Ambassador Program: Cornell -- Hear from current students & alumni

Ambassador Questions

Answers will be updated as the academic year progresses. Check back for updates.

School & Curriculum
• Describe your typical day.
• What are some of the best classes you have taken?
• How do you select what courses to take? Is there flexibility in what courses you can take? Are there courses you think are most helpful for students interning or recruiting full-time for your area of study (eg, finance, consulting, marketing, ops)?
• Do you feel the program is a better fit for students looking for a specific career? Do student preferences tend to learn towards a particular area?
• How would you describe the student community?

Internships
• From what you’ve seen, what types of intern programs/companies were students most interested for their summer internship?
• When does the summer internship search begin and when does it end?
• What support does the school provide for finding an internship and understanding the internship search process?
• How did you prepare for your internship recruiting process?

Recruiting
• From what you’ve seen, what types of full-time roles were students most interested? Was there a shift in what people were looking for in the summer internship to what they were looking for in full-time roles?
• How did most people find their full-time role (e.g., on-campus recruiting firms, off-campus recruiting, the extended school/alumni network, etc)?
• Describe the networking opportunities available to help you learn more about your career options (e.g., job treks, student club-led activities, company-sponsored events, conferences, etc)

Social
• What are the “fun” events that you should not miss out on (e.g., happy hours, formals, Olympics, follies, etc)?
• What opportunities are there for students to work on-campus or off-campus while in school?
• What is something not mentioned on the school’s website that an applicant should know?
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Hi All!

I'm Johnson's GC Ambassador and I'm happy to answer any and all questions about the school.

For those of you who haven't followed me on these forums here's a little background info on myself:

• I'm currently an MBA2 (Class of 2017)
• I'm a former engineer looking to change careers into consulting
• I'm from the Northeast and after college spent just over 6 years working as an engineering consultant for a wide range of manufacturing industries
• My business school journey started over 2 years ago when I finally took the GMAT (you can read my original post here
• I applied to several schools in R1 after which I decided on Johnson to pursue my MBA (the original post is here
• I'm fairly active around the school and so I hope I'll be able to answer most questions, but if not, the school is small enough that I will definitely be able to find a classmate that's willing to provide an answer

Congrats to all of you, who have decided to explore an MBA as your next step. I hope that my responses and aerien 's cool new wiki can help in your decisions about which program is best for you and how Cornell Johnson can help you succeed!

Good luck!
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I really don't think there's such a thing as a "typical day" ever, especially in business school. However I'll post a description of one of my busiest days and one of my more relaxed days. In general, I am busier than most students, perhaps because I've chosen to be very involved with EC's, but everyone is different and how you choose to spend your time in business school is purely up to you. I find that I spend about 1/3 of my time in classes/studying, 1/3 of my time doing things for EC's, and then I split the remainder between recruiting, socializing, and sleeping. Also, the days seem to get busier as the semester carries on (as expected), but by that time I find that I'm fairly used to it and enjoy how quickly the days go by

I'll follow up with 2 separate posts with descriptions of a "typical day".
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I hope that this post will fill in information regarding what a busy day at Johnson looks like and what 2 of my favorite classes are like.

5:30am: My phone rings. It’s my wife calling me on her way into work. We don’t have a lot of mutually free time and so she typically calls during her commute. As she gives me her update, I struggle to stay awake because I’ve only fallen asleep 2 hours ago after finishing my slides for my Management Cases class, which starts in a few hours. It seems like every Tuesday this semester, I’ve cursed at myself for not completing this assignment earlier (which is always due 4 hrs before the start of class), but without fail, I’m up past 3am still working on the powerpoint. She realizes I’ve started falling asleep and annoyingly lets me go back to bed, but reminds me that we need to finalize our vacation plans for the end of May before hanging up the phone. A vacation; something that seems so far away given how much work I need to finish before reaching the end of the semester. But the nice thoughts of hanging out on a beautiful island for a week without homework, relaxing before I begin my exciting summer internship sound amazing. I drift back asleep thinking about how great life will be in a few weeks…

7:45am: My snooze alarm goes off for the nth time and after looking at the time, I rush off to the bathroom to shower. After a quick shower, I make my lunch while drinking my pre-made strawberry-orange juice smoothie breakfast. I gather my computer and a handful of notes I need for class later today and I head out the door.

8:20am: I grab a coffee on the walk in. Gates Hall is on the way for me and I can afford the quick detour on my 10 minute walk. The Gimme Coffee inside is probably the strongest coffee around and with Management Cases first thing in the morning I need it.

8:35am: With a few minutes to go before the start of class, I chat with a few classmates and the TA’s about the case and what my overall thoughts were. I quickly go to open my laptop to review the slides that I submitted. The professor in this class, Nate Peck, has high expectations for student engagement and overall participation, which in turn has a very direct effect on your grade. Every class, a handful of the 30 students in the section will be called up to the front of the lecture room to present a slide taken from their presentation. No one except Professor Peck knows who will be called that class or what slide he’ll pull up and so up to the point that you hear someone’s name, everyone in the class anxiously has their slides opened to the relevant section of the case in preparation to present. During our case discussion, Professor Peck pushes the class to take the CEO’s perspective and think through the most pressing issues of the case’s protagonist. As we work through cracking the first part of the case, Professor Peck calls down the first presenter. It’s a classmate of mine that I know well because we’re enrolled in the same immersion (Managerial Finance). After he presents his slide on the core issues at hand, he calls on classmates who then follow-up with tough questions that press him on his analysis. Everyone’s asking some good questions, with the hopes of getting the “question of the day”. The purpose of all of this is to get us thinking like CEO’s and to polish our presentation skills for when we ultimately have to present to executives during our internship. As we wrap up the end of the class, Professor Peck reminds us of the special guest speaker we have this evening, the CEO of Symmetry Surgical, and that we should be coming prepared (i.e. read the company’s 10-k).

