How to get into investment banking without a target school or a finance degree

What "target school" actually means

Every large investment bank keeps a list of universities where it runs a full campus process: a presentation in the autumn, a recruiting team with named contacts, interview slots reserved for that school, and a quota of offers it expects to make there. Those are the target schools. The list is short because campus recruiting is expensive. A bank that sends a managing director and three analysts to a university for a day wants to be fairly sure it will hire several people there, and the safest prediction of where next year's good hires will come from is where last year's came from.

That is all the list is: a forecast of where recruiting effort pays off. It is not a judgement that people elsewhere cannot do the job, and the banks do not treat it as one. Every bank also hires people the list did not predict, through referrals, through open online applications, through smaller firms that feed into larger ones, and through lateral moves two or three years into a career. The difference is that nobody comes to find those people. They have to arrive.

The practical consequence for a non-target candidate is simple to state and demanding to do. You need to produce, by yourself, the three things a campus process produces for a target-school student automatically: a reason for someone at the bank to look at your application, evidence that you can do the work, and an interview performance that confirms it. This article is about producing those three things, in the United States, in London, and in continental Europe, where the routes differ more than most guides admit.

Why the list leaks, and in which direction

Banks hire outside their target lists for reasons that have nothing to do with generosity. Campus recruiting produces too many similar candidates in the same weeks, and a group that needs an analyst in March cannot wait for the next cycle. Deal teams in sector groups want people who know the sector, which sometimes means an engineer or a biologist. Offices outside New York and London hire mostly locally, from universities that do not appear on any global list. And every bank loses a share of its first-year class within eighteen months, which creates lateral openings that are filled from accounting firms, valuation boutiques, corporate finance departments and smaller banks.

The leak is larger in Europe than in the United States, for structural reasons. London banks run open application processes with online tests at the first stage, so a strong applicant from any university enters the same funnel as everyone else. Continental European offices rely heavily on off-cycle internships of three to six months, which are advertised openly and recruited continuously, and a good off-cycle intern is the most common source of a full-time analyst in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan or Zürich. The American process depends more on relationships built the year before, which is harder to do from outside, but the United States also has far more mid-sized and regional banks, each with its own hiring, and more lateral movement.

None of this means the odds are equal. They are not. It means the question "can I get in from here?" has a different answer depending on which market you are aiming at, and the rest of this article takes the three markets in turn.

What the people who did it had in common

The Academy has taught students from more than seventy universities and from almost every degree subject, and the alumni who wrote about their experience on the Academy's blog between 2008 and 2015 include a large number who arrived with no finance background at all. Reading those accounts together, a pattern shows. They did not pretend to be finance students. They named the gap, closed it deliberately, and then talked about having closed it.

As I entered my senior year at Duke, I was very interested in interviewing for jobs in the finance industry, but as a history and religion major, I really had no background in finance or business.

I was searching for a program that would give me the knowledge and skills that I needed to really stand out in the recruiting process.

As one of the few liberal arts majors with no background in finance, I figured I would struggle and I will admit the course was intimidating at first.

Two things are worth noticing in those accounts. The first is timing: the senior-year student above was already in her final recruiting cycle when she went looking for technical preparation, which is late, and she said so. The second is the attitude towards an unconventional background. An engineering graduate who attended put it this way:

As an electrical engineering major and theater minor, I came to Swiss Finance with relevant skills but lacking practical experience.

How unconventional majors can be good training for investment banking: My engineering background has given me a foundation for understanding technology and the potential for the future, and my theatre background has provided me with the confidence and people skill to interact with others.

That is the right instinct. An interviewer does not want to hear an apology for a philosophy degree. They want to hear what it gave you that the finance graduate sitting outside does not have, followed by proof that you have also learned what the finance graduate knows.

Coming from a small liberal arts college, I had no idea what to expect going in and I can't believe how much I learned in such a short time.

The three things a bank needs to see

A reason to open the file

A bank's recruiting team receives far more applications than it reads closely. For target-school candidates, the school name is the reason to read on. For everyone else, the reason has to be put there: a referral from someone inside, a previous internship at a recognisable firm, a competition result, or a first line on the CV that makes the reader curious. The referral is by far the most effective, which is why the American section below is largely about how to earn one. In Europe, the online tests do some of this work for you, because a high test score moves an application forward regardless of its origin.

Evidence that you can do the work

The work, for an analyst, is building and checking financial models, producing presentation materials under time pressure, and understanding enough about valuation and deals to be useful in a meeting. A non-finance graduate has to show this directly, because nobody will infer it from the degree. The best evidence is a relevant internship. The next best is graded technical work: a modeling course with real submissions, a valuation you built and can defend, a case competition. Reading about valuation is not evidence; it leaves nothing to show. Building a discounted cash flow model on a company you chose, and being able to walk through every assumption in it, is. (If you want to know what that involves, the worked DCF in this series is a reasonable test.)

