Should You Delay Your Graduation to Improve Your Chances of Getting into Investment Banking?

I’ll skip the clever intros here: Delaying your graduation to improve your chances of winning a certain job after university is usually a bad idea.

If you’re doing it specifically to target investment banking roles, it only makes sense in a few scenarios.

Delaying your graduation will not help with many common problems, such as a very low GPA, no return offer from an internship, or attendance at a non-target school.

If you have one of these problems, you’d be better off with some combination of:

1. Getting a Master’s in Finance degree from a top school.
2. Aiming for finance-related roles after graduation or even off-cycle internships and then using lateral hiring to get in.
3. Considering a top MBA if nothing else works.

Also, the accelerated internship recruiting timeline has made it more difficult to get great results from delaying your graduation, at least in the U.S.

It’s no longer possible to use it as a “call option” in case you perform poorly in your summer internship, which reduces its expected value.

Let’s start with some quick definitions and the short version of why a delayed graduation is rarely a good idea:

The TL;DR of Why “Delay Your Graduation” Rarely Works

• “Delay Your Graduation” could mean that you add another semester or two of classes, that you complete a Master’s degree, or that you do an MBA. We’ll focus on the first case here because Master’s and MBA degrees are quite different.
• The benefits of a delayed graduation are that you get more time to complete internships, network, prepare for interviews, and potentially boost your GPA.
• The drawbacks are that you or your family will spend a lot of extra money to do this, and it may not improve your chances that much.
• This strategy makes sense if you have a specific, fixable problem that prevented you from winning IB offers the first time around, and you’re confident you can get better results by going through recruiting once again.
• It could also make sense if you’re trying to fix broader issues, such as no real internship experience, transferring universities at an awkward time, or the inability to stay in the U.S. after graduation as an international student. But a delayed graduation may not help that much with winning direct IB roles in these cases.
• Because of the accelerated recruiting timeline, delaying your graduation is not viable if you fail to get a return offer from a 3^rd year internship. If you do this and “revert” from Year 4 to Year 3 of university, summer internship recruiting will already be done or mostly done.
• These points mostly apply to the U.S.; I am not sure if delaying your graduation in other regions is even feasible, as the university system differs in other countries.

That’s the short version. Now for the details:

Why Delay Your Graduation? Can You Do an Internship After Graduation?

The short answer is that it’s typically easier to win a summer internship in university, perform well, and convert it into a full-time offer than to graduate and search for full-time offers.

Yes, you can do an internship after graduation, but it’s more common in regions like Europe where many firms offer off-cycle internships.

Also, for investment banking, you pretty much need an IB internship or highly relevant full-time experience post-graduation to have any chance at a full-time offer.

Many students, therefore, consider delaying their graduation to boost their chances of getting into these competitive fields.

But there are only a few cases where it makes sense to do so:

Case #1: Delay Your Graduation to Aim for Investment Banking Internships

If you’re delaying your graduation specifically to aim for IB internships:

1. You must do it at the start of Year 3 (your junior year).
2. You should have already gone through IB recruiting in the previous year…
3. …but failed to win offers because of bad luck or a specific problem you can fix quickly.

For example:

• You won interviews at 5 – 10 banks but didn’t prepare well enough for the technical questions, so you didn’t get past the first rounds.
• You started too late, which limited your networking and resulted in only ~2 first-round interviews.
• You made it to ~5 Superday interviews but won no offers due to a lack of cultural fit, bad interviewers, or your fit/behavioral answers.
• Your GPA was slightly too low – maybe in the 3.3 – 3.4 range – but it’s already higher now, and you could further boost it to 3.7+ by the time interviews begin.

What does not count as a specific problem you can fix in a short time frame?

• A Very Low GPA: If your GPA is below 3.0, you will probably not be able to boost it to a 3.5 or higher within 1 – 2 semesters.
• A Late Career Change: If you decided on IB in Year 3 of university, delaying your graduation won’t help unless you can somehow get a highly relevant internship and network and prepare extensively within a few months.
• A Non-Target School: There is no way to “fix” this one unless you transfer universities.

Case #2: Delay Your Graduation to Fix Broader Problems Without Necessarily Targeting IB Roles

In some cases, delaying your graduation could be useful for fixing other problems.

In these cases, you may not be competitive for investment banking right out of university, but delaying your graduation could still make it easier to get in eventually.

The three best examples here are:

1) You Have Absolutely No Real Internship Experience – For example, if you changed your career plans (e.g., pre-med to business) after 2 full academic years, and all you have is lab experience, it could make sense to delay your graduation.

In this case, you are unlikely to win an IB role, but you could get something relevant in a less competitive field (e.g., corporate finance at a normal company) and then move in from there.

2) You Transferred Universities and Need More Time to Prepare and Network – The accelerated recruiting timeline has made it difficult to use university transfers effectively.

But if you transfer after your first year and delay graduation at your new university, you could effectively “start over” as a Year 1 student and get extra time for networking, the internship search, and interview prep.

3) You’re an International Student and Cannot Stay in the U.S. After Graduation – If you have a non-STEM major as an international student, you’re in an awkward position and should consider switching to anything that qualifies as STEM.

By doing so, you could take advantage of the 3-year OPT program that lets you stay in the U.S. and work after graduation – which makes it much easier for banks to hire you.

If this means you need to add a second major or turn a minor into a major, do it.

When to Do a Master’s in Finance or MBA Instead of Delaying Your Graduation

Completing a Master’s degree could also count as “delaying your graduation” because you’ll now be in school for another year (or possibly 2 years).

However, you typically do a Master’s in Finance degree when you want a higher-ranked university on your resume or to compensate for issues like a non-target university or low GPA.

It also takes significantly more effort because you must apply for these programs separately, prepare for standardized tests, etc., so it’s not just a matter of paying tuition for 1 – 2 more semesters.

Therefore, the Master’s route is more appropriate if you need to improve many aspects of your profile instead of just fixing one specific problem.

The MBA option is even more different because it’s for true career changers with significant full-time work experience.

It is also the most expensive and time-consuming way to get into IB.

So, if you’re currently in university, you should do everything possible to avoid it.

It’s cheaper and less time-consuming to work in a finance-related role after graduation and network your way in.

Should You Delay Your Graduation? Final Thoughts

Even before the recruiting timeline moved up to ridiculously early start dates, delaying your graduation just to improve your chances of winning IB roles was rarely a great idea.

But it’s even more of a stretch now, and I can’t see that many students benefiting.

You might be hesitant to delay your graduation because of the extra costs, the need to explain the delay in interviews, or because of a possible market crash or recession.

These concerns are valid, but they mostly fall into the categories of “Can’t do anything about it” or “Should not be hard to justify with a bit of creativity.”

The bigger problem is that in most cases, delaying your graduation won’t provide enough benefits to justify the extra time, money, and risk.

It makes sense to fix very specific problems, but if you’re doing it because you’re in “panic mode” and need more time, you should probably reconsider.

And if you have any questions about whether delaying your graduation makes sense, comment away.