inside the offer: how alex g went from ucl to a bulge bracket bank

This week: Alex G, UCL Economics graduate, now in his second year as an Investment Research Analyst at a bulge bracket bank in London. We asked him how he got there.

Meet Alex G

Alex graduated from UCL with a degree in Economics in 2023. He is now two years into his career as an Investment Research Analyst at a bulge bracket bank, covering equities in London. Before landing his graduate role, he completed two internships: one at Lloyds Banking Group in their Investment division and one at BNY in Markets and Wealth. We asked him everything.

How He Got Here

Take us back to first year at UCL. Did you know from the start that you wanted to go into finance?

"Honestly, not really. I knew I liked markets and I was interested in how companies were valued, but I didn't have a specific plan. What changed things was joining the UCL Investment Society in my first term. I started covering the tech sector for their student portfolio and realised I genuinely loved the research side of things. Writing up investment cases, reading analyst reports, trying to understand why a stock was mispriced. That pulled me toward research specifically rather than just finance broadly."

When did you start actively preparing for internships?

"First year, second term. I know that sounds early and a lot of people told me I was overcomplicating it. But spring weeks at the firms I wanted closed in October of second year, which meant applications opened in August. If I'd waited until second year to start thinking about it I'd have been scrambling. I started building my CV properly, reading the FT every morning, and doing practice numerical reasoning tests in my first year. It gave me a real edge by the time applications opened."

What did that preparation actually look like day to day?

"Two non-negotiables. Read the FT markets section every morning, even just for 20 minutes. And do one practice numerical reasoning test per week so I wasn't going in cold. Those two habits compounding across a full year made a meaningful difference by the time applications opened."

The Journey: Lloyds, BNY and Beyond

Tell us about your first internship at Lloyds. How did you get it and what was it like?

"Lloyds was my first proper finance internship and I got it at the end of first year. The application process was straightforward compared to bulge brackets: an online application, a numerical test, and then a video interview. I prepared hard for the video interview because I'd never done one before. I wrote out my STAR stories, practiced in front of my laptop camera, and timed myself on every answer."

"The internship itself was a really solid foundation. I was in their Investment division, sitting with portfolio analysts, learning how they assessed positions and thought about risk. Nothing glamorous but genuinely useful. I learned how to read a Bloomberg screen properly, how to think about portfolio construction, and what it actually means to manage someone's money rather than just talk about markets theoretically."

And then BNY in Markets and Wealth. How did that feel different?

"BNY was a step up in intensity and in the type of work. I was in Markets and Wealth, which sits at the intersection of asset servicing and investment management. The pace was faster, the clients were institutional, and there was more expectation that you'd be useful quickly rather than eased in gently."

"What BNY taught me that Lloyds hadn't was stakeholder management. You're dealing with clients who are sophisticated and have high expectations. I had to present analysis to people who knew more than me and that's uncomfortable but it's the best development accelerator you can have. By the end of that summer I was confident in rooms I would have found intimidating a year earlier."

"The combination of those two experiences, one more traditional and supportive, one faster and more demanding, is what I think made my graduate applications strong. I could point to real progression rather than just one internship."

His Top Tips for Interviews

What advice do you wish someone had given you before your first finance interview?

"Stop trying to sound impressive and start trying to sound specific. Interviewers have heard every version of 'I'm passionate about markets' hundreds of times. What they haven't heard is your specific view on a specific sector, backed by specific data. When I was at BNY I asked one of the MDs what separated the candidates she remembered from the ones she forgot. She said it was always specificity. The ones who said 'I've been following the semiconductor supply chain and here's what I think about TSMC's pricing power' versus the ones who said 'I have a strong interest in equities.' There's no contest."

What about the actual mechanics of answering questions? Any frameworks you swear by?

"STAR, but with one upgrade. The part most people rush is the Result. They say 'the project went well' or 'the team was happy with the outcome.' That's worthless. You need a number. It doesn't have to be a huge number. 'I built a screening model that cut our sector analysis time by about 30%' is better than 'I built a model that improved our process.' The number is what makes it real. If you can't quantify the result, you haven't thought about the story hard enough yet."

What's the single biggest mistake you see candidates make in interviews?

"Answering the question they prepared for instead of the one they were asked. I've watched friends practice the same six answers and then deploy them regardless of what the interviewer actually said. Interviewers notice immediately when you pivot to a prepared script. The best thing you can do is listen properly to the exact question being asked, pause for two seconds, and answer that question. It sounds obvious but most people don't do it under pressure."

What Investment Research Is Actually Like

Most students think about IB or trading. Fewer specifically target research. What drew you to it and what does the day to day actually look like?

"Research suited me because I wanted to go deep on things rather than wide. Banking is fast, deal-driven, reactive. Research is more about building a genuine view on a company or sector over months and having the intellectual confidence to defend that view publicly, in a note that goes out to institutional clients with your name on it. That accountability was something I found motivating rather than intimidating."

"The day to day in first year was: morning call at 7am where the team runs through overnight news and any market-moving events in your coverage universe. Then most of the morning is spent updating models, reading company filings, tracking data. Earnings season is chaotic, you're often writing a note and updating your estimates on the same day a company reports. Outside of earnings it's more structured, longer-form research projects, meeting with company management teams, building out sector frameworks."

What surprised you most about research when you actually started?

"How much of it is writing. I thought it would be mostly modelling and data. The modelling is important but the actual product, the thing clients pay for, is the note. A 20-page initiating coverage report, a quick flash note when a company misses earnings, a sector outlook at the start of a quarter. Learning to write clearly and quickly under time pressure was the skill I developed most in my first year and it wasn't something I'd specifically prepared for."

What First Year at a Bank Is Really Like

Be honest with us. What is the first year as a graduate analyst actually like?

"The first three months are humbling regardless of how well prepared you are. You've done internships, you've read the books, you think you know what you're walking into. And then you sit down at your desk on day one and realise that knowing about something and being able to do it under pressure at pace with real consequences are completely different things. I made mistakes in my first month that I found genuinely mortifying at the time. A wrong figure in a model that went into a client note. An email sent to the wrong distribution list. Small things in the grand scheme but they felt enormous when they happened."

"What I'd tell anyone going into their first year is: your job in the first six months is not to be brilliant. It's to be reliable and to learn fast. Show up before anyone else. Ask good questions. Don't pretend you understand something when you don't. The analysts and associates who thrive early are the ones who are honest about what they don't know and rigorous about fixing it quickly."

What about the social side? Is the culture what you expected?

"Better than I expected, honestly. There's a reputation for finance being brutal and there are certainly demanding periods, earnings season in research is genuinely intense, but the culture within my team is collaborative. People want you to succeed because your success makes the team better. I had a senior analyst spend 45 minutes walking me through how to structure an initiating coverage note in my second week. That kind of investment in juniors isn't something you hear about in the horror stories but it's real at a lot of firms."

Thanks to Alex for being so open about the journey. If this gave you one thing to act on this week, let it be specificity: in your applications, in your stories, in your market knowledge.

If you're preparing for an interview or assessment centre and want to know where to start, hit reply and tell me which firm. I read every one.

Good luck out there.

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