I think I def had to network harder and put in more effort but that's about it. Congrats on getting in.

Since you came from a non target, did you have a strong work experience?

@@TLiu-1b no I didn’t. I started with nothing on my resume. I got involved as possible in my schools investment clubs and leveraged that experience. I targeted wealth management for my first internship than I managed to land an IB internship my junior year. Download wallstreetoasis it’s an app that is like Reddit but specifically for wallstreet and high finance jobs

@@yourmomhello7695 yeah I have been using wso lately, it's great. What other internship positions would you say is a good stepping stone to break into IB? Cuz I'm a sophomore seeking internships

@@TLiu-1b equity research or anything finance related really. Your goal at first is to get an offer. Don’t be picky

Seconded. Good vid idea

Great idea. Outside of the US, I only know the Canadian market really well, but I'll see what I can put together.

@@PeakFrameworks Breaking into Investment Banking (Canada) as a foreigner will be a great idea

@@PeakFrameworks Matt this would be super timely right now :)

I’m trying to pull this off, but feel like it’s going to be a very long shot as I have 3 people who actually did this. I won’t be needing a visa sponsor so that’s nice but guess I’ll have spend 200k on an MBA program.

Let’s network!

Any suggestions for a veteran looking to break in, I see a lot of people suggesting getting an MBA vs trying straight from a bachelors. I'd love to chat!

@@snipinmonstadid you go back to college or did you not start college yet? I’m asking because if you haven’t started yet, as a veteran you’d have a good chance getting into a target from community college if you do well enough I think.

@@thetimemaster1475 I started college already. It’s not a community college but I do currently have a 3.8 GPA it’s only the first semester tho and I have two mid terms coming up

@@thetimemaster1475 do you think it would be worth it to try and goto a target after this year ?

Hey man, as another vet I was wondering how things are going as well as what school you ended up going too. Hopefully things are well!

That's really impressive! Could you please tell me what you did to achieve this?

Seconded

Sure, can add it to the list. Ivey and Queen's best for undergrad, Rotman best for MBA.

Nah

Based on my data it's about ~5 per year into the top firms. So I'd say it's on the lower bound of being a semi-target. Still seems overall quite hard to get into finance from Rutgers.

Still non-target

Very easy to lateral to American office from a BB in Canada. It's probably the route I recommend most to Canadians who whiff on recruiting or who come from semi-targets. After that, I've seen the most people from RBC and TD. GS TO places extremely well, on par with the best groups in the US. In terms of deal flow I'd have to do a bit more research. I get the sense that RBC and BMO are the clear winners for Big 5. And the deal flow for the American firms really oscillates year over year.

Can you list a couple of firms you would consider to be in this field? I can do research but not that familiar with it.

Nah man you can do it, just gotta work hard and be prepared for some failures

Hey bro I’m the exact same, what college are you. I’m in maynooth

IB salaries are the same if you're from either a target or non-target!

MBB and maybe OW it's probably viable with hustle. But I think you'd probably get funneled into more cold calling type roles unless you had a technical background. I wouldn't get an MBA to pursue VC. VC is less traditional of a path, I would probably try to pick up technical skills, start side projects, start a VC blog, etc.

Nah I wouldn't recommend a Canadian MBA over top 15-20 US from a pure recruiting standpoint. Maybe only if the cost of a US one is absurdly higher. Canadian MBAs unfortunately are pretty weak. But if you have to pick one, go with Rotman.

@@PeakFrameworks what if your main goal IB at a Canadian bank like Bmo or rbc. Wouldn’t rotmans greater presence and more extensive network on Bay Street be more beneficial than a top 15 US mba?

Thanks man! I unfortunately can't get access to UK data due to GDPR rules and have never worked there so don't expect this any time soon.

This is a bit too personal for me to really opine on. I don't think Binghampton has a good business school. Baruch you'd have to be a top 10 candidate in your school to break into IB. I think the chances are materially better at NYU and Cornell. It's also going to be more competitive, but that's sort of what you want. If I had to finance everything with debt, I might do Cornell but not NYU.

Nah not that hard to switch. I would almost say it's very easy to switch as long as you're at a global-ish firm. There's so much attrition at firms that people are generally happy to help you lateral. Lots of people start in London / HK and move to NY. Lots vice versa as well. London has lots of PE firms and is #2 center in the world, but unclear how Brexit plays into things. HK also has its political problems right now.

