<p>Alumni network may be part of the problem; UChicago’s alum network in business is no where as strong as Dartmouth’s or Columbia’s or other Ivys’. Now I’m regretting not transferring to another school when I could. As an international student paying full with 3.87 GPA, I’m sure I could have transferred to an equivalent pre-professional school that are not need-blind for international students, maybe Cornell, maybe Duke. There’s no going back now. I will just have to keep my GPA for these last two years and hope for the best.</p>
<p>ohh puhleeze
*** should he tone down his kids accomplishments? There are plenty of morons on this forum, including PA that try to posit their expertise and accomplishments (whether warranted or not). Arrogance or not, vulgarity has no place, just sounds exactly what it is, jealousy and sour grapes.</p>
<p>funny, my friend who is also an international (class of 2009) got several interviews (it was somewhere in the 30s) in ALL the major BBs, and other MM firms and boutiques. He now works in a BB (GS/MS/JPM) and he is on the F-1 visa, under the OPT program. What else did you have on your resume besides a high GPA?</p>
<p>Are you in any ECs? any club activities? sports?</p>
<p>Besides a high GPA, what other qualities are you showing in your resume?</p>
<p>Did you sit in a cave all summer? No work experience or internships at all?</p>
<p>You’re a junior with a 3.8 from UChicago, but you couldn’t even get a first round interview? The problem is not the school, it’s you.</p>
<p>wait, from your previous posts, it appears as if you don’t even know what visa you’re on. Are you on the H4 visa as a junior? If that’s the case, i know what your problem is</p>
<p>Treebounders - No. I worked at an American college entrance consultant firm oversea.</p>
<p>Awped - the problem is not me. It was during sophomore spring. My 3.7, 3.8 international friends at UChicago who applied to wall street didn’t get interview either.</p>
<p>quag_mire - I am on H4. UChicago didn’t require me to switch to F1. What’s my problem and how can I fix it?</p>
<p>Isn’t it very difficult to get an summer analyst spot as a sophomore? Your chances for a BB internship should be exponentially greater as a junior since they’re looking at your potential for FT. No experience, that’s just what I hear…</p>
<p>wow, so you absolutely know nothing about visa rules. you are NOT allowed to work on an H-4 visa, period. You should have switched to an F-1 visa your freshman year. You’d better do that now before junior year, or else they would not want to interview you because there is no chance that they’ll be able to hire you with an H4.</p>
<p>hahah you’re here on an H4? I was born here and even I know you can’t be employed with an H4…Better get that fixed fast</p>
<p>I wonder how the banks knew? I doubt you put it on your resume or cover letter</p>
<p>it’s probably your career center which has you registered under H-4. In my school, when one does resume drops for OCR, HR will be able to see your account in the career center, which lists your visa status. There would be no point interviewing an H4 visa holder because he/she will not be eligible to work, even with stellar credentials…</p>
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<p>Bear in mind that you’re competing for a few select spot with students who have GPAs just as high as yours and a lot more work experience/ECs than one summer job at an overseas company that potential employers have probably never heard of. </p>
<p>Once again, put things into perspective. This world is very competitive and can be very cutthroat. There’s a reason they’re not calling you back and those 3 or four friends. You can’t sit here wallowing in self-pity blaming the companies and refusing to acknowledge that there’s nothing more you can do. You need to market yourself and make them want to call you.</p>
<p>****. Career advising really sucks. No wonder kids here aren’t doing so well.</p>
<p>OP:</p>
<p>as the thread unfolded, I realized that you absolutely had NO idea what your legal status was in terms of employment. You are NOT eligible for work, period. No wonder that nobody even bothered to interview you. The fact that you had no idea about this makes me wonder in what other critical areas you are completely clueless.</p>
<p>As an international student with a desire to work in this country, have you been following ANY news at all about what the work visa situation is really like? Do you know that high tech companies like Google and Microsoft are having a hard time getting their Ph.D. hires approved for work and are shipping them off to Canada while their formidably funded HR department sort things out? Note that the high tech industry usually have a much stronger case to make to the government along the line of “how hard it is to get the top talents and why we ran out of tippy top domestic engineers and have to go to the foreign source to fill the mission critical positions”. Industries without this high tech orientation is usually having a harder time, and ESPECIALLY in this environment FOR WALL STREET positions, much more so.</p>
<p>This kind of stories were reported in various business magazines. Where have you been last few years? What preparation have you made and what strategies have you implemented to overcome your single most critical barrier and challenge? </p>
<p>Do you know visa status of all the other kids you are referring to? The ones who are not getting interviewed may as well all have the visa issues. The ones who are working - it could very well be that they may have a green card (good enough for everything except for the voting right), or that they had some sort of preparation to deal with this issue.</p>
