19-year-old who turned down Goldman Sachs says other students are just 'lazy'
"Most people at target schools are really lazy," he said.
Target schools are prestigious institutions, like the Ivy Leagues, where Wall Street banks usually focus their recruiting efforts.
The Wharton student, now a rising junior, is back interning with the same firm this summer.
Though he's the youngest person at a hedge fund that historically never hires undergraduates, he doesn't think he is particularly extraordinary. The problem, he says, lies with other potential candidates.
"They think that, 'oh,' you know, 'we got into this school... You can just drift on by, recruit on campus, and you'll be set,'" he said.
"Most of them don't network," he says. "[They] don't talk to anyone." Instead, they just rely on their school's prestige to land job interviews.
The 19-year-old intern says he reached out to some 200 Penn graduates from the school's alumni database before getting a Goldman offer and landing the hedge fund gig.
So his idea of 'doing something' might be a bit different from the average person's.
It's not just Ivy League kids that are lazy.
There are all kinds of nightmare stories about what it's like interning at a Wall Street bank or hedge fund.
The 19-year-old intern thinks a lot of those stories are bogus. For example: he believes the whole thing about how interns work 80 to 90 hours a week is overdone.
"Most people exaggerate when they say that, and a lot of the time it's not really working, per se, but just waiting for work or waiting for work to be reviewed," he said.
It might sound harsh. Or it might be just the kind of attitude you need to make it on Wall Street.