Barry Zhang: Keeping One's Balance

Now that I've survived my first year of B-school, I can finally give you the complete play-by-play of my winter and spring quarters at Kellogg. The fall quarter was for meeting people and getting acclimated to the school scene again. Group meetings and section mixers ruled the day. With on-campus recruiting starting in January, people really buckled down during the winter quarter.

The classes I took were a mix of core requirements and electives. One of them turned out to be my favorite class so far at Kellogg: "Negotiations." The school has a great negotiations program headed by Professor Medvec, who taught this class. Another course I enjoyed was "Managing Turnarounds." The instructor was a practicing lawyer who I felt brought many of the lessons learned in the trenches with him to class.

Since the point of this journal is to give readers a true feel for Kellogg, I must say that many of my other classes stick out because the teaching quality left a lot to be desired. I, and many classmates I've spoken with, have noticed that there are a few superstar professors at Kellogg in select fields such as marketing, operations, and negotiations. However, unless you spend 1,000 points bidding for each one of those classes (you only have 2,000 your first year), you'll quickly find yourself listening to instructors who have made names for themselves in the research journals but don't really belong in the classroom.

THE MAIN EVENT.  However, let's not dwell on classes since the main event of winter quarter was the recruiting process. I'm sure many readers have experienced the on-campus interview process as an undergrad firsthand. For those who haven't, on-campus interviews (OCI) are an annual rite of passage at any business school. Hundreds of companies come to campus to cull the best and brightest of recently "corporatized" MBAs.

As I've mentioned in previous journal entries, the top B-schools send most of their students on to the Fortune 500 companies. Kellogg's strengths lie in the consulting firms, investment banks, and consumer-products companies. It even surprised me to hear that as much as 10% of a recent class went to McKinsey. Add to that all the people going to Merrill (MER ) and P&G (PG ), and you've got an army of Kellogg people that can strategize, finance, and market the best shampoo in the world!

Seriously, the process at Kellogg works like this. You see which companies are coming to campus. Then you "drop" your resume for an interview with that company. If the company doesn't reciprocate your interest, Kellogg allows you to bid points for that interview so you can still try to wow the recruiters in person even if your resume wasn't enough to do the job. Kellogg's Career Office requires all companies in OCI to reserve half their interview slots for students that bid their way in, which really helps career switchers.

LANDING AN INTERNSHIP.  The companies start coming to campus in late January. As soon as students return from their holiday breaks, they begin researching their target companies. Kellogg's jovial culture gets redirected when it's time to get serious. People help one another by giving mock interviews. Classmates are always responsive to requests to discuss their former employers. I've heard it can be more cutthroat at some schools, but Kellogg is a very supportive environment during recruiting season. One testament to this is that at corporate receptions, the culture here always is to let other students into a conversation with a recruiter instead of boxing them out.

I didn't do much on-campus interviewing myself. I chose to pursue an internship in private equity. I luckily landed an offer in late January, so much of my winter and spring quarters were spent learning more about the field so I could make a bigger contribution this summer.

My company posted a notice on Kellogg's job site, so being here was an obvious factor in my landing the internship. Otherwise, I didn't rely much on the school's career resources. While Kellogg has the system down pat for getting students into the big banks, consulting firms, and consumer-products programs, the school hasn't put many resources behind more niche fields such as non-profit, private equity, or hedge funds.

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