Finance Internship: How to Find One as a Freshman or Sophomore

A friend of mine from college called me one March about her younger brother, Owen. He was a freshman at a big state school, he wanted investment banking, and he had spent the winter applying to every bank program with "early" or "insight" in the name. Nothing had come back. His question was simple: can a freshman even get a finance internship, or should he just be a lifeguard again and try again next year?

I'm Stephen Turban. I co-founded Lumiere, a research program that pairs students with PhD mentors, and I now run WallStreetGuide (WSG), where I help undergrads work through the IB and consulting pipelines. Owen didn't need a better bank application. He needed a second lane: a list of small local firms, a short cold email, and a plan for how that first summer would feed the next two. He spent that summer at a small advisory shop near home. This guide walks through that plan in full, so you can run it whether you're a freshman or a sophomore.

Insight programs are the most realistic way in at this stage, so start with the top sophomore insight programs for IB. Diversity fellowships are another early entry point that many first and second years overlook, so check the 2026 diversity finance fellowship deadlines before they close.

Can you get a finance internship as a freshman?

Yes, but usually not at a big bank. Most freshman finance internships come from small firms, local businesses, and campus programs, not from Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan. Most large investment banks do not hire large numbers of first-year students into their traditional summer analyst programs. Instead, many major banks use early-insight programs, diversity initiatives, and exploratory experiences to introduce freshmen and sophomores to investment banking and other finance careers.

That does not mean you should spend your entire freshman summer without finance experience.

For first-years, opportunities are often more fragmented. Boutique investment banks, wealth management firms, private investment firms, family offices, search funds, local businesses, startups, and university-affiliated programs may be more accessible than the large-bank recruiting process. Some positions are formally posted; others are created through direct outreach.

Your first internship does not need to have “Investment Banking” in the title. The objective is to build evidence that you can work professionally, analyze information, handle responsibility, and are genuinely interested in business and finance.

Your freshman summer does not have to prove that you are already an investment banker.

It needs to give you a credible answer to the question: “What did you do with your first summer that made you more prepared for finance?”

When should freshmen and sophomores apply for finance internships?

Earlier than most students expect. Bank programs for sophomores often open in late summer and close by October of sophomore year, while small firms fill spots from January through May. Freshmen should start contacting small firms in the winter of freshman year for that summer. Sophomores should apply to bank programs in the fall and run the small-firm search in parallel through spring.

1. The finance internship ladder runs freshman summer, sophomore summer, then junior summer

The internship that most IB hopefuls care about is the junior summer internship, the Investment Banking Summer Analyst role that often turns into a full-time offer. Everything before it exists to make that application stronger. It helps to see the whole ladder before picking your first rung.

Here's how the three summers usually stack:

• Freshman summer. A small firm, a local company's finance team, a wealth management office, or a research role on campus. The goal is one real finance line on your resume.

• Sophomore summer. A sophomore program at a bank if you land one, or a bigger step up from freshman summer: a middle-market bank, a boutique, a corporate finance role at a larger company.

• Junior summer. The Investment Banking Summer Analyst internship. This is the one that converts to a full-time analyst job.

The part that surprises people is the timing. Big banks now screen most junior summer applicants during sophomore winter and spring, before the sophomore summer internship has even started. For current sophomores, applications for Summer 2028 IB internships will largely run in the first half of 2027. But there is an important new wrinkle: the timeline is moving even earlier at some firms. Evercore opened its U.S. Summer 2028 Summer Analyst applications on September 8, 2026, with a November 15 closing date—months earlier than its previous two cycles. Our list of IB internships to apply to in 2027 tracks those dates bank by bank.

So don't think of recruiting as having one universal “IB application season.” Track each bank individually. A firm can open weeks or even months before its peers, and applications may be reviewed on a rolling basis.

For a current sophomore, the practical takeaway is simple:

Do not wait until spring 2027 to start preparing for Summer 2028 recruiting. Your resume, technical preparation, networking, and target-firm list should be in place by the beginning of sophomore fall. Then monitor individual bank portals closely as applications open.

Walk through what that means for your resume. When a recruiter at a large bank opens your application in, say, February of sophomore year, they see your freshman grades, your clubs, and whatever you did the summer after freshman year. Your sophomore summer internship shows up only as "incoming," with nothing done yet. So the freshman summer is the last full summer of real work the screener can actually read.

