UCLA to William Blair | Chat with Andrew | WSO Academy

Wall Street Oasis

Business

4.9 • 534 Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this inspiring chat, Andrew shares his journey from multiple student club rejections at UCLA to landing a coveted investment banking offer at William Blair. Hear how he leveraged the WSO Academy, mock interviews, and cold email networking to turn things around — all while starting late in the recruiting cycle. From setbacks to success, Andrew’s story is a must-watch for anyone aiming to break into finance. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 👇👇👇 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

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0:00.0	I got the email maybe like two days after telling me about the Super Day.
0:04.0	So I was very pleasantly surprised, but also like I was panicking a little bit because I thought like, oh, yeah, I and founder of Wall Street Oasis.
0:28.4	Today we have another great chat with Andrew.
0:31.3	Andrew joined WSO Academy when he was a sophomore at UCLA.
0:34.8	He joined us pretty late.
0:35.9	So it was early November when he started with us. Listen to all the struggles he went through during his freshman year, getting rejected from over 10 different student clubs and how he turned the corner specifically with a lot of our mentors and how it all worked out for him landing an offer at a great middle market bank. All right, Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. Thank you so much for having me, Patrick. We really appreciate it.
1:09.0	It would be awesome if you could just get the listeners kind of short summary bio, where you're from, all that good stuff. So my name is Andrew. I'm currently a sophomore UCLA. I'm majoring economics. Early from Boston, Massachusetts, currently, but now I'm just going to make... Celtics.
1:10.4	No Celtics, yeah.
1:12.7	But next year, it's kind of over for us next year.
1:13.2	Yeah, hopefully.
1:12.5	Yeah, hopefully. currently but now um just like to make Celtics yeah but uh next year it's kind of over for us next year but hopefully hopefully something happens but we'll see yeah um decided that i wanted to go to
1:18.2	UCLA um no real strong motivation behind that decision other than i wanted to get out of the northeast
1:24.5	um see a bit more of the country and Yeah, that was pretty much kind of it
1:28.3	behind my decision. Nice. You're kind of done with the Boston winters, I guess, and wanted
1:33.1	to lay weather. For sure, yeah. Nothing really beats SoCal in terms of college experience. Was it like a
1:39.1	culture shock a little bit kind of going to UCLA? How do you care? I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think
1:43.9	people at people in SoCal, like in general, they are much more free.
1:49.0	I feel like they, maybe it comes up location, but I feel like they know how to enjoy
1:53.0	life a lot more than Northeast people.
1:56.0	Okay, fair enough.
1:57.0	I'll give them that.
1:58.0	So tell me a little bit about, so you get to UCLA,
	...

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