10 Hacks to Break Into Banking Your Freshman Year

August 10, 2025

If you don’t start prepping for banking first semester freshman year - you’ll fall behind FAST.

The ivy-league kids you’re competing against started networking, studying technicals & adding elite internships to their resumes before even getting to college.

Recruitment happens ridiculously early and the timeline gets pushed up every year.

You interview for that post-junior year internship over a year in advance -

Meaning you only have three semesters on campus to beef up your resume before apps are due.

My #1 goal was to out-compete the target school kids and land a gig at a top shop in NYC.

Here’s what you should prioritize as freshman if you want to do the same.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • 1 - WIN A CASE COMP

  • 2 - NETWORK WITH UPPERCLASSMEN

  • 3 - START READING THE GUIDES

  • 4 - INTERN AT A SEARCH FUND

  • 5 - GET A MODELING CERTIFICATION

  • 6 - SETUP YOUR LINKEDIN

  • 7 - JOIN RELEVANT EXTRACURRICULARS

  • 8 - ORGANIZE YOUR RESUME

  • 9 - FOLLOW THE NEWS

  • 10 - PICK EASY TEACHERS

1 - WIN A CASE COMP

I did four of these in college and took home first place in two.

Having that first place on your resume will give you instant credibility.

It gains their respect right away since they know you’ve already impressed a panel of ex-banker judges.

Each case comp is only two weeks long, so I’d try and do as many as you can.

They can be hosted by investment banks, campus clubs and other third parties.

ON-CAMPUS CASE COMPETITIONS

  • Student Organizations

    My first one was freshman year in our intro to M&A org. My second one was part of the application process for our banking academy.

    In both, we split up into teams of four and were given a public company to make a pitch deck for. We created four excel models (DCF, LBO, Comps, Precedents) to drive our valuation and a 35+ page PPT deck. At the end of the two weeks, we presented to panels of alumni in banking, acting like sell-side investment bankers presenting to a management team.

    It’s common for these types of orgs, along with others like business frats to host case comps.

  • Sponsored by Banks

    Lincoln came to campus and hosted a two week competition for the 30 kids in our banking academy my sophomore year. Winning that was huge. My team of four all got automatic first round interviews and a nice gift card to a steakhouse in town.

    Lots of other firms do this too at other schools. For example, I know William Blair hosts every year at Miami University in Ohio.

OFF-CAMPUS CASE COMPETITIONS

  • National Investment Banking Case Competition (NIBC)

    NIBC hosts a national competition every year in the fall. They have separate divisions for undergrads and graduate students and winner takes home $10k in prize money.

    This is also great exposure to begin networking since ~50 of the biggest name investment banks and private equity shops (e.g. JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, Moelis & Company, Lazard, KKR, Blackstone, Carlyle Group, etc) have employees there to judge and recruit. (https://nibcglobal.com)

  • Harvard Global Case Competition

    This one isn’t always investment banking focused, but it’s still an impressive finance case experience to add to your resume.

    One of their recent cases involved IBM and the acquisition of Equinix. Teams had to analyze the strategic fit and potential synergies of the acquisition. Winners of that one also got $10k.

    There’s also an in-person networking aspect to this one and past partners have included big names like Blackstone & Jefferies. (https://www.thecasecompetition.org/)

2 - NETWORK WITH UPPERCLASSMEN

Freshman year is way too early to have calls with real bankers.

What you’ll want to do instead is start building relationships with seniors who just finished their banking internships.

They’ll be full-time analysts next year when you’re in the heat of interviews -

So planting these seeds early & knowing people on the inside will give you an extreme edge.

As a freshman, I did in-person coffee chats with all 30 seniors from my school that interned in banking.

Here’s how to reach out and start to form these relationships.

  • Step 1: Use LinkedIn to find seniors that just did banking or private equity internships

  • Step 2: Find personal email address (look on executive board pages of campus clubs if they hold position) or resort to school email if unable to find

  • Step 3: Send personalized cold email with resume & ask if they’d be open to meet up

  • Step 4: Create 30min calendar invite

  • Step 5: Prepare short list of questions

    Note: Do NOT read off your laundry list of questions like a robot during the chat. It’s supposed to be a naturally flowing conversation. Each next question you ask should be based on something they said in their previous remark. However, you should still spend some time researching their background and have a few thoughtful topics of conversation ready to go.

    Here are examples of questions I asked.

