The school year is barely a month old, but for college students hoping to land a primo internship next summer it might already be too late.
Elite financial firms that pay around $50,000 for 10-week programs have been recruiting for weeks, if not months. While most of their peers are still decorating their dorm rooms, hard-charging undergrads are vying for these coveted seats.
Some already have offers for 2027 or are deep in the interview process. And just as students
The school year is barely a month old, but for college students hoping to land a primo internship next summer it might already be too late.
Elite financial firms that pay around $50,000 for 10-week programs have been recruiting for weeks, if not months. While most of their peers are still decorating their dorm rooms, hard-charging undergrads are vying for these coveted seats.
Some already have offers for 2027 or are deep in the interview process. And just as students are in a frenzied competition with one another, firms such as Citadel, Five Rings and Jane Street Capital are hustling to lock down the most promising talent before their rivals do.
In this arms race, 20-year-olds now command pay rates that most Americans don’t reach at the peaks of their careers, never mind as interns.
“When I got the offer call and they said how much the salary was, I asked a few times if they were saying the right number,” says Karthik Kallam, fresh off a quantitative-trading internship at Susquehanna International Group. “I can’t fathom how an intern should be making that much money.”
Top internship programs have long been competitive, but those dangling stratospheric compensation rates now have acceptance rates of less than 1%. You’d have a better chance of getting into Harvard.
The result is that application cycles keep starting earlier. Some firms now open applications for the following summer’s internships while the current cohort is still on the job.
Starting early affords time for multiple rounds of interviews. These culminate in on-site “superdays” where evaluators gauge whether candidates are as impressive in person as they seemed on-screen—and don’t have access to AI.
The most selective financial firms are often looking for a kind of raw intelligence that doesn’t show up on students’ transcripts. They sometimes scout collegiate chess and poker tournaments, looking for people who are uncannily good at playing the odds and anticipating what will happen next.
Kallam plays both games competitively. He says he believes his prowess at the table did more to boost his internship application than his sparkling GPA at Ohio State, where he is studying computer science and statistics.
Then there is the quant factor. In quantitative finance, where many of the highest-paying internships are concentrated, experience arguably matters less than in most other disciplines.
If you were choosing a personal-financial planner, you’d want someone with decades’ worth of judgment and intuition—a pro with a steady demeanor that comes from having seen it all before.
Quant traders don’t necessarily need that. They use mathematical models to predict where markets are going and take pride in removing emotion from investment decisions.
“They can become exceptional very quickly because of their technical skills and the opportunities we give them,” says John Talarico, global head of talent acquisition at Millennium Management, though he adds that experience is a plus.
In this way, finding promising talent for niche finance roles is a bit like scouting athletes.
A college quarterback may not know how to read an NFL defense or have any experience in a professional team’s style of play. Yet coaches might see potential in his arm strength and decision-making.
Similarly, firms like Millennium might see an upside in candidates who have never taken a finance course. If their logic, problem solving and pattern recognition are off the charts, then they could become major moneymakers.
To find out whether they have what it takes, it’s worth paying them handsomely for the 10-week equivalent of training camp. At this level, interns aren’t fetching coffee; they are auditioning for full-time jobs with base salaries around $300,000.
With so much at stake, shenanigans are inevitable.
“Always say you’re a junior” is the unofficial motto of students applying for top-flight financial internships, a former Arrowstreet Capital intern told me. The thinking is that third-year college students are the most appealing because they are close to graduation. Sophomores and freshmen sometimes fudge their class years in hopes of improving their chances.
And I thought college students only lied about their ages to get into bars.
Their deception is laced with desperation. A lot of high-achieving students have an unhealthy fear of falling behind, says Joe Catrino, executive director of the Dartmouth Center for Career Design.
“It’s a troubling thing for us because we see students that have this anxiety and stress that they have to figure out what they want to do, and they just got here,” he says.
At Ivy and other top colleges, this often results in a frenzied effort to gain acceptance into selective clubs on campus almost as soon as first-year orientation wraps up. Membership promises a standout résumé line, as well as access to peer and alumni networks.
Ishaan Shah recalls being rejected by the quantitative-trading club at Penn in his first semester of college. He applied again in the spring semester—and was turned down once more.
The third time was the charm. Being in the quant club helped propel him to an internship at Susquehanna last summer as a rising senior. But he didn’t receive an offer to return after graduation.
“Just because you’ve got an internship offer at one place and have seen that big paycheck, it doesn’t mean you’ve made it,” he says.
The disappointment didn’t last long; Shah landed a full-time job offer from another firm a couple of weeks ago. Still, his highs and lows underscore how precarious these ultracompetitive internship programs can be.
Even for those who are highly skilled at making predictions, the surest bet is that you’ll be humbled eventually.
Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com
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