Full-time MBA Blog

It is finally spring break! And while some of my peers are travelling the world, discovering new places – I have never been happier to stay in NYC. You see I am still recovering from a little mishap that happened to me about 2 months ago – where I literally saw all of my dreams and aspirations flash in front of my eyes.  Ok, I will stop with the dramatics and tell you what happened.

I went to Montreal for an interview, thinking that I would be gone for one day and then back.  On my way back, the U.S. immigration wouldn’t let me enter the States, and do you know why? My passport had about 4 months left – the minimum required to enter the US is 6 months. I had naively assumed that the standard was 3 months, that I still had a month, and that I could renew it once I was back.  They asked me to either get an extension, or to get a new passport.  Being a Rwandan citizen, a panic ensued. Our consulates do not provide passport extensions, and I would need a new passport all the way from Rwanda – which usually takes 2 to 3 months.

And so my month of waiting began. I told my professors and my spring internship what happened, and that I would be starting late. I left Montreal for Ottawa where the Rwandan Consulate is to ask for their help. I sent an expedited request to my uncle who represented me with the ministry in Rwanda, and asked for a new passport on my behalf. Then I went to Toronto and raided my sister’s closet :).  Since I literally had come for one night, I definitely didn’t have clothes to last me a month. I spent the month with my sister, half of it visiting with friends and trying to enjoy my time in Toronto, and the other half panicking about the classes that I was missing, and the spring internship that I had not started. Finally my new passport arrived, and within a week I had a new student visa from the American embassy and I was on my way back.

4 Weeks! From January 22,2015 – February 19^th, 2015…  The moral of the story is that really 2 things would have helped me avoid this situation from the beginning:

1. Leveraging the Office of Global Services (OGS) – whether it was by going to the office and talking to them, or looking at the website

OGS is the office that helps international students. They issue our I-20s, give us International Students Do/Don’ts Training before school starts, and help us when we have questions. Had I thought of checking with them, I would have seen it written clearly: Only travel if your passport is valid 6 months into the future.

2. Knowing my rights

Even though my passport was valid for less than 6 months, technically they could/should have let me in. There is some small fine print that says that since I had been out of the country for less than 30 days (and in my case, 1 day!) I could have gone through and renewed my passport in the US. However, I did not know that and therefore could not build a case for it.

As international students, we have to pay attention to a few more things, and our student status is the priority! Thankfully that scare is over, and I will use this week to organize myself and catch up on my life – as they say, we live and learn!

Have a great week,

Michaella

We are half way through the second semester, which means I am officially 7/8’s of the way done with my MBA. Many of us are headed out of town for spring break this weekend, so I figured it’s a good time to share the second edition of my favorite things at Stern. As mentioned in my previous post, these are a few of the reasons I love being a Stern student:

• My Finance Classes: Upon enrolling at Stern, I thought I would fill my schedule with “softer” classes such as leadership and management. I wasn’t even sure I would take finance. However, after my first semester, I saw how valuable the finance knowledge and skill set would be for my career. Subsequently, I took Foundations of Finance last spring, and became hooked. Since then I have also taken Corporate Finance, Investment Banking, and Financial Modeling. It is clear why Stern has such a strong reputation for finance, when these classes and professors can convert even the most reluctant student into an enthusiastic financial modeler.

• Beer Blast: As mentioned in my previous post, Beer Blast is a weekly social gathering held every Thursday. SGov and student clubs provide the food, beer, and theme decorations,* while full- and part-time students mix and mingle for four hours. Beer Blast is often my favorite part of the week. I know that I’ll be able to catch up with friends that I might not see during the week, and often times get to know some of my classmates better. There are always a few hotly contested beer pong games being played, and an occasional dance party. It doesn’t get much better than a Thursday night in the basement of the Kaufman Management Center hanging out with my classmates.

• Block One: All incoming Stern students are assigned to “blocks” of 65-70 students with whom you take your core classes with. My block, fondly nicknamed Block Won, has been the cornerstone of my community at Stern. Our block had instant rapport, and has been hanging out since the first week of school. We have one or two block-wide parties a semester. I also frequently partner with Block One members for group projects. This is also a community that I’m confident I’ll stay in touch with post-Stern. I look forward to more block parties for those of us who stay in New York, and getting coffee with others as I travel for consulting.

All this being said, I am certainly glad I have another 1/8 of my MBA career to go! The next eight weeks will be filled with group projects, final presentations and exams, a class trip to Puerto Rico, time with friends and plenty of Beer Blast. I could not be happier.

*Beer blast themes range from an Oscar party hosted by the Entertainment, Media & Technology Association to the Halloween party hosted by the Entrepreneurs’ Exchange.

