Hi, My profile: Just grad from UWat with Comp Sci undergrad Going into MStat in UWat thi Sept. Looking for intern for summer 2006. Does it worth while to fill out those apps on those ibank websites? I mean.. it seems impossible to get a job through those sites and most of the good jobs I heard are by referrals anyways.. on the other hand, I don't think a lot of US/UK banks come hire from UWat.... so should I put in several days of effort to fill those apps?Thanks!

> Looking for intern for summer 2006. Why not a graduate position? They've not closed yet...> Does it worth while to fill out those apps on those ibank websites?Yes - in the UK at least, a lot of a firm's graduate intake is through their graduate or intern programme. e.g. for a large ibank, such as GS, ML, MS ... some 50-100 grads go through this route.> so should I put in several days of effort to fill those apps?Yes, what else are you going to do?! Spend some time on each app, they all differ slightly.Deadlines for interns are usually after the grad deadline, normally Dec/Jan/Feb, but of course always aim to get it done asap.

Pokerboy - Excuse my ignorance, but what is UWat? And...A piece of advice on the "submitting apps" issue: If any of these firms are nearby, take a hardcopy of your CV and knock on the door! And when the receptionist says "go away" (or similar), go back the next day, etc.I think you'd be surprised at how effective this can be. It's by no means a sure thing, but it's better than the old standby "cover letter and CV" - probably on its way to the dustbin or the (massive, bottomless, never-to-be-accessed again) file cabinet.Get the name of the person you'd like to work for and drop the name with the receptionist/secretary! ("I thought I had an appointment to discuss the XXXXX position...") Follow him/her to lunch and, very politely, slap a CV in his/her hand after lunch - never before or during lunch, let him/her relax a bit. (This him/her construction is clumsy, but I'm doing my best to be "PC")Good luck, Pokerboy, and others out there looking...I never got a really good job without being a bit of a "pest" initially.Mike

That grade of persistance has a sort of charm to it.As Mensa0 says, sending a CV into many banks is a the sort of efficient data destruction that government departments would pay good money for.I've felt for a long time that there are a vast number of internships that don't exist, but would if it were easier to match people, and that is a subgoal of our entry level programme.The sort of internships you get by bugging people would be both better and worse than the structured internships run by HR through management.Formal internships are part of the recruitment programme, and most firms have a mildly efficient process for spotting people they might want to hire. This can make getting a job much much easier.Informal internships will have a higher variability, you might get given a really crap learn nothing job, or you might be taken under the wing of a master. But either are better than nothing.I have a standard bit of advice (other than registering on our DB).Learn Excel.That's it.The Mensa0 algortithm if executed diligently and repeatedly has an adequate chance of getting you to the point of where the Master says"ok kid what can you do for me ?"It would be tragically frustrating to reach this point only to say "what do you want me to do ? I'm good at set theory, could you use that ?"If I were young again (if only...) I'd make sure I was good enough to say :"You've got a pile of spreadsheets, they give you grief, some of the output is crap, and some are too slow. They cost you money, and waste your time".I'd guess that's true of >75% of every desk on the planet, so it's a good bet.So you offer to serve the great man, mending spreadsheets makming them less ugly, fixing bugs.First nice thing about this is that you produce a visible result (or you're crap so who cares). When you apply to that desk, or use him as a reference, they may recall you as "the guy who helped us".Next is that spreadheets are right in the faces of traders. For you to deliver an effective fix, they've got to explain stuff to you, so you learn.Fortunately in many sheets the granulartiy of the things they need to explain is small. Two bits to that. First it's easier to get small bits of their time, and of course you are less likely to be swamped by stuff far beyond your current capabilities.It is rational to expect a newbie intern to produce something useful in Excel during the summer. The % who can do useful C++, much less real hard sums is small.Of course the Excel they may need you to do may be crap, as is the way of all internships. They may have to produce a report of trades to some other bit of the firm ordered in a really irritating way, that no one has bothered to automate, and need to be sucked out of 4 different systems each of which has a different format. But you don't get to go home until the flaky system (there's always one if you have 4) delivers the data.Two months of that is not good.