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This Investment Banking application question can come in several form, such as "Who is your Hero?", "Who do you admire most", "who would you want to be?", or again "Who is your role model". If you apply to graduate programmes or internships at London Investment Banks, you should structure your answer as described below.

What is this question is really asking you though, is "What are your values, and what qualities do you think are important".

Investment banking is often perceived as being synonym with long working hours, weekend work, and very little sleep. A natural questions therefore often follows: do bankers have a social life?

Based on our experience, we would say that of course they do. London-based investment bankers tend to have much better hours than bankers in hong Kong and New York, more holidays, and in general, Europeans are much more concerned about junior bankers' personal lives. However, do not expect to be home by 7pm everyday, and do not plan to enrol in Saturday yoga lessons. This is a view of what you life as a junior investment banker will be like:

Your social circle will quickly start to revolve around other junior bankers

Many students that we talked to think that the "Personal Interests", "Other Interests", or "Hobbies" section is not the most important in your CV. Here is a CV tip: while it is true that your academic performance and professional experience matters, this section at the bottom of your CV is often critical.

Why? Because:

1. They show the bank how well rounded you are

Ask Ivy has asked woman investment bankers to share their thoughts and experience of their working life in the City as a femal investment banker. The summary is below.

This is quite a difficult topic, but overall, from a woman perspective, I would say that while investment banking is generally a tougher job to handle for most woman, this is changing quite rapidly and there is an increasing number of woman in senior positions in the City.

Yes, it is tougher for woman from a simple from physical perspective, in general

The answer is: yes you do have chance.

This is quite a common investment banking application question, essentially testing your attitude when facing challenges, stress and tough situations, which is a very common situation as an investment banker.

You can take any example, doesn't really matter: it can be an example at school (i.e. you had a group project due, but a member became sick and so you had a major issue) or in extra curriculars (your team was loosing because badly organised or the team spirit wasn't good, etc.), or personal experience (you were lost in some foreign country) What matters is how you handled the challenge, and you need to demonstrate logic in your thought process.

You need to structure and address the following points (some high-level example in parenthesis to give you an idea)

Many students will find themselves in a situation where they decided not to attend a second or final round of investment banking interviews and refuse an internship, because they already received and accepted an internship offer somewhere else. Many feel that this may affect their chances to apply for full time positions (or other internships) at the company in the future.

The truth is that most banks will be more than happy to receive your application again for a full time position, even if you declined an offer or quit during the process, provided that you declined politely.

What kind of work will you do as an investment banking intern? In order to give you an idea of what to expect for your internship, the work given to summer intern (or off-cycle interns) usually fall into the following categories:

Research Work

When students come to do a summer internship in the investment bank, what do we look for, and how do we evaluate them at the end of the summer to decide whether or not we want to give an offer or keep them into our "strong potential" database?

Interns in investment banking need to demonstrate the following qualities:

#1 Proactivity

Here is a selection of books that are recommended by investment bankers to learn about valuation.

Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies
811 pages, Wiley