what's up everyone kenji here and i thought i'd make this video to celebrate reaching 1000 subs
but last time i checked we were at 5k so thanks a lot for the support i didn't really think it
would grow this quickly but nonetheless i'm still going to make this q a video i guess it's a 5k
special this time and basically i've gathered questions from the comment section on youtube
as well as from my instagram dms and i basically put them all together and i split it up in two
main areas the first one more personal questions if you will related to my background as well as
some of the things that i've been doing in the past and then on the other hand we'll do more
career related stuff for finance related stuff so if you just care about the finance stuff say
just skip to this point here all right so let's get into the video all right so first question i
have my computer here so i'm just going to be looking down but the first one is where am i from
so basically i'm from spain my father's spanish and my mother is japanese that's why i suppose
i have a bit of a strange accent how old are you i'm 23 right now so where did i learn to edit my
videos basically i learned mainly on youtube i also took some short courses that i paid for but
i didn't find them nowhere near as useful as youtube the only thing with youtube is that you
there's a lot of filtering that you have to do to find the stuff that you're looking for
so that's a bit tedious but there's definitely all the information you need out there
if you're bothered to look for it safe but here's some channels that i thought were
fairly useful in showing me how to make the videos and creating tutorials
so what software do i use for my videos for the editing site i use premiere pro
and then for the animations that you've seen like graphs going up and stuff like that
that's where i use after effects and they're basically the same bundle of what's called
the adobe creative cloud i'll leave that in the description in case you're interested they do
have a free trial if you want to try it out so how do i transfer to cornell university that's
probably a question that i've been asked the most i know some of you are requesting i make
a video on it maybe i will in the future but basically just to give you a bit of background
i spent my first two years of university at the american university of paris in france and then
i transferred on to cornell university for my last two years where i also got my degree from right
and yeah overall the process is fairly opaque and that you don't really know why you got in or why
you didn't obviously they don't give you a full reason for it um but i'd say there's there's two
main reasons that i think i had a good argument for getting in and the first one is obvious that
you need to have very good grades right in my case i have the 3.96 out of 4 gpa which was
among the better ones in my university and then the second reason is that you have a
compelling reason to go there in that whatever essay you wrote or your motivation letter
makes sense that you need to get to cornell state or whatever university you want to transfer to
and an example could be something like hey i'm starting business here but there's no say finance
concentration or finance related topics that are offered at my school and so i realized that say at
cornell university you do specialize in finance and so i'd like to transfer there so that i can
specialize in finance and continue pursuing that road right it can be something like that
it shouldn't be related to things like hey um i don't like the school or teachers are not good
enough for me other things like that that might make you sound say a bit arrogant if you will
if possible yeah i try to focus it on academics or maybe something personal that has to do
with say your family being elsewhere or something like that but yeah those are i think that's how i
got in but to be honest you don't really know the ins and outs right um i would say though
that my parents didn't go there it's not like i got it through legacy or or my father didn't
give a donation or anything like that but yeah unfortunately the process is quite opaque but um
yeah that's what i would say that's what i'd say maybe i'll make a video on it someday and actually
go into more details but that's that for now so am i still in investment banking and the answer is no
after my summer ago man sucks i moved on to tech and hopefully i'll be making some more videos on
that in the near future maybe a day in the life so why did i start a youtube channel so basically
a lot of people would ask me hey to see my resume or to get some help with say getting a particular
job that i had had in the past and obviously that would be a one-on-one conversation with friends
or friends of friends but i realized that i could just be reaching a wider number of people in this
case you guys by making videos so i thought why not you know it might help some people and at the
same time i obviously enjoy it i like helping and i do like making videos so i guess it's a win-win
so moving on to the more careers finance related questions the first ones are you paid by the hour
in investment banking um i can only speak for goldman sachs but so as an intern you are paid
by the hour um even weekends you're paid by the hour whilst if you're a full-time person you're
paid a fixed salary um it's typically around 85 000 us dollars that you're paid fixed and then you
also get a bonus on top of that depending on how good or bad your performance is right the 85 000
i mentioned is usually for for new york i don't really know too well for other offices around the
world right hey everyone i just wanted to quickly interrupt to say that you can now book a 30-minute
one-on-one with me to talk about anything you want from university staff to jobs or any other general
topic i received a lot of messages from people asking to do something like this so hopefully
it's of interest to some of you if it is feel free to check it out i'll leave it in the description
so yeah that's that back to the video all right so next question what are the best measures for
investment banking i'd say that any major that's somewhat numbers related is good obviously when
you work at a bank you mainly see numbers so basically anything from finance econ math stats
other subjects like that are fairly highly valued um there are obviously people that get in studying
