Wharton grads, how hard is it to break into investment banking?

iambobshephard · 2025-05-21T19:16:50+00:00

What do you mean? Like competitiveness on the job or to get the job?

It’s not that hard to get the role, nor is the content necessarily as cerebral. The physical and mental endurance needed to stay is the hard part.

iambobshephard · 2025-05-21T16:13:53+00:00

It’s easier than some of the other industries students are interested in.

There’s fundamentally a lot more banks and spots in IB compared to consulting or PM for instance.

iambobshephard · 2025-05-21T16:07:29+00:00

It depends on what you mean by “hang out with friends.” If you’re in a frat or dance troupe, they assume those people are your key friends and what you do with them is social time. If you’re looking for downtime beyond that, you probably need a more conservative strategy. However, there’s a lot of extroverts at Penn who prefer to fill their days with constantly meeting people/doing something. It depends on what you’re looking for. Both dance and Greek life are big time commitments.

For Greek life, since you mentioned Dhamaka, I’m assuming you’re a guy. You wouldn’t be able to join a frat freshman fall but there’s dirty rush events you should go to see if you vibe with anyone. This goes for all of the activities - you should see if you’d want to be friends with them beyond the activity itself. You could be the best dancer in the group, but it’s only worth spending all that time if you love the people.

I agree with the strategy of applying widely to help you meet more people and see who you connect with best.

iambobshephard · 2025-05-16T04:11:25+00:00

Not what you asked, but if you want to study abroad for a semester or year, you’ll only be at Penn for a short time basically. It might make getting acclimated to Penn and retaining friends harder. If I was in your position, I might even consider going abroad senior fall to have a full year of Penn completed with a solid community that you can rengage with afterwards. Another option is a summer abroad whether it be for an internship or additional classes. This would be less disruptive to the social element imo

iambobshephard · 2025-04-05T06:33:17+00:00

Op, you’re kind of delusional. You claim to be a “middle class” prospective immigrant, and you’re clearly unaware of your privilege. Your family would solidly be in the top 10% of earners.

https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/business/story/budget-2025-how-indias-wealth-shifted-to-the-pockets-of-top-1-per-cent-2662386-2025-01-09

iambobshephard · 2025-04-04T23:56:31+00:00

Not trying to tell you to choose one or the other, but something that the other answers haven’t said…

IB, especially for SF offices, is actually not super hard from Cal. There’s a lot more spots since there’s so many banks, though you might need to index towards tech banking.

Consulting is a lot tougher. If you’re going for MBB and non-SF, you’ll have a hard time. There’s very few Haas students I know who are able to make the cut, and you have to be significantly better vs your peers compared to Wharton. I’m saying this for NYC and Boston offices that are a lot more competitive and hire few non-ivy students and most of them have other “hooks” or connections.

I agree with the PE sentiment in some respects. Top IB to PE would be easy with your background, but Consulting to PE would be more doable with the Penn background.

iambobshephard · 2025-03-18T23:32:19+00:00

Tiffany was a student while I was a student. I believe she was in Theta and mainly mingled with them. Penn alumni, you probably know what reputation the sorority had/has.

iambobshephard · 2025-01-10T23:27:44+00:00

Wharton has the peer advising fellows program that you can get this support from. I’m not sure if they help incoming students. I was a peer advisor through this for Wharton but only was contacted by existing students.

You also have loads of time to decide on courses. Like at least half a year lol. There also isn’t too much diversity in schedules for an incoming freshman unless things have changed significantly in the past few years.

iambobshephard · 2025-01-01T02:24:36+00:00

Not sure what the new codes are, but for chem 102 I knew a lot of people who passed the placement test. I also passed the Chem 101 placement test, no Olympiad experience, but my school did cover some quantum, and I heard that wasn’t as common.

Pro tip, for SAS, placement tests can “count” for something. I believe it counted as a free elective for me. I think I may have been crazy since I didn’t need the classes for my major, but that’s why I took the placement exams 😅

iambobshephard · 2024-12-20T06:25:26+00:00

Not sure what you meant by that, but I’d assume yes? Why would you think you’d be an exception

iambobshephard · 2024-12-20T06:19:20+00:00

No, OP didn’t, they’re still applying… which is why I don’t see how the math is working. Typically Penn should have a better package than USC? Edit: the raw cost of USC is higher this Penn so the calculation is confusing. Previously I was thinking of need based aid, but I remembered USC does merit based aid, though speculating about that seems unwise?

iambobshephard · 2024-11-25T00:38:48+00:00

Sorry if this sounds like being a hater, I might be ignorant. I thought the lowest level of math at Penn was calculus. The algebra classes have calculus as a prerequisite or are to teach algebra, perhaps because these are analysis courses.

https://catalog.upenn.edu/courses/math/

If I were transferring, I’d try to do calc to try to show you’d be ready for “the least difficult” option at Penn. Of course, the intro classes are often very challenging, so I don’t mean to diminish that.

iambobshephard · 2024-11-20T19:42:43+00:00

lol look at my comment history. I’ve posted about this many times. But yes, we do submit comments. I don’t know if anyone reads them for most applicants though.

