Hi folks! It’s been awhile since I have blogged and for that I apologize. The whirlwind of recruiting for a summer internship has officially ceased (in a good way!) and I feel like I can breathe once more. I know that many of you following the MBA Student Voice have already received acceptance, many have applied and are waiting for decisions, and the rest are probably still considering whether or not to apply. To you I say congratulations, good luck, and please do, respectively! Thank you for continuing to follow us. So here’s an update: I landed a summer internship! I was recruiting for investment banking and am happy to say that I will be working for the Los Angeles office of a fantastic bank. Recruiting took a lot out of me with nonstop networking, studying and interviews for weeks on end, but it finally came to fruition and I could not be more relieved/excited/grateful. The reason I bring up my own experience is that all prospective UCLA Anderson students need to know that it is possible to obtain a great finance internship starting right here on campus. There are so many reputable firms that come here to recruit us that if we are not toward the top of your list of finance-focused schools, we should be. I don’t think there is any chance I could have obtained this particular internship here in LA if I had been anywhere but Anderson. And now that recruiting is behind me I have... Continue reading

Hello, all. I’ve had a great weekend so far and I hope you have, too. On Friday our section and another section had a joint barbecue at Westwood Park and it was great. Any excuse to get together and drink beer with friends I’ll take. Then yesterday I bowled in a charity bowl-a-thon for C4C (Challenge for Charity). UCLA Challenge for Charity is the largest charitable organization at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. UCLA C4C raises money and supplies volunteer hours for two local charities: LA Works and Special Olympics. Anderson takes C4C incredibly seriously and has won the annual C4C competition among nine West Coast business schools for the past three years! We like to take advantage of any opportunity to aid our community, and it doesn’t get much better than bowling for charity. Many people showed up in funny costumes and the positive spirit of the event far outweighed the competitiveness that comes along with bowling. I, for one, enjoyed myself immensely. Today I am preparing for the busy week I have ahead of me. I am excited because this coming Thursday and Friday, the first year directors of the Investment Finance Association have arranged for us to visit several investment banks in Palo Alto and San Francisco for what we call “DOJs,” or days on the job. DOJs are great ways to interact and learn more about the companies we are interested in pursuing. You go to the location, listen to a presentation by members of... Continue reading

It is 6pm on Sunday evening and I am just now sitting down to start my homework that’s due tomorrow (and there is a lot of it). Why did I wait so long? Is it because I am a procrastinator? No. (Well okay, maybe a little, sometimes). But there was a really good reason I was busy this weekend and it goes by the name of the Training the Street Corporate Valuation Workshop. I spent the majority of both Saturday and Sunday in Korn Convocation Hall here on campus learning how to value companies. I mentioned before that I am pursuing investment banking and much of the recruiting is occurring right now. Coming from a corporate finance background (read: not investment banking), there is plenty that I still need to learn before I can land an internship, including how to value companies. This workshop was a fantastic way to do just that. Training the Street is a widely renowned company that teaches students and bankers the tools needed to be successful in any type of Wall Street career. We had a great instructor named Marc Aqui come and teach us the three main types of valuation. There were over a hundred students, both full-time and part-time, at the workshop and I know we all found it very informative, useful and valuable to our future careers. The professional clubs at UCLA Anderson are great about providing students with opportunities to improve their skills in a variety of areas. This particular workshop... Continue reading

Happy Halloween, readers! I hope everyone enjoyed their weekends. We had an Anderson Halloween party on Friday night which was a blast! It was a great end to a busy and stressful week full of midterms. But that’s what’s great about business school. There is a good mix of academic, professional and social activities, and in my opinion, to get the most out of your experience, you have to participate in a combination of all three. Last Friday was a perfect example of this. We had our Marketing Management final at 8:00 in the morning. It lasted three and a half hours (brutal), but the best part? The best part is that they had mimosas waiting for us on the North Lawn afterward. What a great way to celebrate finishing three midterms and a final in one week. After the mini celebration, I attended Deutsche Bank’s office hours. Office hours are chats with recruiters from firms that actively recruit on campus. I sat with another student and a recruiter from Deutsche Bank at a table at the local coffeehouse and talked for about 15 minutes. It’s a more personal way to interact with the recruiters. Also, it’s really a great way to find out more about the companies you are interested in and a fantastic way to network and meet people who could be the ones hiring you at some point! Anderson takes the recruiting process very seriously and the Parker Career Management Center tries to provide as many opportunities... Continue reading