A story that makes the pivot sound inevitable

Every interview begins with some version of "tell me about yourself", and for a non-traditional candidate this question is the whole interview in miniature. The interviewer wants to understand how a person who studied chemistry came to want to spend eighty hours a week on merger models, and whether the explanation is a passing enthusiasm or a decision. The answer has to be specific. "I like problem-solving and working with numbers" describes half the graduates in the world. "In my second year I spent a summer at a family-owned manufacturer and watched them sell a division without understanding what it was worth; I have been learning how that question gets answered ever since" describes one person, and it is a story the interviewer will repeat to colleagues. The interview guide in this series sets out how to build that answer.

Route one: the United States

The American process is the earliest and the most relationship-driven of the three. Large banks now open applications for summer analyst internships in the spring of a student's second year, well over a year before the internship starts, and many of the people who get interviews have been in contact with the bank for months before the application form opens. The recruiting timeline article sets out the calendar in detail. For a non-target candidate, four parts of it matter most.

Informational conversations, systematically

Alumni of your university who work at banks, people who went to the same secondary school, members of the same societies, and second-degree contacts introduced by any of them will usually agree to a twenty-minute call about their work. The purpose of the call is not to ask for a job. It is to become a name that somebody inside recognises when your application arrives, and to learn enough about the group to make your application specific. Done properly this is a spreadsheet exercise: a list of fifty to a hundred people, a short and courteous request, a call prepared with real questions, a thank-you, and a follow-up a few months later with something concrete to report. Target-school students do this too, but they can do less of it because the campus process does part of the work. A non-target candidate has to do all of it.

The firms that actually hire outside the list

Bulge-bracket banks in New York are the hardest entry point from a non-target school and the one most people aim at. Middle-market banks, regional firms, industry-specialist boutiques and the regional offices of large banks (Chicago, Houston, Charlotte, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto) hire a larger share of their analysts from universities near them, and their analysts move to larger banks later with some regularity. A first role at a smaller firm is not a consolation prize; for a non-target candidate it is often the main road.

Diversity and early-identification programmes

Most large banks run programmes for first- and second-year students from groups under-represented in finance, and some run early-identification programmes aimed at students whose universities are not on the target list. These are published on each bank's careers site and have their own deadlines, usually earlier than the main process. Eligibility criteria vary and should be read carefully rather than assumed.

The lateral route

If the undergraduate cycle has passed, the realistic path runs through a role that banks recruit laterally from: transaction services or valuation at a large accounting firm, a corporate development team, a smaller bank, or an equity research position. Two years of that work plus a sustained networking effort is a well-trodden path into an analyst or associate role, and it is how a large fraction of the people in any bank's second-year class arrived.

Route two: London

London is, by most measures, the most open of the three markets to candidates from outside the usual universities, because the first stages of the process are run on applications and tests rather than on campus visits.

Spring weeks and the first-year advantage

Most London banks run spring insight programmes during the Easter vacation for students in the first year of a three-year degree (second year of a four-year degree). Applications open in the autumn. The programmes are short, paid, and widely used as a pre-selection for summer internships the following year: a strong spring-week participant may be interviewed for the summer internship before the main application round opens. For a non-target student this is the most valuable door in the whole system, because it is open before the bank has formed any view of your university, and it is open to anyone who applies in time. The commonest mistake is not knowing it exists until the second year.

Open applications, tests and assessment centres

Summer internships for penultimate-year students open from late August and are usually filled on a rolling basis, so the same application submitted in September and in November has different odds. The early stages are an online form, a numerical and situational-judgement test, and often a recorded video interview. Those stages are blind to your university in practice: the test score is the test score. Candidates who reach the assessment centre are judged on a group exercise, a case study and interviews against published competencies. Non-target candidates who prepare for the tests seriously, and apply in the first weeks, reach assessment centres at rates that would surprise anyone who only knows the American system.

A master's degree as a reset

A one-year master's degree in finance or a related subject at a strongly recruited university is a common European route for graduates whose first degree was elsewhere or in another field. It is expensive and it only works if you use the year's recruiting cycle properly, which means applying for internships in the first weeks of the course, not at the end of it.

Route three: continental Europe

Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Amsterdam, Zürich and Geneva each have investment banking offices of the global banks, strong domestic banks and a layer of local advisory boutiques. They hire differently from London in three ways that favour a persistent candidate.