The freshman summer internship matters because it's the only real work experience on your resume when banks screen for junior summer. That's why a paid role at a small local firm can be worth more to you than another summer at a job unrelated to finance. It gives you a real line, real stories for interviews, and a reason for the next firm to say yes.

Sophomore summer still matters. Middle-market banks and some regional firms recruit later, into sophomore summer and junior fall, and a strong sophomore internship helps there. It also gives you better stories for superday interviews that happen after it starts. Our freshman to junior roadmap lays out the full semester-by-semester plan.

2. Bank programs for freshmen and sophomores are short, selective, and worth applying to anyway

Before the list, one distinction. Most bank "programs" for underclassmen are not internships. An insight program is a short event, often virtual, that introduces you to the bank and can move you into its interview pipeline, while an internship is paid summer work. A few programs below are real paid summer roles. Most are one day to three weeks long.

Banks run these programs for a business reason. They want to identify strong students a year or more before junior summer recruiting, so they can see who they like before competitors do. That tells you what they screen for: good grades, a real reason for finance, and signs you'll follow through. It also means attending well (showing up prepared, following up with the people you meet) matters as much as getting in.

Here are the programs worth knowing, with current details.

For freshmen:

• Goldman Sachs Possibilities Series. A spring program of workshops and networking for first-year undergraduates. The 2026 edition was for students graduating December 2028 to May 2029 and is now closed

• SEO Career. A nonprofit that places students in internships at banks and other firms. It accepts first-years, sophomores, and juniors, and first-years can apply before they have a college GPA. SEO states that a 3.2 GPA or above is required for competitive candidates, while students with a 3.0 GPA may be considered. 

For sophomores:

• Goldman Sachs Emerging Leaders Series. A training, interview prep, and networking program by business track, running fall 2026 through spring 2027 for students graduating December 2028 to June 2029. Applications close October 4, 2026

• Morgan Stanley Early Insights. Virtual sessions for sophomores graduating December 2028 to June 2029, covering investment banking, sales and trading, research, wealth management, and more. Registration runs September 18 to October 30, 2026, with sessions on November 2 and November 5 

• Citi Early ID. A three-week virtual program for current sophomores, with training, mentorship, and interview prep, and a 3.3 GPA preferred. The 2026 cohort ran in the spring, with applications closing February 27 and 28, 2026. Citi has not yet published the specific Spring 2027 application deadline.

• Bank of America Sophomore Summer Analyst programs. A real paid internship. The investment banking version has been two 10-week internships over consecutive summers, with a spot in the junior program offered after a successful first summer. BofA has preferred a 3.5 GPA and has closed applications very early in sophomore fall, in early September in past cycles 

• JPMorganChase Fellowship Program. A five-week, paid, full-time summer fellowship for sophomores in select offices. It's open to students of any background, with outreach focused on Black, Hispanic, and Latino students 

• Wells Fargo Sophomore Discovery Fellowship. A paid summer program in Charlotte, North Carolina, with corporate housing, that can lead to an offer for Wells Fargo's junior internship the following summer 

• MLT Career Prep. A 20+ month coaching program from the nonprofit Management Leadership for Tomorrow, with a finance track and employer access. For sophomores graduating in 2028 to 2029, the general deadline is December 1, 2026 and the final deadline is January 15, 2027 

• Girls Who Invest Summer Intensive Program. A tuition-free program for sophomores: several weeks of on-campus coursework starting in late May, then a paid internship at a partner firm in July and August. The final deadline for the 2027 program is October 15, 2026 

Our full list of sophomore insight programs for IB goes deeper on the elite boutique programs, and the guide to diversity finance fellowships covers the affinity programs and their deadlines.

Apply to every bank program you qualify for, but don't let them be your only plan. They take small classes from large applicant pools. A student who applies to six programs and also runs the small-firm search below ends up with a summer either way.

3. The most realistic freshman finance internship is at a firm most students never think to email

Owen's summer came from a firm with a handful of employees. That's normal. Small firms hire underclassmen because they have real work, no formal intern program, and no one screening a thousand applications. An owner who likes your email can say yes in a single phone call.

Here are the kinds of firms that do this, and what the work usually looks like.

