We Analyzed 2,500+ Intern Profiles at Goldman, McKinsey, Deloitte, and 25 Other Top Firms. Here's What They Actually Had on Their Resume.

TL;DR

• We analyzed 2,500+ LinkedIn profiles of students who landed summer internships at 28 top firms across investment banking, consulting, Big 4, and tech. Two out of three already had at least one internship when they got the offer.

• School prestige mattered less than expected. At the Big 4, interns came from 146 different schools. In SWE, school tier had zero effect on prior experience. Even at Goldman Sachs, 24% of summer analysts came from outside the top 100 universities.

• The bar is rising fast. In SWE, the share of interns with prior experience jumped from 33% (class of 2023) to 81% (class of 2026). IB went from 72% to 94%.

• Each industry has a different "key." IB: one finance-adjacent internship. Consulting: a student consulting club or case competition. Big 4: an accounting major and one local accounting stint. SWE: a dev internship or research project.

• Class year changes your benchmark more than school does. Junior-summer IB applicants: 71% had a finance internship. Sophomore-summer: 29%.

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How We Collected This Data

Everyone tells you to "get relevant experience" before applying for a top internship. But nobody tells you how much, what kind, or how it stacks up across firms. So we went and looked.

We pulled over 2,500 publicly listed LinkedIn profiles of students who held summer analyst, summer consultant, or intern positions at 28 of the most competitive employers: nine bulge bracket banks, seven strategy consultancies (including McKinsey, BCG, and Bain), four Big 4 accounting firms, and eight major tech companies. Then we looked at what each person had on their profile at the point when they would've received their offer, typically 9 to 12 months before the internship started.

Every number here is an aggregate. No individual profiles are shown or named. And to our knowledge, nobody has published an analysis like this before.

How Many Internships Did They Have Before Getting the Offer?

Across every industry we looked at, roughly two out of three admits already had at least one internship or research experience when they got the offer. And in consulting? Closer to nine out of ten.

Those numbers are higher than most students expect. But here's what matters more.

What Their First Internship Actually Looked Like

Among IB summer analysts, only 6% had done a previous investment banking internship. Six percent. So what did the other 94% have? Adjacent roles, mostly. PE and VC firms (35 people), corporate finance departments (24), accounting and consulting firms (22), and equity research (19). Plenty started with something completely unrelated to finance.

At the Big 4, the pattern was even more accessible. Half of the students who had a prior accounting internship did it at a local CPA firm or a company's finance department. Not a brand-name employer. Not even a mid-size firm. Just a small office where they filed tax returns or reconciled accounts for a summer.

In SWE, university research labs were the second most common entry point after dev internships (91 people), followed by IT support roles (31). You don't need a previous FAANG stamp to get your first one.

The first experience on your resume doesn't need to be impressive. It needs to exist. If you're looking for that first step, here's what's open right now in finance and consulting.

Does Your School Actually Matter?

Yes. But not the way most people think. And it depends entirely on which industry you're looking at.

In software engineering, school tier had no measurable effect on prior experience. Students from tier 3 schools (outside the top 100) actually had slightly more internships on average (1.85) than tier 1 students (1.65). Big tech employers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft drew 21% of their interns from tier 3 schools. If you can pass the technical screen, where you went to school isn't the filter.

At the Big 4, school was a non-factor. Our 163 Big 4 audit and tax interns came from 146 different schools. No single university contributed more than three people. And the credential that mattered? An accounting major (84% of admits), not a prestigious diploma.

In investment banking, school was the most correlated factor. But it determined which bank, not whether you get in. Students from outside the top 100 schools made up 16% of all IB admits. At JPMorgan, 35% of the summer class came from those schools. At Goldman Sachs, 24%.

The School-Experience Tradeoff in Investment Banking

Here's something that surprised us. Tier 3 students who made it into IB had more prior experience than their tier 1 peers. They compensated for the school gap with about half an extra internship on average. Put differently: the less prestigious the school, the stronger the resume needed to be. But the resumes existed.

And school prestige varied a lot across banks:

JPMorgan and Wells Fargo cast the widest net. PJT Partners and UBS are the most concentrated at target schools. But none of these had zero from tier 3. If you're at a non-target school, the door is smaller, not locked. You just need to bring more on your resume.

How Much Harder Is It Now Than Three Years Ago?

We compared the profiles of students whose internships started in 2023 against those starting in 2026. The change is stark.

Share of interns with at least one prior internship at offer time.

In SWE, the jump is wild: from a third to four fifths in three years. IB and consulting started higher and still climbed 20 points each.

Some of this probably reflects better LinkedIn profile hygiene. Students in 2026 are more likely to list every role they've held. But the direction is real, and it's accelerating. Your competition this year has more on their resume than your competition two years ago.

So waiting another semester to "figure things out" has a real cost.

What Each Industry Actually Looks For (According to the Data)

Job descriptions ask for "leadership, teamwork, and analytical skills." Honestly? That tells you nothing. Here's what actually showed up on the profiles of students who got in.

Investment Banking: One Finance-Adjacent Internship

The threshold is one internship in a finance-adjacent field. It doesn't need to be at a bank. PE, VC, corporate finance departments, wealth management, and equity research all counted in our data. Only 6% had done a previous IB internship specifically.

Beyond internships, 43% of IB admits were involved in a student investment fund or finance club. Certifications showed up too: the SIE exam (27 people) and Bloomberg Market Concepts (23) were the most common.

The bar differed by firm. PJT Partners had the highest (3.0 prior internships on average, 91% with 1+ prior). Lazard had the lowest among elite boutiques (1.88). At bulge brackets like Morgan Stanley and Goldman, the averages clustered around 2.2 to 2.6.

