<p>I see this is a very old thread but figured I’d chime in because of how much misinformation there is flying around.</p>
<p>-In response to the points about “Why don’t more Wharton grads go into banking?”
->I don’t know where you get this impression. Lack of demand is absolutely not an issue. There are way more Wharton undergrads who want to go into banking than there are spots. There are plenty of people with solid grades and resumes who will want to go into banking but fail to get an offer. There aren’t many analyst positions to go around, and IB plus the few buyside roles that recruit undergrads basically skim the top ~20-30% of kids in any given year. They get the best kids from Wharton, best from Harvard, etc. They will not fill their entire analyst class from Penn even though it is the top target school for most firms. The best few kids from other schools are much smarter and better prepared than the median kid at Penn.</p>
<p>->The implication of this is that you need a very competitive resume to even get first round interviews, and the vast majority of the spoils go to the top ~5-10% of students. Unless you have great connections or a hook, you will need a 3.8+ GPA to have a good shot at getting a lot of interviews. The math is pretty simple, because most firms have ~30 interview slots (large banks like GS would have more like 50-60) and will get 300-400 applications [much higher if they are a firm that everyone, even non-finance people, apply to just for the heck of it, like GS]. </p>
<p>During OCR, those top students will often receive tons of interviews, even 20 or more. Ultimately the people in the top ~5% will ace these, end up receiving more second round interviews than they can physically go to, and receive multiple offers. OCR at Penn is ultimately very unequal, with the people at the very top getting many great offers but the quality and number of offers people get tapers off quickly.</p>
<p>->The importance of OCR may be declining. More firms are now doing accelerated recruiting in the fall for summer positions, particularly to attract female/minority candidates. In aggregate this is bad for both students and firms, because there is a lack of information on both sides, unlike in OCR when everyone is recruiting at once. However, it’s a prisoners dilemma situation, where if one firm recruits early, all firms have an incentive to recruit early because they are afraid of losing the top candidates.</p>
<p>->Comp at boutiques/buyside and even the big banks like GS is well above $110K all in</p>
<p>->GS/MS are not the best places to be, the attraction of bulge bracket banks has declined significantly since the crisis</p>
<p>->Banks don’t care about math wizardry, they want very smart people with decent social skills who understand finance/accounting well</p>