Anonymous wrote:Lots of the summer associates are those whose parents have significant assets at the bank.

One of my friends did a summer gig at GS in NYC and one of his colleagues was a young woman from China whose parents are billionaires. She didn't really do any work, just took lots of meetings with various people in the bank. He said she went out to Michelin starred lunches 2-3x per week. The only point of her internship was so she could put GS on her resume, before returning to China to eventually work in the family company.

Lots of that happening with summer associate jobs. It's a perk for big accounts, where the bank is trying to keep the relationship going with the future leaders of the company. It's a really good strategy, imho.

As always. Makes sense for GS (or any big firm).

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Anonymous wrote:Anyone can do one of these jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand financial markets and work on PowerPoints. I once was an intern. It’s kind of like how there are millions of kids who would do perfectly fine at Princeton.

The ones who don’t have what it takes won’t get offers after the summer.

Not true

How is this not true? Have you ever been an investment banking analyst? Half of your time is spent waiting for feedback on decks and working on excel models. It’s not very challenging work. I met many analysts who disliked the lifestyle but don’t recall meeting anyone who thought it was too intellectually challenging. It’s just not.

What majors do you think lead to intellectually challenging work on a routine basis to freshly minted college graduates? I am asking this question as a Ph.D. in engineering and a MBA finance graduate.

Excellent question! In a not-too-distant future, AI will destroy those jobs currently held by those with fancy and fluffy but not intellectually challenging degrees.

AI is better at replacing technical skills than people skills. The guy who can close the deal will be fine. The people they rely on to run the numbers will not.

AI is replacing copywriters’, journalists’ and marketing managers’ jobs fast. Wake up, history major.

None of those are people closing deals

True. But why do you assume that only people with fluffy non-challenging degrees close deals? People with challenging STEM degrees close deals too. Lots of them.

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Anonymous wrote:Anyone can do one of these jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand financial markets and work on PowerPoints. I once was an intern. It’s kind of like how there are millions of kids who would do perfectly fine at Princeton.

The ones who don’t have what it takes won’t get offers after the summer.

Not true

How is this not true? Have you ever been an investment banking analyst? Half of your time is spent waiting for feedback on decks and working on excel models. It’s not very challenging work. I met many analysts who disliked the lifestyle but don’t recall meeting anyone who thought it was too intellectually challenging. It’s just not.

What majors do you think lead to intellectually challenging work on a routine basis to freshly minted college graduates? I am asking this question as a Ph.D. in engineering and a MBA finance graduate.

Excellent question! In a not-too-distant future, AI will destroy those jobs currently held by those with fancy and fluffy but not intellectually challenging degrees.

AI is better at replacing technical skills than people skills. The guy who can close the deal will be fine. The people they rely on to run the numbers will not.

AI is replacing copywriters’, journalists’ and marketing managers’ jobs fast. Wake up, history major.

None of those are people closing deals

Lots of the summer associates are those whose parents have significant assets at the bank.

One of my friends did a summer gig at GS in NYC and one of his colleagues was a young woman from China whose parents are billionaires. She didn't really do any work, just took lots of meetings with various people in the bank. He said she went out to Michelin starred lunches 2-3x per week. The only point of her internship was so she could put GS on her resume, before returning to China to eventually work in the family company.

Lots of that happening with summer associate jobs. It's a perk for big accounts, where the bank is trying to keep the relationship going with the future leaders of the company. It's a really good strategy, imho.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone can do one of these jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand financial markets and work on PowerPoints. I once was an intern. It’s kind of like how there are millions of kids who would do perfectly fine at Princeton.

The ones who don’t have what it takes won’t get offers after the summer.

Not true

How is this not true? Have you ever been an investment banking analyst? Half of your time is spent waiting for feedback on decks and working on excel models. It’s not very challenging work. I met many analysts who disliked the lifestyle but don’t recall meeting anyone who thought it was too intellectually challenging. It’s just not.

What majors do you think lead to intellectually challenging work on a routine basis to freshly minted college graduates? I am asking this question as a Ph.D. in engineering and a MBA finance graduate.

Excellent question! In a not-too-distant future, AI will destroy those jobs currently held by those with fancy and fluffy but not intellectually challenging degrees.

AI is better at replacing technical skills than people skills. The guy who can close the deal will be fine. The people they rely on to run the numbers will not.

AI is replacing copywriters’, journalists’ and marketing managers’ jobs fast. Wake up, history major.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone can do one of these jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand financial markets and work on PowerPoints. I once was an intern. It’s kind of like how there are millions of kids who would do perfectly fine at Princeton.

The ones who don’t have what it takes won’t get offers after the summer.

Not true

How is this not true? Have you ever been an investment banking analyst? Half of your time is spent waiting for feedback on decks and working on excel models. It’s not very challenging work. I met many analysts who disliked the lifestyle but don’t recall meeting anyone who thought it was too intellectually challenging. It’s just not.

What majors do you think lead to intellectually challenging work on a routine basis to freshly minted college graduates? I am asking this question as a Ph.D. in engineering and a MBA finance graduate.

Excellent question! In a not-too-distant future, AI will destroy those jobs currently held by those with fancy and fluffy but not intellectually challenging degrees.

AI is better at replacing technical skills than people skills. The guy who can close the deal will be fine. The people they rely on to run the numbers will not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone can do one of these jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to understand financial markets and work on PowerPoints. I once was an intern. It’s kind of like how there are millions of kids who would do perfectly fine at Princeton.

The ones who don’t have what it takes won’t get offers after the summer.

Not true

How is this not true? Have you ever been an investment banking analyst? Half of your time is spent waiting for feedback on decks and working on excel models. It’s not very challenging work. I met many analysts who disliked the lifestyle but don’t recall meeting anyone who thought it was too intellectually challenging. It’s just not.

