Full-time MBA Blog

As you may know, all Stern clubs are student led.  This is a great because it not only gives the student body a say in how to set up clubs and organizations to best serve their needs, but it also gives students the ability to practice their leadership skills and develop their abilities as managers.

As an MBA1 you can apply for roles on student club boards — for example, last year, I applied and was selected to be AVP of Alumni Relations for EMTA–our Entertainment, Media, and Technology club.  Throughout the year I was trained to take over the club leadership position as Vice President of Alumni Events in my second year.

So this year I have been sitting on the board, enjoying the experience, and have recently hired my own “AVP” who I will, in turn, train to take over the spot for me next year when I graduate.  One of my primary goals as Vice President of Alumni Events this year (along with the help of the AVP) was to organize and facilitate the “EMTA Alumni Roundtable.”

This event, which happened just over a week ago, invites Stern alumni who are working in the EMT space to come back to campus, meet informally with students hoping to work in these industries, and have a drink and snacks on Stern.  We had alumni from some really impressive companies this year: Facebook, Spotify, NBC, Verizon, WWE, U.S. Tennis Association, The New York Times, and many others.

It was definitely a lot to coordinate, as our Alumni have busy schedules, but it all turned out to be a remarkably successful event.  As you can see from the picture above, alumni spoke to students at small tables for 20-30 minutes, in three rounds, then everyone split up for some general networking around the open bar.

The feedback has all been very positive! Hopefully this will lead to some of our MBA1s getting an internship, or at least getting some really positive and productive networking opportunities.

This is just one example of how the student leadership organizes club events.  Other events, like treks, speakers, conferences, et al happen in very similar ways.   It’s definitely a fair amount of work but very rewarding when it all goes off without a hitch…

Before enrolling at Stern, I worked for a US Senator and a social enterprise in South Africa. Unlike some of my classmates, there is no mention of profit, sales targets, cost analysis, or other private sector lingo on my resume. Those words were replaced by phrases such as fundraising, proposal writing, and beneficiaries. Given my background, I am often asked how I made the transition into management consulting, and specifically, how I made that transition at Stern.

Stern has a multitude of resources to prepare students for a career in consulting. The most important resources for me were the Office of Career Development (OCD), the Management Consulting Association (MCA), and the Stern Consulting Corps (SCC). These entities all come into play at various points in the consulting preparation process: OCD connects students with prospective companies and facilitates the application and interview process; MCA prepares students for the case-based interview; and SCC readies students to work as consultants.

OCD: I attended all of the corporate presentations OCD facilitated with the main consulting firms. OCD also works with firms to plan events that allow students and the companies to get to know each better. Last fall, I attended events ranging from roundtable discussions and case competitions to smaller dinners and happy hours. I also asked my Career Counselors for help at every step of the application process. I discussed my recruiting strategy with them, asked for feedback on my resume and cover letter, and did mock behavioral interviews.

MCA: I took advantage of every program MCA had to offer! I participated in a six-week boot camp on casing, attended the casing workshops and speakers that MCA brought to campus, and mock cased with MBA 2’s and alums (facilitated by MCA). I found the Consulting Internship Preparation (CIP) program that MCA runs in partnership with Deloitte Consulting to be extremely helpful. I was paired with a Stern alum who currently works at Deloitte. She served as my Mentor and gave me invaluable feedback on my resume and cover letters.

SCC: After I secured my internship in consulting, I was a little panicked. How was I actually going to be a consultant? Luckily, I participated in the Stern Consulting Corps during the spring semester. SCC is a 1.5 credit course that mixes a hands-on consulting projects with classroom instruction. With a team of three other students, I worked with West Elm to conduct a landscape analysis of fair trade certifications. While we were working on the project, we had the support and guidance of our professor and teaching fellow. During our weekly class meeting, they taught us the fundamentals of consulting ranging from hypothesis development to constructing our final presentation. The course helped me get ready for the summer and gave me much more confidence that I could “do” consulting.

The semester is half way over…and I’m happy to report I’ve received and accepted an offer at The Topps Company, where I pursued my internship and had a phenomenal summer.  So now there’s time…time to take stock of where we are and where we are going.

It’s also time to pick classes for my final semester– which is always tricky as there are always plenty of options, many classes I want to take, and only 60 credits to fulfill (most classes are 3 credits, so an MBA turns out to be around 15 classes).  After much deliberation, I have decided to take the following classes:

-Pricing Strategy
-Consumer Neuroscience
-Business of Sports Marketing
-Marketing Planning & Strategy
-Financial Statement Analysis
-Corporate Finance

I’ve chosen a bit of a combination between marketing and quant-focused classes, which is good for me as I’m really trying to develop the mix of skills I’ll be using at Topps. What’s nice about returning to classwork after your internship/job offer is that you have more clarity on what courses you should take to develop the specific skills you’ll need once you graduate.

