Investment Banking Guide for College Freshmen & Sophomores

This investment banking guide is specifically written for college freshmen & sophomores. In this investment banking guide, we will focus on two things. First, we will help you understand what investment banking is and what bankers do. Second, we will guide you through the recruiting process and show you exactly what to do to get hired.

I. Investment Banking Guide: Job Overview

Big investment banks (i.e. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan) have an Investment Banking Division (“IBD”) and other divisions. Other divisions include, but not limited to, Asset Management Division (manages clients’ money), Research Division (publishes research reports), IT Division (handles the bank’s IT infrastructure), Finance Division (tracks the bank’s finances; purely internal work and doesn’t service clients), etc. When people say “investment bankers”, they refer to the professionals working in the Investment Banking Division of the investment banks. Employees of other divisions are not investment bankers.

IBD services big corporations and their representatives (i.e. CEOs, CFOs, Board of Directors), not regular consumers or small businesses. It provides two types of services to big corporations: Advisory and Financing.

For Advisory, the main advice investment bankers give relate to Mergers & Acquisitions (“M&A”). M&A is the buying and selling of companies. For example, when Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, Goldman Sachs advised Amazon and Evercore advised Whole Foods. Goldman Sachs’s mission was to help Amazon buy Whole Foods for as low of a price as possible and Evercore’s mission was to get Amazon to pay as high of a price as possible. Companies need to retain M&A advisors because it’s very financially complex and because it involves hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

For Financing, IBD helps big corporations raise money. When regular people need to borrow $10,000, they can go to a local bank. But what happens when corporations need $500 million or $10 billion? They contact the IBD of the investment banks. Investment bankers help companies raise money through Debt Capital Markets (“DCM”) and Equity Capital Markets (“ECM”). Through DCM, investment banks help companies borrow debt (“debt financing”). Through ECM, investment banks help companies find investors willing to invest money in exchange for ownership (“equity financing”).

Job Titles

When you intern at an investment bank as a college student, you are a Summer Analyst. After you graduate college, you start as an Investment Banking Analyst (entry level position). After 2-3 years, you get promoted to become Investment Banking Associate. MBA graduates will start as Investment Banking Associate as their entry level position. After ~3-4 years, you become Vice President (VP). After Vice President, you become Managing Director (MD). You get promoted from VP to MD as the banks see fit. So unlike previous promotions (Analyst to Associate, Associate to VP) that have a preset timeline, there’s no preset timeline for VP to MD. Some can get promoted after 1-2 years while others can take 7-8 years.

However, most Investment Banking Analysts leave the bank instead of becoming Investment Banking Associate. That’s because the exit opportunities (see below) after the analyst program are often superior to the Investment Banking Associate position.

What Do Investment Bankers Do?

OK, so now you know what investment banking is, who the customers are, and the services they provide. But what do the investment bankers do on their jobs to provide these services? What bankers do on a day-to-day basis largely depends on the title. Since this guide is specifically for college students, we’ll focus on the Analyst level.

Investment Banking Analysts spend nearly all of their time at their desk in front of a Windows computer. IBD across Wall Street uses Windows PC, not Mac. On the computer, nearly all of their time is spent on using Chrome, Outlook (emails), Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

Both Advisory and Financing services are built on working with clients on transactions (M&A, debt financing, equity financing). This requires a lot of meetings with clients. Most meetings require “discussion materials” (presentations) so participants have something to reference for the discussion. Without materials, the discussion won’t be as productive.

Here’s what these discussion materials (presentations) look like:

• Goldman Sachs presentation to PowerSchool.
• JPMorgan presentation to SearchLight Capital.
• Moelis presentation to Avangrid.

What you see in these presentations is pretty much what you do daily as an Analyst. The Analyst is responsible for creating the entire presentations. MD, VP and Associate are not going to make these presentations. They might draw up the presentation outline and type up a page or two, but the Analyst pretty much makes the whole thing. Most of your time at work is spent on creating these presentations. You spend your time writing, making every table, creating every chart, setting every color, etc.

Making Presentations in PowerPoint

After taking a spin through the three examples of investment banking presentations above, you should notice that every presentation is made up of three things: texts, tables and charts.

