Final 2013 West Coast Adventures: Bain, Berkeley, and Stanford

We’ve been busy. After spending the last 5 months traveling to top colleges across the planet (Canada, U.K., and the East Coast – HarvardYaleColumbiaGeorgetownDuke and Georgia Tech), we decided to end our year off with one last trip to the Bay Area.

This time we visited the Bain office in San Francisco, held 2 bootcamps at Stanford, and 1 bootcamp at Berkeley.

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Red and white were the colors of Day 1 (December 5th, 2013) of our tour as our first stop was the Bain office in San Francisco and our second stop was Stanford University.

We arrived at the Bain office early in the afternoon; a partner at the firm had contracted us to do a fashion consulting project for their SF employees. Well, not really. But we stopped by anyways for a visit.

Bain and Company entrance

For those of you applying to work in the San Francisco’s Bain office, here’s the office view you can look forward to. I know what you’re thinking – you could probably put up with it, right?

San Francisco

After visiting Bain, we went on a short walk down to the ferry building for a late lunch. The food was great and the sunshine even better.

 San Francisco Consulting Team

After a quick bite, we navigated our way through the downtown traffic and 50 minutes later, arrived at Stanford. Upon arriving, emissaries from Stanford Consulting brought us to the meeting room where held our 2-hour Consulting Bootcamp Lite.

 Bootcamp Snapshot

Although finals at Stanford were taking place the upcoming week, 60+ intellectually curious students joined us Thursday night to learn more about consulting.

 Students at bootcamp

The next day we spent 8 hours with students from the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, prepping students for the highly competitive internship interviews – below you can see a snapshot from one of our Hot Seats.

Consulting teachers

Over 30 students participated, and every single one stayed after the closing time to keep asking questions.

students

We were so happy to see students from many majors, at all kinds of different levels in the program, come to the event on a Friday afternoon and evening.

Group of students

Saturday, the last day of our trip, we went to Stanford to do a day-long session focused on case interviews.

Stanford classroom

We were impressed by the advanced questions many students asked, and the demonstrated interest in really understanding business problems – not just how to win at the case.

Stanford students

Because of the small group setting, everyone was able to work with multiple partners in the room. According to one of the students, “This is exactly what I was looking for.”

For those of you who don’t know about our Bootcamps, here’s what we do:

8:30-9AM – Registration

9AM – 10AM – The ultimate networking tool – your elevator pitch

10AM – 11AM – Structuring the fit interview

11AM – 12PM – Break-out sessions -networking and fit interviews

12PM – 1PM – Case Frameworks – becoming a case-opening expert

1PM – 2PM – Networking lunch (with homework!)

2PM – 3PM – Break-out sessions – case openings

3PM – 4PM – Case math and case closings

4PM – 5PM – Break-out sessions – mid/late cases

5PM – 6PM – The ultimate case practice plan, Q&A, and closing

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Thank you for tuning in for our Bay Area tour recap. We’re honored to serve all of you pre-consultants and can’t wait to meet more of you next year.

Speaking of next year, we’re headed back to the East Coast and Canada in January 2014, Australia in February 2014 and Europe in April 2014. You’ll know if we’re coming to your school (these events are private) – but if you haven’t heard about one that’s happening, make sure you invite us!

Next year’s Open Consulting Bootcamp in January is upon Eventbrite as well – come meet us!

Finally, we’d love to present a private 8-hour Consulting Bootcamp on your campus. Please email us – we would be happy to come to you. Just one thing – our small group dynamic is critical, so we need a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 30 attendees on each Bootcamp day. We’ve been to 45 countries and counting, so don’t hesitate to invite us to come to you!

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