investment banking Stories from UCLA Students
Meet garrett roach, an ib analyst at bofa!
Tell us about your recruitment process:
Networked starting January of my sophomore year. I spoke with three people at the company. They did an information session with the IB Workshop. After the session, they invited me for a HireVue + technical screening on the phone with an analyst. After those, I did a superday that consisted of six interviews with people from associate to MD. I got the offer a few days later.
when did you start recruiting for ib?
Beginning of sophomore year
why did you choose to pursue ib?
I’m a people person with attention to detail who likes to learn and work with numbers.
tell us about your summer project & current full-time project:
I worked on a lot of stuff but in essence, a lot of work in PowerPoint and Excel. I had a capstone project where we had to pitch an LBO which included a lot of research and modeling.
day in the life?
Wake up: 7:00 am
Breakfast and gym until 8:00 am
Get to work 8:30 am
Work until anywhere from 7:00 pm to 4:30 am
Mostly just monitor my email for assignments that range from updating PowerPoint decks to doing random research to tweaking models. I would read news and work on technical skills if I didn’t have anything else to do.
Meet sharon lin, a summer ib analyst at citi!
tell us about your recruitment process:
I had an untraditional IB recruitment. I was reached out to for first round 4 days beforehand in November. After first round, was notified about super-day the day before. 2 rounds total. First round was behavioral and technical, 2 30 min interviews. Super day consisted of 3 30 min interviews - behavioral, technical and brain teaser esque questions. Was notified that I got my offer the next day. Process took about a week.
why did you choose to pursue ib?
I believe it gives me a skill set that opens a lot of doors for me in the future. I wanted to challenge myself early on in my career and put myself in the position to build a network with like minded people.
tell us about your summer project & current full-time project:
I have not started my internship, but the summer prior I worked in asset management and am currently working at a private equity firm.
meet justin james, an investment banking analyst at morgan stanley!
Tell us about your recruitment process:
For sophomore summer internship, I had six rounds - two being pure technical and the rest being a mix of technical and behavioral. The final one was a mixture of specific technology industry knowledge questions and financial technicals. They were spread over a 1 1/2 - 2 month process. I was also in processes at Wells Fargo and UBS which were mostly technical throughout the rounds.
when did you start recruiting for ib?
I started recruiting for investment banking freshman summer for my sophomore summer internship.
why did you choose to pursue ib?
I wanted to work in a place post-undergrad that would give me a lot of learning opportunities about things that interest me such as the intersection of business and technology and how companies successfully scale themselves. Also, I wanted to work with people who are intelligent that I can learn a lot from.
tell us about your summer project & current full-time project:
Worked on and closed $400MM term loan allocation and refinancing for a semiconductor client, worked on the creation of an illustrative valuation presentation for a company to assess IPO market readiness, helped build illustrative merger model for potential cross-border M&A for client, re-worked bottoms up financial model and created valuation and key performance indicator analysis deck for a company ahead of their next Series raise.
day in the life?
You start your day checking emails and preparing yourself for any upcoming meetings with teams in the morning, generally work here and there while doing team meetings throughout the early afternoon and evening. Once your seniors go home normally in the evening, you basically work on whatever deliverables are necessary to submit that night until they get done.
Meet mert turna, an ib tech coverage analyst at bofa!
Tell us about your recruitment process:
My process looked like this: Knowing I wanted IB pre-college, I researched how to break into the industry from UCLA and found about finance clubs. I got lucky enough to end up in Bruin Hedge Fund, which helped me learn technicals and find internships. I landed one low commitment internship freshman winter (would recommend a more substantial one) and one decent valuation internship at Big 4 back home for the summer. Started early networking with warmest connects and learning advanced technicals late summer, landed another IB internship with not that much time commitment and a position at a student run VC when the school started. Amped up studying for technicals to get into UBS IB Workshop, which helped massively with guidance and networking sessions (In my case, the offer I landed wouldn't be possible without the SF Trek to offices). Knowing I wanted tech IB limited my networking and options to SF. On top of that, being international definitely limited my chances of getting in certain banks like CVP, PWP, Barclays, FT partners and more. On top of that, being international makes finding things to bond over harder and even for banks that sponsor, they still have quotas for internationals so it is even tougher competition.
The office I signed with offered me a pre-screen after I did an office visit, mix of tech trendm behaviorals, and basic technicals. After that, they sent a hirevue of why this office/tmay and behaviorals (tell me about a time). From the hirevue, I got a superday around 2 weeks later, which was very short at 45 minutes with very minimal behaviorals like TMAY and why banking, straight into industry grill, then 25-30 minutes of technicals. Technicals weren't too hard but they definitely required thinking and were harder than a typical bulge bracket.
when did you start recruiting for ib?
Sophomore year Fall Quarter. Sent minimal networkign emails over the summer and first half of fall, started ramping up mid fall and kept going until signing week 7 winter quarter.
why did you choose to pursue ib?
As an international student, laying down a solid career plan before coming to the states was important. I researched careers in finance and found about investment banking midway through high school. Coming to UCLA, I learned about Tech IB, which combined my CS Major background and my interest in finance. The option to go into startups or VC after is also interesting to me.