Does I-banking internship hurts once chance for any prestigious fellowships?

[janieblue]

Perhaps we should use a few accomplished kids who can solve our Debt/Banking/Political problems. Can't hurt.

Ain't that the truth.

By the by, Mr. Qalbani (referenced in my earlier post as someone who had spent more than one summer working at investment banking firms and who won the Rhodes in '98) got married this past summer, 2007. It was in the NY Times. Here's what he does now:

Mr. Qalbani, 30, is a managing director for the Reservoir Capital Group, an investment firm in New York. He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and received a master’s degree in economics from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

[newmassdad]

janieblue,

Let's be careful to distinguish what winners do AFTER they finish at Oxford and what they do before they win.

Let us hypothesize, for a moment, that the Rhodes Trust is looking for people that will change the world, with high empathy for the less advantaged (not saying this is the case, just making an example). As already mentioned by others, doing an IBanking internship is not thought by most adults to be an indicator of such traits. But, why is it so surprising that some of these same world changers will conclude, after two or more years of maturity and education, that the best path for them to accomplish their world changing goals personally is through finance?

Strikes me as a pretty rational approach.

To put it another way, seeking an internship while in college in certain fields signals something very different than an employment choice.

You may also notice that Qalbani seems to have done a rather less than traditional I banking internship.

[janieblue]

Strikes me as a pretty rational approach.

newmassdad: Yes, I absolutely agree with your comments. My point is that regardless of what else was on his resume (and I'm not privy to that-- but perhaps you are), he did, in fact, spend more than one summer doing IB internship(s). I doubt seriously he's the first (or the last) potential Rhodes Scholar to do so.

Let's be careful to distinguish what winners do AFTER they finish at Oxford and what they do before they win.

Yes, and this particular Scholar did IB internship(s) BEFORE he won and went to Oxford.

Again, all things being equal, I do not think a banking internship would hurt a prospective Scholar. By "all things being equal," I mean-- the person would have to have a lot of additional impressive (perhaps even connected) involvement going on, which would obviously enhance his/her background for this particular fellowship. Certainly, I agree with your assessment in the post above about what they might be looking for in a potential Scholar.

As an aside, I don't know where you picked up that his particular IB summer internship(s) were "less than traditional" as my earlier post never suggested that:

His independent research on the balance of payments crises and the effects of monetary policy on stock prices has been supplemented by summer internships in investment banking on Wall Street.