You type the texts directly in PowerPoint. You make the tables and charts in Excel and then paste them into PowerPoint. Then, you move these texts, tables and charts around on every page to make each page look professional and pretty like it’s shown in the links. As an Investment Banking Analyst, you will spend a DISPROPORTIONATE amount of time on formatting. For example, adjusting the width of a shape, changing colors, altering the thickness of a line, etc. In a way, the “Analyst” title is a bit misleading. You are more of a “Formatter” than Analyst because you spend way more time formatting to make presentations look pretty than you do on analysis.

Building Financial Models in Excel

A lot of these tables and charts are the outputs from financial models. Financial models simulate how the company will perform financially. Once you finish the model, you can create table outputs or chart outputs, which you then paste into PowerPoint.

To create a financial model, you have to input the data in Excel first. You obtain these data either from clients (private information) or from public data sources such as SEC.gov, CapitalIQ, FactSet, research reports (public information).

Then, you perform analysis (“financial modeling”) in Excel. All calculations in financial modeling are based on additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and exponentiation. For example, Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Profit. Gross Profit – Operating Expenses = Operating Income. Operating Income + D&A = EBITDA. These are representative of the type of calculations you make in financial modeling.

Financial modeling is based on elementary school level math. There’s no middle school or high school level math in investment banking. No geometry, no calculus, no linear algebra. No Sine, Cosine, Tangent. And no Pythagorean Theorem. Just add, subtract, multiply, divide and occasionally raise some numbers to a certain exponent. The most advanced math knowledge you need to know is the Order of Operations: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.

Top Investment Banks in 2025

There are three types of investment banks: bulge brackets, elite boutiques and middle market. Both bulge brackets and elite boutiques work on the largest of the M&A deals (i.e. deal values of mid-hundreds of millions to billions of dollars) while middle market work on the smaller sized M&A deals (i.e. high tens of millions to low hundreds of millions of dollars).

College students generally aim to work at bulge brackets and elite boutiques.

Bulge brackets are Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and UBS.

Elite boutiques include Centerview, Evercore, Guggenheim, Lazard, Moelis, Perella Weinberg, and PJT.

Elite boutiques usually specialize in Advisory only. By contrast, bulge brackets provide both advisory and financing services to clients. In addition, bulge brackets are bigger in scale and offer much more services to clients beyond IBD.

Why Work as an Investment Banking Analyst?

Investment Banking Analyst at a bulge bracket or elite boutique is one of the most desired jobs out of college. There are four main reasons.

First, high compensation. A fresh college grad can earn ~$200,000 in the first year out of college as Investment Banking Analyst.

Second, exit opportunities. Working in investment banking opens you up to a wide range of jobs: investing, corporate, government, and entrepreneurship. A lot of the investment jobs require Investment Banking Analyst experience. These investment jobs set you up for careers that pay millions of dollars per year. Some exit opportunities allow bankers to become billionaires. For example, this guy from GS TMT became a billionaire before turning 40. A lot of these top-notch investment jobs only hire Investment Banking Analysts.

Third, professional network. Analysts form significant bonds and friendships working together. As you progress in your career, so will your fellow Analysts. Some in your program will become billionaires. Some will become future CEOs/CFOs. Others might become government officials. Your professional network will become increasingly valuable as you move forward in your career.

Fourth, learning experience. While the job isn’t rocket science, it does come with amazing learning experience. Working side-by-side senior bankers and clients (often CEOs and CFOs of big corporations), you will learn way more about business and about finance than you will working in almost any other entry-level finance jobs.

Fifth, big impact. Fresh out of college, you will work on multi-billion-dollar transactions that can significantly shape commercial landscape. Tesla IPO? That deal had an Analyst. Microsoft acquisition of Blizzard? That deal had an Analyst. Your work has significant impact on commerce that affect society.

Coming up next in this investment banking guide, we’ll teach you how to break into investment banking.

II. Investment Banking Guide: How to Break into IBD Part 1 (Process & Timeline)

There are two ways to get hired for the Investment Banking Analyst position out of college. The first way is to get hired as an intern in the Summer Analyst (SA) Recruiting Process. Then, complete the internship and receive a return offer. The return offer is a job offer to work at the bank as an Investment Banking Analyst after you graduate. The second way is to get hired directly as an analyst in the Full-Time (FT) Recruiting Process.

