M&A internship

What kind of an internship is it? Summer, long-term, year long placement?

Pretty much what will2348 said.
In my previous teams we'd always quite like to give interns company profiles to do and lots of research.
Modelling wise it is highly dependant on how long you'll be there for, your team / staffer and how good you are. You are unlikely to build a model from scratch, but if you're not just a sumemr intern and your team is kind (or completely under water) you can get some decent modelling exposure. That can range from just plugging in a few multiples and figures into a football field to running a full template. If you have lots of previous experience you could even get a shot at building a model from scratch.
Whether tempaltes are used a lot or not is also a point. Many teams will have tempaltes for valuations. Some won't. Folks in my last team didn't beleive in tempaltes, so we rarely broke out a proper valuation for pitching purposes. And since we didn't model for the sake of filling in one figure on a slide with a football field which is meaningless, we never had tempaltes.
If you're working on a deal you won't (or at least shouldn't) use tempaltes but always build from scratch. An intern woudn't get to model for a live mandate.

That said, if you're really desperate you can try what an intern once did to me. Asked me if he can sit next to me and watch me build a model

You are generally not asked to do a lot of work on an internship. The point is to get a full time job at the end. Do what you are asked to do and do it well and promptly. Be likeable and enthusiastic. Don't **** basic tasks up.


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What kind of an internship is it? Summer, long-term, year long placement?

Only really true for a summer internship, and even then you might end up with a whole bunch of more or less real work


Pretty much what will2348 said.
In my previous teams we'd always quite like to give interns company profiles to do and lots of research.
Modelling wise it is highly dependant on how long you'll be there for, your team / staffer and how good you are. You are unlikely to build a model from scratch, but if you're not just a sumemr intern and your team is kind (or completely under water) you can get some decent modelling exposure. That can range from just plugging in a few multiples and figures into a football field to running a full template. If you have lots of previous experience you could even get a shot at building a model from scratch.
Whether tempaltes are used a lot or not is also a point. Many teams will have tempaltes for valuations. Some won't. Folks in my last team didn't beleive in tempaltes, so we rarely broke out a proper valuation for pitching purposes. And since we didn't model for the sake of filling in one figure on a slide with a football field which is meaningless, we never had tempaltes.
If you're working on a deal you won't (or at least shouldn't) use tempaltes but always build from scratch. An intern woudn't get to model for a live mandate.

That said, if you're really desperate you can try what an intern once did to me. Asked me if he can sit next to me and watch me build a model.

Sounds like you're applying to GS. I beleive there the cover letter was optional so I tihnk I left it out last time I applied. Got me interviewed at my 2nd choice office (not London) . for my 3rd choice.

From my experience,

Even if you know a lot, it's not that useful because every bank does stuff differently and this is what you have to get to grips with very fast. Most models I work on, you're just adding extra analysis, using a template, updating them, or fixing something. Never had to do a model from scratch or if so, it's a very, very basic analysis on something. Also, lots of powerpoint and ****ing around with Excel to make a graph look sexy and getting it into Powerpoint with all the right analysis/conclusions, engineering it to come to the right conclusion etc. Actually, my biggest problem was trying to make so much data look good/simple in a graph and presentable etc. Also, you're the guy doing the work so if you think in the presentation, some analysis is missing or would look better another way, or you should add something, then say. My Associate was disproportionately impressed by adding an extra row in a table on a presentation showing the trend of a different way of measuring a certain metric. Little weird things like that matter.

And actually, before you do anything, get a pen and paper and ask an Analyst to walk you through all the formatting rules regarding colours, bold, italics, types of graphs, hard coded numbers, font size and font type. Will save you lots of time later. And make sure everything is consistent in everything you work on.

Most of it is just asking the right questions to get what you need done as quickly as possible and doing what is asked. I've actually found you can get quite a few abstract and weird requests from time to time.

Posted from TSR Mobile

From my experience,

Even if you know a lot, it's not that useful because every bank does stuff differently and this is what you have to get to grips with very fast. Most models I work on, you're just adding extra analysis, using a template, updating them, or fixing something. Never had to do a model from scratch or if so, it's a very, very basic analysis on something. Also, lots of powerpoint and ****ing around with Excel to make a graph look sexy and getting it into Powerpoint with all the right analysis/conclusions, engineering it to come to the right conclusion etc. Actually, my biggest problem was trying to make so much data look good/simple in a graph and presentable etc. Also, you're the guy doing the work so if you think in the presentation, some analysis is missing or would look better another way, or you should add something, then say. My Associate was disproportionately impressed by adding an extra row in a table on a presentation showing the trend of a different way of measuring a certain metric. Little weird things like that matter.

And actually, before you do anything, get a pen and paper and ask an Analyst to walk you through all the formatting rules regarding colours, bold, italics, types of graphs, hard coded numbers, font size and font type. Will save you lots of time later. And make sure everything is consistent in everything you work on.

Most of it is just asking the right questions to get what you need done as quickly as possible and doing what is asked. I've actually found you can get quite a few abstract and weird requests from time to time.

Posted from TSR Mobile