2025 · New York State
$49.2B
record bonus pool (before inflation) for New York City's securities industry, an average of $246,900 per employee.
State Comptroller7
The first job pays $110,000 before bonus, accepts fewer than one applicant in a hundred, and is decided in the second year of college. What these jobs pay, what they test, where the hires come from, and how early preparation now has to start.
The first job in investment banking pays $110,000 before bonus at most large banks, and the competition for it now begins in the second year of college. Six numbers frame the briefing.
Wall Street has its own vocabulary. These are the terms this briefing uses, in plain English.
A first-year analyst at most of the largest banks earns a $110,000 base salary before any bonus. Pay then climbs on a fixed ladder, and private equity pays more again.
A first-year investment-banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America or Citi starts on a base salary of $110,000, according to the banks' 2026 wage filings with the U.S. Department of Labor.1 Several elite boutiques pay more: $120,000 at Evercore, PJT Partners and most Lazard groups, and $130,000 at Centerview. Moelis pays $110,000, the same as the big banks.1 For comparison, the average starting salary for the college Class of 2025 was $67,983, and the median recent graduate earned $60,000.2,3
Those salaries jumped in 2021 and 2022. After years at $85,000, first-year pay rose to $100,000 at JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley in mid-2021. Goldman went straight to $110,000 that August, and the other large banks matched it by early 2022.4 At Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citi, the figure has not moved since.1,5
| Group | Annual pay |
|---|
From there, base pay climbs on a fixed ladder. Moelis's 2026 filings show $125,000 in the second analyst year and $135,000 in the third, then $175,000, $200,000 and $225,000 across the three associate years. Citi's filings show the same steps.1
| Year in the job | Base salary |
|---|
The bonus is where pay starts to vary. Practitioner estimates put typical total pay for New York analysts at large banks between $165,000 and $225,000 across all analyst years, and one recruiting firm says total pay for top-ranked first-year analysts starts at about $180,000, salary plus bonus.5,6 Across the industry, 2025 set a record in dollar terms: New York City's securities firms paid out a bonus pool of $49.2 billion, an average of $246,900 per employee.7
Even the internship pays at the full-time rate. Morgan Stanley pays its 2027 summer analysts $52.89 an hour, about the hourly equivalent of a $110,000 salary and more than twice the national average for bachelor's-level interns.8,9
Private equity pays more again, though less predictably. In Heidrick & Struggles' 2025 survey, associates and senior associates at firms managing $40 billion or more averaged $328,000 in total cash pay for 2024, compared with $232,000 at firms managing $1 billion to $2 billion. The survey's samples at the largest firms are small.10 More senior investors also earn carried interest, a share of a fund's profits, though weak payouts from funds have left much of it unrealized.11
The pay reflects the hours. In 2024, JPMorgan introduced a policy limiting junior bankers in its investment bank to 80 hours a week, and Bank of America rolled out an improved tool that has juniors log their hours daily rather than weekly.12 The money is real, and so is the workload.
The outlook favors bankers. Johnson Associates, which tracks Wall Street pay, expects 2026 bonus pools for advisory bankers to rise 15 to 20 percent, in what it calls the “Year of the Bank.”13 Its managing director, Alan Johnson, also expects fewer people to share them: “The people that survive are going to make more,” he said, though “it will be harder to get a job.”14
Banks teach the technical work after they hire. The interview tests whether a candidate can think, explain and hold up under questioning, and AI is raising the value of all three.
