<p>Im in the process of interviewing for an Investment Banking internship (senior year highschool next year) this summer starting in August and finishing the second week of September (school starts 2 weeks later in this part of the world).</p>
<p>Its a respectful IB, but operates solely in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Whilst I am solely doing this because I love finance, I can't help but wonder....how much will this help me in terms of college applications, in addition to the hopefully stellar letter of reccomendation that Im gonna get (to Finance-crazed places like UPenn-Wharton or NYU-Stern)? </p>
<p>note: Im including the IB rec. letter in addition to a written letter that I got from my financial management teacher (its an academic subject, by all standards, we used a textbook on par in terms of size with math and chem! even a final exam! completely excel exercises) with my counselor's secondary school report.</p>
<p>SO, to keep it in simple terms, how helpful is it going to be??</p>
<p>Depends. If they can clearly see that you got the internship because family contacts or any other influences that may have gotten you the internship other than the fact that the people running the internship thought you were perfect for it, then they will not look at it in helpful light, or even in bad light for that matter. If, however, they see that you legitimately earned that position through a great interview and display of character then it will definitely help your application.</p>
<p>Also, the letter of recommendation should highlight any characteristics or qualities that your other teacher recommendations do not highlight otherwise it will just be tedious and annoying to the admission committee, which has to read many such letters. I suspect this will be the case if you are sending a letter from your financial management teacher.</p>
<p>Make sure the internship lasts more than four weeks also as colleges do not like students who only stick around for one to three weeks as it shows a lack of commitment.</p>
<p>Honestly though, most of these colleges know that it is very, very hard to land such an internship while in high school so they will begin to look at it with skepticism unless you can display otherwise.</p>
<p>I would rather display an interest for business/economics in your ECs (I started a business that achieved quite a lot in my particular region, that too a rather competitive one (Hong Kong)). I think Wharton looks a lot more closely at leadership and commitment and a summer job is the best way to do that. </p>
<p>As a personal example, I am doing my summer job at Summerbridge - a respected internship that is rated in the top 10 by Princeton Review. It is nothing spectacular though - I just teach young children English for many weeks (7). That shows commitment and leadership as I have no adult supervision. Furthermore, it gets thousands of applicants of which only 50 or so are selected from all around the world, based on their interviews, which shows that I was selected without the help of connections. Ideally, this is what you should do with your summer for such colleges but that is only my personal opinion. I am doing it because my friend did the same internship and got into the Jerome Fisher program at Wharton (but this was 9 years ago).</p>
<p>Just some advice and ideas on the said topic that I have gathered over the months while eagerly hanging around the Wharton threads.</p>
<p>Not at all, I called them myself… dude, im the first “intern” at their company,ever ! strange for such a highly ranked brokerage and IB in the middle east! Apparently they all want to go to Dubai so they skip my country ;d even though its wealthier than Dubai (grr! Investment Strategists!) !</p>
<p>I had to speak with the director, who then had to speak to the big guy at the country’s head office to get a green light for it! its really strange! </p>
<p>any who, yes, I had to hunt for 2 days (in a very smart, approachable, and INTERESTED way, not the dumb and needy way), even though I could easily ask my gramp’s brother to get me a shiny place next to some big wad…but I didn’t (even though he retired 2 years ago 3rd in command, can’t remember exact position, many many contacts in that huge as hell bank)</p>
<p>Can I tell them to include that in the letter (that I had to personally look for them, and not “hooked up”)?</p>
<p>Funny you brought that business thing up. I wanted to ask,but I thought it would have mixed the whole point of the thread… me and 2-3 friends want to start a Consulting business (since it costs nothing, just time and networking) with our expertise in Social Media and “Adolescent trends”… we are prospecting about 2-5 businesses as our initial client base…for a mere $1 per project (to get started)… </p>
<p>Do you mind giving us some advice? especially considering the fact that you started a successful one in Hong Kong!! We’d truly be indebted towards you!</p>
<p>me and 2-3 friends want to start a Consulting business (since it costs nothing, just time and networking) with our expertise in Social Media and “Adolescent trends”… we are prospecting about 2-5 businesses as our initial client base…for a mere $1 per project (to get started). </p>
