The West Coast is the Best Coast – I thought that was ridiculous. Until I moved to California.
Yes, we busted our a#$es visiting Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Georgetown, Duke and Georgia Tech (click the links for highlights). The East Coast schools are organized – all competing with one another, all beating to the same drum.
West Coast? Not so much. Every school is on a different schedule (some start classes in October! What the heck…) So, instead of coordinating a tour, we visited the Bay Area, met with ~300 Berkeley students, held an open enrollment Consulting Bootcamp and ate not 1, but 2, killer ice cream sandwiches. As the pictures will tell you below…it was a blast.
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To check out a video with in-person testimonies, make sure to read on to the end of the article…
We rolled in early on a Friday evening for 24 hours of fun in the Bay Area. First stop? The prestigious Haas School of Business at Berkeley.
It took less than 2 minutes for the event coordinator, Wendy, to impress us with her wit and charm. The team she works with coordinated an impressive event.
The room, a 300-seat lecture hall, was one of our biggest ever – and PACKED!
We were so impressed that hundreds of Berkeley students from many majors, at all kinds of different levels in the program, came to the event on a Friday night.
Despite the enormous size of the group, we still kept the session informal, with Q&A during the session…
…and interaction for a full hour after completing the 2-hour Bootcamp Lite.
After completing the event, the MC Team and a group of Berkeley students – current and former clients – hit up CREAM, a killer $2.50 fresh ice-cream-cookie-sandwich hotspot that was well worth the 30-minute wait.
No rest for the weary – we started our day-long Consulting Bootcamp with registration at 8:30AM on Saturday. Complete with 5 total breakout sessions, we started with Fit Interview training and moved on to Case Interviews about 1 hour before lunch.
Because of the small group setting, everyone was able to work with multiple partners in the room. In addition, the group upped the ante – asking Jenny Rae to take the HOT SEAT.
For those of you who don’t know about our Bootcamps, here is the agenda (“Lunch” is a working break so it’s actually a 9-hour day):
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
Below is the impressive crew that attended the Bootcamp – it was an awesome day, and we hung out for a full hour after the last session closed.
It was amazing to see how much of a difference 8 hours makes – we watched the candidates transform before our eyes. The group was so excited to connect – I thought we were going to find ourselves clubbing in SF at 3AM. We did finally disband, but not before getting to hear some wonderful feedback from the attendees.
We’ll look forward to our next SF Bootcamp in September 2014 – stay tuned for more details.
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If you’d like to hear from consulting career experts, we’d love to present a private 8-hour Consulting Bootcamp on your campus (for 1+ days). 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 look forward to meeting you in person!