Boutique and middle-market investment banks. These firms advise smaller companies on selling themselves, buying other companies, or raising money. A deal might be a $40 million sale of a regional manufacturer instead of a $4 billion merger. An intern at a small shop might research possible buyers, pull financial data on similar companies, and help format pitch materials. That's the closest thing to junior summer IB work you can get as a freshman.

Wealth management practices. These are advisors who manage investments for families and individuals, from a two-person local office to a team inside a large firm like Merrill or Morgan Stanley. Interns often research stocks and funds, build client meeting materials, and learn how portfolios get built. Some large firms also run their own sophomore programs in wealth management, including Bank of America 

Corporate finance and FP&A at local companies. FP&A stands for financial planning and analysis. It's the team inside a company that builds the budget, forecasts next year's revenue and costs, and explains to management why actual results came in above or below the plan. A mid-sized company in your hometown, like a regional hospital system, a manufacturer, or a distributor, has this work, and a finance manager there may welcome summer help.

Small private equity firms, family offices, and real estate investors. A family office manages the money of one wealthy family. These firms are often tiny and rarely post internships. They respond to direct outreach more often than you'd think, and the work (reading company financials, summarizing deals) translates straight into IB interviews.

Here's why these roles help you move up. A banker reading your resume cares more about what you did than the name of the firm you did it at. "Built a comparable companies analysis for a $40 million sale of an HVAC distributor" tells a screener you've done analyst work. "Shadowed advisors at a large bank" doesn't. So when you're weighing two freshman offers, pick the one where you'll produce real work.

4. Campus options count as finance experience if you do real work in them

Not every first rung is an off-campus job. Two campus options carry real weight, and both can run alongside a summer role.

Student-managed investment funds. Many schools have a fund where students manage actual money, often part of the university's endowment. Members research companies, pitch stocks to the group, and vote on what to buy or sell. A student fund gives you a stock pitch you can walk through in an interview, which is exactly the kind of story sophomore program interviewers ask for. Join as a freshman, even as an analyst on a sector team, so you have a year of pitches by the time junior recruiting starts.

Research with a professor. This is the option I've seen work best from the Lumiere side of my career. Finance and economics professors often need help cleaning data, running regressions, or reading through company filings for a paper. A regression is a statistical test of how much one thing, like a stock's return, moves with another, like interest rates. Doing that work teaches you Excel, data, and how to read a 10-K (the annual report every US public company files). To find one, read the faculty pages in your school's finance or economics department, pick two or three professors whose papers interest you, and email them with one sentence about a specific paper and a clear offer to help.

Research also answers a question banks ask in interviews: "Tell me about a time you worked through a hard analytical problem." A research assistant has a real answer. Research assistant work reads as analytical experience on a finance resume, especially at a school without strong bank recruiting.

5. How to find a finance internship as a freshman or sophomore, step by step

This is the process I gave Owen, in order. It works for freshmen looking for a first summer and for sophomores who didn't land a bank program.

Step 1: Know where the listings live

Posted internships are the easy part, so check them first and fast.

• Bank career sites. Each bank lists its underclassman programs on its students page. Set a calendar reminder to check them in August, October, and January.

• Handshake. Most colleges use it for job postings, and local firms that recruit at your school post here first.

• Your career center and finance club. Small firms often email a specific club or career advisor instead of posting publicly. Ask your career center directly which firms have hired underclassmen before.

• LinkedIn Jobs. Filter by "internship" and your home city, and search terms like "summer analyst" and "finance intern."

Posted listings are only a slice of freshman finance internships, because most small firms never post the role at all. That's what the next steps are for.

Step 2: Build a target list of firms that don't post

Open a spreadsheet with columns for firm name, type, city, contact name, contact email, how you found them, date contacted, and status. Aim for a few dozen firms across your home city and your college town, since those are the two places you could realistically work for the summer.

Here's where to find them:

• LinkedIn alumni search. Go to your school's LinkedIn page, click "Alumni," and filter by city and by keywords like "investment banking," "wealth management," or "private equity." Alumni are the most likely people to reply.

• Local deal news. Your city's business journal reports on local companies that were sold or raised money. The articles often name the advisory firm on the deal. Those firms are your boutique and middle-market targets.

• FINRA BrokerCheck and the SEC adviser search. BrokerCheck and the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site let you search registered financial advisors and advisory firms by location. It's a free list of every wealth management practice near you.