    (1) How’d you first learn about banking and what made you realize it was a good fit?

    (2) Besides [Our School’s Intro to M&A Org], what else helped you prepare for the recruitment process and build the resume / skillset needed to succeed in interviews?

    (3) What made you choose [Insert Firm] when interviewing sophomore year and how did you enjoy the structure of their internship? Have you decided whether or not you’ll be returning full-time and if so, do you see yourself there in the long term?

  • Step 6: Show up 20min early. Secure table & send email on same chain letting them know what you’re wearing so they can find you

  • Step 7: Have notepad out and jot down bullet points on advice

  • Step 8: Send thank-you email within a day

  • Step 9: Reach back out every few months to catch up

3 - START READING THE GUIDES

There are ~700pg of guides you need to have memorized to pass the technical portion of interviews.

At first I was overwhelmed since there are so many different resources out there to help you prepare.

Luckily, I had an upperclassmen mentor who miraculously placed at BofA NYC from our non-target.

He showed me the exact resources he used and his approach to tackling one piece at a time.

The first piece of that approach was memorizing the questions in the back of the BIWS subject guides.

99% of kids study with BIWS’s guides.

Never pay for them though - get an upperclassmen to send you the PDFs.

Updated versions have a bunch of fancy supplements, but you only need the core six “modules”.

  • 1. CORE FINANCE CONCEPTS

  • 2. ACCOUNTING & 3 FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

  • 3. EQUITY VALUE & ENTERPRISE VALUE

  • 4. VALUATION & DCF

  • 5. LEVERAGED BUYOUTS

  • 6. MERGER MODELS

Spend most of your time on one through four. Most banks never ask about LBO’s & Merger Models .

The first 75% of every guide is pretty much textbook reading with tons of charts and visuals.

For each of the first four guides, I started with a skim then went back to take more detailed notes. After digesting the front of each guide, I started quizzing myself on the practice questions in the back. I’d scroll up on my laptop to cover the answer and go one by one saying answers under my breath.

By the end, I’d rehearsed every single question in the back of the first four at least a dozen times. Those are all a “check the box” and there’s no excuse to not know them by heart.

After I got the BIWS subject guides down, I started looking at the other resources he recommended.

Here’s a list of those.

4 - INTERN AT A SEARCH FUND

Top candidates now have 2-3 internships BEFORE sending their first networking email sophomore year.

A relevant internship is the best resume booster because of the real-world experience.

What I didn’t realize was that internships listed on those online portals don’t hire freshmen.

You have to seek freshman year gigs out on your own, cold emailing tons of smaller firms to convince them to hire you for little-to-no pay.

Your best option is to land a part-time remote gig at a search fund.

These are basically one-man private equity shops.

Searchers are typically ex-bankers / consultants who just got their MBA and want to buy their own small business. Their goal is to improve it as CEO over the course of about five years then sell it for a profit at the end. They’ll raise money from a ton of investors and have a two year deadline to find the perfect business.

That sourcing phase is super labor intensive and involves contacting thousands of companies. Searchers have tight budgets, which is why they are willing to hire inexperienced freshmen to help out.

Here’s what your resume would look like after a search fund internship.

Here’s a previous piece I wrote explaining how to go about landing one (https://chiefanalyst.beehiiv.com/p/5-steps-to-land-a-private-equity-internship-with-zero-experience).

5 - GET A MODELING CERTIFICATION

It took me three tries to pass the final exam for the modeling course I took.

Our screens were strictly proctored & we had 90 minutes to build a dynamic LBO from scratch in excel.

Your classes are much easier than the ones ivy league kids are taking.

A good way to prove your intelligence is by adding a couple certifications to your resume.

There’re so many to choose from but only a few worth spending time and money on.

Bankers aren’t familiar with most that’re out there and only find a couple credible and relevant.

Here are three that our academy’s director (former partner at top CHI bank) told my class to look into.

They’re well-respected across the industry and definitely worth checking out.

Our school’s academy made every kid get the FMC Level 1 & 2 before recruitment sophomore year.

After finishing, Adventis gives you the exact bullets to paste in the education section of your resume.

I liked Adventis because of how personal it felt.

There are real people grading your homework and exams that leave comments in your excel files giving super specific feedback on where you went wrong.

6 - SETUP YOUR LINKEDIN

Every time you send a networking email to a banker, the first thing they do is look you up on LinkedIn.

They judge you on strict etiquette standards that’re more proper than any other industry.

