Over the summer, many University students take on internships, gaining professional experience, building connections and strengthening their resumes. However, for some rising second-year Commerce students looking to pursue careers in finance, summer is not just a time to land an internship — it is a time to prepare for another, one that remains more than a year away.
The finance internship recruitment process, which includes opportunities in fields such as investment banking, private equity and asset and wealth management, is both a months-long marathon and a brief, brutal sprint, according to students interviewed by The Cavalier Daily.
For second-year finance hopefuls, the marathon begins around the time they return to Grounds in August, kickstarting the process of cold-emailing alumni, monitoring Handshake for firm visits and building relationships that will carry them through the process. The sprint arrives in January, when most applications open on the first of the month. Superdays — which are intense, final-round interviews that consist of numerous back-to-back conversations with employees of varying seniority — can occur within days of students returning to Grounds for the spring semester.
In recent years, this increasingly competitive recruiting process has influenced changes within the McIntire School of Commerce’s curriculum. While students in the Class of 2027 — and all prior classes — entered McIntire in their third year, the Class of 2028 was the first class to experience a new three-year program where students begin Commerce coursework in their second year.
The finance internship recruiting cycle was a notable factor in the decision to adjust the curriculum to a three-year program, as it lets students begin their Commerce coursework before finance recruiting ramps up, giving them a head start on the foundational knowledge needed to stand out in technical interviews.
For rising fourth-year Commerce student Shruta Thum, who was accepted into McIntire just before the program was extended, comparisons to peers at universities with three- or four-year business programs — such as the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business or the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business — made an already competitive recruitment landscape feel even more daunting.
“It did feel like I was behind a lot of the other schools with recruiting … where [they have] three- or four-year [long] programs,” Thum said. “I felt like I was behind them because I didn't have that business school curriculum that they had already gotten.”
This shift to a three-year McIntire program proved valuable for rising third-year Commerce student An Huynh, who will be interning at Goldman Sachs in the summer of 2027. She said that taking accounting and finance courses during her first semester in McIntire gave her the technical knowledge she needed to be informed and confident in her interviews.
“I found, in January, when I was restudying accounting specifically for the interviews and finance questions, I kind of already had a really good understanding of why this works the way it works,” Huynh said.
While the three-year program is designed to give students a headstart by introducing commerce coursework earlier, some students from the former two-year program said the difference in preparation is not as significant as it seems. They explained that many of the concerns about being “behind” do not come from actual gaps in knowledge, but from the perception that students in longer programs are better prepared simply because they spend more time studying business.
Among commerce coursework and networking opportunities, Commerce-related Contracted Independent Organizations, many of which are open to both Commerce and non-Commerce students, play a significant role during many students’ recruitment experiences. Many of these clubs have bootcamps in the earlier semesters for their members to learn key financial concepts, providing participants of McIntire’s two-year model with the financial knowledge they were not yet able to receive through their coursework.
Thum began full McIntire coursework after she was recruited for an internship at Goldman Sachs. According to Thum, her early preparation was largely driven by experiences outside the classroom — the most formative being the foundational concepts she learned through her commerce clubs such as Global Markets Group and McIntire Investment Institute, which provided structured training in accounting, corporate finance and valuation directly applicable to investment banking interviews.
Echoing this sentiment, Huynh, a member of Smart Women Securities, noted how being part of a network with like-minded people was especially valuable.
“It’s really nice because [SWS is] all women in finance, so that was a really helpful network,” Huynh said. “We had an event with [a] Barclays senior banker in tech, so I would say those kinds of special events were also very helpful.”
Although much of this early preparation occurs before students can draw on classroom knowledge, the connections built during this period can prove decisive later in the process. For Huynh, attending those informational events where she had the chance to speak with analysts and young alumni from the University helped her differentiate her options in a sea of opportunities that might have otherwise felt indistinguishable.
“I would really try to analyze how the analysts and the people who were interning there spoke with each other,” Huynh said. “I knew if I had multiple offers, which I was lucky enough to have, I [would] have to pick what is best for me, like ‘Who did I feel like I got along with the most? Who seemed like they liked each other the most?’”
Rising third-year Commerce student Jason Lu was in the first class of McIntire students to experience its new curriculum. However, he noted that much of the material he learned in his Commerce classes overlapped with his previous knowledge from MII.
“[In McIntire], we had the choice between [taking] finance and [accounting],” Lu said. “I specifically chose to take finance because I thought it would be more applicable … [But] I learned a lot of [the material] prior, through MII, so it was more like a good refresher. But I could see how [the three-year program] would be very useful compared to the two-year program.”
While Lu said his prior coursework made some Commerce classes feel like more of a refresher, Thum said her independent preparation for technical interviews would have taken the same amount of time regardless of if she had prior coursework in those areas.
“I put in, I would say, about two to three months of work that was studying pretty on and off … maybe three times a week for three months,” Thum said. “I don’t necessarily think that starting in [Commerce earlier] would have helped save that time."
Students across both the new and old McIntire programs emphasized that while earlier access to Commerce coursework can be helpful, it is not the sole determining factor in recruiting outcomes.
“I think that any student at U.Va. is very well-positioned to do well within high finance recruiting,” Huynh said. “One of my best friends in [Global Markets Group] is not in [Commerce], and we’re both working at Goldman [Sachs] together.”
Similarly, Lu emphasized that, at large, success in the recruiting process is not solely determined by the availability of resources through McIntire, CIOs or alumni, but rather how students choose to use them.
In a process dominated by high-stakes competition, constant networking and intense technical preparation, students across both McIntire programs emphasized a common theme — while access to resources matters, initiative matters more. According to Thum, the qualities that ultimately set candidates apart are often the least tangible.
“I don’t think you necessarily have to be in finance or [that] there is one straight path to getting a good job in finance or banking,” Thum said. “The concepts within finance are pretty easily learned, so [what] they’re looking for [are] the things that can’t be learned, whether that’s how you are as a person or your niche interests. Those have a bigger factor in landing you a job than I think most people realize.”
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