1. How did you find your internship?

I found my internship through my college’s career center webpage.  There was on online form and I attached my resume, two weeks later I received a call for an interview.

2. Why this internship?

Everyone was telling me “you need an internship” so I applied to anything on the website that sounded appealing in any way at all.  The internship with Morgan Stanley sounded by far the most intense, so it became my first choice.  To my surprise, they sent me an offer and I went for it.

3. What were your general responsibilities?

I was in Operations which handles all the behind the scenes work of finance, i.e. checking the trades, directing information, etc.  I was specifically in collateral management for equity swaps and options.  I was part of a team involved in making sure Morgan Stanley was covered by collateral for its swaps and options.  We also managed the interest for this collateral.  A large part of what I did was looking at different functions of our group and trying to streamline these activities to make them run more efficiently. 

4. What was a typical day like?

I spent the first half of the day working on “line-based” work, meaning we had set tasks due on a timeline that needed to be done every morning (making collateral calls).  The second half the day was “project-based” work, which means that I had larger scale projects that I worked on over basically the entire summer.  These were the streamlining I mentioned above.

5. Did you receive any perks, benefits, or compensation?

I received a large stipend for the summer, equivalent to a first year employees salary pro-rated for the summer as well as a “relocation bonus” which covered my housing expenses in New York.  Beyond this, we also were in a program for “Summer Analysts” where we had numerous activities such as dinners, which were covered by the firm.  Overall it was a pretty ridiculously awesome deal.

6. Where did you live?

I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Times Square.  Park Slope is an amazing place to live for summer interns, you don’t get caught up and sucked dry by the fast-paced city life but you have access to anything you’d want from the city at merely a 15 min subway ride.

7. Future plans?

Right now, I am not exactly sure where my life is going but I am looking into a future in medicine.  My summer in Finance was what I figured one last chance to see that world, live that lifestyle, and check out that career path.  It was a great experience and I learned a lot but I still don’t know if I would want to leave the medical path for it. 

8. Any particular advice?

When in doubt, just go for it.