UCL to Société Générale | Chat with Alkin | WSO Academy

Wall Street Oasis

Business

4.9 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With just three months left in his MEng at University College London, Alkin ditched an engineering track and sprinted into high-finance. Hear how he combined a last-minute PE internship, CFA Level I prep and WSO Academy’s modeling + interview bootcamps to master derivatives, send laser-targeted cold emails and wow SocGen’s X-Asset Solutions Sales team by nailing the only “impossible” technical of the day—earning the job on the spot. Perfect for late pivots who still want an elite markets seat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 👇👇👇 Land A High Finance Career: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/academy?affiliate=socialwinner-youtube 🚀💼📈 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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/academy?affiliate=socialwinner-youtube 💪🔥 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 technicals 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?affiliate=socialwinner-youtube 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?affiliate=socialwinner-youtube ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #finance #investmentbanking #privateequity #hedgefund #consulting #venturecapital #wallstreet The Daily Peel Newsletter 📰 → https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/media/newsletters/the-daily-peel 🎧 Listen to the Podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wall-street-oasis/id1463441793 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7nQxuApNXFkUSvojQGKyAQ?si=GrYh2zIHSsub8S8xIX0PjQ&nd=1 📚 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	One of the technical questions that I received, I was apparently the only one to answer that question.
0:06.5	And that's probably what heck.
0:25.6	Hey, this is Patrick Curtis, CEO and founder of Wall Street Oasis. Today we have a great chat with Alkin.
0:27.6	Alkin was at UCL, getting a master's in mechanical engineering, when he joined us three months
0:32.6	before graduating.
0:33.6	So obviously, I was very concerned.
0:35.6	I even told him initially like, hey, this is going to be really hard. You're super late. We had the engineering degree. Luckily, he was already taking the CFA. So he was heard of getting some of that foundation. But listen to what happened once he came into the academy, once he started working with some of our mentors. I think you'll enjoy this one. He really felt comfortable when he got into that
0:54.6	final round interview. Enjoy. All right. I'll okay. Thanks so much for taking the time to
0:58.4	chat with us today. It was my pleasure. It would be awesome if you could just give the listeners
1:04.4	kind of short summary bio where you're from, all that good stuff. Yeah. So I was born and raised in Istanbul, so I'm Turkish, and I've studied all the way through high school there, and I actually went to a French high school in Turkey.
1:20.9	And for college, I applied to like basically everywhere, then I ended up in the UK in London.
1:29.0	So I did a three plus one,
1:31.7	like a bachelor's plus master's program at UCL.
1:35.4	And I studied mechanical engineering business finance.
1:39.2	And basically throughout all my degree,
1:43.1	I was dead set on being an engineer up until pretty
1:47.5	much October really, September, October of 2024, when I decided, you know what, this is
1:53.7	not going to happen because it's just there are really two aspects for me that didn't
1:59.3	really sit well.
2:01.6	One of them is the work life because it's just like a basic office 9 to 5 or it's like in a factory in production.
2:10.6	So it's not that it's not that really interesting for me and I wanted to go into somewhere where I can really make an impact and obviously
2:20.1	the pay goes without saying and you know all of those combined like it's just the area that
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wall Street Oasis, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wall Street Oasis and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.