JP Morgan Spring Week: Inside the Industry Review

Was a fun week, good balance of socialising, networking and useful presentations.

Valued in the sense that JPM committed a lot of employees' time to us, and put on useful events and nice meals. I didn't contribute anything to their business, so I didn't make a valuable contribution.

Fantastic opportunity to ask as many questions as I wanted, and address any uncertainty I had during any of the workshops.

Won't be helpful in terms of my degree, but was very useful when I came to apply for internships later that year. Very useful to learn about all the different sectors in the bank, get an overview of what they do, and work out what sort of work I want to do and would be best suited to.

Pretty well organised and structured; a few sessions ran late or started late. A fair amount of waiting around at times. But given the number of spring week-ers, it was well organised.

Really fun - a lot of us got on really well. The social events were fun and the nights when we didn't have something organised for us, we all went to the pub after the day's timetabled activities finished.

Didn't really learn anything in a huge amount of depth, but was instead a broad education in what an investment bank does, and all the different roles within a bank. Good to understand how they help their clients, the current pressures in the industry and how things will change in the years to come.

Half and half - as I have said, useful to learn about what the bank does and the different roles within it. However, was very difficult to establish what working life would be like at JPM. The employees we met often avoided questions on working hours and work-life balance and I think could have been more honest and upfront in this regard. Plenty of opportunities to talk to current employees about the work they do though.

Tying in to my last answer, couldn't get full and honest answers as to what the culture regarding working hours is. Lots of employees talked about how unique the JPM culture is, but having only been in one workplace environment and met the 'showcase' staff, it is hard to really appreciate what that actually tangibly means.

Very useful - confirmed to me that banking is the industry I want to go into, and enabled me to work out which part of investment banking is most suited to my skills and interests so when I went on to apply for an internship, I knew which division I wanted to apply for.

Travel expenses were covered and they arranged hotel accommodation for the people who didn't live in London.

Almost endless opportunities to talk to current staff and they were very open to any question and were happy to explain things in a lot of depth. All the staff we met were very helpful.

Professional networking opportunities, as described, were great. Socialising / networking among the spring week-ers was good, helped by the two social events that JPM arranged and a Facebook group.

JPM tried to avoid discussion of this nature, sticking firmly to professional life in the company.

Yes - the presentations and workshops were an excellent way to learn about investment banking and the opportunity to ask any questions you have is invaluable.