Semester 2 at Wharton. Part I: recruiting for summers!

So the time after winter break was when the Second semester and the recruiting for summers started. I wasn’t looking forward to coming back at all from India but it was only when I got back, I realized how much I had missed the place, the pace and all the people here.

Second semester was pretty easy, academically – yeah they make it such that you don’t have to worry too much about studies while recruiting. We had two weeks off for recruiting – a departure from the usual 1-week holidays across all US B-schools. It really helped too, especially when you’re juggling multiple interviews in multiple locations across Philadelphia.

Those two weeks were stressful, to say the least. It’s the time when you suddenly realize that getting into Wharton was not the big deal that everyone thought it was. The big deal was competing against the most amazing people from across the world for a job that you liked and had your mind set upon. The phone becomes a much reviled object when you are called up to be told that you’ve been dinged!! I stopped counting the dings after a while and instead focused on drawing happiness from the job offers that I did have! It also turned out that those were the ones I really wanted..so maybe those recruiters do know something about a good fit, skeptical as I am!

Some friends though really struck gold. IJC for eg, maxed it out with probably the most consulting company offers than anyone else in Wharton. NT still preens at turning down Goldman Sachs to do something he really wanted and CJS who was uber-lazy at the beginning of recruiting season (yeah by some strange quirk of fate he had only 1 class on Mondays and slept all damn day!) finally got active around spring break and easily managed a PE fund offer.

One company dinged me twice – once after I had applied, apologizing that they couldn’t have me over for the interviews because there were so many other more qualified candidates. Then, on the day they had their interviews, they called me to ding me AGAIN, apologizing that I wasn’t moving to the second round interviews though the interviewers really enjoyed speaking with me –it was hilarious when I told them I hadn’t even been called for an interview…I guess they were just making sure that there was no way I joined :)

So anyway to cut a long story short, after some trials and tribulations all of us ended up in jobs we wanted. I will be spending my summers in 2 internships across Amsterdam, Hague, London and Washington DC. The first is with a private equity fund that focuses on energy assets and the second is with a leadership program in an energy behemoth. MM recently sent across a mail that we had exchanged much before coming to Wharton where I had gushed about how I wanted to be in a leadership program – I guess I got what I wanted and now it is up to me to make the most of it.

[so this is stuff from Feb 08 - I am right now in the middle of my first internship in Holland - hoping to bring the blog up to date!!]