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SEPTEMBER 2000 MBA JOURNAL: YEAR TWO Alex Virtue: Academics, the Placement Process, and More
Settling Back into Wharton Life I finished up my summer at Merrill Lynch at the end of August and began wrestling with the Fortune class-auction system and my fall schedule less than a week later. Aside from the 750 new faces, the most striking thing about returning to campus was how quickly everything moves in the second year. In the first year, everything seems to have a nice introduction and forewarning -- not so in year two. While some people either completely hated or fell in love with their summer job, most of us needed some time to depressurize and mull over what we really wanted to do with the rest of our lives. However, the frenzy of corporate presentations started just two weeks into the semester, and I quickly realized that I'd have to decide very quickly if the world of investment banking and Wall Street was for me. Recruiting and the First Semester The most frustrating thing about fall recruiting is that the array of choices is too vast. You simply can't fit every recruiting event that you want to attend into your schedule. As such, I tried to maintain a focus and attended some of the investment banking presentations as well as the more traditional real estate company events. Having an offer from Merrill was both a blessing and a detriment. On the one hand, the summer offer is a prerequisite for consideration by other firms (i.e., the question always comes up in the interview and you'd better be able to say "yes") and makes the selection process somewhat easier. I quickly ruled out a slew of firms based on the fact that I had the offer. Turning down interview offers and recruiting dinners was definitely a strange experience, considering my tenacity to get on interview lists during my first year. The downside to having an offer, or at least an offer that you're strongly considering, is that you tend to be a little less pumped about going out there and finding the job of your dreams. I suppose that this is all part of the selection process, but I know I would have worked harder and probably considered a wider array of opportunities if I didn't have a job offer to return to at one of Wall Street's major players. Nonetheless, as each week ticked by, my offer deadline loomed nearer. But I had a good summer at Merrill and knew that I could learn a great deal as an associate there. The corporate-recruiting team from Merrill really put on the heat once recruiting got going. I'm still amazed that these companies bring out the "big guns" just to convince MBA students to come on board. While I eventually signed on and will return to Merrill next fall, I interviewed with some other investment banks that had real estate principal investing (real estate private equity) divisions, a part of the business that Merrill doesn't play in. Interviewing again was grueling, but a good way for me to learn more about the firms out there and be sure, at the end of all of this, that I was indeed making the right decision. The Flight to Dot-coms One thing that's received a lot of press has been the flight of B-school students to the wild world of the Internet. Around 25 to 30 students in my class didn't return from summer break as they were lured by lucrative Internet startup opportunities. Even for those who stayed on, it seemed like everyone you talked to had a New Economy business plan that was hush-hush (nobody talks about their plan prior to getting and closing a VC funding commitment). This frenzy was enough to make me wonder if I should jump into the field. As a real estate guy, I felt like a true Old Economy dinosaur in comparison to my maverick classmates. The biggest problem that I personally had with this option was the difficulty in determining what a good company or opportunity really was. With the established companies, the flow of information with which you can judge a firm is pretty good. With the Internet startups, there's no track record, and even the most established ones are capital-intensive enterprises with negative earnings. In any case, some students have already had awesome successes with their ventures and I know others are leaving the halls of Wharton this spring with polished business plans, funding commitments, and very exciting futures indeed. I wish them the best of luck. On the academic side, I took mainly finance and accounting in the fall, as well as an interesting and cutting-edge class on the new paradigm of e-commerce. I definitely overloaded on the academic work, taking six classes. So if anyone out there is wondering if the second year is a breeze -- a mere academic formality -- let me tell you, it is not! In addition to recruiting and classes, I was also heavily involved in running the Wharton Real Estate Club as one of the co-presidents. This entailed lots of detail-oriented event planning and coordinating with companies and recruiters that wanted to match up with our members. In my next and final entry for the year, I'll give an overview of the second semester and my overall experience at Wharton. Did I enjoy it? Would I recommend it? Would I do it all over again? Stay tuned...  Alex Virtue  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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