The Summer Analyst Recruiting Process is how the vast majority of students break into investment banking. You submit applications towards the end of the first semester of your sophomore year (actual timeline varies by each school). Interviews happen in the second semester of the sophomore year (i.e. January / February of the second year). SA offers are often given out within 24 hours after the interviews. The internship will occur in the summer between junior year and senior year (~1.5 years after your SA offer).

The Full-Time Recruiting Process is more like a last-resort process. You submit applications in August / September of the senior year and interviews happen shortly after. This process is primarily for students who want to work at a different bank than the one they interned at. People who usually get hired from this process are usually Summer Analysts from other banks. It is extremely unlikely to get hired in the FT process without completing a SA program at another bank.

For freshmen and sophomores (hopefully you’re reading this as a first semester sophomore), you should target the SA process.

That means you must build strong credentials and be interview-ready by the beginning of your sophomore year second semester.

III. Investment Banking Guide: How to Break into IBD Part 2 (Credential Building)

This section of the investment banking guide focuses on credential building. We will teach you how you should direct your time and energy to build the ideal credentials for investment banking. Once you have the right credentials, you can write them on your resume.

Academics – University & School

The university you attend is hands down the most important credential.

For high school students reading this investment banking guide, know that your college choice has BIG impact on your candidacy. Peak Frameworks has done a very insightful exercise ranking the schools that places the most students into investment banking. Recruiting is exponentially easier if you go to one of the schools with heavy placement into investment banking (target schools). Likewise, recruiting is exponentially more difficult if you go to a school with weak placement into investment banking (non-target schools). There are two structural forces at play here outside of your control. First, firms go to target schools and actively recruit students from these schools. There will be slots specifically reserved for students from these universities. Second, there is a big alumni network that will help current students.

For college students considering transfers to make recruiting easier, you should do it if the difference between the two schools is huge. For example, transferring from SUNY Binghamton to NYU Stern boost your candidacy significantly. Don’t make the transfer decision for recruiting if the difference is marginal. For example, transferring from NYU Stern to Duke University will not make a big difference in your candidacy. (Compromises it, really).

For universities with strong undergrad business programs, please note that their existence means not all schools within the university are treated the same in recruiting. Oftentimes, the recruiting resources are siloed specifically for the business school. Students of other schools (i.e. Arts & Sciences, Engineering) are excluded even though they attend the same university. Some interview spots and offers spots will be specifically allocated to the business school as opposed to the broader university. Examples of these universities include Cornell (Dyson), UC Berkeley (Haas), University of Michigan (Ross), NYU (Stern), UPenn (Wharton).

Academics – Major & GPA

In terms of majors, the most staggering difference is between business majors and non-business majors within the same university. As we explained above, that’s primarily because a lot of resources are given exclusively to business school students. Students of other majors are excluded. Unfortunately, that affects recruiting structurally and it’s not something you can compensate by studying more.

Non-business majors within the same university are basically on an equal footing for investment banking recruiting. If business major is not an option, then study whatever you want. Follow your passion. Learn whatever you like. It can be economics. Or computer science. It can be gender studies. Or biology. It can be kinesiology. Or music. Whatever you like.

What matters far more than which non-business major you choose is your GPA. GPA matters big time. It’s far more important than which non-business major you choose to study. The higher your GPA, the stronger your credential. A 4.0 psychology major is more competitive than a 3.7 economics major. A 3.9 music major is more competitive than a 3.8 economics major. Ideally, you get a perfect 4.0 GPA.

So, in your freshman year and sophomore first semester, get as high of a GPA as possible. You can get a high GPA by studying hard or by taking easy classes. While your grades matter, the classes you take to get these grades don’t matter. Students don’t disclose which classes they take in investment banking recruiting. Frontload the easiest classes during this period. Avoid or defer hard classes that have a reputation for low grades until after you finish recruiting.

Work Experience

After academics, the most important credential to build is finance-related work experience. You can work part-time during the school year or in the summer between freshman and sophomore year.

Preferably, you gain experience working in investment banking at a small firm prior to the SA Recruiting Process with the bulge brackets and elite boutiques. Experience in the other professional financial services roles is also great. Examples include private equity, hedge fund, venture capital, equity research, credit investing and asset management. However, investment banking experience would certainly be the most ideal.

