Summer Associate Review

I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. The work was interesting and I was given quite a lot of freedom to explore topics I wanted to look into, as long as I could argue how they would benefit the research team. The team were very friendly and welcoming, at a junior and senior level.

I felt reasonably well valued. Clearly, as an intern I did not have the financial market knowledge to contribute much in calls or team meetings, but I was given a project with a more macroeconomic focus that I could contribute to. When I spoke to people or asked for advice on the project people were interested and helpful.

I was given lots of support when I asked for it, but my manager was still happy to be hands-off for several days at a time, letting me get on with my projects and reporting back only occasionally. This worked well for me, as I am used to lots of independence in my PhD.

This varied a lot day to day. On a normal day I would have enough work to easily fill a 8-6 day, but I was not so swamped that I had to stay later than that. There were occasional days with more work to do, especially during the week my manager was on holiday.

I was given a lot of responsibility and control over my own projects, but these were for standalone pieces for the team, not for their regular cycle of publications. I helped on these, but was not given much responsibility - my manager always edited things before they were sent out.

The work I was doing was not closely related to my PhD research, but the greater knowledge of financial markets I developed will be helpful going forward. I also learned to write R and Python code, which will certainly be helpful in finishing my PhD. Finally, I got the opportunity to meet people from other areas of the firm which are more related to my research, and those conversations will inspire my final PhD chapter.

Everyone was very friendly and cheerful, but it was a very focused environment. If there was a deadline coming up heads would go down and there wouldn't be much chatter until the deadline was met. Meetings were usually short and to the point. People definitely got even happier when we moved to a new building mid-way through the summer!

Once I had started it was well organised. I was met shortly after arriving and taken to my desk, and I got set up on the IT system and working quite quickly. I was sent to some training that was definitely aimed at interns in other teams though - on software that my team don't use.

There wasn't much in the way of formal training, but senior people were very happy to meet with me and talk me through different aspects of the job and the markets, so I ended up learning a lot. There was a formal Python coding course offered, but my internship ended halfway through that so I didn't complete it.

Before starting the internship I wanted to work either in academia or a central bank, but GS has made me consider the private sector - so quite appealing! The pay offered is a part of that, but the environment and the job itself also help. I am still going to finish my PhD before deciding though.

There wasn't much that I saw, but I believe those in other teams where there were more interns had more of a social scene. I commuted from quite a way away, so I wasn't upset at the lack of intern socials. There were team socials though, and that was nice.

Very high, but that is to be expected in central London. Lunch was usually around £7 each day, but they pay you enough to deal with that and the quality of the food was usually high. I'm not so sure about the living costs as I lived further away than most.