Yes, that would be a reasonable plan (but, again, I add the disclaimer that this site doesn’t focus on consulting and I’m much less familiar with the overall process and competitiveness there).

Yes, one of those could work. Your chances of getting into IB right now are not great because they award very few FT offers outside of internships, and in a bad market (the current environment), it’s even worse. If you can win an MBB consulting offer (I don’t know the competitiveness or timing or requirements as consulting is not our focus), that would be a good option. If not, maybe go for something else less competitive but still related to deals, such as corporate banking, a valuation firm, or even using your VC internship to win off-cycle roles at smaller banks.

I can’t say which one is best without knowing your full profile and/or more about your chances for the MBB offer.

For context, I’m an incoming senior at a top 20 US public university. I decided last summer that I no longer want to pursue medicine/healthcare, and since then, I’ve been interested in consulting or tech. But last month I managed to secure a VC internship in a small biotech/AI investing firm for this summer, which I got through a tech internship placement program (so entering finance wasn’t my original intention).

I know how lucky I am to land something in VC, so I was wondering how I can leverage this to break into finance? More specifically, how much I can spin it to apply for IB full-time? Most people in IB seem to have a summer analyst position before getting a FT return offer, which obviously won’t be my path. Should I instead focus on breaking into consulting instead? (I’m only interested in MBB/Tier 2, which I know is tough to get). Or maybe, less competitive finance roles like AM? Just want to do a cost-benefit analysis of what I should spend the most time on. Thanks so much!!

Potentially yes, but it depends on your other options. It’s not as good as a PE/VC or Big 4 valuation internship, but it’s better than options that have nothing to do with finance.

Would you recommend an internship in a valuation team of a reinsurance company, which is a big name such as Swiss Re and Hannover Re, as a stepping stone to investment banking? The valuation work is more about the liabilities of the company in the incoming years and no that relevant to the stock evaluation. And due to the regulations, the main asset class that the company invests in is fixed income securities instead of stocks. Probably it still helps get into FIG groups but I am not sure if it is worthwhile.

Thanks

I’ll be sure to stick both of those aspects on the front of the my resume and email. PE is undoubtedly more crowded and popular when compared to the VC world so that should work in my favor. Thank you for the help, I really appreciate it.

If you have experience at a large, brand-name PE firm and/or you attend a target school, those should work well for getting attention. Make sure you put those names front and center in the subject of the email and the first sentence of the body. It’s much easier to move from PE to VC than to do the reverse, especially if you already have tech startup experience.

Unfortunately I don’t have previous experience in venture capital, however I have experience as a summer analyst at a large PE firm in addition to working at a tech startup in California. I’m hoping that this may compensate for the lack of direct experience with VC firms. I’ll certainly look through the email templates.

If you’re asking directly about an internship, yes, you should include your resume in your first email. You need to present strong credentials upfront and use brand names/previous firm names to win their attention. You could use some of the cold email templates on this site as a start as well.