End times are near.

The end of my MBA, of course!  It’s with mixed feelings that I look at the calendar and see that in just two and a half months I’ll be graduating form NYU Stern with my degree.  Then I have about a month before beginning work–so there is time for me to take a little bit of a rest before the next phase in my life!

In the meantime, the MBA2s are starting to get involved with more and more activities on campus–especially as the weather improves.  Beer blasts (our Thursday night on-campus social get-togethers and weekend kickoffs) are getting more crowded; so are club happy hours and events near campus in the village.  Most exciting of all is that our student leadership has been planning a class-wide senior trip for our last weekend here in May; this year, they are leading a trip to Puerto Rico, and all MBA2s are welcome to join.

I have never been to Puerto Rico, so I’m looking forward to a cool new experience with my Stern friends–a  proper send off after two years of really great times (and a decent amount of homework).  The pictures of the city look beautiful:

Meanwhile, we also have spring break coming up–which is a week off in March.  It’s nice to have a few days to just relax in NYC–though some of my classmates are using the week to travel (I know someone going to Australia–pretty ambitious for just a week off)!

One of the great things about business school, if you couldn’t tell, is that there is a good amount of time off.  When we are in classes it is very busy, make no mistake–but having the “students’ schedule” is a huge benefit of the full-time program here.

Anyway, I guess it is best to travel now, as soon enough we’ll be working pretty long hours as we transition from full-time student to full-time employees.

But, you know, pay checks are good too.

 

Now that I am in my last semester at Stern, I have started to reflect on what I really love about being the school. The following are a few of the reasons I’m so excited to walk into the Kaufman Management Center every day and am always proud to tell people I go to Stern:

• My friends: I have made fantastic friends at Stern. I have found people to connect with through various facets of my life – friends who also used to live in DC, friends who like to do yoga, friends who are excited to travel, etc. We have brunch together regularly, go to each other’s conferences and shows, and travel together. I’m now even living with one!

• The community: From the moment I walked into Stern as a prospective student in July 2012, I knew I wanted to be part of the Stern community. I have found community in several places – from my first-year block and the Social Enterprise Association to the friends I share a Class Pass calendar with. I love being able to walk into Beer Blast* on Thursday night and know that I could talk to and find a commonality with almost everyone in the room.

• The faculty: My professors at Stern keep getting better and better. They keep classes lively and engaging through their humor and real life anecdotes. A few of my favorite professors include Glenn Okun for entrepreneurship and management, Diane Lennard for communications, and Bill Silber for finance. Moreover, I’m confident that I could contact any of them during my career and they would be willing to help or offer sage advice.

• The opportunities: I just found out that one of my good friends is in the United Arab Emirates for the week, facilitated and funded by the school. Through the Stern Signature Projects, she and a group of Stern students are working on a strategy and business plan for the country’s first national park. No big deal. It is these types of opportunities that continuously astound me. Over the past 18 months, my friends have traveled to Singapore to present at a conference on women in business and to Paris to attend a conference on the sharing economy. Opportunities such as these are countless at Stern.

This list well captures how fun and special it has been to be part of Stern for the past year and a half. It certainly makes me glad that I have a few more months left to take advantage of it all.

*Beer Blast is a weekly social event for full- and part- time students. Think of a more mature and elegant college party.

“How was break?”

It’s a chorus of the same question here at Stern, just one week back to classes after a month long break, with MBA2s eager to catch up over coffee, beer, and finance problem sets.  The answer is always somehow the same: a lot of fun, too little sleep, and much needed rest and relaxation.

The MBA1s had a bit of a different break, as many of them stay on campus both to prep for, and participate in, on-campus interviews.  That is anything but R&R, I know from experience, but worthwhile–even if you don’t end up with a summer internship when the smoke clears in February.  The reason is that the iterative process of mock interviews, research, and preparation is exactly what it takes to land the job you WILL get…whether it’s in January, February or later in the semester.  Practice makes perfect, as they say, and at business school it is no different.

For the MBA2s, though, Winter Break meant Thailand, Cancun, and Caracas.  It meant mai-tais in Malaysia, trips to see grandma in Orlando, or (for a wise few), some NYC apartment hibernation with a Netflix subscription and little else.  There are definitely worse ways to spend one’s break.

For me, I went to California, where my sister’s family is and where my parents spend the winter.  It was certainly nice to get some sun, fresh air, and avocadoes (is it just me or do Californians put avocadoes on everything?)  Then I switched gears dramatically, went to New Hampshire to go camping a few days.  It was a true whirlwind, but a good “productive vacation” if that’s not too much of an oxymoron.  I got back just before the semester began.

