When you apply to college, you might start by picking schools based on overall ranking, strength in your intended major, or the type of school. A job search needs a more specific direction. Investment banking, consulting, marketing, data analytics, and software engineering each require different preparation and follow different hiring processes, so a single “find a job” to-do list can’t cover them all.
You don’t need to decide in freshman year what you’ll do for the rest of your life. You do need to choose which directions are worth exploring and trying first. Only once you get down to specific roles will you know what to learn next, which activities to join, and who can give you useful information.
Find Out What the Job Requires, Then Plan What to Learn
The order your school teaches things in isn’t necessarily the order recruiting needs them in. When you’re preparing for an investment banking internship, you may need to get into accounting, valuation, and financial modeling ahead of your coursework. Consulting case interviews also take dedicated practice. You can’t count on being able to do them just because you’ve finished your classes.
For first- and second-year students, I suggest three things to start: find a few job postings for your target role, learn what the interviews actually look like, and then check what you’ve found with someone who has already been down this path. That way you can tell which knowledge you’ll need soon and which you can pick up gradually as your courses cover it.
If you memorize discounted cash flow (DCF) answers before you understand basic accounting, for example, you’ll usually just remember the steps and get stuck as soon as someone asks a follow-up. Understanding how the earlier concepts connect and then building on them gives you firmer footing. Consulting works the same way. Following someone else’s case and being able to work through a whole case yourself are two different things; you have to do the analysis, the math, and the discussion out loud yourself.
You also have to check timelines yourself. I lived through the shift when investment banking recruiting for summer internships moved up from fall to spring, and for some opportunities, preparation started a year or more before the internship itself. Schedules now vary again by company, region, and program, so you can’t treat “it starts in such-and-such month every year” as a rule for every program.
Evercore is a clearer example. Its 2028 Investment Banking Summer Analyst program in New York opened applications on September 9, 2026, with a deadline of November 15. In other words, students who had just started their sophomore year were already applying for the internship that comes after junior year. They were nearly two years away from starting, and recruiting had already begun. A student who waits until the fall of junior year to think about next summer’s internship will find that round closed long ago.
McKinsey also runs programs for students at an earlier stage that help them learn about later recruiting. Start from the Evercore 2028 Summer Analyst posting and McKinsey’s page for early programs, then confirm the graduation year, city, and deadline that apply to you. The specifics can change every year. The point here is less about remembering a particular date than about realizing that recruiting may already have started while you still think it’s early.
Before the formal summer internship, there may also be externships, early insight programs, leadership programs, and all kinds of summits. Some last a single day or a few events, yet they put you in touch with recruiters earlier and tell you when later internships open. First- and second-year students shouldn’t skip them just because they don’t look like “real internships.” One of them may be your first step into the places where recruiting news circulates.
Know Whether You’re Facing Campus Recruiting or Experienced Hiring
A lot of students think US hiring is simply “see a job, apply.” But campus recruiting and experienced hiring don’t work the same way.
Campus recruiting usually brings in a whole class at once for a given graduation year or program, with a fairly concentrated application window and a shared process and interview standard. In some industries, the summer internship is also a major route into the next full-time class, because firms give return offers to their summer interns first. Miss one cycle, and it’s the whole round of hiring you’ve missed, not a single position.
Experienced hiring is more team-by-team and as-needed. A position opens when someone leaves, someone transfers internally, or a team gets new headcount. There may be very few openings, and they come up at scattered times. If you’re about to graduate, have already graduated, or no longer qualify for campus programs, you need to track specific teams more actively instead of waiting for a single “fall recruiting season” to begin.
Networking plays a different role in each. In campus recruiting, it often helps you learn the timing early, understand the teams, and prepare for interviews, but you still go through the standard process in the end. In experienced hiring, if you know someone on the target team, they’re more likely to pass your materials straight to the hiring manager. Work out which kind of hiring you’re in first. Only then can you decide whether your time should go into public programs, campus events, or specific teams and roles.
Choosing Activities: Industry Ties, Long-Term Commitment, and Working with Different People
Besides learning what the job requires, you need activities and experiences that let people see how you put those abilities to use. Work on the following types at the same time; there’s no need to finish one before starting the next.
First, activities connected to your target industry.
For finance, try a stock pitch competition, where you pick a company to research and value. Along the way you’ll run into plenty of concrete questions: how the company makes money, where its competitive advantage lies, what the changes in its financials tell you, and why you think it is or isn’t worth investing in. Doing this seriously once gives you more to say than “I’m very interested in finance.”
For consulting, try a case competition. You’ll practice breaking a problem down, gathering information, making recommendations, and presenting your analysis to other people. Showing up is only the start. Whether you come away with your own judgment is what determines how much the experience gives you to talk about.
STEM students can choose research, engineering, or development projects in their field. The focus is the same: what problem you solved, why you chose that approach, and what you found once it was done.
Second, extracurriculars you can keep doing over time.
Plenty of students think they have to found their own club to show leadership. But starting as a regular member, later taking over as the lead, and making an existing club better shows your ability just as well.
What counts is what you specifically did after you took over. What problems it had before, how you solved them, and what changed in the end. Those are the things worth expanding on in a resume or an interview. Founding a club is fine, of course, but the title “founder” on its own doesn’t say much.
You don’t have to drop everything you did in high school just because you’re now job hunting. Volunteer work in your community can continue, or expand to reach more people. A school team can mean more training and competing, or organizing related events.