<p>We all know what we’re doing, we’ve been on FB for god knows how long, I think soon after it started or something like that. Also, nobody can help you determine trends except the people youre looking the product towards and sell your product! Ofcourse, the people onboard are not “dweebs” or do-nothings, but very-active individuals socially and have A LOT of friends…some even have 2 FB accounts! All are excellent communicators… but the problem is that we dont know HOW TO START it…what services will we be able to actually offer?? Im slightly confused</p>
<p>2 others, as well as myself, are successful foreign exchange traders. We all started out small with $1,000-$5,000 we managed to scrape together (life savings!), and11 months later the accounts range anywhere from $80,000 to $122,550… can we start a trading group?? I read something about Hedge Funds (incase youre wondering, all you need is about $280 to open it!), but nothing about FX funds… is there an age requirement? We don’t want to cater to all individuals, just family and friends, although we want to keep it all formal incase anything does go messy.</p>
<p>Oh, and do you mind sharing your success story? Thanks!</p>
<p>You could do that but I would rather find another motivation for it. I am not sure how much of a profit that is comparatively (it is still a lot). In a recent virtual stock exchange competition, I made a ~45% gain when the market dropped 10% in the period of a month so if I started out with $5000 I would have $300,000 in 11 months so it is a respectable gain.</p>
<p>Personally, I would do stocks with virtual money because it shows that you know your limits. I mean, managing stocks for your family would show that either your family is really rich and thus advantaged (thus everything else in your application is looked down upon) or is careless with their money as you would seem like a rather inexperienced trader (no matter how good of a trader you are at the age of 16, unless you are Warren Buffet’s equivalent I wouldn’t trust you with my money).</p>
<p>Take part in some stock competitions and run an actual business. Do not mention Facebook as a means to your contacts as it shows a lack of personal commitment and drive. You really have to go out there are get your customers… it shows you are willing to put in the effort and you aren’t lazy.</p>
<p>My success story? Well, I wanted to run a business and my friend wanted to be a designer so we found out that Hong Kong had no mainstream glass recyclers. We saw an opportunity for ourselves, so my friend started designing and creating eco-friendly household appliances utilizing glass, and I started gathering business contacts and funds. We started out with USD10 and got a gain of ~4000% within the course of two months. We began to run out of the contacts we required to continue so we “hired” three friends to help us and we enlisted in a national design competition in which the top 7 designs would be selected to go to an infamous international exposition in Shanghai. We were selected and in the process we not only learnt more ideas from the workshops that we attended during the process of the competition but also we advertised internationally and locally.</p>
<p>That’s about it. It is not a million dollar business or a hundred thousand dollar business for that matter.</p>
<p>I guess it shows my dedication to business, my friend’s dedication to design, our leadership, our willingness to commit and persevere, our door to door hard work and a lot of other things.</p>
<p>People may disagree but I will go out on a limb here and say that this shows more about our character than sitting at hope an running a million dollar e-business might have shown to Wharton.</p>
<p>Well I guess I am getting a little full of myself here. I am just really proud of it. Personally I think it is the only REAL achievement of my life.</p>
<p>You have to be proud of yourself! Its nothing small you know, especially doing that stuff during the school year… wow! How did you keep your momentum?</p>
<p>Well, its our money, each of us contributed between $1000-5000 in our independent accounts and traded, and after we saw how successful we were, we thought of starting our own private fund together. Its not that Im trying to look appealing to wharton or anything, I just want to actually apply my passion and drive and show leadership in it instead of doing something just for doing it (umm…stacking stones, for example)!</p>
<p>You could write about it, but I am just saying you could not only show that you are good at stocks but also display that you know the different ideas that are present in running a business.</p>
<p>And you are somewhat disadvantaged by being well off as the admission committee usually expects you to do better than someone from a low income family. They expect you to go to a good school because of your money and thus get a good education and therefore good grades and standardized test scores. Furthermore, they may think that you utilized your money to benefit yourself in terms of prestigious internships and the sort. Lastly, many schools require money to do extra-curricular activities thus they may expect you to be a part of such activities because of your money when compared to a low income student who cannot afford to join such activities.</p>
