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FEBRUARY 2001 MBA JOURNAL: YEAR TWO Yi Lu: Academics, the Placement Process, and More "Being a second year student made me aware of the fact that nothing is going to last forever. There is certainly the sentiment that everything is coming to an end soon."
Boy, was I glad to get back to school for the second year. Not that I did not enjoy my summer internship. It's just different when you know that the internship will eventually come to an end and you will have to move on anyway. Back on campus the first thing I had to get used to was the fact that I am finally a second year student. Not too long ago I was still the anxious first-year, holding the second-years in reverence and wishing my life could be as easy and seemingly relaxed as theirs. Now I am the one who is watching some 750 new faces of the first-years running around campus as if their heads were cut off. It is amusing to hear them complaining about the same issues I griped about a year ago: overflowing school work, a dysfunctional learning team, overcrowded classrooms, and too many recruiting presentations. All I can say is that I am glad I am a second year student! Tough Academics Before I immerse myself in the glory of being a second year, I have to admit that this semester has been tougher than last year for me. Wharton requires first year students to take all the core classes. There were no electives to speak of last year unless you could waive a few classes by exams or credentials. Second year is about academic freedom, which I was looking forward to. I can design my schedule however I want to. No one is going to care if I schedule all my classes in the afternoon so that I can sleep late in the morning. There are plenty of my classmates who are taking four courses with no final exams whatsoever. However, being a nerdy finance major, I was compelled to take a number of finance and accounting electives since almost all the popular professors teach in the fall. Because I've spent so much money on school already, I figure I might as well try to take classes from the best professors and get the most out of it. In addition to regular finance classes, I decided to take one competitive strategy/game theory class to help with my business thinking process. The level of difficulty of the electives is definitely higher this semester. I can't just read a case the previous night and scramble for the final exam without spending a lot of time studying the subjects. In addition, most professors are really interested in getting the students to understand the theories in the class, so we have quite a few big projects due at the end of the semester. So far this semester, I must have done some thirty to forty homework assignments and I am working on three big projects due within the next couple of weeks. I am definitely deprived of sleep, and I am working a lot harder than last year in aggregate. Sometimes I wonder why people always say second year is a lot better than first year. I certainly don't feel that way in terms of classes. In addition to coping with demanding classes, there is obviously the "R" word: Recruiting. Full-time Recruiting is Not a Breeze This Year Full-time recruiting in business school is just as cyclical as many businesses. Last year, the dot-com fever swept through business school campuses across the country. There were more than enough job openings for students both pursuing traditional jobs such as consulting, banking, and those within other corporations, as well as for those students interested in start-ups and e-strategies. This year the competitive landscape underwent a thorough shift to "B-to-B", meaning "Back to Banking", and consulting firms have not seen such enthusiasm among MBA students since 1997. It's only the second week back to school, but recruiters are already streaming onto the Wharton campus. For some of those students who interned at start-ups and high-tech in the summer, traditional jobs have become a much more attractive option than the "risky" entrepreneurial ventures. Although there were many students who had offers from the summer employment, a large number of the students have decided to switch jobs after the summer. I have always been a fan of investment banking and was glad to receive an offer from Lehman Brothers. But there was quite a bit of confusion inside my head. On the one hand, I was a little bit burnt out by the summer recruiting process and did not want to go though it again. Taking the job offer from Lehman Brothers seemed to be a very easy escape for me. I could relax and not worry about jobs any more. On the other hand, I felt I would be doing myself a disservice if I did not go through the recruiting process. After all, this is the only opportunity before I graduate to change my career choice again. So I wavered, and did not really go through the campus recruiting presentations and dinners. But in the end I half-heartedly sent out two cover letters to some other investment banks. Fortunately, I was able to get a few first-round interviews and I started my grueling recruiting process. What made these interviews even tougher than first year interviews for summer internships was the fact that for full-time recruiting there was no longer the one-week "dedicated interview period" available in my first year. A lot of the second year students had to skip classes to make the interview schedules. Sometimes half the class would disappear and fortunately most of the Wharton professors are used to this phenomenon and did give us a small break. During my first week of interviewing, I had altogether five mid-term exams and about 20 interviews. I was a nervous wreck. The tension of rejection, the feeling of anxiety, and fear of under-preparation for exams were all mixed together within those seven days. Many times, I felt as if my head was going to explode. If it were not for my dear friends at Wharton, who kept providing me with encouraging words, I would never have made it through. At the end of it all, I decided to accept a job offer from the generalist group at Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB). I was attracted to this offer versus some competing ones because this group does merchant banking, financial sponsors, and leveraged finance transactions, as well as make some of the deals with traditional large-cap industrial companies. I can get a more well-rounded experience than in any of the other investment banking positions that I have looked into. In addition, Credit Suisse First Boston just acquired Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) which was famous on Wall Street for its merchant banking and leveraged finance franchise. I went to New York to visit CSFB's office and met with a number of investment banking professionals. I truly believe this firm has tremendous growth potential and I really like the people I met during the interviews and office visit. However, I also felt really guilty about turning down Lehman Brothers' offer because I had a great summer experience and had established a good rapport within the firm. Now I have to start all over again at CSFB and who is to say that I will definitely like what I do in the future. On the other hand, I believe that I have been on Wall Street for a while and I understand at least the basic skills required to get the job done. I am willing to take the challenge and deliver good performance at a different firm. Sometimes it seems funny that we all mull over the full-time job offers as if they were irrevocably final while everyone knows that half of the MBA graduates will change their jobs within the next two years. I guess that as over-achievers we just don't like to make any judgment mistakes, even though things are sometimes out of our control. Other Things to Do Being a second year student made me aware of the fact that nothing is going to last forever. There is certainly the sentiment that everything is coming to an end soon. Some second-years are taking advantage of the free time after recruiting to enrich their extracurricular activities such as wine-tasting, golf, and dancing. Others are busy with club activities and going to telecom conferences and speaker series. I personally didn't really have a lot of time to do all that since I have to go home to New Jersey almost every single weekend to see my husband. I participated in a China independent study project with the Wharton Entrepreneurial Center to establish a consulting interface with the mainland Chinese high-growth companies. The formal launch of the project will start at the beginning at the next semester. Now we are mainly doing the initial candidate selection of the Chinese companies and setting up the web-based tools to start the consulting project. I can't wait until the project formally takes off next spring. Second Year Is Going By Too Fast As we started auctioning for next classes, I am struggling between whether I should take a break and take some relatively less demanding classes, or if I should keep challenging myself with "hard-core" classes. In the meantime, I have had a lot of fun working with my various project teams over the past three months. I will definitely miss the late-night pizza, the heated discussion over the modeling assumptions, and all the tears and laugher that I have experienced with my friends at Wharton. The first semester is not finished yet, and I have already begun to feel that the second year is going by too fast.  | | Learn about your online education options |
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