@@PeakFrameworks Thanks. That's a good point. Unfortunately for me, I didn't start my career in the international big corps but a local small hedge fund. I guess maybe I will need to extend my networks on my own if I want to find opportunities outside the US. And I agree there are a lot of things going on in the UK, and HK as well. But I believe they are still irreplaceable at least in the medium term simply because of the massive amount of money printed by their banks (still highly credible) and a good amount of business opportunities there.

Yes! I was a non-target student and work for a large-cap regional IB in Europe (think BNP, SocGen, ING, ABN Amro, Commerzbank, Berenberg), lemme explain. Europe is a lot more "regional" regarding non-targets. No matter what the BS Financial Times ranking says, there are only a couple of real core, non-regional target schools for the EMEA office in London at BB s and EB (even less than in the US). What I mean with them is a school that permits you to recruit in London in ANY team (not only your country specific coverage team like Benelux or DACH coverage team). So those are schools that will place you in any bank no matter your language skills. From my experience and datasets from my network these are: - Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial (stem), LSE, LBS, HEC Paris (they used to send mostly French or French speaking grads to BB s but I ve seen other teams flooded with some of their grads like the Benelux team that didnt necessarily spoke french) and St Gällen Now comes the controversial part. The other sets of "target" or what I call "semi-target" Schools will place you in BB and EB too BUT you will need to master the local language. These are: - UK: UCL, Imperial (non-stem), Warwick, King's - France: engineering schools: Polytechnique, Centrale Paris, Mines Paris, ENPC business schools: HEC Paris, ESSEC, ESCP - Italy: Bocconi (sometimes Politecnico di Torino or Milano) - Germany: WHU (would also add Frankfurt School of Finance, TUM and Mannheim for some banks) - Austria: WU - Sweden: SSE and KTH - Norway: NHH - Denmark: CBS - Portugal: Nova - Spain: IE, ESSADE - Netherlands: RSM - Ireland: Trinity - other countries like Belgium, greece, Switzerland (other than St Gällen), Luxembourg or other CEE countries don't have targets for London. All the other local good universities like Luiss Rome, Vlerick, Solvay, KULeuven, Ghent, Köln, LMU, Edhec, em lyon, Supélec, Gröningen, Tilburg, UvA, HEC lausanne, Unibo, Catolica, BI (in norway), St Andrews, Edinburgh, Bristol, Queen's London, UCDublin, etc are amazing higher institutions but won't be considered target by BB or BB in London by any means ( I was part of one of those). They, however will be target from some boutiques or MM in London OR heavy targets from your local top IB players in continental Europe These firms are (non-exhaustive) : Benelux: ING, Rabobank, ABN, Kempen, Etc France: SocGen, BNP, CACIB Germany: Commerzbank, Berenberg, Italy: Medionbanca Austria: Raffeisen Nordics: Nordea, SEB Etc Bear in mind, you can break into a BB and/or EB from non targets but it will be a lot harder than from oxbridge or HEC And will require a perfect story, great internships, good grades or another "edge" Like being a pro-athlete

I get my background music from a platform called Splice and I'll normally make the outro music myself (if there is any).

Focus on getting into a good school over everything else. Make sure you have top grades, SATs, good extra curriculars. I wouldn't worry too much about internships until you've secured a great school - it's way more important than anything else. If you're confident in your schooling, I would think about doing side hustles first before internships. Any internship you get now is going to almost definitely be purely administrative. Try to pick up data science, dabble with e-commerce, write blog posts about your opinion on VC trends, etc. Just do interesting side projects.

Yeah I personally think so. Cornell masters should be enough to get interviews at least.

Round up those numbers to “clean up your resume appearance” and you’ve just got yourself a 3.5 and 3.8. Much more appealing.

If you're still in school, then get your grades up. Network 3x as hard as your peers. Get anywhere into finance out of school and take small steps to IB if needed.

Coding bootcamp for finance seems unnecessary and probably a waste of time to me. Unless you're switching to a quant focused career. From my view, coding bootcamps seem to not work very well for a lot of different career paths. Seems best for things like UX / web development.

Unfortunately due to Europe GDPR rules I can't get access to UK data.

