Ross Ambassador Blog

Sweep!

Another big win for Michigan over Ohio State, this time in basketball - let me briefly recap how I got there...

I was in Chicago Friday and Saturday at a sell weekend for a potential consulting internship.  There's no overestimating how nice it is to be on the flip side of the recruiting process, to have companies pursuing you instead of vice versa.  But even nicer was to find that my potential summer coworkers (three from Ross and a handful each from Kellogg and Booth) were wonderful company - smart, motivated, and excited to be in the position they were in.  I'm looking forward to getting to know them, and the consulting industry as a whole, better.

So the sell "weekend" was actually only Friday and Saturday morning, but Chicago is home for me, so I was also keen to see some friends while I was in town.  Once brunch ended around noon, I asked a friend to come down and meet me at the hotel (in large part to see the great room!).  We took a nice walk around the city, had lunch, then I headed back to the airport for what was supposed to be a 4:45 flight, getting me back to DTW around 7:15, in plenty of time for the 9PM basketball game.  When we still hadn't boarded at 5:00, I was starting to get nervous.  The gate agents did not seem to care that this was the biggest basketball game at Michigan in over a decade!

Somehow though, luck was smiling on me (or maybe Michigan) - though we didn't leave until nearly 5:30, we somehow still landed just after 7PM EST.  A clock error in my favor, I guess.  So I headed back to a friend's apartment in Ann Arbor, where I had left my ticket and my maize t-shirt (gotta participate in the MAIZE RAGE!!) in preparation for this very scenario, and headed over to the game, arriving just in time for the national anthem. I was up at the top of the arena, but as you can tell from the picture below, there's no bad seat at Crisler Arena.

And the place was rocking!  I'll admit that my only in-person Michigan basketball experiences are from this year, but it was definitely the loudest I've ever seen Crisler.  And we got the win to go with - tough year for OSU, but I don't think I'll shed any tears for them  :)

The Michigan Network

Here’s a quick plug on how cool the Michigan network is.  After my last post about my VisionSpring MAP project in India, a BBA, who graduated from Ross in 2010, reached out to me saying he came across my blog post, and that he had worked with the VisionSpring team in Hyderabad upon graduating from Ross.  He’s now currently still in India, and offered to help our team with any questions we might have on VisionSpring, India, culture, etc. … and he even offered to put together a “Guide to India” to keep us occupied during the weekends :D

I feel proud to be part of this network; it’s pretty neat that we have such strong Ross presence wherever we go.

GO BLUE!!!

Post-recruiting life

As you can see, I've been away on the past weeks. Recruiting has been crazy! I was recruiting for management consulting, for the Sao Paulo (Brazil) office. Although the procees in on-campus in terms of corporate presentations, networking, dinners, office hours and everything that happened between September and December, all interviews are off campus for the offices outside US. So I was going back and forth from Chicago to NY for two weeks. I can get really insne as I had one interview in Chicago, the other day in NY, and the following in Chicago again.

After everything, I received last Monday a phone call from one big firm congratulating me and offering me a Summer. And I went from hell to heaven!

Now that I have my life back, I think clearly about the recruiting season. One thing that happens is that you get really nervous and stressed. There are times that you think you're not gonna make it. But thinking about my preparation and other Rossers, everyone is really well prepared! One of the best things about our career office is that we start everything really in the begginning here. From resume, through cover letter and finally interview preparation, I'm pretty sure that we're one the most prepared B-Schools for the recruiting season. 

The other main issue about our culture, is that when you see no hope, you rely on your friends around Ross. During the past weeks I spoke with two MBA2s that gave me valuable insights about their recruiting experiences and their histories gave me strenght to keep walking through this season. Moreover, there's a bunch of people who prepared with you for the interviews, and they'll help as well.

Ross is a place where you're gonna get prepared and you'll get your job. People here are awesome and smart and they'll help with everything they can to make sure you get there.

Amidst the Recruiting Fun ...

Our MAP projects came out about two weeks ago, and Facebook was exploding with status updates the minute we found out about our projects.  So where will I be in March?  INDIA, for four weeks!  Our client is VisionSpring, a social enterprise that sells over-the-counter and prescription eyeglasses, and we’ll be understanding how VisionSpring can bring more people to vision campaigns (so for example, understanding how to connect customers with eye care issues to a more formal eye care health system).  This will be done through focus groups and community feedback/observations as we explore various forms of marketing.  I’m REALLY excited for the project and overall experience.  We will have our first client call this week to understand project scope, timelines, etc. … stay tuned!

Slightly late … but Happy Chinese New Year to everyone!  Wishing everyone a happy year of the dragon, with lots of health, happiness and success (i.e. prospectives getting into b-school, MBA1’s landing summer internships, MBA2’s finally deciding which offers to go with for full-time)!  We had a mini get-together to celebrate the new year, with lots of good food including some homemade egg rolls and dumplings.  It’s as if I were back at home celebrating .. minus the red pockets ;) (photo courtesy of Anna Chen):

Our RSA Winter Formal last weekend at the Fillmore Theatre in Detroit (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Huynh): 

My first hockey game at Yost Arena!

... GO BLUE!

That Motor City Spirit

This morning I attended a ladies’ champagne brunch at the home of one of my classmates in the Tauber program and was speaking with fellow students about tomorrow’s Super Bowl.  Another American and I were talking to two classmates, one from Peru and another from Venezuela, and telling them about how, for us non-football types, the commercials are what make the Super Bowl an event worth watching.

This conversation took me back to last year’s Super Bowl, two weeks after I had been admitted to Ross.  I don’t remember which teams played or even where I watched the game, but what I do remember was the Chrysler commercial that made me ecstatic all over again that I would be going to Michigan.

“Imported from Detroit,” the punchline in the ad declared. (For those of you who haven’t seen the “Born of Fire” commercial, watch it here.)

What does a town that’s been to Hell and back know about the finer things in life? You see, it’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel. It’s that hard work and conviction and a know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us. That’s who we are. That’s our story.

The don’t-mess-with-us, comeback kid attitude that permeates the commercial filled me with a sense of excitement that Detroit and American Automakers were back on the map and got me pumped about being only 45 minutes away.  This story by Rochelle Riley in the Detroit Free Press captures well the spirit that emanates from that two minutes of television.

Now it’s probably not the one you’ve been reading in papers. The ones written by folks who’ve never even been here and don’t know what we’re capable of…

Before attending Ross, all I knew of Detroit was what I had read in the papers or seen on TV during its downturn—the Silverdome on sale for $550,000 after having cost $55.7 million to build in the 70s, the crumbling of a city's industry, the high unemployment, the absurdly low property prices. I had in my mind a vision of smog, grit, and grime, of factories, of destitution. 

We’re from America, but this isn’t New York City, or the Windy City, and we’re certainly no one’s Emerald City.

Now, I have seen different faces of Detroit—the International Auto Show, Greek Town, the Heidelberg Project, Eastern Market.  It takes some motivation to separate oneself from the hectic life on campus, but a trip to Detroit for a day is fun and well worth doing.

This is the Motor City. And this is what we do.

Now, I’m embracing the Motor City spirit—Chrysler projects make up 2 of the 5 projects on my list of potential Tauber summer projects for which I am interviewing next week.

I’m finishing this post now to get ready for Ross Follies tonight (our annual Ross comedy show).

And what, you ask, is the theme for Follies this year? Imported from Ann Arbor.