Why do you want to do investment banking?

The strongest answer is the education. In two years you learn how companies are valued, financed, bought, and sold, at a pace no other job matches. Say that, tie it to something specific you have done, and avoid leading with prestige or money, which get candidates dinged.

Why is prestige and money a bad answer to why investment banking?

Because every candidate could say it, and it signals you have not thought past the surface. Banks want people who understand what the job actually teaches and will grind for it. Prestige and money are byproducts, not reasons, and interviewers hear them as a red flag.

What is the best reason to go into investment banking?

The learning curve. Investment banking front-loads a rare technical education in valuation, financial modeling, and deal execution, and it opens doors to private equity, hedge funds, and corporate roles later. Most people do it for the skills and the exit options, not to stay for life.

Interview Guide

The 3 questions that start all interviews, Part 2: Why investment banking

By Michael Song · Wharton MBA · ex-Greenhill · investment banking interview coach

6 min read · updated July 2, 2026

Start with the rule, because it's the one that sinks the most candidates: if your answer to "why investment banking" leads with prestige, money, or "it opens doors," you get dinged. Those things are real, and the interviewer knows you know it. But stating them as your reason signals you're chasing a brand, not the work. The strong answer connects something specific about you to what the job actually involves.

What the question is really testing

"Why IB" isn't small talk. The interviewer is checking two things at once: do you understand what this job actually is, and is your reason for wanting it durable enough to survive the hours? The entire interview, behavioral and technical, is one question wearing different costumes: do you understand the job, and can you do it under pressure? This is the behavioral half of that.

So the answer has to prove you know what a first-year analyst does: build the models, the valuation work, the materials that support a senior banker's advice on how to raise capital or get a deal done. Wanting the title isn't evidence you understand any of that. Wanting that work is.

Common mistake

The dinged answers, in order of how common they are: "the prestige," "the compensation," "it'll open a lot of doors," and the vague "I'm passionate about finance." The first three make you sound like you're optimizing for status. The last is filler that says nothing, because everyone in the room claims it. None of them mention the actual work, which is the tell.

The answer that actually lands: it's an education

Here's what's worked, over and over, from the other side of the table. The best-received "why IB" answers frame the job as an education you can't get anywhere else. And it's true: there is no other entry-level job out of college where you consistently learn this much, this fast, day to day.

This isn't a line. As an analyst, then an associate, then a VP, it stayed true the whole way, the feeling of learning at least one genuinely new thing every single day, about how companies are valued, how deals actually get done, how capital moves, how management teams think. Nowhere else compresses that much learning into your first few years out of school.

Key insight

Framing the experience as an accelerated education does two things at once. It shows you understand what the job gives you (proximity to real deals and real decisions, fast), and it signals your reason is durable, because wanting to learn survives a bad night in a way that wanting a bonus doesn't. That's why it's the answer bankers take well.

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Frequently asked

Why do you want to do investment banking?: The strongest answer is the education. In two years you learn how companies are valued, financed, bought, and sold, at a pace no other job matches. Say that, tie it to something specific you have done, and avoid leading with prestige or money, which get candidates dinged.
Why is prestige and money a bad answer to why investment banking?: Because every candidate could say it, and it signals you have not thought past the surface. Banks want people who understand what the job actually teaches and will grind for it. Prestige and money are byproducts, not reasons, and interviewers hear them as a red flag.
What is the best reason to go into investment banking?: The learning curve. Investment banking front-loads a rare technical education in valuation, financial modeling, and deal execution, and it opens doors to private equity, hedge funds, and corporate roles later. Most people do it for the skills and the exit options, not to stay for life.