When the UK offices of top-tier banks hire for graduate roles or offer internships to undergraduates, what A Level grades are the minimum that they, or their algorithms, require?
Rule of thumb back in my day used to be A*AA. Nowadays I think weirdly they’ve become less important, but you’re competing against hundreds of people per internship place.
They will have multiple A-stars. You need at least a few yourself. You need to differentiate yourself in other ways (high performing sport, for example) but top-tier academic success is table stakes.
What grades did you get?
Agreed that this is the baseline. But your extracurriculars can go a long way. People with more A-stars have failed to get in because they relied to heavily on their grades. Equally, some people have got in with no A-stars at all due to the strength of their work outside school.
Put some time into side-projects while you can. Maybe run a kalshi strategy if you’re interested in a markets job or make a project about creating Claude agents to do IB work if you want a banking job.
100% agreed on this all this. Nerds there are a-plenty, but interesting and/or entrepreneurial Nerds less so
Greg is correct. You must have at least a Series A round startup to get a banking job these days. Don’t even get me started on PE jheez louise
Graduate Hiring and Internships Grades requirements preferred minimums are listed in global firms at AAB. The cherry on top would be to list a certificate typically within technology, data analytics a special project you’ve worked on or a volunteer role now adays AI/ML basics will assist in building your profile!
There’s a big difference between what they say officially and what they expect actually.
Always when expectations are usually only suggested level for grades which happen to be minimum requirements Have a great weekend!
It would be very prescient to learn AI and ML fundamentals when going into banking, regardless of which role you’re actually going into:
AI Skills Reshape Bank Internships as Interns Guide Senior Staff on Technology - Bloomberg
It’s an advantage to have AI and ML skills when seeking internships opportunities allows the resume to standout the technologies are now helping to optimize and shape servicing customers, fraud detection, credit lending, automation, compliance, foundational tools will allow interns and employees to be selected for projects while taking on real challenges in the industry