Instead of joining five or six clubs where all you can write is “member,” I’d suggest picking one to three you’re willing to commit to and going deep. What you’ll be able to talk about in the end will be much more specific than a string of club names.
Third, activities that bring you into contact with people from different backgrounds and require real communication and teamwork.
There’s nothing wrong with joining the Chinese student association (CSSA). But it’s worth asking yourself whether all your activities happen inside the same familiar circle, and whether you could do something aimed at a wider group of people.
Campus tour guides, for example, have to present the school to visiting students, parents, and other guests and answer all sorts of questions on the spot. Organizing an event across several clubs means coordinating different groups’ schedules and needs. Experiences like these give you practice communicating, and they also give you concrete examples for interviews.
Don’t judge by the club’s name alone. A CSSA member may have organized a cross-cultural collaboration, and a member of an international club may just show up to sign in now and then. What you actually did matters more than how “mainstream” the activity sounds.
There’s no fixed formula for combining these. What you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what your school offers can all shape your choices. Aim to build a foundation in what the job needs, plus experiences that show how you learn, work with others, and move things forward.
One Path into Investment Banking: How the Pieces Connect
Below is a plan based on the undergraduate path I know well, meant to show the order of preparation. It isn’t a unified recruiting calendar for every firm. Work backward from each firm’s official dates for the year you’re applying.
| Stage | What to work on | What you’re aiming for |
|---|---|---|
| Before freshman year | Learn about courses and clubs; tell apart investment banking, sales and trading, wealth management, asset management, research, and other areas; get some exposure to basic accounting if you can | A rough sense of what you want to explore, and where to find resources once you arrive |
| Freshman fall | Keep your grades up; join relevant clubs and recruiting events; meet older students; learn basic accounting; look into programs for first- and second-year students | Moving from an imagined picture of the industry to being able to explain how roles differ and what they require |
| Freshman spring | Learn valuation basics; keep networking; learn about different firms and teams; look for an internship where you’ll do real work | Starting to settle on a direction, and building a first experience you can explain clearly |
| Summer after freshman year | Intern or complete a relevant project; fill in knowledge gaps; try building a DCF and make sure you understand it | Coming back with material to write about and questions to keep asking |
| Sophomore fall | Do stock pitches and similar activities; review technicals; organize your experiences; keep checking when target programs open | Having your materials ready before applications open, and being able to explain your judgments |
| Around when your target programs open | Apply for the next summer internship; practice behavioral and technical interviews; prepare for specific firms and teams | Applying with specific reasons, so an interview invitation doesn’t send you back to square one |
I used to suggest that students aim to meet a few dozen people in the industry during a given stage, and even set 50 as a target to push themselves into action. The point of the number is to keep you from talking to two people and deciding you understand the whole industry. Hitting the count doesn’t mean you’re done. The real test is whether, after all those conversations, you’re clearer on how the divisions differ, what recruiting requires, and what suits you.
Early internships don’t have to be at big companies. A local company that lets you work on real tasks and real problems can give you material for your next step. If you can’t find a posted opening, reach out to a company and ask, but be clear about what you can do, how much time you can commit, and what kind of work you want to learn about.
If You’re Starting Late, How to Use This Table
The most common reaction to seeing the full timeline is: “I’m already a junior and I haven’t done any of this. Do I have to go back and do all of it?”
Start by confirming three things: which opportunities are still open, how long you have until you apply or start, and which of your gaps will directly affect this round of screening. If those aren’t clear, you can be busy catching up and still miss the opportunity right in front of you.
For example, say you already have an interview, and next week you’ll be talking about a past project. Getting that experience clear and preparing for follow-up questions is more urgent than joining a new club at the last minute. Industry research and networking can continue, but they should serve this round of applications, not walk you back through the freshman-to-sophomore activity chart.
If your target program has already closed, look for other ways into the same field: other entry points, other firms, the next round. Don’t keep preparing for a program you can’t apply to right now just because you don’t want to change your plan.
Go for the Programs You Qualify For, and Keep Building Your Strengths
When I was in college, I went to women’s summits at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and through that early-program route I got later internship opportunities. I’ve never felt the need to be quiet about this. The firm offered an opportunity that fit my situation, I prepared for it, and I went after it.
If you’re preparing for programs like these now, check that year’s eligibility and format. Some are about exposure and learning; some tie into later recruiting. Don’t look at a program’s name and assume that attending it means you’re in formal recruiting. But if you qualify, don’t start by doubting yourself: “Am I not strong enough? Should I really be coming in through this route?” The opportunity is open to you, and you can give the application your best effort.
Another trade-off I often remind students of: Don’t just stare at your weaknesses. Build up your strengths, too.
When I say “play to your strengths instead of patching every weakness,” I mean it as a guide to how you divide your time. If you still don’t meet a role’s basic requirements, you have to close those gaps. But once you’ve cleared what’s necessary, you don’t have to pour all your energy into catching up on what other people are good at, only to end up middling at everything.
If you’re good at writing and communicating, you can show it through research reports, campus tours, or organizing events. With strong technical and hands-on skills, look for projects that let you show them. What matters is how the strength connects to the work you want to do, and whether you can back it up with concrete evidence.
A plan isn’t something you pick once and can never change. Once you’ve taken part in activities, talked with people in the field, and interned, you’ll come across new information and may overturn your earlier judgment. Being willing to adjust based on that feedback is what serious planning looks like.