If you're not American, you have a disadvantage

THE WEEKLY EDGE

If you're not American, this costs you more. Measurably.

First-year analyst in New York: $170k–$190k all-in. Same job in London: $95k–$115k. Same hours, same pitchbooks, nearly half the pay.

And the door's tighter. Goldman took 17,000 applications for 350 seats. Two percent — before anyone checks if you need sponsorship. A lot of US programs quietly won't sponsor at all. So the thing that kills you isn't your GPA. It's a checkbox on page one.

The deck is stacked. Anyone saying otherwise is selling something.

But people with the wrong passport land at Goldman, JPMorgan, Jane Street every year. Not by luck. By playing a different game.

Six moves.

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CAREER DECODED

1. A degree that travels. Finance, econ, accounting, math, CS, engineering. Reads the same everywhere. Guard the GPA from day one — most banks screen at 3.5, plenty at 3.7. Far easier to protect one than explain one.

2. One internship, early, anywhere. Local boutique, search fund, two-person advisory shop. Get it by year two. It flips you from "random applicant" to "someone already trusted with real work." The shop's name matters way less than you think.

3. Fundamentals cold. Three statements and how they link. DCF, comps, precedents, LBO, accretion/dilution. Cold, not casually. You'll walk through a DCF out loud while someone interrupts you. Say it standing up until it's boring.

4. Network, because it's your only distribution. Nobody's flying to your university to hand out interviews. The honest math: 50–100 cold emails, 30–50 conversations, 6–12 months. That's 10–20 messages a week, mostly into silence. This is where everyone quits — week three, nothing back, feels like shouting into a void. The ones who get in just kept sending.

→ IB Roadmap — outreach scripts, technicals, full timeline. QUIZIBF for 30% off

5. A backup that isn't a consolation prize. Regional boutiques, middle-market, Big 4 transaction services, your own region's hub where you can legally work. Tons of analysts at elite banks started somewhere nobody's heard of, got two years of reps, lateraled up. Where you start matters less than whether you start.

6. Become annoying to replace. Answer fast. Work that doesn't need checking twice. Catch the broken formula before the client does. Unglamorous, and it's exactly what people remember when someone asks "know anyone good?"

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Where to do it: Finploy for jobs. edX for coursework (free audit). IFSA Network for chapters. Money Stuff and Morning Brew for fluency — and this newsletter for the part they skip, which is getting in.

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BOTTOM LINE

Every move above works from anywhere. None of it needs a US address.

But look at the number again: 50–100 emails. 30–50 calls. 6–12 months.

That's why most people don't clear it. Not impossible — brutal blind. Sending 100 emails with the wrong subject line, to the wrong people, in the wrong month of the calendar is how six months of real effort turns into nothing.

Effort isn't scarce. Sequence is.

That's the IB Roadmap — scripts, technicals, the international playbook, month by month. The Quant Roadmap is the same for quant, where the passport matters least because the screen is probability and code and you can't fake either.

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