Ask the banks what they look for and the answers sound alike. JPMorgan wants “motivated, resourceful, analytical people” with “exceptional interpersonal and communication skills.”15 Morgan Stanley asks for “basic knowledge of and a keen interest in finance,” along with strong oral and written communication.8 Evercore lists the “ability to think critically about strategic issues impacting our clients.”16
Much of the technical craft is taught on the job. JPMorgan's nine-week summer analyst program opens with five days of orientation and classroom instruction in accounting, financial modeling, valuation and Excel.15 Goldman Sachs' president, John Waldron, has said Goldman turned him down after college, in part because he “didn't do well in the financial modeling test.” A second-year analyst at his first bank taught him how to build a model.17
The interview is still demanding. At Goldman, selected applicants record a video interview of about 30 minutes; those who advance are invited to a final round, the “Superday,” of typically two to five interviews.18 Across banks, candidates are asked to tell their story, explain why they want the job, discuss markets and recent deals, and answer technical questions. One widely used practitioner guide names accounting, equity and enterprise value, and valuation and discounted-cash-flow analysis as the most common technical topics at entry level.19 Private equity adds a practical test: candidates “will almost always have to complete a case study or modeling test,” which can be anything from a paper LBO solved in minutes to a take-home model and presentation.20,21
| Stage | Format | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| BankingApplication | Résumé and online application. Banks discourage scattershot applications: Goldman caps each student at four business-and-location choices a year, and JPMorgan recommends no more than three internship applications.18,22 | Academic record, experience and a focused choice |
| BankingRecorded interview | About 30 minutes at Goldman. Mostly behavioral, or “fit,” questions answered on camera.18,23 | Communication, motivation and composure |
| BankingSuperday | Typically two to five final-round interviews at Goldman. Banking interviews generally cover the candidate's story, fit, markets and deals, and technical questions.18,19 | Technical fluency, judgment and presence |
| BankingSummer internship | A nine-week program at JPMorgan that opens with a week of training.15 A majority of Goldman's summer interns are typically hired as full-time analysts, and at Bank of America the “vast majority” typically receive return offers.24,25 | Quality of work, teamwork and stamina |
| Private equityAssociate interviews | Headhunter screens, then timed modeling tests. Some firms, often smaller ones hiring off-cycle, set take-home cases that end in an investment recommendation.20,26 | Valuation, deal judgment and defending a view |
Artificial intelligence is now taking over the most routine of that work. In 2025, JPMorgan showed its internal AI platform building an investment-banking deck in about 30 seconds, work that had taken a team of junior bankers hours. The bank's chief analytics officer described staff moving from “makers” to “checkers.”27 Goldman Sachs told employees in October 2025 that it would “constrain headcount growth through the end of the year” and make a “limited reduction in roles” as it reorganized around AI.28 OpenAI enlisted more than 100 former investment bankers, paid $150 an hour through outside contractors, to help train its models to build financial models. In September 2026 it launched a version of ChatGPT for financial services, with Morgan Stanley and Evercore as design partners.29,30
The people running the banks say what that leaves for humans. Asked in September 2026 whether AI changes how Goldman recruits, Waldron said the firm was still studying the question, and then described its working thesis:
“I think our thesis would be thinking and analytical problem solving and intellectual curiosity. Old-fashioned elements like that are gonna be back in vogue.”
— John Waldron, President and Chief Operating Officer, Goldman Sachs · Inside Blackstone podcast, September 202617He described the most valuable part of a junior banker's job the same way. “The best learning was not actually building the model,” he said. “The best learning was sitting in a meeting with somebody senior,” working out how to answer the client's questions.17 Paul Moody, a managing director at the CFA Institute, expects the priority in early investment careers to shift “from processing information to exercising judgement.”32 At Blackstone Real Estate, the 2027 posting for acquisitions analysts has new hires helping with LBO modeling and with “presenting to Blackstone executives and partners at investment committees for final deal approval.”33
Economists see a bargain at stake. Apprenticeships “let juniors pay for training by doing menial work,” Luis Garicano of the London School of Economics and Kellogg's Luis Rayo write in a 2025 working paper. In banking, much of that work has been the models and decks described above. “Now that AI does that [work] essentially for free, the currency that apprentices are using to buy knowledge is vanishing,” Rayo says. In their model, juniors start on harder work, and once a fully trained worker using AI is no longer worth enough more than the AI alone, “advances in AI threaten wholesale apprenticeship collapse.”34,35 It is a model, not evidence about any one bank.
| Attribute | Employers seeking it |
|---|
For a student, the conclusion is practical. Banks teach the modeling, and a machine can increasingly draft it. What a bank cannot install after hiring is the habit of reasoning from the numbers to a decision and explaining it clearly to someone senior. That habit takes years to build.
Banks hire from many colleges, but a few dozen supply the most analysts. The elite firms lean hardest on them, and private equity leans on the elite firms.