• Family and friends. Ask your parents' friends, your old high school's alumni, and your friends' parents who works in finance or runs a business with a finance team. This isn't cheating. It's how most small-firm internships get filled.

Step 3: Write a short cold email

The cold email has one job: get a 15-minute call. It shouldn't ask for an internship in the first line, and it shouldn't run longer than a phone screen. Here's a sample a freshman could send to an alum at a small firm:

Subject: [School] freshman, question about your path into M&A

Hi [First name],

I'm a freshman at [School] studying economics, and I found you through our alumni network. I saw you started at [Bank] and now work at [Firm], and I'd like to learn how you made that move.

This semester I pitched [Company] to our student investment fund, which meant building a simple model of its revenue and margins. I'd like to spend this summer doing that kind of work for a real firm, even a small one.

Would you have 15 minutes for a call in the next two weeks? I'd love to hear how you got started and whether firms like yours ever bring on a summer intern.

Thanks,

[Your name]

[School], Class of [Year] | [Phone]

Here's why each piece is there:

• The subject line names your school and a specific question. Alumni open emails from their school, and a specific question sounds like a real person wrote it.

• The first paragraph explains how you found them and what you want to learn. It proves you looked at their actual background.

• The second paragraph gives one concrete thing you've done. It doesn't need to be impressive. It needs to be real and specific.

• The ask is small (15 minutes) and puts the internship question last, as a question about firms "like yours." That lets them offer without feeling cornered.

If you don't hear back in about a week, send one short follow-up in the same thread: "Hi [First name], just bumping this in case it got buried. Happy to work around your schedule." Then move on. Expect most cold emails to go unanswered, so send them in batches and track every one in your spreadsheet. How many to send each week, and what to do once someone replies, is covered in sections 6 and 7.

Step 4: Run the call, then make the ask

On the call, spend the first ten minutes asking about them: how they got into the field, what a normal week looks like, what their firm does well. People like talking about their own path, and you'll learn what the work actually is.

In the last few minutes, ask directly. Something like: "I'd really like to spend this summer doing real finance work. Is there any chance your firm would take on a summer intern? I'm happy to help with whatever's most useful." At a large bank, that question gets you pointed to the online portal. At a five-person firm, the person on the phone might be the one who decides.

If the answer is no, ask one more question: "Is there anyone else you'd suggest I talk to?" Every call should end with either an internship conversation or a referral to someone new. Send a thank-you email the same day.

Step 5: Get your resume ready before the first email goes out

Keep it to one page, even as a freshman. Lead with education (school, major, GPA if it's strong), then experience, then leadership and activities, then skills. Describe each role with what you did and a number where you can: "Researched 15 potential buyers for a client sale" beats "assisted with research." Our guide to the investment banking internship CV covers the format banks expect, and it applies to small-firm applications too.

Step 6: Prep for a small-firm interview

A small-firm interview is usually a conversation with the owner or a senior person. Expect three kinds of questions: why finance, walk me through your resume, and a basic question to test whether you've done any reading, like how the three financial statements connect. You don't need the full IB technical set yet. Know your own resume cold, and have two or three sentences on why this firm, based on what you learned on the call.

6. How many people should you network with for a finance internship?

Five a week. That's the number I give every student who asks, and I mean five real conversations: a phone call, a video call, or a coffee if they work in your city. Not five emails sent. Not five LinkedIn connections accepted. Five people who spent 15 to 30 minutes talking with you about their work.

Why five? Because networking is a numbers game, but it is also a relationship game. If you reach out to one person a week, you are giving yourself very few chances to build a relationship. If you send 50 cold emails without ever getting on the phone, you are creating activity without actually building a network.

Five networking chats a week is the target, and it takes about 50 cold emails a week to get there. The second number surprises people until they see it worked out, so here's the math.

Why 50 cold emails a week is the number

Most cold emails get no reply, and usually that has nothing to do with the email. The person was in a meeting, then on a call, and by 9 pm your note is 60 messages down in an inbox they'll never reach the bottom of. From what I've watched across WSG students, a well-written cold email to an alum gets a reply from somewhere around one person in five to one in ten. Emails to people with no connection to you do worse. That's normal, and it's the number everything else is built on.