Additionally, I’m taking corporate finance because it’s an unofficial Stern “must take” — everyone says the class taught by Professor Damodaran (world-renown valuation guru) is one of the course highlights of their MBA.

Other than that I’m using the bit of extra time I have now (that recruiting is done) to catch up on school work, see old friends, attend Stern’s weekly “Beer Blast” more frequently, and continue with my part-time jobs on campus–where I am a tour guide and T.A. for a non-Stern Marketing Management class.  I’m trying to keep a good balance of business, work, and play.

It’s definitely enough to fill my days and even though there is more “time” with recruiting out of the way, there is somehow less time than ever before to do all the things I need and want to do.  But I suppose that’s the way it goes with time, your life sort of fills it up, regardless of how much you have … so you may as well enjoy the ride of “being busy.” That’s another macro-lesson of Business school by the way, BUSY IS GOOD, because in life, busy is just the way it goes.

Anyway, that’s enough philosophizing for now.  For one of my current classes–LEADERSHIP MODELS — we have to read a biography of any leader in ANY field or discipline.  I’ve chosen the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, transcendental meditation founder.  It’s amazing to be able to read such a “non-businessy” text for one of my classes, and apply the principles we are learning.  Reading about Yogi’s path to leadership is the biggest item on my agenda today, well — that and watch a lot of football.  You have to stay balanced, right?

M

Three more weeks of my internship to go!

Generally internships between your two years last for 10 weeks… some can go even longer.  For me, it was just ten–but I was fortunate enough to start very early (just after final exams).  I call this fortunate because now I am faced with wrapping my internship at the end of July… which means a whole month off before school starts in September.

To be honest, I haven’t made too many plans— I’m staying flexible to see where the wind blows me.  I also wouldn’t mind some relaxed NYC time, because during school and especially during the summer internship it can be hard to get out and explore the city as much as one would like.  So this may turn into more of a “staycation” in the end–a prospect I’m fine with.

As for the internship–it really has been great.  The amount that I’ve learned and the exposure my bosses have given me to the many facets of their business have been truly the best part; I am very grateful that Ive had such a resume-building, unique, and–yes, I’ll admit it–challenging summer.  Challenging as it was, I think I’ll be quite happy with the end product of my assignments, and definitely am confident in what I have managed to accomplish personally and professionally in just a few short weeks.

And then back to school!  Can’t believe its coming already.  A number of my classmates are emerging from their own internship bubbles and think we are one by one getting ourselves prepared for the next year of classes.  Should be a great one!

Hope all are well out there.

M

Hi Everyone! It’s been awhile since my last post and I figured I would use this time to answer a common question that I get: “what are the benefits of NYU’s location?” I could write 10,000 words on this topic, but when you browse the web it seems like everything is now written in list form! I can take a hint internet, so here are my top 5 reasons why Stern’s location in New York City (NYC) gives Stern students a major advantage as they pursue a great MBA experience:

1) Finding a Job

When choosing where to apply I made a list of all the companies I thought I would want to work for. What I found was that the companies were either headquartered near NYC (Pepsi, ESPN, Johson & Johnson) or had huge offices in NYC (Google, Facebook, Unilever). My first semester I recruited heavily for internships and all these companies came to campus for corporate presentations. Additionally, many companies worked with clubs to have more social events like happy hours and “day in the life” events where students travel to their offices and shadow an employee. NYU Stern is a cab or train ride away from so many companies that a majority of my conversations were face to face interactions. Since cultural fit is crucial to most companies, these face to face interactions were far more meaningful than a phone call could have been. Establishing these relationships yielded several internship offers and allowed me to accept Unilever’s because it was the best fit, not because of a lack of alternatives.

2) Conferences

This is really an offshoot of finding a job, but I feel as if conferences warrant their own section. If you are thinking about a career in luxury, retail, entertainment, advertising, technology, non-profits, or early stage startups, a major resource for you to network will be industry conferences. New York City is home to many of the top conferences in these industries and as a student you get a special rate. On top of these industry sponsored events, every club on campus throws fantastic conferences as well with C-Suite executives from Fortune 500 companies.

