How screwed am I?
Hi, I’m a long time viewer and this is my first ever post on here
I’m an undergrad at a semi-target (think UVA/BC/WF) and messed up my first semester at college and got a 2.6 gpa. I lost my pet and was pretty much constantly sick throughout the semester. I know that does not excuse my gpa. I also wasn’t disciplined at all when it came to managing my time. I’m confident in my ability to clean up my act and get a 3.8+. If I manage to do this next semester and throughout sophomore year, can IB and/or big3 consulting be realistic to achieve?
As long as you get above a 3.5
Look it's been just one semester, you can't have the mentality of oops I failed over the past 6 months, life is over. Over time you will learn that some years you will succeed while other years you will fail and be depressed because of some set back.
You are very young still and likely have no idea what exactly you want to do long-term, most on this site think IB then buyside is the promise land, but quickly realize its not for everyone. And that is completely okay. Luckily it's been just one semester and you can get your act together over the next couple of years. Banks are not going to care that you got a 2.6 GPA your first semester in college. As long as you can get up to a 3.0 GPA or higher then you should be fine as long as you are willing to put in the effort to network and land jobs outside of the traditional interview process. Most say a 3.5 GPA is needed to break in. While that will make it much easier to land interviews going through your school's career center, it doesn't mean that those who have lower GPAs are absolutely nixed from the IB path. I know many who didn't land an initial internship IB offer or even a full IB offer and were able to break into banking after a couple years full-time in a different role (they landed a corporate finance/strategy role fulltime, and did some extra things to help make them stand out to break into IB - networking, passing the CFA, etc.).
I've had many ups and downs in my career. Landed an IB offer at one of the so called "elite" BB/boutiques, then after a few years moved to the buyside working at a large multimanager. I went through a dozen superdays to land that IB offer, got rejected at all of them and finally got an offer at my very last interview. Same story with trying to move to the buyside, failed at dozens and dozens of interviews, but kept persisting and finally landed an offer at a $40Bn+ large multi-manager. Thought I got by dream job, then burnt out after just one year, quit with no job lined up, joined a startup hedge fund that blew up after just two months and back to being unemployed again. Went from elite IB firm, to elite hedge fund, to start up, to unemployed - yes I felt like a failure at the time. But if I gave up and quit then, I would not be were I am today.
Would read more about my life story below to see how my career path wasn't so smooth. Point is that nobody should expect to be successful at every stage of their life, success comes and goes, and I promise you your GPA is not going to determine how successful you will be longer term. It's all about grit and persistence.
Thank you, this is very helpful
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