Breaking Into Investment Banking From a Non-Target | Mentor Podcast

Wall Street Oasis

Business

4.9 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Chris shares his real investment banking recruiting journey—from a non-target school, with no finance background, to finally landing an offer after multiple Superday rejections. We cover: What it’s like recruiting without knowing the “finance language” Dealing with imposter syndrome in IB recruiting Aggressive networking and using platforms like Wall Street Oasis Why most Superdays end in rejection What actually made the difference in getting the offer This is a must-watch for students trying to break into investment banking, finance, or Wall Street from a non-traditional background. 🔔 Subscribe for more real mentor conversations on finance careers. 👉 Want to follow this path? Check out WSO Academy — the prep that has helped thousands break into high finance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 👇👇👇 Land A High Finance Career: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/academy 🚀💼📈 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT IS WSO ACADEMY? It's a 12-week program to dramatically increase your odds of landing a 6-figure+ role in high finance... What’s included? 💥 GUARANTEED offer in high finance 🎓 Full course library for life (over $4k+ of content) 👥 Direct access to 1,300+ top mentors across banks & funds 📚 Tons of live training bootcamps (IB, PE, VC, Excel, etc.) 📄 Full resume rewrite + LinkedIn review (human + AI) 🧠 1:1 work with Head Mentors on TMAY + behavioral questions 🗣️ 6–10+ mock interviews, HireVue prep, Excel + logic assessments 🏢 Internship with WSO for resume branding 📬 Proven networking strategy & outreach software 🧭 Accountability coach & progress matrix 💬 Lifetime access to the exclusive alum Slack community 👉 JOIN WAITLIST HERE: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/acade... 💪🔥 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ IS WSO ACADEMY FOR YOU? Yes, if any of the below sound like you: ✅ You want to break into investment banking but don’t know where to start ✅ You've applied to 100+ jobs and heard nothing back ✅ You’re not sure how to network effectively ✅ Your technical or behavioral answers need work ✅ You’re not from a target school or have below a 3.7 GPA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Land A High Finance Career: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/academy WSO Academy is the largest online finance community with 1M+ members and 20M+ annual visitors. The 50+ head mentors in the program were handpicked from 1,300+ finance pros. They’ve helped thousands break into Wall Street careers over the past decade. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 🎓 JOIN WAITLIST HERE: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/academy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #finance #investmentbanking #privateequity #hedgefund #consulting #venturecapital #wallstreet The Daily Peel Newsletter 📰 → https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/media... 🎧 Listen to the Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nQxuAp... 📚 WSO Resources: Courses: https://bit.ly/2ESzrv2 Resume Review: https://bit.ly/2Z0DFYq Mentors: https://bit.ly/3lIHoUi Events: https://bit.ly/350vMGd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 📱 Follow us: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | TikTok → @wallstreetoasis ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcript

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0:00.0	Didn't really know much about finance.
0:01.8	I didn't come from, you know, a family with, you know, a financial background.
0:04.9	I didn't understand the language. I didn't understand the culture. Definitely felt a bit of imposter syndrome. Take me through the timeline of like your first super day. I got interviews, I got super days, probably five. And then I rejected from all of them except BAML. when like recruiting kind of did open up junior year at that stage, had you done a lot of networking?
0:23.9	The first thing he said to me was, oh, I heard you the time to join us today.
0:46.2	Thanks, Patrick.
0:46.9	Really happy to be here.
0:48.2	So it would be awesome if you could give the listeners a short summary bio where you're from, all that good stuff.
0:52.4	Of course, absolutely.
0:53.8	So I attended the
0:55.3	University of Maryland. I'm a Maryland kid through and through big Redskins slash a Wizards guy,
1:02.9	but attended the University of Maryland, which was like 15 minutes from where I grew up.
1:08.2	Didn't really know much about finance. I didn't come from, you know, a family with, you know, financial background.
1:13.1	But when I got to the University of Maryland, joined the business school, we actually had a pretty
1:17.9	decent amount of exposure for, you know, for a non-target, a relatively good amount of exposure
1:22.6	to Wall Street.
1:23.9	And so I had a couple of friends who had done internships in investment banking at Goldman
1:28.2	in places like that. Decided to go the Wall Street route, you know, joined all of the finance
1:33.7	clubs, the investment banking club, ended up getting an offer at BAML actually to join their
1:39.8	trading desk. I was there for about six months and then actually decided to join the ECM desk.
1:46.2	We can get into, you know, the rationale for that later. But worked in ECM at B of A for about two
1:52.7	years. From there, I had an opportunity to join Citadel on one of their byside ECM investing desks,
2:00.4	which we can also delve into later, was at Citadel
	...

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