Thanks to our little princess, my wife and I didn’t get a lot of sleep on Thursday night. I had planned to sleep throughout the flight to Raleigh. This was however not to be as there was an inquisitive high school kid sitting next to me. He decided to test everything he had learnt in school about Africa on me. I enjoyed the conversation with him and was impressed with his knowledge of Africa, especially how current he is with recent events in Nigeria.
My flight was delayed so I arrived in Chapel Hill late and could not attend the Friday night kick off reception. I got together with two Kenan-Flagler students and was out on Franklin Street till about 2:30 am. I had a fabulous time here!
I got up at 6:30am on Saturday for an early start. I arrived on campus at 7:30 to meet quite a number of students registering and picking up their goody bags. I took the opportunity to interact with some of the current and prospective students including one that turned out to be the president of the MBA association. I also spoke with an incoming student who mentioned that he applied to 8 schools. EIGHT SCHOOLS!!! I screamed. I applied to four schools and I had to put everything else in my life on hold for several months because of that. I noticed that there were a lot of students from North Carolina. I could tell because our nametags had our resident towns on it.
We moved into the Koury Auditorium at 8:30 for an address by Dean Jones. My takeaway from his speech was that “At Kenan-Flagler, it’s not just about what you know, but WHAT YOU CAN DO”. I have always known that US recruiters are very particular about what you can do, so it was nice to see this being reinforced here.
The dean’s address was followed by another quick one by the MBA Association president and other students. The students described the great opportunities available in Sustainable Enterprise and Private Equity through the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. There was in fact a Venture Capital Investment Competition going on in the school during this weekend. We went on a fifteen minute break after this and came back to meet an Alumni Panel. The panel consisted members of the class of 1999, 2002, and 2005 from Proctor & Gamble, Credit Suisse, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs, NFL etc.
I was especially interested in what the class of 2002 had to say since that was one of the worst years in MBA recruiting. I was also interested in the perspective of the International Student among them. The P&G alum confirmed my suspicion about some company policies towards recruiting international students. P&G does not file for work papers and hence does not recruit International Students. I had read somewhere earlier that Marketing and Brand Management are very cultural centric. This will probably explain why P&G does not mind recruiting International Students who are willing to go and work in their home country.
Next came the lunch/student activity fair. We took turns in going for lunch depending on the color code on our name tag. I seized the opportunity to hook up with the second year student who was going to sublease his apartment to me for the summer. Nice likeable guy. He even said I didn’t have to pay him until August. I stopped by some of the student club desks including the soccer club, finance club, general management club, volunteer club, golf club and the minority students’ club. I’m sure I will not be able to participate actively in all these clubs but I’ll do my best.
Tables in the Café McColl had student representatives from different clubs to answer questions. I chose to eat at the Private Wealth Management table. My first job out of college was in this area and I was just curious to see how that works in the US. The student rep there was helpful. He’ll be heading out to Atlanta to intern at the Private Wealth Management Unit of one of bulge bracket Investment Banks.
After lunch we broke into groups for an Academic Exercise. I was in the Business Innovation group where we had a case study on whether or not to outsource. The professor prefers not to be called a professor or a doctor because he neither professes to know everything nor is he capable of healing anyone. He gave us 20 minutes to read the case and rushed us through the time such that we only spent 15 minutes reading it. He did this deliberately to emphasize that there will be times when we will have no more than 15 minutes before class to read assigned cases. Since there will be cold calls on us to answer questions, we’ll do well in being able to separate to useful information in the essays from the garbage. Overall it was an interesting class as there was a lot of interaction and role playing.
Thereafter, we went back to the Koury Auditorium for a presentation by the Office of Career Services (OCS) and a frank Q&A session with current students.
The OCS presentation was informative and we left with a hard copy of the internship and full employment numbers (updated up to the day before this presentation). A crucial point I noted here is that those that have clearly defined their post MBA goals will find the recruitment process much easier. 7 stages were listed and by ASW we should all be right around stage 2. You simply will not have adequate time to attend as many job information sessions as you’ll like to. Narrowing down the job to the desired industry/ job functions will help in staying focused.
Both first and second year students were represented at the Q&A session. There was an ex-teacher who interned at Kraft Foods and is now heading to Unilever as a marketing associate. For all you career switchers, this ought to be good news. He also mentioned that he didn’t care too much about grades since he came from a non-traditional background and so he spent more time focusing more on some key classes, the recruiting process and generally enjoying the MBA experience. Fortunately, KFBS also does not disclose grades to recruiters...Yipeeeeeee.I can afford to slack a littleJ. There was also a female student from Ghana heading out to BCG consulting for a full time position. They all had interesting experiences and strongly encouraged us to attend ASW to brush up some academic concepts and most importantly to bond with our class mates before full classes start. I personally recommend this to all international students. The culture here is different and the ASW will give you a head start in getting integrated. They also mentioned that a very large percentage of the class end up attending ASW2. However, the few that attend ASW1 usually come out being very close. I’m shooting for ASW1.
There was a recruiter open house after this but I did attend since there will be many more of that in the coming months.
I went back to my friend’s apartment to catch some rest and ended up missing the “Taste of Chapel Hill” I’m not sure how that went as it was a cold and rainy night. At 10p.m, I joined some second year students to attend a party that was organized by the Minority Students Association. I was impressed with the turnout as the gathering had a lot of people in attendance and not just the minority students. The music was from my favorite era – Late 80s and the 90s. For once I did not feel old listening and dancing to Eric B & Rakim or Soul 2 Soul.
Overall, I think Kenan-Flagler students are fun, personable and very receptive. I am sure I will have a great time here. The school also did a great job in highlighting its strengths to convince those that may still be considering offers from other schools. I met a gentleman that also has an offer from Cornell. After experiencing what Franklin Street has to offer, he was positive that Ithaca was out of the question.
We went back to sleep around 3 am and I had to wake up early again at 6am to return my rental car and catch an 8 o’clock flight. This time, I slept all the way back home.