<p>Firms absolutely don’t want to have to fight with the US government for work visa for their prospective foreign employees unless they have to. High tech industry HAVE TO since they simply don’t have enough domestic prospective candidates who can fill all the mission critical jobs. In other sectors, it all depends on the economy. If the job market is a seller’s market, they will work to get the foreign prospects. If the market is a buyer’s market, there is no need for them to go that extra mile. I know a few cases where the candidates were almost offered a position but did not work out due to the visa issues and objections from the legal/HR personnel dealing with the international hire issues.</p>
<p>Knowing that you have been so clueless on THE MOST IMPORTANT THING for your career prospect, I wonder about your qualifications other than higher GPA. </p>
<p>Before you go on and on complaining about the school, you should “own” this problem. No amount of hand holding by school would have addressed this problem for you.</p>
<p>Sorry to be harsh, but I am simply flabbergasted that an international student wishing to work in USA has neglected to deal with the single most importance issue that stands in the way. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to hire anybody who is so absolutely clueless about the most important thing for his career.</p>
<p>this is like hearing a high school senior who goes on and on and on ranting and raving “My SAT is 2350 and GPA is 4.0. Why was I rejected by Harvard? Life is so unfair, this school is terribly unfair - Johnny was accepted with 2300 and 3.8?”, while he says nothing about ECs, rec letters, the essays, etc.</p>
<p>The apparent sense of entitlement is annoying. If you get 3.8 from Chicago, you are automatically entitled your day in court? Says who? Whose rule book is this from? </p>
<p>Top IB banks take only tiny portion of all the kids who want to intern there. Just from top 10 schools, the number is many, many times over what the companies can absorb. Especially in a year like this, they can cherry pick the kids from top schools with top grades AND a lot of other qualifications and clearly demonstrated ability and willingness to make things happen (taking initiatives, being a doer, as opposed to a complainer), etc. </p>
<p>Given that you didn’t a have clue about the most important factor in your case (visa status), I wonder what else you did not even think about that the banks would like to see in a resume. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, all you seem to be doing is blaming someone else - school and its advisors. Perhaps the careers advisors should have been better, but if your life depends on it, will you just blindly follow some bureaucrat’s input, or would you actively search for all the information needed? Just spending a day or two on a board like this or in other internet sites would have given you enough information about your standing, chance, and what you have to do to maximize your odds.</p>
<p>If you do have a chance to interview for the next summer’s opportunity, I suggest you do your best to appear mature in your interview. The apparent lack of maturity shown in your posts through and through is going to turn off all the interviewers.</p>
<p>After realizing this, I have to admit how clueless I must have seemed to the banks. I guess my peers and I at UChicago aren’t doing too well in terms of getting on Wall Street not because of our career advising, etc., but because of us. I now realized that my friends and I focused too much on academics and have become very book smart but not street smart. Perhaps Wall Street is not a good fit for us after all.</p>
<p>you need to also broaden your social network. You keep referring to your friends who are also internationals. Are you one of those international students who mostly socialize among international students, worse yet, mostly within the ethnic group you belong to - especially the Asian variety?</p>
<p>If your goal is to establish yourself here in USA, that’s the first thing you must escape from. For engineers, it’s not so bad. For any career in a non-technical field, this self imposed ethnic exile life style will get no nowhere. I have the feeling that if you had mingled with students and friends who are “local” and savvy about the way the system works here, you would not have been so clueless.</p>
<p>I have seen this mistake made by international students over and over again.</p>
<p>Well, actually most American students wouldn’t know anything about the work visa. It is a very good point about networking.</p>
<p>yes, the american kids would not have any clue about the visa issues for international students, but in general they may have been a little bit savvier about the overall issues of becoming part of the main stream.</p>
<p>I have seen WAY TOO MANY ASIAN INTERNATIONAL students who stay within their ethnic group and remain totally clueless about how it all works out in this country. For non-engineers/science type, this becomes a fatal flaw in launching a career upon graduation, and even for engineers and science type, it becomes a fatal flaw in career advancement later.</p>
<p>If the OP does not fit this mold, my apologies. Something about him/her referring over and over again the fellow internationals (friends) gives me the impression he fits the mold.</p>