history or studying english which obviously doesn't really have much to do with numbers
but it does make it somewhat harder at the same time though i'll say that if you get to an
interview and in your resume it says that you're a finance major what's there they'll be asking you
more questions about about finance and trickier ones then they might might ask somebody that
has studied history right because obviously that person is not going to know too much about finance
but overall if you want the best shots anything numbers related is probably best how can i get
into private equity basically for private equity the typical route to get there is by
firstly working at an investment bank for about one to two years it is quite unusual to get in
straight away fresh out of college stay i know two main companies that do have analyst level
programs so programs for a first year out of college and those are basically kkr and blackstone
which are the two biggest private equity funds that said i'd say it's even more competitive to
get in there than an investment bank so um yeah it's going to be very difficult as i said the
typical route is to spend a couple years in investment banking and then make the switch
do traders work as much as investment bankers the short answer is no traders are a lot more related
to the financial markets and say i think in new york at least the markets open at 9 30 and they
close around 4 30 something like that maybe 3 30 i'm not quite sure but basically that means that
they need to be there obviously a couple hours in front prior to that 9 30 open time so they
do come in fairly early but at the same time they get to live not that late right because
they need to close things but maybe by by six seven they're at home and maybe they can even have
dinner at home that obviously varies depending on like how volatile the market is so how up
and down it's going so at times when there's a political election say like the trump versus biden
that's obviously gonna cause the markets to move a lot and so they might need to be in
there for a lot longer but overall it's a lot shorter in terms of work hours that said it is
a lot more intense i'd say and that you need to be in front of your screen the whole time and
you can't just go for a coffee break or something like that at least while the market is open so
yeah it's something to keep in mind so what skills are most useful for investment banking
i'd say there's two main ones the first one has to do with financial accounting and then the r1
corporate finance basically those two topics are the core of what investment banking is
if you understand them well you know how to value a company well and so those are really the
fundamentals so financial accounting and corporate finance and then i'd say on the computer side of
things having a good understanding of the whole microsoft package so excel powerpoint and word
that's going to make your life a lot easier especially with excel if you know all the
shortcuts and other things like that it's just going to make you a lot faster what do finance
majors work as other than investor banking that's a good question basically a lot of different roles
anything that's on the business side of things that's somewhat numbers related a finance graduate
can can do fairly well fairly competently so think in any big company say apple myriad or whatever
they all have a finance team or an accounting team and a finance major can obviously take on
those roles easily they can also do things that are more business or marketing related
the finance major just means in a way that you're a business grad but you're good with numbers so
it doesn't give you a lot of options it doesn't necessarily have to be related to the financial
markets right it can be things like yeah business development marketing and so on so what are the
best universities for investment banking basically there is a split between what's called a target
school and a non-target school target school just means that the universities actively go to recruit
these people whilst known target means that they don't go to recruit these people right so target
schools are basically the most the best schools in whatever country you're at so in the u.s that's
the ivy leagues in the uk that'd be oxford and cambridge and maybe in the rest of europe
universities like ashesi insead and a couple others i also don't know the names of all the
universities out there but yeah that's basically those are schools that you want to ideally be in
if you're not in those schools it's still possible to get into an investment bank it's
just a bit of a harder route say if you're in a non-target school right basically you want to
do a lot more networking in that you want to meet a lot more people because the people in target
schools will have already met their recruiters through networking events that they have at
their university but if you're a non-target you obviously don't have that so instead you want to
try to reach out to people i did make a video on networking for investment marketing if you want
to check that out um but yeah that's probably the easiest way to to get in if you're not in
a target school any tips for higher views so i made a whole video on that just go to
my profile and you can find it basically talk all about higher views and how to prepare them
and how to actually answer a question right with some examples so yeah just go check that out
all right so last question what gpa should you have for investment banking basically if you don't
know what gpa is because you're not american it's just the way uh the grades work in the us so it
stands for a grade point average and it's out of four so in the us at least for investment banking
you should have about a 3.3 to a 3.5 gpa out of four in order to be competitive as a candidate
now whether you have a say a 3.8 or a 3.9 that's just not going to make a difference it's basically
as long as you meet the minimum threshold that's all that matters anything above that they're not
going to ask any questions so yeah make sure you meet that 3.3 or 3.5 in the uk that's probably
around the 2-1 if you have a 2-1 or or a first that's good anything below that you might have
some troubles with so there you go that's the end of the q a if you have any more questions
feel free to comment them down below and i'll make me make a future video or try to answer them
in the comments right so that's all for this video thanks for watching and i'll catch you in the next
one