A recent Goldman Sachs intern reveals 5 tips for surviving your first stint on Wall Street

Wall Street internships can be intimidating.

You've heard the horror stories about the 100-hour work weeks. The grunt work. The tight deadlines.

But it is possible to survive your Wall Street internship and, according to one recent Goldman Sachs intern, even enjoy it.

The Goldman intern, who'll be returning to the bank next year as a full-time analyst, told us how he did it.

Here's his advice:

1. Ask for work early in the day.

This might sound counter-intuitive, but interns often have downtime during the day. The reason their work hours can run so long through the week is because work can drop late at night, and often has a tight deadline.

Every intern's nightmare is having a last-minute assignment dropped on his or her desk at 9 or 10 pm. The easiest way to avoid this, according to the Goldman Sachs intern, is to ask for as much work as possible early on in the day.

If you're already staffed on a ton of projects, your analyst or associate is more likely to turn to somebody else who is a bit less busy than you at the end of the day.

2. Always get through your 'Excel work' first.

In an HR-driven attempt to improve the internship experience, many top Wall Street banks have set rules on how many hours interns can physically spend in the office. Bank of America, for example, does not expect interns to work between midnight and 9 am, while Goldman Sachs interns must swipe out and leave the building by midnight and not return until 7 am.

Sometimes interns still have work to do, even if they can't be in the building, so here's the hack: If you can't finish all your work by the time you must leave, then at least finish everything you need to do on Excel.

It's much easier to touch up a PowerPoint presentation from your laptop at home than try to work in complicated spreadsheets on detailed models.

Another tip: buy yourself a PC and a couple of screens to use at home.

3. Goldman Sachs has entire teams dedicated to making your life easier. Use them!

Most banks have some strategic services for analysts, but Goldman's team is especially elaborate.

The intern told us it is "probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen" and is designed "to make analyst life easier."

Goldman has a variety of tools all on one proprietary "strategies" web page. You can find just about anything you need there, from presentation services where they'll make nice-looking slides for your upcoming presentation to the data group that can pull multiples for you or set you up with a chart at a moment's notice.

So look into what strategy tools your bank has to offer, regardless of which firm you intern with.

4. You're going to get a boatload of work. Learn to prioritize it.

You're not going to have a lot of free time when you start interning, so you'll have to create time to do the work you need to do. How?

"The biggest part of the job I saw was being efficient and prioritizing what you should do," the Goldman intern told us.

At any given time, he would be staffed on three or four different teams, which meant he could go from having no work one minute to a whole slew of assignments the next.

That's why, whenever an analyst or associate gave him a new project, he would immediately ask when they wanted it finished by. That way he could prioritize his work, rather than going after whatever assignment was at the top of the pile.

Sometimes, if all of his assignments were due by the next morning, he would take his chances on which ones would be looked at first, and narrow it down that way.

Margin Call screenshot

You'll definitely be working some late nights - but there are ways to make the most of your time.

5. Finishing your work super-fast isn't always the best way to do it.

This is a big one. Of course there is always going to be deadline pressure at investment banks. And that's not to be ignored! But neither is making sure the quality of your work is up to snuff.

"The one thing you learn is, trying to get stuff done fast is different than doing it efficiently," the intern said.

If you do it too fast, there will definitely be mistakes. And that looks bad for you.

The assignment will go to a higher-up, like an associate, who inevitably returns it covered in red mark-ups. Remember the analysts and associates are staffed on more teams than you are, so that will only add to their stress load.

It's much better to make the time to double-check your work - and only have to do it once.