How Internship process works @ Ross

A lot of people have asked me what is taking me so long to find an internship for myself. So let me explain here the whole process for finding a summer at Ross.

Step 0 – Find a career – You will go through some of the psychometric tests and sit with career counsels to identify your career objective. Yes all those essays on short-term and long-term goals really don’t matter once you are in the B-School.
Step 1 – Resume Building – Having decided on the career, you will start working on your resume and resumes for various functions (yes a lot of them to be sure, why else I would call finding a career as step 0)
Step 2 – Network with firms – Start networking with all the firms that you want to target. Make sure you spend enough time on these firms before you touch base.
Step 3 – Resumes and Cover letter submissions – This is the step at which I am on these days. You drop your targeted resumes along with cover letters to these firms and pray every day.
Step 4 – Close listing by firm – So almost 75-100% of the interview seats are decided by the firms based on their interactions, resumes and cover letter. For remaining 25% seats you bid.
Step 5 – Bidding – So this is how it works. You get 1,000 points in the beginning of the process and you can bid various amount to get in the remaining 25% slots for a firm. For example if McKinsey has 60 slots, 40 will be close listed and remaining 20 are open for bidding. You can bid as many points from those 1,000 or remaining points and if your bids are in top 20 you will get a slot and will loose the minimum clearing points (MCP) for that firms. Simple, isn’t it. Just that you would never know how much to bid for. For example, last year McKinsey’s MCP were close to 460, which essentially means you will be able to bid for 1-2 companies maximum after this. Lehman went as high as 800! So that leaves you with nothing once you are through Lehman. Well its just around the corner now and I am sure its going to be fun!
Step 6 – Interviews – Two round of interviews. One at schools and second at firm’s office. You get paid for the trip; so that translates in to lesser people in second round… around a third of the first round candidates. After the second round… well it’s a simple go or no go decision after that.
Some of the ratios for the future MBA1s… people focusing on consulting… around 180… internships on offer… around 50 (upper side…) Happy Summers!!!

Summary of Fall B – Still Shining – The Seven Star

Positives – Going back to last quarter’s resolutions, I think I was able to keep at least two of them. One, I did network well this time and second, I did follow football a lot. As far as the good things on last quarter are concerned, I certainly built a little further on that. Adding to the list of friends, I did manage to get a descent standing with-in my international peers as well. The research for summers was heightened to almost Nth degree this fall. I continued on my learning this amazing country. However, one thing which I am really proud of is that I continued to perform well in my classes and of the three subjects for which the results have been announced, I have got an excellent for all… making it a seven star performance for me. However, at times it seems I am competing among incompetence or non-competence to a certain degree. People here do not really care about the academics and grades or so they say and thus getting in to the top 20% is no big deal. At times, all these excellent grades seem far less deserving than my GPA at IIT (oopps… did I say that… forget it please)

Negatives – Well I still haven’t got in the mode of reading newspapers on a daily basis and I certainly should have done much better in Marketing.

Take Away – Making sure, I do not loose anything next semester. Manage the time well.

Action based learning at Ross

I am sure most of you would have heard the phrase “Action Based Learning” when discussing about Ross. So what is Action Based Learning… trust me most of us here are not sure whatever it means… most of the Umich people will start talking about MAP and ABL in the same breath. So is that all… guess not… I am trying to answer this here; however again don’t quote me on this in your essays :)

Action Based Learning – When we discuss about various mode and methods of learning, some of the prominent ones come are… academic learning followed by practical (as followed by most of the schools in India and to a certain degree even in the states)… then the case study method in which you will be given a real life problem and will be asked to find the solution of the stated problem in the case and thereby making you learn the hidden academic concepts. I have also learnt a little on the story-based method, though I really haven’t seen any examples of the same. The Action based learning approach works as a superset for the case method though. You will be presented a real life situation in which things are not moving smoothly or at least as desired. You will work on the problem definition, develop your own hypothesis, find the relevant data, propose a solution, and then try to implement the same. Thus not only it encompasses most of the benefits of case study method it takes you closer the real business problems and also makes you work hands on. Let me tell this with an example, so in the Managerial Behavior class, that started with some cases initially, we moved on to team exercises. You get a task and you work in a team, trying to solve a real life problem taken from MAPs or industry projects from the past and the problem is defined through interviews with people. So you define the problem, you search for data, find probable solutions based on assumptions and that is learning through actions.

Then a lot of time you have to prepare cases even; for example, in marketing you make cases and thus learn much more than just solving a case. Again it’s not necessary you get cases in all classes but you may read articles in some. For example, for world economy class, the cases or action based learning really doesn’t work as you have to update the whole thing every year. So the professors make you read a lot of articles before every class.