Thus, it’s taken a few days to “get back in the swing of things” — though I already have a good amount of homework to do!  Night classes start this week and then we are back to a full schedule — so pretty quickly people get back to the “b-school groove”.  It’s definitely nice to see all my friends and colleagues again.

Yes, so it’s a little cold, a little snowy, a little dreary.  And many of us do miss the tropical paradises we visited over vacation; still, NYC in the winter has its charms.  It’s a magical, beautiful city when covered in snow.

Winter, you’re alright.  Just don’t stay long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week was technically the first week of the Spring semester. Stern gives us 6 weeks of winter break! Which I know is amazing, but REALLY it depends on what you are recruiting for, when you are a 1^st year MBA. You see, most of the interviews for Banking, Consulting, and Marketing summer internships happen during the month of January. This is the usually the end of Fall Recruitment, the final push. Therefore, the MBA1s recruiting in these industries usually come back on campus the 1^st and 2^nd week of January. This period is great as it gives us time to only focus on interviews – without having to worry about classes, midterms or group assignments.

Once again the Stern Community pulled through.  Bootcamps, behavioral and casing preps were organized by the Management Consulting Association (MCA), the Graduate Marketing Association (GMA), and the Graduate Finance Association (GFA) to prep their members.  The Office of Career Development (OCD) was open and ready to help us. For example, the MCA created a spreadsheet that allowed us to sign up for casing prep with other MBA1s that were going through the process.  From Montreal, where I was spending the break with family, I was able to sign up and conduct multiple Skype casing sessions. When I came back on campus, we had rooms that were booked at school and that we could use for more prep. Some MBA2s even volunteered their time to help us, and give us some feedback.

Recruitment is hard, it is part of the process, and we expect it. However, it can really make you question yourself, your abilities, and the reasons that you came to b-school in the first place. There are quite a few learnings that my peers and I took away, and that I am sure we will keep using the rest of this semester, for full-time recruitment and even later on.  A few that I can think of right now are: knowing yourself and understanding what the different firms are looking for, being open to more options, and more importantly remembering that there are more opportunities out there – and that we are in it for the long haul.  Fall Recruitment is emotionally taxing for everyone that is involved in it. For the ones that get offers, it is finally the time to take a deep breath and enjoy being done (for a while at least). For the ones that don’t make it, it is the time to recover, and keep fighting the battle. Like my father told me: “You will not miss what is meant for you!”.  For all of us, it is time to reflect, and to celebrate the learnings and friendships that were made through the process! But the thing that I am most looking forward to, is having a real winter break next year when I am an MBA2, 6 weeks of “freedom” that I will hopefully use to travel 😉

Have a great week,

Michaella

END OF SEMESTER!

It’s the end of the semester and weather is turning cold… hence our increased flannel and warmer weather gear.  This photo is of me and my co-tour guide Michelle; we accidentally wore blue plaid the same day for our scheduled tour… which definitely looked planned (it wasn’t, I assure you).

We Graduate Ambassadors are wrapping up our last week of “official” tour-guiding for the year… and although tours will be given in January, many of us won’t resume our regularly scheduled hours until February.  Michelle was a fantastic co-guide (and so were you Joy! — another fellow Graduate Ambassador) so I’ll definitely miss you; I hope my co-guides next semester are as fun.

So, yes, the last week of finals–and then a [very] long break…at least for me.  As an MBA2 who has a job lined up (yay me!), a bit of the pressure is off–so I don’t really need to be around campus throughout January. However, MBA1s and some MBA2s who are still recruiting may have a bit more to do here because a lot of the on-campus recruiting, especially in “traditional” career tracks (banking consulting, CPG marketing), happens over the winter break.

Taking a look back at last January, it was a very different month for me — I was doing “mock madness” with the Graduate Marketing Association (GMA) leading into my interviews.  This was a great couple of days of programming where MBA1s get mentored by more-experience second-years, as they are schooled on the ins-and-outs of interviewing.  They even have a “question bible” available with literally lists of every question anyone has ever been asked in a marketing interview.  It helps you to prepare snappy responses beforehand–taking (a little) of the pressure off during the actual interview.  This is just yet another way the professional clubs, in this case the GMA, helps shepherd you through the job-finding and job-getting process.

So this year, in lieu of recruiting, I’m going to visit my family in California and then take a sweet camping trip in New Hampshire.  I will most likely not have such an extended vacation for a long time after I graduate from business school, so I’m going to make the most of this one.

See you in February– for one more semester of triumphs, tests, and business school shenanigans.  Have the happiest holiday.