to move up makes the most sense. Also I just generally am well-spoken and explained my candidacy better than others.

 

Non-target liberal arts school

3.4 GPA

Experience: BB PWM SA and off-cycle IB internship at no-name boutique my senior year

Went full-time at no-name boutique, worked there for 1.5 years, then lateraled to an EB.

"Work ethic, work ethic" - Vince Vaughn
 

School: Ivy

GPA: 3.9+

Internships / Experience: Nothing freshman year (could have landed an unpaid startup gig in NYC that would have left me in the red so I stayed at home and read up a bit on finance over the summer), buyside internship sophomore year (apparently landed based on a cover letter, which many other applicants from my school neglected to write)

Where I ended up: EB / UMM

 

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