3) Clinical Faculty

Professors at NYU Stern fall into 2 buckets: adjunct professors whose full-time jobs are as NYU professors and clinical professors who spend their days as leaders of business who teach at night or on weekends. I found that one of my favorite benefits of Stern’s location was our ability to draw top clinical faculty to the school. They have plenty of money from their business success, so the reason they teach is because the love interacting with students. For instance my brand strategy class was taught by Scott Galloway. He founded Prophet brand consulting, founded the gift-giving website Red Envelope, and currently runs L2, a digital marketing think tank. He is an excellent resource who not only helps you look at branding in unique ways, but he is able to weave in current market trends because he’s meeting with people every day discussing their companies’ brand strategies. There are countless examples of phenomenal clinical professors and without our location in New York we simply could not draw in such top tier talent.

4) Guest Speakers

Here is a real life conversation I had with an alumni at the NYU Stern Info Session in Los Angeles before I applied:

Alumni: “Do you know which CEOs come to New York during the year?”

Me: (trying to sound smart) “CEOs of publicly traded companies?”

Alumni: “ALL of them”

This is obviously an exaggeration, but not as big an exaggeration as you may think. CEOs always seem to find themselves in NYC whether it’s for conferences, meetings with top partners, or just to visit a friend. In my Strategy class, we prepared a case about whether Peter Lewis, the founder and CEO of Progressive Insurance should enter a specific market in the 1990s. In class we were surprised when Peter Lewis (at that time Chairman of the Board and sadly now deceased) surprised us in class to talk about his decisions and do 45 minutes of Q&A. My first semester this year I saw Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn), Larry Fink (Blackrock), Dick Costolo (Twitter), and Kevin Byrnes (US Army 4-Star General). These were just a handful of speakers that I saw over my 2 years at Stern. A speaking engagement at Stern was not the primary reason these CEOs were in New York, but we were able to benefit from their wisdom and years of experience because of our proximity to their other engagements.

5) Experiential Learning Opportunities

With so many companies surrounding Stern there are many opportunities to take what you learn in the classroom and apply it outside of school. As a career switcher it was important for me to have actual marketing experience BEFORE my summer internship at Unilever. I chose to get this experience in the Stern Consulting Core, a school-run program that allows students to work on 12 week projects starting their second semester at Stern. My particular project was to assist with the launch of an e-commerce site and at the end of the 12 weeks my team had developed a customer segmentation and digital marketing plan for the company to drive quality site traffic.

The Stern Consulting Core is for course credit and is run by the school, but students can leverage clubs for experiential opportunities as well. The Graduate Marketing Association, Luxury and Retail Club, and the Entrepreneurs Exchange are just three of the clubs on campus with their own consulting opportunities. Students interested in luxury brands often use the Luxury and Retail Clubs long-running partnership with the CFDA to partner with talented designers to build their businesses. Hands-on programs like these provide outstanding building blocks for personal growth and are also excellent bullet points on a resume.

Finally, the location in NYC is perfect for students that want to gain experience by interning throughout the year. Many students who want to dive into an industry (and make a bit of money!) during the school year are able to find internships through the Office of Career Development and through industry clubs. If there is one thing I learned at school it’s the principal of supply vs. demand and part-time internships are definitely skew higher towards supply. With so many options students are able to choose internships with fantastic job descriptions at top companies rather than settling for an internship that may not be exactly what they are looking for.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Although i can list many more reasons New York is fantastic (I could make a separate Top 10 list for social purposes) I will leave you with these five. Good luck with your applications and keep checking back for new posts!

Another question we often get in Admissions is around housing and what’s the best place to live. As with many other questions, the answer is: It depends!

The great thing about Stern’s location is that you can get here from almost any subway, even if you live uptown, downtown, in Brooklyn or New Jersey. Students who already live in NYC tend to remain in their current apartments as NYU is easily accessible from anywhere. If you are moving from another city or country, there are many options.

One great option is to live in the Palladium, which is student housing. The Palladium offers fully furnished studios with your own bathroom. There is also a gym on site and the location, Union Square, is great – about a 10 minute walk to campus. More information on the Palladium can be found here http://www.stern.nyu.edu/programs-admissions/full-time-mba/students/housing

There are many cute neighborhoods within walking distance of Stern – East and West Village, Chelsea, Lower East Side, Soho, Noho, Flatiron, Union Square and Tribeca, to name a few. You can’t go wrong with any of these areas as they are all close to Stern and have plenty of restaurants, grocery stores, pharmacies, coffee shops, bars, etc. You can get anything from a quaint studio in a walk-up apartment building to a luxury managed apartment with a doorman and elevator. It depends what kind of amenities you’re looking for.