<p>This is the fundamental idea behind why low-income students get the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure you have seen many chance threads in which the poster has stated himself to be hailing from a low income family or one in which he is a first generation college student, therefore getting a lot of responses from people saying he has good chances because his low income/first generation can be counted as a hook.</p>
<ol>
<li>If a low-income/first generation student has a similar application to you, he will almost certainly be chosen over you, because you are better off and thus should have had more opportunities.</li>
<li>Do not show to the admission committee that you have utilized/manipulation your/your family’s wealth to gain positions/internships/business licenses (they never want to see your parents/grandparents set up a business for you) that you otherwise would not have attained based on your characteristics/personality/credentials/qualifications.</li>
</ol>
<p>And onto the point about the money being your own… where did you get such money? Did your parents give you the money and then you saved it up? Did you earn the money by doing a job? Did you start out with a low amount and do some sort of activity that increased the amount you had?</p>
<p>Regarding activities in school, we have NOTHING in my school. In addition to starting a business/starting a private fund (most likely business from your advice, the fund trading will be group, but not formal), me and a friend (or 2) want to start the first club at my school, the Trading & Economics Club (we’re structuring it over the summer and presenting it to the administration once school starts). In addition to starting the first Honor Society at my school (we first thought about opening a chapter here from a US-based one, but all the major ones need you to be in the US!), we are also in the process of structuring a “Homework Help Center”, and submitting the plan to the administration once school starts.</p>
<p>One bad thing about my school is that the administration is soooo stubborn (in addition to not having APs OR honors!!).</p>
<p>Half of the money that I submitted as Starting Capital ($2000) was gained by selling stuff to kids at my school in grades 7 through 8 (then moved schools), particularly Yu-Gi-Oh cards (OMG! Remember those?). I bought them at bulk from Chinese Markets in Indonesia for $1 a pack and sold it for $40 a pack, excluding the “god cards” (haha sorry, reliving the old days!) which fetched about $85-$110. In all, I made around $2500, can’t remember. </p>
<p>The OTHER half was from money accumulated through holiday money (like bar mitzvah or Hannuka money) over 7 years (yes, my grandparents and my great uncle are greedy! but they want to teach me the value of money… oh well!)</p>
<p>My immediate family isn’t superfly rich, we make it by on $70k-73k a year ( I am very thankful) for 7 people and live in the middle east. My grandfather and his brother are a completely different story (god bless).</p>
<p>It’s certainly an unique EC and probably a potential topic for an essay/supplement but the influence of ECs on admissions is usually grossly exaggerated on these forums. Your IB internship can set you apart from the thousands of 4.0/2300+ applicants but only if you have similar stats to begin with.</p>
<p>You could definitely start those clubs at those your school. The only potential problem I see with that is the fear that the admission committee might misinterpret it as padding your resume as you are starting it at the beginning of senior year. Even if they don’t do that, you will not have the opportunity to show your commitment.</p>
<p>Definitely write about how you got those $2500 in the first place if you write an essay on your stock trading.</p>
<p>Really though, anything of the sort is great for Wharton and the likes considering that most of the applicants to said business schools do not even have business experience. If you go through most of the stats of accepted students and ones who hang around the UPenn forums, you will find that many of them, if not most, do not have proper business experience.</p>
<p>Thus, by doing your IB internship and your stocks trading, you really are doing really well in terms of passion. The most important thing about your application is emphasizing your passion for business and displaying your leadership as those are the two qualities Wharton loves the most. Wharton has accepted many students with relatively low SAT scores, such 1800, because they either had a strong hook or they displayed leadership/passion. It is about fit, and then if you have a high score, great!</p>
! strange for such a highly ranked brokerage and IB in the middle east! Apparently they all want to go to Dubai so they skip my country ;d even though its wealthier than Dubai (grr! Investment Strategists!) !</p>