Most students prepping for IB think technical means grinding through questions on DCFs or the walk from EBITDA to free cash flow. That's table stakes. Everyone in the room has done it.
Here's what actually sets you apart: pick one public company and learn it cold. This could be a company you work on as a part of your student investment club coverage or something you do independently. Something you can bring up during an interview to show your interest in doing the work.
This is not asking Claude or ChatGPT to produce a shiny company report, you will be exposed pretty quickly in an in person interview (AI is just a starting point). Read the last two or three 10-Ks. Listen to a couple of earnings calls — actually listen, the way you'd listen to a podcast. Read their most recent investor presentations. Figure out how the company makes money, where the margin comes from, who its real competitors are, and how they differ from them. Look at their past M&A. Develop an opinion about what they should do on deals going forward. This will pique the interest of your interviewer (a mid-level/sr banker).
Exhibit A, I was an analyst at small regional investment banking looking to move to New York post the Internet bubble bust in 2003, I leaned hard into learning the business model of American Tower (ticker: AMT). I learned to explain the business model like I would to a kindergarten level student, learned all of the key metrics of the business (and how they were trending) and how they stacked up vs competitors from a valuation perspective. Finally I had an opinion on industry consolidation and what the industry structure should be vs the current state. I interviewed at three bulge bracket banks and got two offers. A conversation about AMT dominated the conversation in each one of my interviews. It was one of the main reasons I was able to get the job (lateral analyst move).
A banker doesn't just build the model; they understand the business well enough to advise it. Once you've gone deep on one name, you stop sounding like a student studying for a test and start sounding like someone who could sit across the table from a CEO.
And when an interviewer says "tell me about a company you find interesting or something you worked on during school," you won't reach for a rehearsed line.
One company, cold. That's the move.