Now follow one week of 50 emails through the funnel:

• 50 emails go out. Say 7 or 8 people reply, which is where you land once you count the one-week follow-up from Step 3. A good share of replies come from that bump rather than the first email, because it catches people on a quieter day.

• Not every reply becomes a call. One person is slammed until next month. One says "sure" and then never answers the two times you offered. One tells you to apply through the portal. Figure about half to two-thirds of replies turn into a call that actually happens. That's 4 or 5 calls.

• Good calls create new names. If you end each call by asking for one more person to talk to (more on that in the next section), a week of 4 calls hands you 2 or 3 warm intros. A warm intro gets a reply most of the time, because the email now opens with "Priya on your team suggested I reach out," and that's a name they know.

Add it up and 50 cold emails, plus follow-ups, plus a couple of referrals gets you to about 5 conversations a week. Send 20 instead and you'll get 2 chats in a good week and none in a bad one. Send 50 emails a week because the reply rate on a student cold email is low enough that anything less leaves you with a quiet inbox and no calls.

Fifty means 50 individual, researched emails, not one template pasted into a mail-merge tool 50 times. Each one follows the Step 3 format: how you found them, one specific thing about their path, one concrete thing you've done, one small ask. That research takes a few minutes per person, which is why the schedule below exists.

Who should the 50 be? As a freshman in January, most of them are the small firms from your Step 2 list, because that's where the summer role comes from. But put a few analysts and associates from the banks you'd want for junior summer on every week's list too. Those are the relationships section 7 is about, and they take the longest to build. As a sophomore in the fall, flip the mix: more bank contacts, since junior summer applications open within months, and small firms in parallel so you have a summer either way.

Never send more than 2 emails into the same firm on the same day

This is the rule students break most, and it's the one that does the most damage.

Here's what happens inside a firm when you break it. You find six alumni at the same middle-market bank on LinkedIn and email all six on Tuesday morning. Two of them sit ten feet apart. One turns to the other: "Did you get an email from a freshman at [School]?" Now your carefully written note reads as a mass blast, because from where they sit, it is one. Analysts forward those to each other as a joke. The best case is that all six ignore you. The worse case is that the one person who would have replied now doesn't, because answering a blast feels like a waste of their time. Emailing six people at one firm on the same day burns the whole firm at once, because those six people talk to each other.

So cap it at two per firm per day, and spread the rest across days and weeks. If a firm has six alumni you want to reach, that's two on Monday, two the following Monday, and two the Monday after. If one of the first two becomes a call, you may not need the other four. Or you can mention the first conversation when you write them: "I spoke with [Name] on your team last week and she suggested I get in touch." Now each email reads as a deliberate choice.

A weekly schedule for 50 emails and 5 chats

Here's the week I'd run as a freshman or sophomore during the semester. Ten emails a day, Monday to Friday, sent in the morning before class so they land near the top of a workday inbox. Calls go wherever the other person's calendar puts them, which usually means late afternoon or early evening, since that's when an analyst can step away for 20 minutes.

• Sunday evening. Build the week's list of 50 names in your spreadsheet. Pull from the sources in Step 2 (alumni search, local deal news, BrokerCheck, family and friends) plus any intros from last week's calls. Check the firm column and make sure no firm shows up more than twice on any single day.

• Monday. Send 10 emails before your first class. Then send the one-week follow-up to anyone from last Monday who hasn't replied. Answer anything that came in over the weekend and offer two specific times for a call.

• Tuesday. Ten more emails. First chat of the week if one landed. Log it in the spreadsheet the same day, with what they told you.

• Wednesday. Ten emails, follow-ups from last Wednesday, and one or two chats. Wednesday and Thursday are the days people most often pick, so keep those afternoons open.

• Thursday. Ten emails, one or two chats, thank-you notes for Wednesday's calls.

• Friday. The last 10 emails, follow-ups, and a 20-minute cleanup: thank-yous for Thursday's calls, every row in the spreadsheet updated, next week's calls confirmed.

That's about an hour a day on research and email, plus the calls. It fits around a full course load. Owen ran a version of it over spring break and into April, and the advisory firm that hired him came from a call a few weeks in, through an alum who knew the owner.