Finally a Vegetarian

Time to announce the resolutions for the New Year and here is the first in line… I am going to turn in to a vegetarian from the next year. Well it might certainly surprise some of you who have seen me ripping through those Tandoori Chickens and Mutton curries… more so because I had been asked by so many people and I never favored them over the meat. However, I guess the final call has been made and the only reason for that is that I was not finding the meat, in the states particularly, healthy anymore (check the Meatrix for more information and some cool animations) and decided to say quits.

Say hello to Green Life :)

Section 4 Rocks - Karoake Night

Our section celebrated the end of the semester with a mega-bang – “The Karoake Night”. For those of you not known to the concept (I sure was one of you until last Friday) this is how it is done.

The video and music of the song keeps running in the background and lyrics are displayed in the bottom half. As the lyrics move on a cursor keeps running with the lyrics and that’s your clue. Sounds easy isn’t it… add a sound proof room, some bottles of Whiskey, Vodka, Rum and a few cans of Beer and you get an atmosphere ready to explode… add some cool Section 4 people and you get a supernova!

The party began at around 7PM when we went to a classmate’s house. There some of our classmates celebrated Hanukkah and sang Hanukkah song for us. Post that we was time for more games and party. I took part in chubby bunny contest. The event requires contestants to pop one marshmallow at a time into their mouths and say "chubby bunny" to amuse spectators until they can't say it anymore. Well, I got third place with my small mouth which to me seemed like a feat none the less. After getting a little drunk, we headed to the Blue Karaoke for the event of the evening. We started with some of the more talented lot, until finally settling for every one and anyone singing. It was fun to see everyone in those moods after the sick looking faces during the exam time. I headed back home at around 12 and instead of going to bed started discussing with Amiya and Anuranjan about the times ahead. Later went to a friend’s house to be joined later by the celebrity of the day Mr. Vikram (my section-mate). Drank some more and had a long chat regarding what all means people use to get in the short list here and if we can do so or not… anyways my mouth was still sweet with Marshmallows and humming Hanukkah songs... :)

Problems of Plenty

"Yeh jigar jala kar peete hi Ahsaas ki narmi hoti hai...

Yeh baraf ki chaadar kya samjhe kya khoon ki garmi hoti hai!!!"

Some time back, I was wondering as to why am I being left out in this race to networking and as I pressed the pedals on this front, I found myself with too many things to do. Here is a day every MBA1 focusing on consulting dreaded… both haves and have nots…

The First Thursday of December was when even the calmest minds would have gone crazy. There were just a few consulting firms that had tried to network with dinner invites etc. till then and then it poured. I first grabbed dinner invite from A.T.Kearney and I felt relaxed to have networked well with them this semester. However, what followed it was just crazy. I got the dinner invites from BCG, BAIN, and Booz for the very same day. I am sure the restaurants were running a discount that day. On top of that I had office hour appointment for Bain and Co and for BCG in the afternoon. Things didn’t stop here as McKinsey decided to have its case workshop the very same day. How many things you can do after all... I had to decline BCG and Booz and went to the other events rushing through one stop to another, eating 2.5 dinners in less than 3 hours and finally managing to network. At the last hour during my Bain dinner, my cheeks were paining finally due to the 7 hours long smile and I gave it up.

Dine with glory – Another problem discovered during these invites was how to make sure you can connect to the person on the other side of the table. How can you weave a chat around similar areas of interest? So if Computer games (Super Mario) saved the day for me while chatting with one of the principles, I was completely out of place while talking about skiing in Denver or Ice Hockey in Boston… it seems there is a lot to learn here.

Solution – I have asked a few of my American student to help me with the dinner chats and guess what I am using poetry and drama to understand this. So I will be reading some of the contemporary plays and poets to ensure I can talk a little about the mile high city next time :)

Loads of movies and drama

This may sound a bit ridiculous for people who have known me as a hard working busy MBA1; however, I have not let that affect my creative side at all. So, here is what I am planning for the time being…

Started writing two plays; almost done with one
Applied for a part in Follies (the annual skit at Ross, see some of the videos from last year)
Resolved to finish at least 70% of the 100 best movies of all time; finished 40% already J
Watch some funny videos and advertisements on youtube as and when I get time
Start on my poetic front again

So far, I have made a head start with first 4 by utilizing most of my thanksgiving break with movie marathons (count out the time for Sleep and I was right there), using breaks between the classes to write and by ensuring I give a descent audition for the Follies.