OK, so how do you find these work experiences? We’ll show you a couple of ways.

How to Find Places to Work

First, the easiest and most obvious way is to apply to keep track of your school’s job postings. However, most schools don’t have much investment banking or other professional finance internship positions for freshmen and sophomores. In other words, most of you will have to rely on the subsequent methods.

Second, create a list of recent Summer Analysts and their LinkedIn profiles. Where did they intern in their freshman and sophomore years? Collect a list of these firms. This list becomes very valuable because you know these firms hire freshmen / sophomore and you know past interns got IBD offers. Then, reach out to the Summer Analyst and ask them for advice. Ask them how they found the freshman / sophomore job. Some are nice enough and willing to share information with you. Some might even be willing to introduce you to their former bosses.

Third, create a list of small middle market financial services companies. There are thousands in the US. Don’t bother with large companies with structured internship programs. They won’t hire you. You want to look for small, mom-and-pop, local firms that probably don’t have a formal internship program. Then, go down the list and reach out to them one by one. Convince them to let you work for them. This research process is very tedious and time-consuming work. It’s one of the few areas where a comprehensive list isn’t publicly available, leaving room for students to differentiate themselves. Though this suggestion is available to everyone, most students reading this article will not do the research. And so, if you’re willing to do the tedious research, you already have an edge over competitors. OK, so how do you create that list?

How to Research List of Firms

You can’t just google “investment banks” or “small investment banks”. The names that show up in the top articles in Google are usually way too well-known and way too structured to hire freshmen interns.

Instead, try searching “[City State] [Company Type]”. Avoid big cities, like New York City or San Francisco. Focus on small cities and towns in middle America. For example, you can search “Mesa Arizona investment banks”.

And you can see that the first name on the list is “CKS Advisors”. That sounds like an investment bank’s name. The second and third on the list sounds like private wealth management (“PWM”) companies. PWM provides personal finance and wealth advisory services to rich people. It’s not an analytically heavy role. Then, you can go to CKS Advisors’ website and you can find more information about what they do and their contact information.

Here’s another example for “Columbus Ohio investment banks”.

Both Footprint Capital and Copper Run are local investment banks. And once you go to their websites, you can validate what they do and find their contact information.

Do this for different towns across America. It does mean that for your freshman summer, you will have to go wherever your internship is. The best time to go on adventures is when you’re young!

Extracurricular Activities

Two extracurricular activities are all you need. Preferably, you have a non-finance extracurricular activity (i.e. sports team, student government) and a finance club.

The best extracurricular activity is being on a sports team. That is by far the most valuable extracurricular activity in terms of credentials for investment banking. It feels counterintuitive. One might think that finance clubs might be the best for investment banking recruiting because they’re the most relevant. That’s a logic based on word association and it’s false. A lot of MDs in investment banking have a sports background. They have great respect for student athletes. Athletes also have stronger stamina and team spirit than non-athletes.

Participating in student government, student newspaper, and major-related activities (i.e. research papers, lab work, coding) are all very good.

The most obvious credential-building extracurricular activity is finance clubs. The point of joining a finance club is to add relevancy. This is especially important for non-business majors. It shows interviewers that you’ve made efforts to pursue your interest in investment banking. Unfortunately, many finance clubs today are turning into exclusive societies with a pretentious “admissions” process. If you get into one of these exclusive finance clubs, great. If not, it’s not a big deal. Any finance club will work. Hold your chin high, promise yourself you will outcompete their members and move on.

Remember, get two extracurricular activities. One non-finance (i.e. sports, student government, newspaper, volunteering) and one finance.

IV. Investment Banking Guide: How to Break into IBD Part 3 (Resume)

If you followed the guidance in Section III of this investment banking guide, you will have great credentials. You should have a great school, great GPA, 1-2 work experiences, and 2 extracurricular activities. Next, let’s write about these credentials on a resume.

Download the 10X EBITDA resume template. Then, fill in the placeholders in brackets with your own credentials. Now you have a professional resume that will impress investment banking recruiters.

We have an investment banking resume guide that goes into greater depth about best practices. Please refer to that article for more information.

