Goldman Sachs kept its intern acceptance rate under 1% for a third consecutive year, welcoming a class of roughly 2,500 summer interns across its global offices in June 2026, Fortune first reported…
Goldman Sachs kept its intern acceptance rate under 1% for a third consecutive year, welcoming a class of roughly 2,500 summer interns across its global offices in June 2026, Fortune first reported on June 8. The bank declined to publish the exact application count for this cycle, but last year it drew a record 360,000-plus applicants, and the 2024 cohort pulled 315,126 for a 0.9% rate. That makes the Goldman Sachs internship acceptance rate 2026 more selective than Harvard, MIT, or Stanford, which each admitted between 3% and 4% in their most recent cycles. If you are aiming for Summer 2027, the applications for the New York, London, and Hong Kong programs are already live on higher.gs.com. The runway is short and the math is brutal.

Goldman told Fortune the 2026 selection rate stayed "under 1%" but refused to hand over the raw application total. The class size landed at about 2,500 interns, spread across more than 500 universities and 90-plus nationalities, per the firm's own June 2026 welcome post and Instagram reel. CEO David Solomon addressed the incoming class directly, calling this "a unique period to be in financial services." Fortune's data trail suggests the applicant pool sat somewhere between 250,000 and the 2025 record of 360,000. Even at the low end, that is roughly one accepted candidate for every 100 who applied.

Three forces are compressing the funnel. First, applicant volume exploded during the 2023-2025 window as finance TikTok, Wall Street Oasis, and LinkedIn "day in the life" content pushed banking into the mainstream student consciousness. Second, Goldman has held intern headcount roughly flat near 2,500 while volume climbed. Third, Solomon told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast the firm expects to "see nuanced changes that probably to some degree reduce the number of people that we start with over the next few years," citing AI-driven productivity gains. Translation: the denominator is growing and the numerator is not.

Harvard released Class of 2030 offers on March 27, 2026, and drew 57,786 applications, per Top Tier Admissions and Oriel Admissions. The university has withheld exact rates for two cycles running, but external estimates put the Class of 2030 admit rate at 3.2% to 4%. MIT and Stanford landed in the same 3% to 4% band. Goldman's sub-1% rate is roughly three to four times more selective. Put differently: a student who cleared Harvard's regular decision round in March 2026 still faces worse odds when they apply to Goldman's summer analyst program in the fall.

Goldman opened its 2027 Summer Analyst applications on higher.gs.com in late spring 2026, and North American deadlines historically fall between July and September. If you are a rising junior at a Tier 1 US, UK, or APAC school, submit before September 1. Goldman uses rolling review, and Superday slots fill by mid-fall. Lock in three things now: a one-page banking-format resume, HireVue answers rehearsed against last year's Goldman question bank, and one referral from an alum currently in the analyst class. Also apply in parallel to JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Evercore, whose 2027 windows open on the same rolling cadence.
Solomon has been the most public banking CEO on AI's effect on junior hiring, telling Odd Lots the "real challenge for us is we've got to find ways to apprentice them and teach them a variety of things that they're not going to intuitively learn." He did not commit to a headcount cut, but he flagged one. If Goldman trims the 2027 class by even 10%, the acceptance rate could drop below 0.7% for the first time. Candidates should not wait for the firm to signal that publicly. Assume the funnel is tighter and prepare accordingly.


Goldman's next milestone is the Summer 2027 first-round HireVue window, expected to open in September 2026 for North American candidates and October for EMEA. Superdays typically run October through December, with offers landing before winter break. Watch higher.gs.com and Goldman's careers blog for regional deadline confirmations, and expect Fortune, Bloomberg, and Business Insider to publish 2027-cycle application totals in June 2027. That is when we will know whether Solomon's headcount hint became a real cut.
