Reflecting on my B-School Experience
- Jan 9th, 2019My second-semester classes next week and I am tired of case-prep, so I thought of getting back on the forums and do a little bit of documentation on how this year has been. For most of you regulars on the forum and those who just joined, I got admitted to Ross last year and it has been a rollercoaster since then. In the middle of classes, social life, lack of sleep and endless coffees, I found myself happy, sad, happy and depressed in a strange cycle. Sometimes it is easy to forger that this is a 2-year bubble and the real world awaits after this weird transitionary phase that is a business school. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's put a structure to it (my MBA2 casing peer coaches would be proud!)
The beginning is the hardest
Namecards are saviors! The sheer number of faces you see at the beginning of business school is probably the most overwhelming experience in school. I would casually list out just 40% of the orientation and first 2-3 weeks events to get you up to speed.
1. 2-day international orientation.
2. 3-day full school orientation.
3. 2-day Business Impact Challenge that kept us at the Ross building for 20+ hours.
4. At least 5 social events.
5. Signing up and deciding among 50+ clubs.
6. Applying to venture funds, leadership positions in clubs, social clubs and others.
7. Leave for M Trek.
All of the above was just done in 2 weeks, so you can imagine how grueling it was. I went to Brazil for my MTrek which I thought would be a welcome break. It was, but it was pretty heavily focused on partying, so by the time it was done I was ready to go to class. Boy, I was wrong.
Nobody cares about classes
I came to school with the full intention of immersing myself in academics. The first few weeks, I absolutely loved going to class. My microeconomics professor was brutal but an incredibly intelligent and passionate teacher. Accounting was pretty great too and my professor took an active role in making the class a lot more than just keeping books. Strategy was terribly underwhelming and I found myself waiting for it to get better. Finally, statistics was great but most of my classmates hated it and the quant rigor was definitely unwelcome for the majority of the class. However, things took a turn after 5 weeks. After 5 weeks, companies started coming to campus with the endless presentation, coffee chats and what not and suddenly people started disappearing from classes, group assignments took a nosedive in terms of how seriously people took it and grade non-disclosure became a relief. By the time I entered my second quarter, I was checked out of classes too. Except for the Leading People and Organization class which is taught by arguably the best professor at Ross, I found myself drifting and missing more than a fair share of classes.
Recruitment is a circus
Everybody knows business school recruitment is crazy, but let me just bring to a close to say that a lot of your chances are crapshoot. I will outline some of my recruiting experience for you guys to decide. I was recruiting for tech and consulting and wanted to make a call when I had offers. Networking for consulting started end of September with the Bain case workshop and soon took over by other consulting firms. Here is what I did so far.
1. Bain - Attended the case workshop, went for at least 5 different events, 3 coffee chats, 3 official mock cases with a consultant, 3 social dinners.
2. BCG - 1 lunch, 3 coffee chats.
3. McKinsey - does not care much about networking but did 2 coffee chats on campus.
4. EY - Missed my coffee chat but connected over the phone with 4 consultants and attended 2 events.
Besides these, I did coffee chats and events for AT Kearney, Simon Kucher and Deloitte. I will not share where exactly I am at the recruitment process but will definitely share more once I have something share-worthy. When all the consulting closed lists came out, I got a few and missed a bunch. I was bummed but at the same time it gave me the opportunity to do a very focused prep for the interviews I have. We'll see what happens next week. My first big consulting interview is on 15th Jan. Wish me luck!
For tech recruiting, I went balls-to-the-wall with Microsoft. I networked early, thanks to a roommate who worships Satya Nadella, and won the Business Innovation Challenge for Ross. That gave me an opportunity to go to Seattle, present to Julia FREAKING White and have 5 snickers ice cream bars from their campus. Microsoft reactor is a magical place. Besides that, I did the Amazon week at Ross which was focused on getting students be aware of the Amazon recruitment process, dropped my resume for Google and called it a day. Besides these, I networked heavily with Dell (closed list invite comes tomorrow, so fingers crossed), Varsity Tutors (an EdTech start-up) and Salesforce. Salesforce is hard to work out at Michigan but let's see what happens. Meanwhile I casually dropped my resume at Apple and got an interview, so let's see what happens with that. All I am trying to say is that it is a roller coaster ride, and you never really know what you might get.
Parting Thoughts For Now
A friend in class recently had this to say over a really good apple cider "some people come to b-school to party, some to take a break, some to find their spouses and some to get their dream job". I cannot underline enough how important it is to know who you are. FOMO is real.
Happy to take questions and post more updates here on an on-going basis.