<p>Hypothetically, say I go to Wharton. Graduating with a fairly high gpa, great scores, and a real passion(not to mention excellent quantative skills and some previous experience in the form of internships), how likely would it be for me to land a job at a hedge fund right out of undergrad? I know that IB is the usual path, however some of my friends in the industry told me that if i was sure that I wanted to do hedge funds forever, I could join straightaway.</p>
<p>If I were you, I’d take a look at Wharton’s career surveys (just search around on Penn’s career services website). You’ll get your answers there.</p>
<p>The short of it is that you have a good shot at getting into just about any finance/banking related internship if you have a 3.7+ and some good interview skills, and you can get just about any finance/banking related entry-level job if you’ve got a 3.7+, good interview skills, and an internship under your belt when you’re coming out of Wharton.</p>
<p>IB isn’t necessarily the “standard” track for Wharton kids. Just as many do consulting, and plenty go into private equity, wealth management, and an array of different other fields.</p>
<p>Depends. Most hedge-funds don’t have any formal training programs like IB and they recruit very few people with no experience in modeling and fundamental valuation. Most recruit experienced equity researchers or from asset management. Buy-side finance is notoriously difficult to break into.
My son who graduated from Wharton, works for a hedge-fund but not straight from undergrad.</p>