Depends on which non target. If you're at a semi target like Waterloo, Toronto, Schulich, I'd still target middle markets in US. But you have to be a top student there. If you go to a more obscure non-target, then I'd focus on Canadian firms. Main rule is to check where past alumni have gone to get a sense for what is possible.

@@PeakFrameworks I go to uoft, not rotman, it's a relatively newer program, our alumni network is pretty limited tbh. Haven't seen people consistently going to the US.

Make sure you still do networking calls with everyone in your group. Keep an error log and try not to make the same mistake twice. Try to find a mentor or someone who will look out for you.

@@PeakFrameworks thanks

We had an internal presentations group based in NY ("EPG" or Evercore presentations group). I personally didn't use them much because I found that marking something up in enough detail took a lot of work, and I'd have to re-touch it up anyways. I'd only use them for like strict logo work. I've heard stories at other firms where there's a lot more emphasis on them (e.g. CS...)

@@PeakFrameworks yea my firm has them do comps/precedents and benchmarking pages

I'm not sure I understand the question. IB does hire graduates? If you've already graduated, then you can focus on lateral hiring.

I haven't heard of this school so I empirically don't know what the data is like. I would check your past school alumni to see what seems possible.

@@PeakFrameworks Ok I'll check that out to see if it's a reasonable attempt to try. Thank you for responding!

I went to Western / Ivey in Canada!

I'm not sure if I would say harder. There's way, way, way less attention towards the LA market. Lots of non targets manage to slide into LA offices because there's such meagre competition. You have fewer chances in LA because there's fewer firms, but it could potentially be easier.

LA has way less competition then NYC. However, the networks here are exceptionally hard to break into. In NYC everyone at a bar works in finance in LA everyone is a creative. However, in LA we have some great middle market firms that don't have all the same regulatory burdens of BB and compensation can exceed BB. We also have lower competition in corporate banking. I know people below 30 years old making >200k in corp banking in LA and have nice homes (plural), nice vacations and better work life balance (think 60-70 hours a week). Think of this, I know of jobs in LA where compensation is >200k and go unfilled for months.

I’d echo what’s said by Matt and Erick, I would add tho that LA in my own experience if you are from LA or on the West Coast it’s easier to break into the LA networks which are really crucial when trying to enter a BB in LA and if you are from the East Coast it can be harder to get into LA than NY so I think personally competition is more so a matter of your location than anything else...but definitely could be different now given mostly everything is online

The list is probably a bit more US-centric, but should still be useful as a place to start if you're Canadian.

Stanford is a top school in the country, but their banking placement isn't anything to be proud of in my opinion. A lot of their talent seeks out tech / PM jobs and accordingly many investment banks don't emphasize recruiting there. Stanford students are still really bright and the ones that pursue finance place well into the buyside. But there aren't a ton of bankers, which is what this data accounts for.

Students that are geared towards finance and especially in TMT teams are definitely strong targets from all BB and EB. I would even put the hypothesis up that the ratio of #students with BB&EB offers / #students pursuing BB&EB recruiting is higher at Stanford or MIT than at Harvard or at Wharton :) Competition for IB jobs is not as fierce but the school is as great and selective as any other top school

It’s cause the IB culture at Stanford is not strong.

Thanks man - didn't know that about Alpha. I might make a 2022 one, but not going to update it this year

Bulge bracket generally because they work on larger deals. Fee structure means larger deals = larger fees.

@@PeakFrameworks Thanks! what about elite boutiques like Lazard or Evercore

Not sure exactly what you're asking, but I know a few people in their mid-late 30's that left finance to manage their own money (since they'd probably have more than a million saved at that point). Starting your own firm is a different story altogether though.

Penn State places a ton of people into IB, Northeastern definitely doesn't seem like it has the same numbers IMO. Penn State is also huge though so maybe on a numbers basis it's comparable, I can't say for sure

I would say PE firms generally care more about the bank / consulting firm you're coming from vs. school. But middle market and lower middle market firms tend to care less about traditional pedigree.

I can see how that might be possible, but the data didn't support that view. I met a handful of Rutgers people while in NY, but less commonly at the top firms.

Renaissance technologies is an extremely hard firm to break into for and they mostly hire math types. I think most people there have PHDs from the top schools.

That's really cool, thanks man!