V. Investment Banking Guide: How to Break into IBD Part 3 (Interview Prep)

OK, so now you have great credentials and a great resume. In this part of our investment banking guide, we will teach you how to prepare for internships. A lot of candidates rely on googling, using a variety of resources. As a result, they get pulled in different directions and spend way more time on interview prep than they need. In this guide, we’ll teach you exactly how to prepare for interviews.

Investment banking interviews consists of two types of questions: Technicals and Behavioral. Technical questions are questions that test your knowledge of finance. Example: “How does $10 increase in depreciation affect the three financial statements?” Behavioral questions are questions that assess your motivation and personality.  Example: “Why did you choose to pursue this major?”

Technicals

Begin technical prep as early as possible.

Technicals for investment banking generally include accounting, valuation, DCF, LBO, M&A and capital structure. Master these 6 things and you’ll master technicals. OK, so how do you learn technicals?

Step 1, learn the concepts. You need to understand the different terms, calculations and the underlying logic flow behind finance. University classes are generally insufficient and, frankly, not relevant because they’re overly academic and not based on practitioners’ approach. You should enroll in an online finance course focused specifically on investment banking. 10X EBITDA’s Financial Modeling Course is perfect for freshmen and sophomores preparing for IBD SA recruiting process. If you choose not to use our course for whatever reason, we recommend Breaking into Wall Street (BIWS) and Wall Street Prep (WSP). Of course, we think our course is better :)

Step 2, review technical interview questions. Download 10X EBITDA’s Core Technicals Guide, which consists of over 350 technical questions with answers. Print it out and practice answering different questions.

Step 3, do mock interviews.

That’s it. Follow these three steps and you’ll master technicals in a very short period of time. You can learn technicals in as quickly as 2-3 weeks if you follow the guidance above. If that’s the case, why do you need to start as early as possible? Because while you can certainly learn things in 2-3 weeks, you need much longer time for things to become natural to you. Over time, as you think about finance while walking to class or dining with friends, you might reach breakthrough / lightbulb moments that naturally occur and can’t be forced. This natural familiarity and breakthrough grasp of technical with strengthen your technical skills and it’ll come across in interviews.

Behavioral

You’re welcome to start on behaviorals anytime. Our recommendation is that you should start on it no later than mid-way through sophomore first semester.

Behavioral questions come in two types. At 10X EBITDA, we nickname them “the Usuals” and “the Obscures”.

The Usuals are a set of behavioral questions that you’ll get repeatedly in investment banking interviews across different firms. There’re only a handful:

• Tell me about yourself / Walk me through your resume. (AKA “THE story”)
• Why investment banking?
• Why our firm?
• Why did you choose this college / why this major?
• What are your weaknesses?
• What are your strengths?
• Greatest accomplishment?
• Greatest mistake / failure?
• Why this [industry] / [location]?

Back in college, I asked an upperclassman once about other behavioral questions in investment banking interviews. He said “the rest I never really got.” He’s spot on. The Usuals are only 9 questions and they appear again and again, interview after interview. You should allocate 80%+ of your behavioral prep to these questions.

By contrast, the Obscures are countless behavioral questions that may get asked but each of which is rarely get asked. They usually begin with “Tell me about a time…”. The problem with the Obscures is that there are countless of them and each is rarely asked. You should allocate <20% of your behavioral prep to the Obscures. It’s not economical to write out every obscure behavioral question and answer. Instead, write down 5-8 stories from your past that you can draw on when needed to answer these questions.

• Tell me about a time when a friend asked you to cheat.
• Tell me about a time when a friend asked you for a favor but it’ll cost you to miss class.
• The list goes on and on. Your creativity is the limit.

Mock Interviews

One last point of advice. Make sure you do mock interviews before the real interview! Everyone will make mistakes, guaranteed. Better to make them in mocks than in the real interview.

About 10X EBITDA

We are a small team composed of former investment banking professionals from Goldman Sachs and investment professionals from the world’s top private equity firms and hedge funds, such as KKR, TPG, Carlyle, Warburg, D.E. Shaw, Citadel, etc. Our mission is to cultivate the next generation of top talent for Wall Street and to help candidates bring their careers to new heights. We’re based in the United States, but we have expertise across Europe and Asia as well.