STEP Internship with JPMorgan NYC

This summer, I completed my STEP signature project through an internship program with JPMorgan in New York City. I was in the investment banking division and the financial institutions group, in which we provide M&A, equity, and debt advisory to a range of financial entities, including banks, insurance companies, peer-to-peer lenders, fintechs, and more.

My internship program proved to be challenging in a number of respects. Primarily, I was living in a very large, very diverse and at times overwhelming city, which made me move out of my comfort zone and get acclimated to independent living, from a social, emotional, and financial perspective. While I’m used to living on my own in college, being in NYC meant getting used to many features of city living that we don’t see in Columbus, namely public transportation, taxis, and getting comfortable navigating extremely busy urban centers. It exposed me to broader worldview, as I was living and working consistently with people from different countries, backgrounds, and belief systems. Most notably, the girl I sat next to lived in Cambodia, and another guy in my intern class was originally from Zimbabwe. Everyone else in my intern class came from different colleges scattered across the US, and all of us had grown up in different places. I had so many interesting conversations with them about the experiences of college students and international students acclimating to the United States. This gave me a richer and more informed perspective on politics, policy, and culture.

Additionally, the job itself was demanding and at times fairly intense. The job of being an investment banker essentially entails managing different deals and transactions for companies, whether that’s a merger, an IPO, or a debt issuance. As interns, we were staffed on live deals – meaning we were added as junior analysts to a handful of ongoing projects throughout the summer. The work we would be given would mainly be tasks that would help the analyst or feed into something the analyst was working on, but there were a handful of times throughout the summer where I joined senior bankers in calls and in meetings. JPMorgan has a very high standard for its work product and expects consistency, quality, and thoughtful work from interns. I often worked 90+ hours in a week, mainly making graphs and charts in Excel, making market update pages for analyst presentations, taking notes on calls, working on updates to an S-1, and lots of time spreading & updating comps and pulling numbers from FactSet and SNL.

I learned an immense amount that have given me a more developed skillset about the processes of corporate transactions, the interactions of financial institutions on markets and communities, the analytical skills of financial modeling, and how a number of very interesting companies work and make money. As I worked in a group that covered financial institutions, I understand on a much deeper, more operational level what drives revenue and profitability at banks, insurances companies, asset managers, consumer lenders, and a variety of other institutions. I have a true appreciation for the takeaways that can be gained from a hands on learning experience, like an internship. Additionally, I had to work harder and more efficiently than I ever have in order to keep up with the pace of work, which established habits that I plan to continue to apply and build on throughout this academic year and onward. Some of these strategies include taking thorough and thoughtful notes on all tasks, learning to synthesize my thoughts and ask detailed questions upfront, having a gauge for when I should work more on something or reach out for help, and how to budget my time.

One of the most challenging projects of my summer was the intern final project. This project entailed building a bank merger model from scratch, completing a corresponding slide deck, and preparing a presentation to a group of senior bankers. Throughout the summer, we were given brief training lessons and matching homework assignments, and the final project essentially pieced all of these lessons together into one culminating deliverable. We were given approximately 8 days, all of which had to be scheduled around work that we were assigned on live projects. Throughout the first half of the week, I focused on building the model, based on templates and precedent examples, and the latter half of the week fine-tuning a number of outputs, including analyses that detailed valuations at various prices, considerations, and synergies. This involved many hours of research, analytical decision making, and eventually synthesizing my thoughts and developing a well informed opinion about a theoretical merger. The project was satisfying in the sense that I drew upon a number of skills I had learned throughout the summer, and was therefore a culmination of a number of different experiences. In a short and intense period of time, I got to practice many of the things that I had gotten a taste of throughout the summer: sending professional emails, communicating articulately to seniors and executives, building a financial model myself, and checking my own work.

Two important learning experiences that came from the final project were among the most impactful experiences that contributed to my development. First, upon checking my project on the day the model had to be submitted, I found a rather glaring error. Rather than trying to cover it up, I recognized that it should be dealt with in the same manner as an error in an actual project presented to a client. Be honest and upfront about the mistake, and provide a corrected copy. Through this I learned the value of checking work carefully, being detail oriented, but most notably being honest and recognizing the possibility of human error despite hard work. Secondly, the presentation we gave to senior bankers ended up being much more like an interview. It was primarily fast-paced Q&A, with many of the questions being posed in a case-like, theoretical context. This challenged me to think on my feet, reason through uncertainty, trust in my own understanding of the model and the company, and to retain control of my emotions and composure even if the situation is unexpected or frustrating.

My summer allowed me to grow as a person and a young professional in ways that are highly valuable and applicable to my future. Most notably, I went into this internship hoping to convert it into a full-time job offer, which luckily came to fruition. I will be working full time in the same bank and group as I did this summer, so obviously the work that I did was very accurate practice for what my future profession is. Having enjoyed a week or two back at school, I already feel as though I’ve gained a sense of maturity from my experience this summer. I understand myself and my working style on a much deeper level from an intellectual and professional standpoint. I feel like I have confidence to conduct myself in a corporate setting and truly felt like I was a contributing member of the team. This internship was a vital step towards continuing my professional goals, and I am incredibly fortunate to be able to get the opportunity to learn and grow even more when I join full-time next year.