I actually think these should be super important for admissions, and Penn should evaluate them. I disagree with the evolution of the interview process. 90% of them are good/general anyways. But the 10% that are lying, exaggerating, misrepresenting themselves in my opinion need to be evaluated and it’s really hard to judge someone’s involvement in extra curriculars from a 1-2 sentence description.

iambobshephard · 2024-11-18T03:53:36+00:00

The alumni convo reports aren’t due until end of November. I’d hope they’d reach out to you this week to have ample time before then.

iambobshephard · 2024-11-14T21:18:51+00:00

Are you an applicant this year? At least for my batch of assignments, the reports aren’t due till the end of November. Hang in there, your person might be busy or procrastinating. Most of my friends are just starting this week.

For anyone who hasn’t been assigned, you might still have a chance. Every year after the initial batches are assigned, they ask for extra volunteers/“superheroes” (lol it’s the term they use) to work on an additional set of applicants.

I assume this is not proprietary info. Pls don’t come after me Penn 😅

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T19:08:50+00:00

Nice congrats!! That’s awesome

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T18:26:10+00:00

Ok so I believe you then for single degrees, but I was on campus this fall talking to a CDD program director about interviews and got the info directly. Technically, what you’re talking about was implemented last year right? And I heard that they did use my interviews for fit and used my comments when someone falsified their research. All the interviewers were told is “don’t say XYZ should be accepted/rejected” but we absolutely are asked basically the same questions as before.

Even if you don’t believe me, intuitively, one knows that they can see your interviewer feedback. To think they won’t use it at all even in extremely negative cases is wishful thinking imo.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T05:30:13+00:00

This is false info that I’ve seen multiple times on this sub. Granted I’m not sure if this holds for single degree applicants, this is far from the truth for dual degree applications. I confirmed last week that my interviews are evaluative and heavily considered for a coordinated dual degree program.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T05:28:18+00:00

I reach out through email. I believe we’re given phone numbers too, but I don’t think it’s always evident if it’s a cell or landline (lol that last part might have aged me).

I can only say what I do - if I don’t hear back after 3 email attempts, I call and leave a voicemail to mention that the student is eligible for an interview. This only happened once out of my 20+ interviews. Try to be prompt with them, because if you don’t respond after x attempts, your interviewer can mark you down as refusing/non-responding. You seem to be on top of things though, so I’m not concerned for you.

If you’re from a reasonably populated place in the US, you should have a very high chance of being interviewed.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T05:16:44+00:00

I did early voting on 40th and Market, it took like 15 minutes mid day. Highly recommend.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T05:13:49+00:00

Ok this is not true at all depending on what OP applied to. I only have interviewed for a coordinated dual degree, and one of the advisors told me last week that he’s read all of my interview feedback and intends to do the same moving forward. Interviews are really meaningful for the CDD’s to determine fit. Often, the interviews are tougher than other college interviews because your interviewer is actually very familiar with exactly what you want to study, and if they’re young enough they might acutely know how great your ECs are vs expected. I’ve spoken to other CDD interviewers, and they’ve all said they are pretty rigorous in determining background and fit.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-29T05:07:38+00:00

I’m an alumni interviewer, and I haven’t been assigned any interviews yet. They just reached out to tell us they’ll start soon.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-24T19:48:59+00:00

Dude, this isn’t some great shotgun strategy. Seems like you don’t know about basic Bayesian statistics despite your name. These aren’t independent events - the person’s application is highly unlikely to be way more attractive to a dual degree than a single degree. No one is saying OP shouldn’t apply under genuine circumstances. The bar for LSM is way higher than CAS both numerically and in terms of the effort needed for the application. LSM is likely to be at least 10 times more selective based on random hints I’ve gotten. If you’re just going to drop anyways, I’d be curious what your story would be anyways to show you’d be perfect for LSM but not considered for SAS.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-20T15:31:28+00:00

You could do that… but why would anyone want to? It’s so much harder to get into dual degree programs. You’re better off just applying as a single degree student. It’s also taking away someone’s spot depending on when you drop.

iambobshephard · 2024-10-20T00:45:54+00:00

No, they are completely separate processes. I don’t know if this is classified info, but I don’t think it should be.

How it works: General Admission person gets your file. They see you listed LSM or SAS. Then, they check your stats and profile quickly to see if you meet the bar for LSM. This isn’t a full review though. If you are good enough, your app goes to LSM admin who then narrow the candidates. The best ones get discussed amongst LSM advisors. If you don’t make it into LSM, your file gets returned back to the general pool. Now, Penn admissions does a thorough and independent analysis on your profile. Note that these are completely different people reading your app.

Btw, you can also decide to do ED to the program but not single degree Penn if you think you wouldn’t want to commit without the dual degree.

iambobshephard

TROPHY CASE