What majors do you think lead to intellectually challenging work on a routine basis to freshly minted college graduates? I am asking this question as a Ph.D. in engineering and a MBA finance graduate.

Excellent question! In a not-too-distant future, AI will destroy those jobs currently held by those with fancy and fluffy but not intellectually challenging degrees.

My DS, a rising college junior at university of Florida, is working in IB this summer in NYC. He was offered the internship over many qualified candidates from Ivies because he teaches tennis to a 12 years old and the father of the kid is an EVP at the company. It comes down to who you know.

What is your DD doing this summer? Just make sure he has some summer work experience. It doesn’t need to be an internship.

The Wall Street firms recruit for graduates at certain schools and Bucknell is one (along with T15s, always struck me as odd but it’s true). If he has consistent and interesting work experience (even if not a financial internship) he will be selected to interview. I worked in a bagel shop (distribution office), as an assistant to an interior designer, and in a hospital billing office and got selected for the most interviews in my graduating class and ended up on Wall Street.

Alongside these jobs, have your DS visit the career services office and befriend the main counselor. Ask that person for advice on what he should be doing, mock interviews, resume review, whatever. Too often students ignore the career services staff and they are resources and can tip students off if an internship or job listing is coming. Plus they are a great resource post graduation as well. Build and maintain that relationship.

And yes, network with alumni. Career services should have a list. Your son should email the ones working in places he’d want to work asking for informational interviews. Do that this summer and it can help for next summer. Meetings now can be by zoom which makes things so much more easier. If he doesn’t know what to ask in an info interview, again that’s advice he can ask career services for.

And don’t stress if he doesn’t get a job at a brand name place. Sometimes it’s the smaller, lesser known forms that are higher growth and where a new hire actually can learn more.

If he’s truly interested in finance, he can also do almost anything for a couple of years post college grad, and then apply to business school and get a second chance.

Or, maybe he takes a job in operations or compliance. Not as sexy as I-banking or trading analyst program but for a long term career can be just as lucrative and smart people in these roles are always in demand.

And forget about your resentment of those connected people. Yes, there will be kids with connections that will seemingly navigate easily through life. But you can’t change that and plus you don’t know them and perhaps they have other struggles you don’t know about.

I’m 50 and have worked in finance through my career. I have seen that life is long and there are many paths to success. Missing out on an internship one summer is not a problem. But it’s how your son reacts and refocuses that will make the difference.

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Anonymous wrote:Really frustrates me as DS is very hard working and going into senior year at Bucknell. Many of his classmates with loaded parents with connections on Wall Street have gotten their kids internships for the summer at companies like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, even Goldman Sachs. Kid feels discouraged. He has a 3.8 gpa, good extracurriculars but got shunned away in favor of kids whose dad golfs with the vp of wealth management and has a 3.0 gpa and subpar involvement in college besides frats. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my money on bucknell as these schools only pay off if you have prior family wealth and connections to launch your career in investment banking and finance. Also, how are these kids who barely ut the work in during the school year manage to work these long, long hours in these internships? Are these repo babies given a pass if daddy is there at work today supervising?

This story is just not true. Each of those firms have internship programs and you can’t get one of those jobs through connections of parents. The school maybe but not parents. Those firms got in trouble for doing stuff like you suggest outside the US. When that happened they revamped the programs. No one is getting a job at Goldman because of parent connections. That is the past.

LOL!!!! Oh, sweet summer child.

Anonymous wrote:Really frustrates me as DS is very hard working and going into senior year at Bucknell. Many of his classmates with loaded parents with connections on Wall Street have gotten their kids internships for the summer at companies like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, even Goldman Sachs. Kid feels discouraged. He has a 3.8 gpa, good extracurriculars but got shunned away in favor of kids whose dad golfs with the vp of wealth management and has a 3.0 gpa and subpar involvement in college besides frats. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my money on bucknell as these schools only pay off if you have prior family wealth and connections to launch your career in investment banking and finance. Also, how are these kids who barely ut the work in during the school year manage to work these long, long hours in these internships? Are these repo babies given a pass if daddy is there at work today supervising?

This story is just not true. Each of those firms have internship programs and you can’t get one of those jobs through connections of parents. The school maybe but not parents. Those firms got in trouble for doing stuff like you suggest outside the US. When that happened they revamped the programs. No one is getting a job at Goldman because of parent connections. That is the past.

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All I’m gleaning from this is that introverts need not apply…

Sigh. Family of introverts here.

Introverts make great buy side people though

Lotta Asian introverts that work way better finance jobs than “ib”

Jane street is not “extroverted “

If that’s the route you want, major in math or physics not finance

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Anonymous wrote:My son attends an all-boys high school and I'm realizing that that the number one skills he's learning there is how to be a guy's guy.
My husband is not but my son very much is and in many ways it's a learned skill.

Out of curiosity, could you explain more about what you mean?

NP Lacrosse bros. Bros before....

DP. My nephew went to boarding school, now at college with multiple dining halls. Freshman fall seemed to be scoping out dinner options and planning where to be each evening with a large crew of guys. Sounds like academics are only so-so, but he'll be more than fine, no doubt.

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Anonymous wrote:My son attends an all-boys high school and I'm realizing that that the number one skills he's learning there is how to be a guy's guy.
My husband is not but my son very much is and in many ways it's a learned skill.

Out of curiosity, could you explain more about what you mean?

NP Lacrosse bros. Bros before....

Anonymous wrote:My son attends an all-boys high school and I'm realizing that that the number one skills he's learning there is how to be a guy's guy.
My husband is not but my son very much is and in many ways it's a learned skill.

Out of curiosity, could you explain more about what you mean?