It is theoretically possible to do that, but in practice, it’s extremely difficult to even get a corp dev or in-house M&A role without working in IB first. So I don’t think this is a great strategy. It’s like saying that you’ll play in the NBA and then move to college basketball from there. In cases where this does happen, it tends to be from corp dev at small companies/startups where they care less about your experience, and sometimes people can use that to move into IB… but not necessarily at a large bank, and not necessarily as a 2nd year analyst.

Might not be relevant to the topic on this blog
I was talking to a few MSF students saying you can first start off at Corp Dev or In house M&A teams in firms, and then jump to IB. It will also help you avoid the gruelling first year analyst work possibly & will anyways provide you relevant experience if nothing. Is it true that we can try jumping from In House M&A work from large corporations to IB M&A?

I responded to your question on the other article (https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-major/).

I am a recent graduate from a state university in Colorado, about an hour away from Denver and Boulder. I double majored in Economics and Philosophy and minored in Statistics, and graduated a year early (3yrs) with a GPA of 3.7 and no debt. The downside is that in order to do that I had to take summer classes and did not get any internships or finance-related experience, with very few finance-related classes from my degree (quite a downside, I know). Right now I am taking some online courses in order to make up for my lack of knowledge of the field, but I don’t really plan on putting those on a resumé for reasons you’ve gone over in other posts.

My question is, what is the best/most efficient/quickest path for me going forward if I want to get into IB? Right now I am thinking I’ll take whatever “finance”-related role I can get and do my homework on getting into an M7 MBA for 3-5 years. Is there a better or faster option than this? Or should I just hunker down? Thank you for the advice in advance.

If your goal is to work outside of China, which it probably should be since it’s almost impossible to win jobs there as a foreigner, then you should gain internship experience in other countries, even if it means a lower-ranked university.

India is a completely different game when it comes to IB recruiting. Please see:

https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-india/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/startup-investment-banks-india/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/india-big-4-transaction-services/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/private-equity-india/

Canada is a tough market because of the small size and number of candidates competing for a limited number of spots. For tips, please see:

https://mergersandinquisitions.com/?s=canada

The short answer is start interning early on and then network, network, and do more networking because that’s the only way you’ll have a shot coming from a non-target school there.