Banks hire from many colleges, but not evenly. A widely cited practitioner analysis by Peak Frameworks covers about 12,000 LinkedIn profiles of U.S. investment-banking analysts who graduated from 2008 to 2023 and worked at 17 leading banks. The University of Pennsylvania produced the most analysts in that sample, followed by NYU, Michigan, the University of Texas and Cornell.37 The same analysis names 15 “target” schools, ranked on a blend of total hires and hires relative to enrollment and described as having “good representation at every firm.” Penn, Georgetown and Harvard lead the list.37
The concentration is sharpest at the top firms. Of the Harvard graduates in the sample, 58% worked at one of five elite firms: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Evercore or Centerview. The figure was 51% for Penn and 34% for Michigan.37
| School | Analysts in sample |
|---|
Undergraduate business schools send the largest shares of their working graduates into finance. At Cornell's Dyson School, 71% of employed 2025 graduates went into financial services, and a third went into investment banking or brokerage.38 At Wharton the share was 59.5%, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were the class's two largest employers.39 At Harvard, which has no undergraduate business school,40 21% of seniors entering the workforce were headed to finance.41
| School | Financial services |
|---|
That makes the college application the first gate on the path. Most of the leading undergraduate business programs admit students directly from high school, and several ask applicants to explain their interest in business in a dedicated essay.46 Georgetown's prompt is the most direct of all: “Describe your primary motivations for studying business at Georgetown University.”47
| Program | Admits first-year students? | What the application asks about business |
|---|---|---|
| Wharton University of Pennsylvania | Yes. Applicants choose one of Penn's four undergraduate schools. | Discuss a current issue of importance to you and how you hope a Wharton education would help you explore it.48 |
| McDonough School of Business Georgetown University | Yes | Describe your primary motivations for studying business at Georgetown University.47 |
| Ross School of Business University of Michigan | Yes | Choose a current event or issue in your community and discuss the business implications. Propose a solution that incorporates business principles or practices.49 |
| Dyson School Cornell University | Yes | What kind of business student are you?A 650-word essay.50 |
| Stern School of Business New York University | Yes. About 21,900 applications for 630 places in the Class of 2029.51 | — |
| Carroll School of Management Boston College | Yes. Applicants are considered only for the school they apply to.46 | — |
| McIntire School of Commerce University of Virginia | No. Students apply at the end of their first year.46 | — |
Private equity narrows the funnel again. In an analysis of about 300 associates in the 2020–2025 associate classes at seven of the largest private-equity firms, roughly half came from just three banks: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Evercore.52 The college a student attends shapes which bank hires them, and the bank shapes which private-equity firms come calling.
| Previous employer | Share of associates |
|---|
Boston families have strong options close to home. Harvard is on the target list, and Boston College ranks in the next tier, the “semi-targets.”37 At Boston College's Carroll School, 48.6% of employed Class of 2023 graduates went into financial services; at Boston University's Questrom School, 33% of employed Class of 2025 graduates did.53,45
Banks now take applications from college sophomores for internships more than a year away. Private equity starts recruiting analysts a few months into their first job.
The internship that leads to a full-time banking job takes place in the summer after junior year. The application for it now happens in sophomore year. Morgan Stanley took applications for its summer 2027 program from January 1 to February 15, 2026, from students due to graduate between December 2027 and June 2028.8 Bank of America's deadline was March 31, 2026.54 Before 2018, an Indiana University finance professor told Business Insider, many banks made these offers in the fall of junior year.55
Attempts to slow the calendar have not lasted. In 2018, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan said they would stop interviewing sophomores for junior-summer internships, which students had been accepting 15 to 16 months in advance; by 2021, banks were again making offers more than a year ahead.56 A University of Texas finance professor who runs the Wall Street for McCombs program said in September 2026 that interviews for junior-summer internships now start “in November of sophomore year.”57
Swipe sideways to see the whole timeline.
| Milestone | Timing |
|---|
The odds at that gate are long. Goldman Sachs accepted fewer than 1 in 100 internship applicants in 2026, for the third year in a row.58 About 240,000 people applied for fewer than 2,000 internships at Bank of America.25 These rates make a prepared candidate's odds look worse than they are, because almost anyone can apply: one reporter completed a full Goldman application without being a student.59
The screens arrive early too. The 2027 postings set grade bars: a 3.6 minimum at JPMorgan, a 3.4 minimum at Morgan Stanley and a preferred 3.5 at Bank of America.61,54,8 Steve Sibley, then co-director of the investment-banking program at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, advised students in 2024 to “take financial accounting as soon as possible.” His advice for anyone outside a business program was to teach themselves: “The earlier, the better.”55 Selective finance clubs have become a gate of their own. At three schools Business Insider reported on, clubs accepted fewer than 10% of their freshman applicants, and a Wharton sophomore said he knew of high-school students who began preparing to get into clubs as soon as they were admitted to college.62
The banks now reach younger students as well. Goldman Sachs runs its Possibilities Series for first-year undergraduates, and Morgan Stanley's Early Insights program is for second-year students. JPMorgan runs events for first-, second- and third-year students, and programs designed for high-school students.63 Interest in high school is rising: the Wharton Global High School Investment Competition drew more than 6,300 registered teams in 2025–26, up by more than 1,300 from the year before.64
The race does not stop at the job offer. Private-equity firms hire banking analysts for associate jobs that start 18 months to two years or more later, through a compressed, headhunter-run process known as on-cycle recruiting.26 Its start crept earlier each year until it came before many new analysts had started work.65 In 2025, the banks and several firms pushed back, and that summer's recruiting sprint never began.66,67 It resumed in January 2026.68
For families, the timing is the point. The decisions that shape a finance career now fall between the last year of high school and the second year of college. Preparation that once could wait until junior year now has to begin before college starts.
