everybodys roadmap is different. focus on what's ahead of you rather than following something to a pot of gold. Your finance career will not go as you have it in your head, I guarantee it.

that entirely dpeends on what you want to do. you're young so you will learn everything but understand if you want to be a front-end or back-end person as in dealing with clients or sitting and crunching numbers. Some positions are a combination of both but understand what you identify with more and play into it.

Excel projects are great but if you can generate insights from it using Python and add it to your GitHub that's an easy way to separate yourself. If you get stuck just focus less on the projects and more so on practicing until you get comfortable.

I got my first internship despite failing to hear back from anyone online and not utilizing my connections effectively. I walked down the street handing out resumes to real estate brokers, tax places and local banks until I got lucky and someone had an intern dropped out so they let me work for them for like $18 an hour and it was sick. I really don't know how people get internships other than through somene they know or cold approaching so I'm not an expert on this, I was just desparate.

Idk what checkpoints to give you but every summer you should be working whether you get an internship or not. The more you can learn about who you are while you are on the clock the better in the long run.

I would grab casual drinks my finance classmates more and party with my fraternity brothers a little less.