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Not so great experience with 10k Black Interns

Hi. I applied to the 10kbi programme this year for the first time and haven’t had any luck with finding an internship. I wanted to see if anyone else has had this experience. I’ve spoken to quite a few people who did internships through 10kbi last year and the impression that I got was that it was pretty much guaranteed that you would get a placement.

I applied for CIB, Consulting, and Retail Banking. The first allocation I was sent was for a bank in London. They offered an internship in asset management and that’s what I’m interested in working in so I thought it was a great opportunity. I had to apply separately on their website. They had the timeline outlined on their website so I knew when to hear back about interviews, but less than a week before interviews were meant to happen I still hadn’t heard back. I emailed 10kbi to ask to confirm receipt of my application, and received no response other than a rejection email the next day. I responded to ask if feedback was possible and also got not response.

Around the same time, I got an email with my official allocations. One for retail banking (the one I had already applied to for asset management), and one for consulting. But the next day, I got a rejection email from another retail banking (?) internship, saying that I don’t meet their requirements as I’m not graduating in 2025. I’m not sure why I was allocated to them in the first place, I was under the impression that things like that didn’t matter for 10kbi, but surely they would take it into account when doing their allocations? I also have a few friends that did internships with this bank as first years, so I’m not sure why their requirements have changed. Anyways, now that’s two down, only one chance left for me, and tbh consulting really isn’t what I want to do anymore.

This whole experience has been really disappointing. I’ve heard nothing but great things about 10kbi and as a non-finance student, I thought it would be a great chance to gain experience which would give me a head up against other students, but this has left me feeling really hopeless.