If your page is “too creative” or unpolished in any way, they won't bother responding to setup a call.

When I recruited sophomore year, the exec board of our school’s academy made us fix our profiles using these “industry norms” before we could start networking.

Here’re the six rules your LinkedIn should follow to get the stamp of approval from any banker.

  • RULE 1 - TURN ON PRIVATE MODE. Otherwise they’ll get a notification every time you stalk their profile before a call…

  • RULE 2 - DON’T SEND DMs. You’ll get the reputation of being lazy trying to network using DMs. They expect you to network the formal, old fashioned way using email.

  • RULE 3 - PROFESSIONAL HEADSHOT. No frat / sorority composites or high school yearbook pics. Throw on your navy suit with a white shirt & red tie and make one DIY.

  • RULE 4 - SHORTEN YOUR HEADLINE. Follow this format: “Finance and Accounting Student at University of Illinois”. Don’t list every scholarship / internship you have. Makes it harder for recruiters to find you and can come across as cocky.

  • RULE 5 - DON’T COPY YOUR RESUME. Desperate look if you attach your resume or list every bullet point in your experiences section. LinkedIn is a “highlight reel” they should be able to scan in 30 seconds.

  • RULE 6 - NO CRINGEY UPDATES. Turn off the “share profile updates with your network” setting and NEVER write a post to flex you accepted an internship offer. Banking is very hierarchical and they’ll think you’re an attention seeker.

7 - JOIN RELEVANT EXTRACURRICULARS

Most kids that apply for banking have the same, cookie-cutter finance extracurriculars on their resume.

You can’t afford to blend together with every other kid & need to find a way to stand out.

The way I stood out during recruitment was by choosing the ideal mix of extracurriculars to join and being strategic about my how involved I got with each of them.

Here are three things you need to show with your strategic mix of extracurriculars.

  • (1) UNIQUE EXPERIENCES

    You need a unique differentiator that’ll make you stick out in that stack of 50 resumes.

    My differentiator was hockey.

    I was a full-time student athlete and emphasized it on my resume in multiple areas.

  • (2) DEEP COMMITMENT

    Quality > Quantity.

    Instead of being surface-level involved in lots of orgs on campus, go all-in with three.

    You work long hours in banking, which requires deep commitment to one thing.

  • (3) PASSION FOR BUSINESS

    Get deeply involved in the most prestigious business orgs your campus has to offer.

    Just beware that many of these are highly competitive.

    They’ll have several rounds of technical & behavioral interviews, written tests and case presentations you have to go through before getting in.

    But this ruthless competition isn’t a bad thing.

    You want to surround yourself with the highest caliber students on your campus.

    The relationships you form in those circles will be key to help you land the most elite internships as someone coming from your specific campus.

There are three types of competitive business orgs I would recommend looking into.

  • CONSULTING ORGS

    I was part of a student-run, professionally managed consulting org freshman and sophomore year that only let in ten percent of applicants.

    I got to work on semester-long projects for real Fortune 500 companies.

    Bankers loved to ask me about this during interviews because of the real-world, hands-on experience interacting with clients.

    They also were impressed I was in a senior consultant leadership role as a freshman responsible for overseeing the work of the six upperclassmen / grad student regular consultants below me.

  • STUDENT INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT FUND

    Tons of schools now have orgs that manage a portion of their student endowment fund.

    Any organization similar to this where you are regularly doing stock pitches will look incredible on your resume.

    Investment management is a completely different career path than investment banking, but the company analysis skills you build in these organizations is highly relevant.

    You’ll be doing deep dives on public companies, digging into financial statements, industry reports and equity research to develop investment recommendations.

  • PROFESSIONAL BUSINESS FRATERNITIES

    The first org I joined freshman year was Beta Alpha Psi.

    Breaking into that involved three rounds of behavioral interviews and several “social nights”.

    With these you instantly gain circle of mentors which gives you an unfair advantage over all your peers very early on in college.

    These orgs also give you a chance to hold leadership roles right away.
    In most other orgs, you have to be involved for a few semesters to be handed an official “title”, but business frats purposefully create positions for underclassmen to help them pad their resumes.

8 - ORGANIZE YOUR RESUME

Bankers are extremely picky and look for a very particular style with your resume.

They want to see you have meticulous attention to detail which means your formatting has to be perfect, especially coming from a non-target.

When I was President of my school’s academy, I helped revise resumes of over 150 sophomores.

