Harvard students both rush to investment banking info sessions and lambaste them in editorials. They speak ironically of "i-bankers" and long hours on The Street. The field, though, remains a mystery to most students--even to some who are planning to pack up and move south after graduation to spend 80 hours a week crunching numbers and pushing papers in a New York i-banking firm.

Investment banking, in the most general sense, involves advising clients, usually businesses, on managing funds as well as helping to engineer mergers and acquisitions between these companies.

Entry-level salaries of up to $50,000--plus bonuses--can lure students who have little experience with finance or investing. Reports from inside the firms confirm that only those prepared for the heat end up enjoying their investing jobs.

Ning Wang '97, who is in his second and last year of training at Merrill Lynch, says the work involved with the entry-level investment banking positions is often long and tiresome.

"Those first years can be pretty hellish and not worth the money for some," he says. With the long hours, young investment bankers need a strong interest in finance or business to sustain them, Wang says. He cautioned against entering banking "just for the sake of doing something."

Wang works in the branch of Merrill Lynch that advises health care clients on managing investments. He says that upon entering the office, at about 9 a.m., he is involved in everything from entering numbers into the computer to doing basic research.

Much of his work consists of helping to create "pitch books," which are presentations to sell the firm's investment plan to a client. These pitch books, sometimes called prospectuses, play the role of both a marketing document as well as a legal document, according to Tom J. Hsieh '97, an analyst at the firm Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette. The prospectus is used to sell the company to possible investors, but it also protects the investor from scams.

In addition to the hefty amount of paperwork, analysts do everything from answering phones, to scheduling plane flights and limousine rides when company executives travel to meet with client management.