Students plan around one deadline and then find out their track was running on a different calendar the whole time. The five below open at different points in the year, and the shape of each cycle changes what being late means.
Quant: earliest, and least forgiving
Trading firms and quant funds open summer applications very early, often a full year ahead, and they close when the class is full rather than at a deadline. Some cycles have been effectively over a week or two after opening.
If you're in quant, a delayed alert costs more here than anywhere else on this page. There usually isn't a second wave.
Investment banking: rolling, and openly so
Banking is the clearest case where the posted deadline isn't the real one. Summer analyst applications are commonly reviewed on a rolling basis from the day the job opens, so the class fills from the front. The stated deadline is often weeks after the last useful day to apply.
Banking has also crept earlier year on year for most of a decade. Whatever last year's dates were, assume this year's are sooner.
Big tech: waves from late summer
Large tech employers generally start opening summer internship reqs around August and then post in waves through autumn as teams get headcount. This is the cycle most people picture, and it's the most forgiving of the five, since a company that posted in September will often post again in November.
Forgiving is relative. One big-name req can pull four figures of applications in a day, and plenty get closed early once the pipeline is deep enough.
Consulting: per office, per cycle
Strategy firms post by office, which is the detail that catches people out. The same summer associate job can open in one city in September and another in November. If you'd move, that's several separate chances instead of one, but only if you're watching all of them.
Public accounting: two cohorts, months apart
Audit and tax run winter and summer cohorts as separate postings, and the winter one surprises people every year because it opens while everyone is thinking about summer. Firms recruit on a well-published calendar, which makes this the easiest of the five to plan for.
New grad, which is its own thing again
Full-time new grad reqs don't follow the internship calendar. Plenty open in autumn for the following year, but a large share appear continuously as teams lose people or get budget. This is where a running alert matters most, because there's no season to prepare for.
Roughly, month by month
| Months | What opens |
|---|---|
| January to March | Quant summer for the following year. Some banking. |
| April to June | Banking summer analyst opens and starts filling. Accounting winter cohorts. |
| July to September | Big tech summer internships start. Consulting begins, office by office. |
| October to December | Second waves in tech. Accounting summer. New grad throughout. |
| All year | New grad full-time, and every off-cycle req |
What to do with this
- Work out which of the five you're on. If you're applying to two tracks you're on two calendars.
- Point your alerts at the employers in your track before the window opens, not once it has.
- For rolling-review tracks, treat the opening date as the deadline. It nearly is.
- For wave-based tracks, staying alerted through autumn beats a burst of applications in September.