7. Keep networking after you land a finance internship

Most students who network well in the spring stop the day an offer comes in. The student lands a summer role at a boutique in April, closes the spreadsheet, and doesn't open it again until junior summer applications go live. By then every person they talked to has forgotten them.

Here's why that costs so much. When a bank opens its Investment Banking Summer Analyst applications, thousands of resumes go in through the portal. The ones that get pulled for a first-round interview are, in large part, the ones an analyst or associate flagged, after a call with the student months earlier. That referral isn't a favor from a stranger. It comes from someone who has talked with you two or three times, watched you follow through on their advice, and has a reason to put their name next to yours. That takes months. The freshman or sophomore internship is the start of your network, not the finish, because the junior summer pipeline runs on relationships built in the 12 to 18 months before applications open.

So the 5-chats-a-week target doesn't switch off when the offer comes. Over the summer, while you're working, take calls at lunch or after work and aim them at people in the city where you're interning. In the fall, keep going. Sophomore program applications in September and October go better when someone at the bank has already heard your name.

Here's how to keep the relationships alive without becoming a pest.

Send a thank-you note within 24 hours

Every call gets a thank-you email within 24 hours, the same day if you can. Three or four sentences. Name one specific thing they said that you'll act on, mention the next step if they offered one (an intro, a resource, a name), and close. Skip the paragraph about how grateful you are. A thank-you email within 24 hours that quotes one specific piece of their advice is the easiest way to be remembered. One line of thanks and one concrete takeaway reads as a person who listened. Four lines of thanks reads as a template.

If they offered to introduce you to someone, include two sentences they can forward as is: your school and year, what you're looking for, and the one thing you've done. Busy people forward a ready-made blurb the same day. They put "write intro for that freshman" on a to-do list and never get to it.

Ask for one more intro at the end of every good call

Step 4 covered this question for calls where the internship answer is no. Ask it on every good call. In the last two minutes: "This was really helpful. Is there one person you'd suggest I talk to next?" One, not "anyone." A specific ask gets a specific name, and "anyone" gets "let me think about it." Then ask whether they'd rather send an intro email or have you write their friend and mention their name. Either way, you have a warm email for next week's list, and one intro from every good call is what keeps the list of 50 from running dry.

Send a short update every 6 to 8 weeks

Here's the part almost nobody does. After the thank-you, most students never write again unless they need something. So the next email they send, eight months later, is a favor ask, and it lands cold.

Instead, every 6 to 8 weeks, send each person you've talked with a short update. One concrete thing: a class you started, a project at your internship, a result from advice they gave. No ask. The update keeps you in their memory at almost no cost to them, since they can read it in ten seconds and don't have to reply. And it shows follow-through, which is the exact trait they'll vouch for later.

Here's a sample, for someone you spoke with in February who suggested you take corporate finance before the summer:

Subject: Quick update from [School]

Hi [First name],

Quick update, no reply needed. When we spoke in February you suggested I take corporate finance this spring instead of waiting until junior year. I did, and it's already paying off. My internship at [Firm] has me pulling comparable company data for a sale process, and that class is the reason I understood what I was looking at in week one.

Hope your summer is going well. I'm back on campus in late August and would love to hear how the [deal, group, or move] you mentioned turned out.

Thanks again,

[Your name]

Why it works: it opens by saying no reply is needed, so it costs them nothing. It ties one concrete result to their advice, so they feel useful. It ends with a question about them, so if they do reply, the conversation is about their work and not your ask. A short update every 6 to 8 weeks with one concrete result keeps a contact warm through the year between your first call and junior summer recruiting.

Keep a tracker with five columns

Your Step 2 spreadsheet was built to find firms. Once calls start, add a second tab for people, one row each, with five columns:

• Name.

• Firm. Add the group or team if you know it.

• Date of last contact. The last time you spoke or emailed.

• Next touch. The date of your next update, 6 to 8 weeks out. Every Friday, sort by this column and write to anyone whose date has passed.

• What they told you. Two or three lines: their path, the advice they gave, anything personal they mentioned (a marathon, a move, a new group). This column is the whole point. It's what lets your April update reference the class they suggested in February, and it's what makes your email sound like it came from someone who was listening.

Don't overbuild it. Five columns in Google Sheets is enough, and the tracker only works if updating it takes two minutes after each call.