The skills banks and investors test can be learned well before college. The Boardroom's week is built around them.
The Boardroom is a five-day business program in Boston for high-school students, taught by the case method that leading business schools use. Its week follows the path a real transaction takes. Students size up a market, read the financial statements, put a value on a company, decide whether to buy it, and defend that decision to a board of working executives.
That sequence is the job described in the first four parts of this briefing, scaled to a high-school student's starting point. The week gives students the foundation every later stage of recruiting assumes, at an age when there is still time to build on it. It also gives a student something concrete to write about when a business program asks why they want to study business, as several of the applications in Exhibit 7 do.
Each day of the program corresponds to a skill that banking and private-equity recruiting tests later.
| Day | In the room | What it builds | Where it shows up later |
|---|---|---|---|
| MondayThe Market | Why some companies dominate for decades and others are toppled overnight. Where the advantage lies, and where the profit hides. | Commercial judgment | Interview questions on markets and recent deals, one of the four standard types of question.19 |
| TuesdayReading the Money | The three financial statements, read on real, name-brand companies side by side. | Accounting fluency | Accounting is among the most common technical topics in entry-level interviews,19 and it heads the list of subjects JPMorgan teaches in its summer analysts' first week.15 |
| WednesdayWhat's It Worth? | How a company is priced, and why the right number is an argument the advisor has to make. | Valuation | Valuation and discounted-cash-flow questions, also among the most common technical topics.19 In private equity, a timed modeling test.20 |
| ThursdayThe Deal | A real acquisition lands on the table. Teams act as the advisors and decide whether to do the deal, and at what price. | Deal judgment and teamwork on a deadline | Private-equity case studies, which can end with a recommendation for or against buying a company.73 |
| FridayThe Board | Teams present their recommendation to a panel of working executives and take the questions a real board would ask. | Defending a view under questioning | The Superday: typically two to five interviews at Goldman Sachs.18 At Blackstone Real Estate, new analysts help present deals “at investment committees for final deal approval.”33 |
Four capacities, each matched to something the earlier parts of this briefing show the industry tests.
Revenue, margins, cash flow and debt, read across three statements. This is the vocabulary every technical interview assumes from the first question.
Students learn how comparable companies and a buyer's control premium shape a price, and why two careful people can disagree about it.
Every case ends in a decision: do the deal or walk away. Students learn to commit to a recommendation and take responsibility for it.
Friday's board session puts each team in front of working executives. For a high-school student, it is the closest thing to a superday.
A practical sequence from ninth grade to the first internship, built from the recruiting calendar in Part IV.
Monday to Friday, 9 to 4, in the heart of Boston. Each session is a single cohort that ends the week presenting a real recommendation to a board of working executives.
Every figure in this report comes from a named public source and was checked against the original document or reputable reporting. Pay figures are reported ranges, survey medians or disclosed base salaries; individual offers vary by firm, city, group and year. Where a figure is self-reported by survey respondents, or comes from a practitioner guide rather than an employer, the exhibit or note says so. Recruiting calendars move from year to year; dates reflect announcements and reporting available as of September 30, 2026.
The Boardroom is an independent education program. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any bank, investment firm, university or other organization named in this briefing; names are used only to describe the public landscape of finance recruiting. The preparation sequence in Section 5.3 is general guidance, and every student's path will differ.
© 2026 The Boardroom. This briefing is provided for informational purposes for prospective families and the counselors who advise them. Figures reflect the public sources cited above as of September 30, 2026. Quotations are reproduced as published or as transcribed from the original recording.
Wall Street now recruits college sophomores.
The preparation can start sooner.
The Boardroom gives high-school students a week inside the decisions that banks and investors make: the market, the numbers, the price, the deal and the board.