The world is not enough…

… Certainly not if you are taking “World Economy” with Proff. Linda Lim. The Professor from Singapore has the distinction of having many students as Finance Misters in the South East Asian countries during the SEA crisis. Her knowledge on the SEA and her command on the third world countries’ economies can be matched by a few, if at all. However, when it can to taking classes she has a tough stick to guide us. No missing classes, no nonsense in class participation, 5-6 articles to read before every class and cold calls each time. She was any first yearite’s nightmare come true, especially if you are planning to skip classes to attend companies’ presentations or planning for a trip to an I-Bank in NYC. Starting from trade deficits to Current Accounts, monetary policies, Dollar devaluation, Yuan controls, IMF, World Bank, trade disputes, and culture we learnt it all in this capsule course thanks to this strict no-BS policy. So did I enjoy the class… the answer is tremendously… why… for besides the topics I mentioned earlier I learnt about cultures and economies of different countries from my classmates… for example Indonesia has third largest Muslim population in the world, Puerto Rico has a comparative advantage in Bio-tech and guess what in Beauty Pageants J… Singapore is planning on opening casinos to keep its metropolitan culture… Thailand’s Nike plant has the best labor standards in all its plants, and child labor is not bad from an Economics stand points… and last but not the least, finally…

… it brought back brought back the belief in me…. “That tolerance will succeed, that people will wake to the dawn, and that I would be able to keep some of my sensitivity outside the class to have free flow of ideas.”

When love was in the Air

So what do you expect from a finance lecture. A lot of slides explaining T-bills? Well this is slightly far fetched I know… how about a lot of formulas to calculate NPVs, IRRs, Cash Flows, PVs, payments, FAF, PAF, Share value, Debt, Equity, Betas… hmmm… lets say maths? Yes, a lot of numbers for sure… right!

This is how Gautam (again no Professor) liked it…

"so what is the most enjoyable thing in the world… its love, so as long we talk about love forget finance." Finance to Gautam was the second most important thing in the world “pity the difference between first and second is too big…” (seems like heard before, go back to “The scent of a woman”)… "

The output, I didn’t study at all for any assignment yet numbers flew in front of me as if the answer itself is searching me than other ways, I didn’t study before mid-sem and found myself writing answers as if I had seen these things 100 times before, I danced for my final preparations, I danced during the exam-hall too :)

Overall, the kind of bond Gautam had with the class was never seen before. He would know every student, their problems and their thought even before they spoke. Did I learn finance? I don’t know… anyways who care when love is still in the air :)

United we stand team...

The most dreaded class this semester for me was Management Organization! How I felt so sorry for getting up early in the morning for this HR lecture (yeah changing the name does make it a bit exciting for sometime). The cases began and I felt all the more sorry for the class to be a part of this torture... What is the final result going to be of all this… and then I saw some changes around me…

As the team activities in the class began, I saw more and more participation from all. Guess what I starting getting on the edge of my seat… I loved arguments put in the class… I enjoyed playing parts in the practice evaluation sessions and finally I saw people recognizing each other’s contribution more than ever before. People that were quiet generally starting speaking, people that were aloof started mixing, and most of all people that didn’t care helped! I think no other class brought the feeling of a section as much as MO did and finally, I think I will miss the Tuesdays and Thursday morning for once.

From puppy channel to male condoms for females

Yes it all happens in the marketing class. Different teams are supposed to prepare case studies for the class and then present their finding with respect to the big picture in the beginning of the class. Think about some product that you think marketers are concerned about and lets match with the list our class came up with… Let’s start with the easy ones first eBay… Chevrolet… Coke zero and Starbucks… okay okay I won’t bore you any further… some of the out of the league topics – US Army “Army Strong” campaign (I was a part of the team), the puppy channel (a TV channel that just shows dogs and puppies all time), eHarmony (the dating site that finds your match using 29 psychological matches), Abercrombie (the all white male dressing) and elexa (the male condoms for females!!!).

So as you can imagine the discussions on the marketing strategy, from acquisition to retention, from stimulate demand to steal share, from dynamic to key variables, from target audience to positions and all remaining 4 Ps, were bound to be heated, exciting, thought provoking. Never before, I was so interested in Marketing and I believe never would I be. At the same point of time, I think it has ruined my life. I used to enjoy advertising. I used to critique them for the subtlety they had, for the humor they provided and for the relaxation they brought. Off late, I am just wondering why are they playing on the dynamic variable when they ought to be stealing share. Is this placement right? What if we decrease breadth of the product? What can improve credence here… I am ruined :)

Oh BTW, some of the worst thing happened during this class... I think I mentioned how I slept once in the class and my head banged against the desk and how Proff Nordhielm was all angry with me... in the last lecture of the semester, we presented our findings. I was cursing myself for being the last group to present and how it meant getting all sorts of questions from all angles and coming to the class even on the last lecture. Suddenly, as you expect, somethings went little sentimental and Proff Nordhielm decided to give "Marketing Star of the Year Awards" to 5 students. Having known the fact, that I hated marketing to the core, I was sure I will be busy clapping and for once I was happy to be contended... however there it was... "Manish Dabas - for asking those brilliant questions and for making class alive!!!" Gosh... I mean ... MARKETING :)

I have to see this movie now... "Gods must be crazy"