Strategy Consulting: Clubs and Case Competitions

Consulting interns had the most loaded resumes of any group we studied. Not even close. MBB interns averaged 3.2 prior internships at offer time, and 42% had participated in a student consulting club or case competition. That club signal was unique to consulting. It barely showed up in any other industry.

Certifications? Almost absent. Nobody seems to care about a Coursera certificate when you're recruiting for McKinsey.

The gradient across firms was steep. Oliver Wyman interns averaged 3.56 prior internships. Bain: 3.15. EY-Parthenon: 2.41. The Big 4 advisory track was noticeably less demanding than the pure strategy boutiques.

Big 4 Audit and Tax: Your Major Is the Gate

This was the most school-agnostic path in our entire dataset. The dominant signal was an accounting major (84% of admits) and one prior accounting experience (53%). Half of those prior stints were at a local CPA firm or a company's finance department.

Beta Alpha Psi membership or a business fraternity showed up in about a third of profiles. School prestige? Non-factor. If you're an accounting major at any accredited program, you already have the baseline credential that 84% of Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG interns had.

Software Engineering: Projects and Research Count

Prior dev internship or university research: 71% of SWE admits had at least one. Projects listed on the profile: 59%. Master's degree: 42%, especially in data-adjacent roles.

School tier had no effect. Students from tier 3 schools didn't have fewer prior experiences, and big tech employers drew from those schools at the same rate (21%) as from tier 2 (23%).

The most common certifications were AWS Cloud Practitioner and Azure Fundamentals, though most admits had none. So what actually separated candidates? Hands-on work. A shipped project, a research publication, or a prior dev role. If you're building toward your first tech internship, code you've written matters more than a course you've completed.

Why Your Class Year Matters More Than Your School

This one caught us off guard.

Students applying for a junior-summer internship looked very different from sophomores or freshmen, and the reason is simple: recruiting timelines differ by industry.

In IB, junior-summer applicants had 2.0 prior internships on average, and 71% had at least one in finance. Sophomore-summer applicants? 0.8 internships, and only 29% had a finance one. That's not because sophomores are weaker candidates. It's because IB sophomore recruiting happens in freshman spring, and almost nobody has a finance internship by then.

And the same pattern showed up in SWE: 77% of junior-summer admits had prior tech experience, versus 52% of sophomores and just 31% of freshmen.

So if you're a freshman reading that "86% of IB interns had prior experience" and panicking a little? Stop. Your real comparison group is other freshmen, where the bar is much lower. Getting one relevant experience during your sophomore summer is enough to move from below average to above average in the cohort that will actually be competing against you.

What You Can Change Before Your Next Application

There are two categories on this list. Things you can't change. And things you can.

Your school, class year, and major (mostly) are locked in. But here's the good news: the data shows these matter less than you probably assumed. Your major matters at the Big 4. Your school tier shifts which IB firm tier you're competitive for. Your class year determines the right baseline to compare yourself against. That's about it.

Then there's the one thing you can change quickly: experience. One relevant internship, research project, or hands-on externship moves you from the minority to the majority in every cohort we measured. And the data shows that first experience doesn't need to be prestigious. Most successful candidates started somewhere small, somewhere local, somewhere totally unrelated to their eventual employer.

That's what Extern's remote externships are built for: a 4-week, mentored project with a real company that gives you a referenceable experience for your resume before you apply.

FAQ

How many internships do you need to get an investment banking internship?

Among 756 students who landed IB summer analyst roles at top banks, the average was 2.35 prior internships at the time of their offer. 86% had at least one. But only 6% had a prior IB internship specifically. PE, VC, corporate finance, and equity research all counted as relevant experience.

Do you need to go to a target school to get into Goldman Sachs?

No. In our data, 24% of Goldman Sachs summer analysts came from schools outside the top 100 (tier 3). At JPMorgan, that number was 35%. School tier influenced which bank tier students entered, but it didn't prevent entry into the industry.

What GPA do you need for a Big 4 internship?

Big 4 firms don't publish hard GPA cutoffs, though 3.5+ is a common screening baseline. In our analysis, the dominant credential was an accounting major (84% of admits) and one prior accounting experience (53%), not a prestigious school or a perfect GPA.

How competitive are FAANG internships in 2026?

Very. Among SWE interns at big tech firms, 81% of the class of 2026 had at least one prior internship at offer time, up from just 33% in the class of 2023. The bar rose faster in tech than in any other industry we measured. See our full FAANG internship guide for application timelines and prep tips.

Can you get a top internship with no prior experience?

Yes, but it's getting harder each year. In our 2025 and 2026 cohort, 14% of IB admits, 23% of SWE admits, and 15% of Big 4 admits had zero prior internships at offer time. Three years ago, those numbers were much higher. Starting early matters more now than it used to.

Methodology: This analysis is based on 2,500+ publicly listed LinkedIn profiles of students who completed internships at 28 leading firms across investment banking, strategy consulting, Big 4 accounting, software engineering, and data science in 2024 through 2026. "At offer time" refers to experiences listed on profiles that began 9 to 12 months before the internship start date, reflecting typical recruiting timelines. School tiers are based on established target-school lists used in finance and consulting recruiting. All figures are aggregates; no individual profile data is published. Full company-level breakdowns are available in our investment banking, consulting, Big 4, and SWE intern analysis articles.

Bifei Wang has spent 17 years focused on human flow and the growth of young professionals, spanning international education, career training and coaching, and recruitment process outsourcing. Over 7 years at Extern, he has had one-on-one sessions with thousands of students exploring careers in consulting, finance, tech, marketing, and data, giving him a firsthand view of how the job market has shifted for early-career professionals and what it actually takes to break in.