Many Sternies in the incoming class often choose to live together to make friends and save money. Sometime in the spring before school, someone will start a Google doc on the Facebook group and everyone can post and browse for potential roommates. I can think of at least 10 different groups who found their roommates this way including myself! I lived with two Sternies my first year and it was great! It was nice to automatically have friends in my class.  We ended up using a broker and finding a great 3-bedroom apartment in the Village, a mere 5-minute walk from school! No doorman or elevator but you can’t beat the location and the “commute”!

To simplify the NY real estate game, one of our very own Sternies recently launched Zenly, a start-up aimed at making the NY apartment hunt painless (www.zenly.com started by Isaac Palka, class of 2014). The site lists real apartments with video walkthroughs and no broker’s fee.

But no matter where you end up living and who you’re living with, you can’t go wrong as every neighborhood has something to offer and Stern is very accessible from anywhere!

Now that Graduation is behind me and before I start my full-time job, I’ve had some time to reflect on the past two years and what I enjoyed most about my Stern experience.

I realized that it is the close friendships that I have formed with my fellow classmates over the past two years. It is truly amazing to realize that you can become such good friends with people that you didn’t know a few months or a year ago in such a short amount of time. It’s also refreshing to know that at this stage in life you can still meet new people and have new experiences that will change your life and continue to make life-long friends.

My favorite parts of Stern aren’t the stimulating classes, the exciting guest speakers, the heated case discussions, the respected and accessible professors or the breadth of electives (while those are all great). My favorite moments are potluck picnics in the park with my Block (yeah block 4!), traveling to Japan with 60 Sternies and singing karaoke all night, losing my voice at Beer Blast on Thursday nights, celebrating birthdays almost every single night of the year, attending a wedding in the DR with 20 Sternies, throwing a surprise baby shower for a classmate, and many many boat cruises around Manhattan.

While Stern is incredibly diverse, we also all have something in common. Everyone I met wants to be here at Stern and is very open to making new friends. Even people who already lived in NY and had tons of friends here warned those friends they wouldn’t be seeing much of them for two years. I’ve loved the collaborative community and I love that it doesn’t end when school ends. For instance, classmates who are launching new businesses are receiving tons of support from fellow Sternies on Kickstarter. I just traveled to Croatia for a week with two Sternies and we met up with at least three others at various points because they also happened to be there at the same time. One Block just traveled to the Jersey Shore and made t-shirts for the occasion. School’s out and yet we’re all behaving as if nothing changed and that we’ll be back for another semester.

In a few months or years, I won’t remember how many A’s (or B’s) I got, I may soon forget how to account for depreciation and amortization, and I hope I never have to do another case interview, but I’ll never forget all of the friendships I made and that made it all worth it.

This is my first post as an alumna (gasp!) of NYU Stern! I am in major denial right now and I am hanging onto Stern as I continue to serve as a Graduate Ambassador throughout the summer before I start my full-time job in September. I couldn’t bear to leave just yet!

The week leading up to Graduation, Senior Week as we call it, was packed with fun events organized by our great student leaders in SGov (Stern Student Government). We celebrated for a week from Newport, RI to The Frying Pan to the Beach @ the Dream hotel here in NYC. Stern keeps it classy.

Graduation itself was bittersweet. It was really emotional seeing hundreds of students clad in purple robes gather at the esteemed Radio City Music Hall a few Thursdays ago for the ceremony. It was my first time there and it’s a beautiful venue. We all sat with our Blocks, which reminded me of those first days of LAUNCH when we are all just getting to know each other and forming friendships. I know it’s definitely not the last occasion where I will spend time with my block as they are truly friends for life.

We had a few keynote speakers including our classmate David Kuperstein, popular professor Charlie Murphy, and CEO of Mastercard Ajay Banga. Mr. Banga emphasized “doing well while doing good” and reminded us of the symbolic Stern “Torch” that we must carry on. Murphy joked that it was always “better to be rich than poor” and I will miss how he regaled our investment banking class with endless stories from his years in the industry. We capped off graduation later that night with a great party for our entire class

While many of my close friends remain in NYC, some are moving far away to places like Seattle, San Francisco or Colombia. Some have already left NYC for good and last week was filled with goodbye parties.

Fortunately, we MBA 3’s (as alumnae are now called) have started a “Sternies Summer Camp” group for those of us who will remain in NYC and haven’t started working yet so we can continue hanging out with fellow Sternies who are also in denial about graduation.