Off-cycle internships are the real door

Continental offices run summer internships, but much of their junior hiring comes through off-cycle internships: full-time placements of three to six months that start throughout the year. They are advertised openly, recruited continuously, and frequently lead to a second internship or a full-time offer. In France the final-year "stage" of six months is built into most business-school and engineering degrees, and the banks are organised around it. In Germany and Switzerland a "Praktikum" of several months is the normal first step and a candidate may do two or three at different firms before a permanent offer. The practical implication: a non-target candidate who can commit six months to an internship in a continental city has more entry points per year than a candidate applying only for New York or London summers.

Languages

English is the working language of deal teams everywhere, but in Frankfurt and Zürich fluent German, and in Paris fluent French, are expected for client-facing work and are often a filter at the application stage. Milan and Madrid are similar with Italian and Spanish. Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen operate largely in English. A non-target candidate with a strong second language has a genuine advantage in the relevant market, and should apply where the language is an asset rather than where it is irrelevant.

Switzerland in particular

Swiss finance is larger in private banking and asset management than in investment banking, which changes the shape of the market. Zürich and Geneva have investment banking teams at the large Swiss and international banks and at a number of independent advisory firms, but the broader set of entry roles is in wealth management, asset management, trading and the finance functions of the cantonal banks. Internships are typically six to twelve months. Admission to the market for non-Swiss and non-EU nationals depends on work-permit rules that favour EU and EFTA citizens and limit third-country hires to quotas, so a candidate from outside Europe should check their position before investing in Swiss applications. Universities with strong finance recruiting into Zürich and Geneva include St. Gallen, ETH Zürich, the University of Zürich and the University of Lausanne, but the Swiss market, like the German, is used to candidates arriving through internships from anywhere.

The Nordics

Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki have active advisory markets served by the Nordic banks, a few international banks and specialist boutiques. Cohorts are small, English is sufficient in most teams, summer internships are the main route and the networks are tight, which rewards candidates who make themselves known early. The Academy runs intensives in Stockholm, and the Nordic market is one of the regions this series will return to.

Building the evidence: a twelve-month plan

The plan below assumes you are at least a full recruiting cycle away from the internship you want. If you are closer than that, compress it, and aim at the entry points that recruit later: off-cycle internships, smaller firms, and graduate programmes.

The order matters. Technical knowledge comes first because it makes the networking conversations useful: a call in which you can ask an intelligent question about a recent deal is remembered; a call in which you ask what an analyst does is not.

Mistakes that cost non-target candidates

• Applying only to the names you know. The five best-known banks in New York receive the most non-target applications and make the fewest non-target offers. Breadth across firms and cities is the single biggest lever you control.
• Starting in the final year. The system is built around the year before the internship. A final-year student is competing for graduate roles against candidates who already have a summer behind them.
• Hiding the background. A CV that buries a music degree under a list of finance society memberships reads as evasive. State the degree, then show the pivot.
• Treating a certificate as a credential. No course replaces a referral or an internship. A course is useful for what it lets you build and discuss; it is not useful as a line on a CV on its own.
• Networking without substance. A request for a call with nothing to say wastes the contact. Prepare questions that only someone inside can answer.
• Ignoring work rights. Banks will rarely sponsor a visa for an intern. Know where you can legally work before you build a list around markets where you cannot.

A note on certificates, including ours

Swiss Finance Academy sells investment banking courses, so a reader is entitled to discount what we say about them. Here is the honest version. A certificate from any provider does not get a non-target candidate an interview. What a serious course does is produce the second of the three things a bank needs to see: graded, specific technical work you can put in front of an interviewer and defend, built on your own time because nobody built it for you. That has been the Academy's purpose since it began in Verbier, and the alumni accounts quoted above are from people who used it that way. Whether you use our course, another provider's, or a stack of textbooks and a spreadsheet, the test is the same: can you walk a managing director through a valuation you built, and does your story explain why you built it?

Questions people ask

Can I get into investment banking with a humanities degree?

Yes. Banks hire history, languages, philosophy and science graduates every year. What they will not do is assume you have the technical basics, so you need to show them: a graded course, a modeling portfolio or a relevant internship, plus an interview performance that proves it.

Is it easier to break in from a non-target school in Europe or the United States?

Europe, on balance. London and continental banks run more structured, test-based processes that are open to any applicant, and off-cycle internships give non-target candidates a second and third entry point each year. The American process depends more heavily on referrals and early campus recruiting.

Does an investment banking certificate replace a target school?

No. A certificate is evidence of technical skill, which is one of three things a bank wants, alongside a credible story and someone inside willing to vouch for you. Treat it as a tool for the first and a conversation starter for the third.

How late is too late to start?

For a summer internship, applications in the United States and the United Kingdom open roughly a year before the internship starts. If you have missed that window, the realistic routes are off-cycle internships, smaller firms and graduate programmes, all of which recruit later or continuously.