How to re-engage someone you've gone quiet on

You'll drop some. Everyone does. The tracker will show you a row where the last contact was five months ago and the next-touch date is long past. The instinct is to write a long apology, or to never write again out of embarrassment. Do neither.

Send a short email that skips the apology, gives one concrete update, and makes it easy to say no:

Subject: Update from [School], and a quick question

Hi [First name],

It's been a while since we spoke last spring, so I wanted to send a quick update. I spent the summer at [Firm], a boutique in [City], mostly building buyer lists and pulling comps for a sale process. Your advice to look at small shops instead of only bank programs is a big part of why I ended up there.

I'm starting to think about junior summer applications, which open in [month]. If you have 15 minutes in the next few weeks, I'd value your read on how to present that experience. If not, no worries at all, and thank you again for the push last spring.

Best,

[Your name]

Two things make this work. It reminds them who you are by tying you to one specific conversation and one piece of their advice, so they don't have to dig through their inbox. And the ask is small and easy to decline. Most people reply. The ones who don't were unlikely to help anyway, and you've lost nothing by asking.

8. The finance internship timeline, year by year

Here's the calendar for the two classes reading this now. Current freshmen are the Class of 2030. Current sophomores are the Class of 2029.

If you're a freshman right now (Class of 2030):

• Fall 2026. Protect your GPA, since sophomore programs screen on it. Join a finance club and the student fund if your school has one. Start your target list.

• Winter 2026 to 2027. Apply to the Goldman Sachs Possibilities Series and SEO Career Start cold emailing small firms in January for the summer, at the 50-a-week pace from section 6.

• Spring 2027. Keep emailing and taking calls until you have a summer role. Most small firms decide between March and May.

• Summer 2027. Your freshman internship. Keep notes on every project so you can describe it later with numbers, and keep the update emails going.

• Late summer and fall 2027 (sophomore fall). Apply to the sophomore programs above as they open, starting with any that close in September 

• Winter and spring 2028. Junior summer IB applications for Summer 2029 open, alongside Citi Early ID and other spring programs.

If you're a sophomore right now (Class of 2029):

• Now through October 2026. Apply to Goldman Emerging Leaders (closes October 4), Morgan Stanley Early Insights (registration closes October 30), and Girls Who Invest (final deadline October 15) 

• November 2026 to January 2027. MLT Career Prep deadlines on December 1 and January 15. Watch for Citi Early ID, the JPMorganChase Fellowship, and the Wells Fargo Sophomore Discovery Fellowship 

• January to spring 2027. Junior summer IB applications for Summer 2028 run at the same time. Run the small-firm search in parallel so you have a sophomore summer lined up either way.

• Summer 2027. Your sophomore internship. If you've already accepted a junior summer offer, use this summer to get sharper at technicals and modeling.

Sophomores have to run junior summer recruiting and sophomore summer recruiting at the same time, so start both lists this fall. It's the part of the calendar that catches the most students off guard.

9. If nothing lands by May, there's still a strong summer to be had

Some students run the whole process and still have no finance role by mid-May. That's fixable, and it doesn't end your IB path.

Here are the best fallbacks, in order:

• Keep emailing small firms into June. Some owners only realize they need help once summer work piles up. A part-time role that starts in June still counts.

• Take a paying job and add finance work on top. A full-time summer job plus a stock pitch for your student fund or a model you build on your own still gives you something to talk about. Walk through your model in interviews the way you'd walk through a project at work.

• Ask a professor for summer research help. Summer is when many professors have time for a research assistant.

• Line up a part-time role for sophomore fall. Small firms and local companies often take interns during the school year, and a fall role shows up on your resume before junior summer screening starts.

If you're starting from zero, our guide on getting into investment banking with no experience covers how to build a resume from scratch. A summer job outside finance, paired with a real stock pitch or model, still gives you a finance story to tell in junior summer interviews.

Where to start this week

Owen started with one spreadsheet and a batch of short emails over spring break. That summer at a small advisory firm gave him real work to talk about, and it's the line on his resume every interviewer asked about when he went through junior summer recruiting.

Pick the one step that fits where you are. If you're a sophomore, check the October deadlines above today. If you're a freshman, open a spreadsheet, find ten alumni in your home city on LinkedIn, and send your first ten cold emails on Monday. By the second week you should be at 50, with no more than two going into any one firm on the same day.