Summer Intern Review

The hours were occasionally brutal, but that's to be expected from any investment bank. I had a lot more fun during those hours than most interns at other banks would likely have done, as the people in my team were awesome.

There's a limit to what interns can do in 9 weeks, given our huge knowledge gap and lack of experience. Having said this, I was made to feel part of the team the whole way through, and was given proper work that regular, full-time analysts would be doing.

My mentor in particular devoted a huge amount of time to making sure I was getting everything out of the experience that I could; that I was able to perform the tasks I was set; and that I was working on things that actually mattered.

There were periods where I was mind-numbingly un-busy during the day. There were also times when I was worked off my feet, and had to stay pretty late to get things done. I took the internship expecting there would be periods of this latter sort, so no complaints there. Not having anything to do is infinitely worse than having too much to do, though.

Obviously there's a limit to the responsibility you can take on board as an intern. Having said this, I was sending around regular updates to people all around the world on behalf of my team throughout the internship.

I won't use the skills I developed whatsoever in my degree. However, in my career I expect what I have learned over these 9 weeks to be more useful than the content of all 3 years of my degree put together.

In my team the atmosphere was great. People joked around a lot (but got work done as well), and we went out for drinks a fair amount. In other teams around me, it was a lot quieter and people were more insular.

There were no hitches. Intern events and training merged pretty seamlessly with on-the-desk work.

I was very impressed by how much time and resources were put into the professional development of the interns, from a technical and networking perspective.

I have been given some very promising feedback from all of the team. (Official job offers do not come out for two more weeks.)

We went for drinks and hit the town a few times, sometimes as a large group and sometimes with just a few other interns. Good fun.

Cost of living was incredibly high (coming from a non-Londoner), and I had little time to socialise outside of work. This pretty much comes with going into investment banking, unfortunately.

We were pretty near Shoreditch, so options were out there. Some may view going to Abacus as a mistake, though.

With only 9 weeks people were pretty focused on getting as much of a work experience as possible. I think there are many more opportunities available for full-time employees, though.