These are the 14 rules you need to follow to meet the strict standards bankers judge you on.

GENERAL FORMATTING RULES

  • (1) FONT - Garamond Size 10 - 12

  • (2) SQUARE BULLET POINTS (NOT Round)

  • (3) REMOVE OXFORD COMMAS

  • (4) ABBREVIATIONS - Do NOT Mix Styles

    - MONTHS - Either “November” or “Nov.“

    - LARGE NUMBERS - Either “200+” or “Over 200”

    - METRICS (MILLIONS/BILLIONS/ETC) - Either “MM/BN”, “M/B” or “m/b”

  • (5) DASHES - Do NOT Mix Sizes

    - OPTION 1 - LARGE DASHES such as “Sep. 2020 – Present”

    - OPTION 2 - SHORT DASHES such as “Sep. 2020 - Present”

  • (6) ALIGNMENT - Consistent Indents & Line Spacing (*Use MSFT Word Ruler*)

  • (7) CAPITALIZATION/BOLD/ITALICS - Consistent Headers, Sub-Headers etc.

BULLET POINT RULES

  • (8) ACHIEVEMENT-BASED BULLETS

    [ACTION WORD] + [DETAILED ACTION DESCRIPTION] + [RESULT]

  • (9) MINIMIZE WHITE SPACE

  • (10) REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER - Most Recent Top Each Section by End Date

OTHER RULES

  • (11) NO BORING INTERESTS

    Most kids make the mistake listing general interests like “Sports”, “Music” & “Food”.

    To make them actually interesting, you need to niche down and make them more specific.

    Change those to be more like “Extreme Snow Skiing” / “Taylor Swift’” / “Lou Malnati’s Pizza”

  • (12) ALWAYS SUBMIT AS PDF - Name the File “LastName_FirstName_Resume”

  • (13) REMOVE HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCES & GRADES

  • (14) REMOVE SKILLS SECTION

9 - FOLLOW THE NEWS

Everyone tells you to “keep up with the markets” but never really mentions how.

Nobody has time to read the WSJ from cover to cover every morning, so I turned to a couple newsletters to keep a pulse on business news.

  • MORNING BREW (linked here)

  • TERM SHEET (linked here)

I’d skim each for ~5min every morning.

For term sheet, I started keeping a log of deals that interested me.

I would pick one per week and write down the following details in a spreadsheet.

  • Purchase Price: Dollar amount, Valuation multiple, Premium paid

  • Financing: Percent mix cash / stock / debt, Names of lenders

  • Advisors: Lead investment bank on buy side and sell side

  • Dates: Both announcement and closing

  • Rationale: Motivation for both buyer and seller

  • Background: Recent performance of each company

  • Deal Context: Anything unusual with the negotiations / agreement?

You’re guaranteed to get asked some variation of this question in every interview

“Can you walk me through a recent deal you’ve been following? And do you think it was a good one?”

So keeping a log is a great way to start practicing.

For morning brew, I focused on the market section at the beginning.

I paid attention to two things, knowing they’d eventually be asked about in interviews as well.

  • (A) Stock Market Trends

  • (B) Interest Rate Movements

As a freshman, I also breezed through the WSJ once or twice a week.

I’d find any articles relevant to M&A and would fully read a couple of those.

You should have free access to the WSJ through your school (check at this link).

10 - PICK EASY TEACHERS

Anything under a 4.0 as a non-target gets your resume trashed at the top shops.

The good thing is that all they see on your resume is the GPA & major(s), not the classes underneath it.

I strategically scheduled a lighter load of easier classes my first couple years to keep the GPA perfect and budget time for the more important parts of recruitment like resume building (internships & extracurricular leadership), networking and studying for interviews (technical & behavioral).

Here were the three main parts of that strategy.

  • (1) MINIMAL IN-SEMESTER CREDITS

    I took thirteen credits both semesters sophomore year and was still on track to graduate early.

    Here was my schedule during the intense semester that interviews happen.

  • (2) SUMMER & WINTER CLASSES

    I took online / asynchronous classes during winter & summer of my first two years.

    This allowed me to knock out the busy work gen-eds so I could focus on the other items mentioned before during the semester.

  • (3) EASY TEACHERS

    My school had a website that listed average GPA by professor for every course.

    Most schools probably don’t have this but make sure to to ask upperclassmen who the best professors are, especially for courses known to be the most intense.

Cheers 🥂

- Jack