Perhaps. However, those who do not want an IB career usually do not last through the analyst 2 years. It is a lot of hours, sacrifice, and detailed work that one cannot just “dial it in.”
I don’t know, but I heard that some 10%-20% of the analysts get to associate directly. Some others move on to PE, which is an end goal for some people.
For those that want to stay in IB, getting promoted from analyst to associate no longer requires an MBA.
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Kids these days are not buying into this path in quite the same numbers as they used to. I have been given arguments that some parts of tech ~ IB on a comp/unit time basis, and that other parts of finance are >> IB in comp/time worked basis etc … Anyway this generation has different ideas on how much time they want to work.
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I see and hear that a lot. And that is fine. But where you can see some friction is when the expectation is same pay for reduced hours. At that point its an eat your cake and have it too type situation. If you can get it, great. But often times, the economics change in such a way its not possible.
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It’s not uninteresting work, it’s more the lifestyle and hours as others have mentioned. I knew a few classmates from b-school that went into consulting, the work and pay were good, but they had to travel every week (Sun-Thursday) which they said could get old. I don’t think they were bored at their jobs early on.
The perception is that it is mostly making presentations, and looking at comps, which is also seen as boring. This is what I was told by my son. At least that is his perception. It terms of intellectual challenge, for the first several years, it ranks below the 50th percentile on campus. He is unsure why that job is prestigious. If not for the pay, nobody would take that job seriously, according to him. I suppose that is true with most things :-).
Yep. I agree. However, the work still must get done and clients want “exceptional work, always no stop.” IB has definitely become a bit more kinder and gentler than perhaps 25 years ago… but to make the big bucks, and get to MD level or beyond it is still competitive. Every other Friday off will not cut it in the real world. Excluding the last two years of course.
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What do you mean by comps. competitive work, and 50% intellectual challenge, IB and consulting are where the top students in the class go from b-school, smartest, to put in your terms.
When I said comps, I meant part of the work is about “Comparable Company Analysis”. MBAs are a self-selected group that are likely more interested in finance than the average undergrad. At the undergrad level, a wider variety of work is assessed for intellectual challenge, for being interesting, and for being meaningful. In no particular order: a) performing arts, b) non profit work, c) govt service like the state department, d) tech in its various flavors, e) think tanks, f) academia, g) quant finance, h) product type roles, i) law, j) consulting etc are often considered to be better than IB on the metrics I mentioned by many kids. Maybe its just the crowd my son keeps company with. I don’t know.
I don’t disagree with any of that, yet there are still plenty of students who would (and do) jump at the chance to take these analyst jobs out of undergrad.
It will be interesting to watch the return to work policies by the top tier firms and see how things shake out. Goldman Sachs' return to work mandate took effect in February. Only half of employees showed up. | Fortune
For OP, I lean towards recommending IU, especially if they want to end up on the East Coast. It seems OP might like TCU better, but will likely be more difficult to get into IB in general from there, and certainly more difficult to get to the East Coast. But, Dallas IB opportunities are available, and increasing.
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I think the paradigm has been changing because of PE, hedge funds and VC’s poaching IB talent after it has been trained. Prior to the 90’s it was rare for analysts to be directly promoted to associate. It started to change in the 90’s. We were making associate offers to our top analysts in the mid to late 90’s. One of my key guys made MD with just an undergrad degree from G’Town.
My S has no current intention of going to BSchool while working at a bulge bracket firm. He thinks he can achieve his career goals without an MBA at this point. He did not even study finance or business undergrad. My D jokes about her BF’s courses at his BSchool. While she is slaving away at her lab, TA’ing a small section and grading exams, her BF has constant “networking” events. For him the MBA was necessary to move from the science side of biotech to the business/consulting side.
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The kids who go into “tech” and “other parts of finance” are a subset of STEM majors. They generally have little interest in investment banking.
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It really depends upon what your child wants to do. For example, someone who is really into math like my son would be bored as an IB analyst.
But for my daughter, who is an analyst at a major IB, the position works well for her goals. She considers her two years to be a well-paid training program. While none of the work is particularly hard, she is being exposed to many different corporate situations and what she is learning will help her in her next position.
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That’s fair. I also think there are some changes happening in IB under the radar. I know of at least two cases of non finance kids that were offered IB internships – one a bio kid and another from chemistry. Zero finance course work. A third kid in CS was encouraged to apply, but turned down the offer. I wonder if IB is seeking out more domain expertise than was the case in the past. All these kids have substantial expertise, either in research in a particular hot area of their field, or from a prior industry internship in their field. The feeling is that this domain knowledge cannot be taught, but some of the finance can be taught.
My daughter is a non-finance kid as well, by which I mean she didn’t have any finance courses in college. The finance knowledge she needed was taught in student clubs and wasn’t particularly hard to learn.
The reason that the IB companies want strong students is not because of the difficulty of the finance part. It’s because they want students that can adapt to many different corporate situations quickly.
It’s interesting that you mentioned that some IB companies are looking for specific domain knowledge. My daughter hasn’t mentioned that.
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The chem kid I mentioned worked with the CRISPR team at Berkeley. The bio kid took a gap year and worked at Dana Farber in cancer biology. The CS kid worked in cloud infra…
IB, MBB consulting and tech are still the holy grail at my kid’s HYPSM. They are fields with lots of other highly compensated smart young people who can spend a few years there and then enter another field if they prefer.
Not really under the radar. IB requires analysts to model/think quickly and have strong analytical skills. For instance, at my daughters university Goldman Sachs routinely interviewed engineering kids for summer internships. One of her friends was a marketing major but had a minor in math. Brilliant girl and ended up in IB. The interview process is really grueling and the case studies presented are tough; but if you know how to “think” undergrad degree is not so important.
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The trend Neela cites has been going on since about 1999 so I’m not quite ready to describe it as “under the radar”.
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