<p>I'm currently a freshman hoping to work in a bulge-bracket someday. I was planning on staying at my university this summer to begin my finance courses early and also to take another accounting course. This would give me a huge leg-up and allow me to take junior/senior level finance courses as a sophomore.</p>
<p>However, I just found out that I may have a shot for an internship with Merrill Lynch over the summer. The internship is unpaid and I have a phone interview scheduled for this week.</p>
<p>That being said, I am torn between what I should do. Merrill would probably look great on my resume, and because the internship is unpaid, I don't think I'll simply be doing busy-work.</p>
<p>I think you should take advantage of the internship opportunity. That is a huge advantage if you can get in the door as a freshman and build that relationship as you progress through school. If all goes well you could easily have a job at the time of graduation.</p>
<p>What would you be doing at Merrill? Chances are if it’s unpaid it will probably be a lot of crap work (they usually pay all the interns doing the fun modeling). However, just having an internship as a freshman would give you an advantage.</p>
<p>From what I understand, internships at the big firms are usually held for the juniors and seniors, so being able to intern at ML as a freshman is extremely rare.</p>
<p>Internship hands down should be your priority. Even the juniors and seniors are allowed to apply, but very few actually land the spot. Having that internship on your resume will make you a lot more desirable to recruiters when you do graduate. </p>
<p>From what I’ve read and have been told, choosing to get a head start in some classes or doing an internship at a firm is like having to choose Stanford or UCLA. Internship is the obvious choice.</p>
<p>And if it really is only “crap” work then at least think about how much having ML under your belt will help you land the “better” internships as a junior or senior.</p>
<p>Yes, I think you will be doing “crap” work (but since you want to be an investment banker one day, you atleast get to watch in the battlefield instead of talking about it, so its the good kind of “crap” work). Most importantly, you will be getting an AMAZING opportunity that most people get in the summer of their sophomore or junior year (mostly).</p>
<p>I cant guarantee that you’ll get your foot in and all that hubub, but it does make you look sharp. As long as you can show that you learned something useful (even if its one thing), having Merril Lynch Summer Analyst for the summer of freshman year, that is pretty darn impressive. Its more than likely to help you in getting next year’s or junior year’s summer internship (which are mostly paid). Accounting courses can wait!</p>
<p>Is it a SA position or a regular intern position? Also, is it at a local PWM branch, or would it be in one of the major centers (NYC, Chicago, etc.). This is just for my curiosity and you can completely ignore these questions if you don’t feel like responding.</p>
<p>The internship would be in the Cleveland office (that’s where I’m from). I’m guessing it is going to deal more with PWM… I can’t really find anything specific about the Cleveland office online.</p>
<p>That’s why I’m not sure if I should do it or not. It’s probably not core investment banking, but I could definitely leverage a PWM internship with Merrill in any of my interviews with other banks… or this could be the start of a career with BoA/ML haha.</p>
<p>Only do classes if 1) it will drastically improve your GPA or 2) you won’t graduate on time otherwise. If neither are applicable, definitely do the internship. You can easily learn all the finance and accounting you need on your own. Any type of finance internship early on is very helpful and will set you apart.</p>
<p>I actually got accepted for one of these internships this year(in a different city though), after I went to the interview though I knew right away it wasn’t anything I wanted to do. First of all it will only be 15 - 20 hours a week of mainly busy work helping brokers, not exactly the best learning experience. Secondly, they told me that I would not be able to use them as a reference since they do not keep records of unpaid interns, which was my biggest concern.</p>
<p>Of course as a freshman you can’t really expect anything better.</p>
<p>First of all, figure out what kind of bs you’re going to be doing at the internship. If you’re just cold calling and getting coffee (very likely for an unpaid internship at ML, since I know for a fact the more legit PWM interns get some kind of compensation), then you should probably take the classes. </p>
<p>I know people here jizz their pants when they see a BB and internship in the same sentence, but banks honestly don’t give a crap what you do freshman summer. You’re not going to have any kind of leg up if you spent all summer doing secretarial work</p>