Thursday, April 17, 2008

Preview @ Stern - Admitted Students weekend

Last week i was in New York for the NYU Stern Preview and i really had a great time.

Events started on Friday evening with Admitted students reception guess where :)....@ New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) right on the Wall Street. It was really organized very well. We had champagne on the NYSE Options trading floor. As many as 250 admitted students turned up for the event. There were couple of nice speeches by NYSE CEO and Dean. Overall it was a networking event wherein i interacted with many admitted students and also MBA1 and MBA2's. Friday night was full of parties with one of the good parties organized by LGBT community at Stern...we were partying till late in the night.
I actually organized a happy hour at San Francisco for admitted students wherein i met some 10 people and they already are very good friends now. During the preview these people were like old friends for me, as if i know them for years...bonding has really started.

On Saturday, we had some interesting team games, just another way to have more networking :), but it was good. This was followed by sessions organized by OCD(Office of career development). Now i know why Career Services @ Stern are ranked in top 10 by Economist. OCD people were really great. They really gave a snapshot of things to come and how they will help us in that and i am really looking forward to that now. There were couple of workshops organized for Finance, Consulting, Media & Entertainment, Marketing, Non profit etc. Based on students interests, people were already divided into different workshops. Since i am interested in Finance, i went there and had a chance to interact with current students who are going into the type of profiles in which i am interested. Saturday evening we had a cocktail party at a pub in Manhattan downtown. After that all admitted students and many current students went to The Village Underground for the night out. It was a real fun. Nice ambiance and we had a nice time dancing till around 4 AM in the morning.

Sunday was alumni day with some 90 Stern alumni coming in on campus to meet us. And again alumni were divided into groups like Finance, Consulting etc so that every person can meet up people in his field of interest. For finance alone there were some 25 alumni who came. 1-2 alumni were VP's in large investment banks. I don't know about other groups as i only attended the Finance alumni meet. Didn't have time to go to other meets.

It really was a great weekend and at the same time tiring as well. I slept for less that 12 hrs in 3 days. But it was worth it. I am really waiting for the school to start now :)