You’ve probably seen the TikToks. The 5:00 AM wake-up calls, the pristine mahogany desks, the crisp Patagonia vests, and the promise of a mid-six-figure salary before you’re old enough to rent a car without a surcharge. It looks glamorous. Honestly, it looks like a cheat code for life. But if you're trying to figure out how to become an investment banker, you need to ignore the aesthetic influencers and look at the Excel spreadsheets.
It’s brutal.
Most people think it’s just about being good at math. It’s not. It’s about stamina. It’s about being able to format a PowerPoint slide at 3:00 AM while a Managing Director (MD) breathes down your neck because a multi-billion dollar merger depends on the font being perfectly consistent. If you can't handle a 90-hour work week, stop reading. If you can, let’s talk about how you actually get through the door.
The Pedigree Problem and the Target School Myth
Let’s be real: where you go to college matters more in investment banking than in almost any other industry. Banks like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley have "target schools." These are the Ivies—Harvard, Yale, Princeton—along with places like Wharton (UPenn), NYU Stern, UChicago, and Duke.
Does this mean you’re cooked if you go to a state school? No. But it means you’ll have to work five times harder to get noticed.
At a target school, the banks come to you. They hold info sessions, they buy you pizza, and they practically beg for your resume. If you’re at a "non-target," you are the one doing the begging. You have to be a LinkedIn stalker. You have to send hundreds of cold emails. You have to find that one alum from your random state school who made it to Wall Street and convince them to give you thirty minutes of their time.
It’s an uphill battle. But it happens every year.
The Internship Is the Job
If you want to know how to become an investment banker, you have to understand that the "Full-Time Offer" is basically a myth for anyone who didn't intern first. The pipeline is rigid.
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- Sophomore year: You start networking and looking for "diversity" or "early insight" programs.
- Junior year (Summer): This is the big one. The Summer Analyst internship.
- Senior year: You hopefully have a return offer in hand before classes even start.
If you miss the junior summer internship, your chances of getting into a Bulge Bracket bank (the big guys) drop to nearly zero. The internship is a ten-week-long interview. They aren't looking for you to be a genius; they are looking for you to be "trainable" and "likable." Can I sit in a room with this person for 15 hours a day without wanting to jump out a window? That is the question every MD is asking themselves when they look at an intern.
Breaking Down the Technicals
You need to know your accounting. Cold.
If I ask you how a $10 increase in depreciation affects the three financial statements, you shouldn't have to think about it. You should just know. The "Three Statement" question is the bread and butter of the interview process.
- Income Statement: Operating Income drops by $10. Assuming a 40% tax rate, Net Income drops by $6.
- Cash Flow Statement: Net Income is down $6, but you add back the $10 of depreciation because it’s a non-cash expense. Cash flow from operations is up $4.
- Balance Sheet: Cash is up $4. PP&E (Property, Plant, and Equipment) is down $10 because of the depreciation. Assets are down $6. On the other side, Retained Earnings (under Equity) is down $6 because of the Net Income drop. Everything balances.
If that sounded like gibberish, you have some studying to do. Pick up Investment Banking by Rosenbaum and Pearl. It’s basically the Bible for the industry. Read it until the pages fall out.
Networking: The Art of the "Coffee Chat"
Banking is a relationship business. Period.
You can have a 4.0 GPA from MIT, but if nobody at the firm knows your name, your resume is going into the "trash" pile—or more accurately, the digital void of the ATS. You need a referral. To get a referral, you need to conduct coffee chats.
Don't ask for a job. Never ask for a job in the first email. Ask for "advice." People love giving advice because it makes them feel important. Ask them about their deal flow. Ask them what the culture is like in their specific group—is it a "face time" culture where you have to stay until the boss leaves, or is it more meritocratic?
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Send your thank-you note within 24 hours. If you don't, you're dead to them. Accuracy and speed are the two pillars of banking.
The Reality of the Hours
We need to talk about the 100-hour work week. It’s not a meme. It’s a very real, very soul-crushing reality for first-year analysts.
You will work on Saturdays. You will work on Sundays. You will miss birthdays, anniversaries, and probably a few funerals. The reason the pay is so high (think $100k - $120k base plus a massive bonus) is because they are essentially buying your entire life for two years.
You aren't just calculating Enterprise Value or running Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) models. A lot of the job is "turning comments." An associate will print out a slide deck, mark it up with a red pen, and you will spend four hours making those exact changes in PowerPoint. It is tedious. It is not "The Wolf of Wall Street." It’s a lot of alignment tools and font checking.
The Different Tiers of Banks
Not all banks are created equal. You’ve got your Bulge Brackets (BB) like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. These are the giants. Then you have the Elite Boutiques (EB) like Evercore, Lazard, and Centerview. These firms often pay even better than the BBs and work on the most complex deals, but they don't have the commercial banking side.
Then there are the Middle Market (MM) banks like Houlihan Lokey or William Blair. They work on smaller deals—maybe a $200 million sale of a family-owned manufacturing company instead of a $50 billion tech merger. The experience is often better at MM banks because you get more "hands-on" time with the clients, but the "prestige" (if you care about that) is lower.
Technical Skills You Actually Need
Forget complex calculus. You need to be a wizard in Excel. If you're using your mouse in Excel, you’re doing it wrong. Professional bankers use keyboard shortcuts for everything.
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- Modeling: You need to understand how to build a 3-model merger.
- LBOs: Leveraged Buyouts are the bread and butter of Private Equity, which is where most bankers want to end up anyway. You need to understand the mechanics of debt.
- Valuation: DCF, Comparable Companies, and Precedent Transactions. Know them. Know when to use which.
Why Do People Still Do This?
If the hours are terrible and the work is often boring, why is how to become an investment banker one of the most searched career paths?
Exit opportunities.
Two years in banking is like five years anywhere else. After your "tour of duty," you can jump to Private Equity, Venture Capital, or Hedge Funds. You can go into Corporate Development at a massive tech company. You’ve proven you can handle the pressure. You’ve been through the fire. You are "vetted."
The money doesn't hurt, either. A 22-year-old making $170,000 in total compensation is a rarity in any other field except maybe high-end software engineering or quantitative trading.
Actionable Steps to Take Right Now
If you're serious about this, stop scrolling and start doing.
- Audit your Resume: It needs to be one page. No "Summary" section. No "Objective." Just Education, Experience, and Skills. Use the WSO (Wall Street Oasis) template. It is the industry standard for a reason.
- The 40-Email Rule: If you are a student, aim to send 40 cold emails per week to alumni in the industry. Your goal is a 10% response rate.
- Master the "Walk Me Through a DCF" Question: If you can't explain a DCF to a five-year-old, you don't understand it well enough for an interview.
- Prep Your Story: "Tell me about yourself" is the first question in every interview. It should be a 90-second narrative that connects your past to why you want to be a banker today.
- Watch the News: Read the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times. Know where the S&P 500 is trading. Know what the Fed did with interest rates yesterday. If you don't know the markets, you don't belong in the bank.
This isn't a career for everyone. It's a grind that will test your mental health and your physical limits. But for those who can navigate the gatekeepers and master the technicals, it’s the fastest way to change your financial trajectory. Just don't expect to sleep much for the first few years.