11:25am: I chat with a few classmates as we leave the lecture room about how I find myself up until the wee hours of the morning every week working on the slides for this class. They confirm similar sentiments and that even though they start reading the case right after lecture every week, they find themselves working tirelessly the day before it’s due. We all agree that although the amount of work we’ve put into this class seems disproportionate to the number of credit hours on our transcripts, the confidence it has given us with our presentation and case cracking skills are well worth it. Most people finish the class with a great deal of confidence that they’ll be able to convert during their internships.

12:00pm: I wrap up lunch in the atrium with a few classmates and head up to the reading room to start reading-up on the next week’s case hoping that this one will be a bit easier.

1:20pm: I head down to the admissions office to meet with a prospective student that’s doing a class visit. I’m an Admissions Ambassador, a group of students that have applied and been selected to host class visits, information sessions, coffee chats, and give building tours to prospective students. I think it’s important to learn about a school directly from current students and to immerse yourself into the school as much as possible before applying. Business school is a large investment and you want to make sure it’s the right one for you.

1:25pm: After introducing the prospective students to the professor, we begin class. This class is Valuation Principles and has been a fascinating extension to our Core Finance class where we first learned various valuation methods. During class, we discuss the various multiples used in a relative valuation and the most important financial metrics to look at when developing a comparative set of companies. The class is a deep dive into how to effectively look at valuations and the important factors that can affect the outcome. I think it’s an important skill that every MBA should master before graduating and I’m happy that I’m taking it now because I know I’ll need it for my internship.

2:40pm: The professor wraps up class with a reminder that we have an alumnus guest speaker next week from Lazard that’ll go through the valuation of a real deal that went to arbitration after close and his partners had to defend their valuation approach. I say good-bye to the prospective and make sure he knows where he’s going next and then head off to the library to read-up on the daily news and Symmetry Surgical’s 10-k

4:25pm: I head down to a lecture room to see a guest speaker, Mark Whitacre. He’s a Cornell University alumnus that’s been invited by Johnson’s Ethics professor, Dana Radcliffe, to talk about his experience as the most notorious white collar corporate whistleblower in America. Apparently, Hollywood made a movie out of his experience (“The Informant”). The room fills up well past capacity and many people end up having to stand up in the back. As Mark describes his experience, which was definitely far more serious than the comedy that was later produced, I realize that the corporate world is full of ethical traps and that most people would ignore them. He has a very interesting story and I encourage you to research it more if you have the time. Unfortunately he gets to Q&A late and I have to leave for another meeting.

5:45pm: I rush off to meet with members of the Ethics Action Group board, most of whom were at the guest lecture as well. This is a leadership transition meeting where we go on to discuss past initiatives of the group and new goals moving forward. It’s a productive meeting and the new board members stay behind for a few minutes to discuss working norms and immediate actions.

7:00pm: I debate to myself if it’s worth seeking out dinner or just doing more work before the next guest speaker. I opt to do more work given the brief half hour window that I have.

7:30pm: I find a seat by a few friends near the front of a large lecture hall for our guest speaker from Symmetry Surgical. An attendance sheet is passed around because this lecture is mandatory for everyone enrolled in Management Cases. We all listen as the CEO describes his journey from a large company (Johnson & Johnson) to Symmetry and the various phases of his company’s transformation to its current state. The speaker is incredibly engaging and interactive as he seeks for answers from the audience. Participation is once again graded, however it’s fairly easy with this speaker and format.

9:00pm: I hang around for a bit to talk with the CEO after his lecture and then walk home for some dinner and a quick nighttime read of the case that I’m meeting my team about the next morning.

11:30pm-12:00am: I finally head to bed after doing a little research into a company that’s hosting a corporate briefing later in the week and set my alarm for 5:30am. My wife will be on her way to work again and I want to make sure that I’m awake so that after our call I can finish the case and write down some preliminary notes.
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In general, there aren't any classes on Friday and Wednesdays are left fairly wide open to allow you to catch up on homework, club obligations, and recruiting. For me, I enjoy signing up and taking additional one session classes called "MSPs" on these more open days. These MSPs can be anything from "Intermediate Excel" to "Presenting Like a Pro". They're typically worth around 0.1 credit hours and can be pretty fun. You can take as many of these classes as you'd like (free of charge ), but only 1.5 credit hours can be applied towards your degree.

9:00am: I start heading toward Sage. Today I'm walking a bit faster because I'm not carrying my backpack. I don't have any of my regular classes today because it's Friday!

9:30am: The start of COFFEE HOUR! Every weekday during classes, there's free coffee for students, faculty, and staff in the Sage atrium from 9:30am-10:30am. It's a great time to "run into" and talk to your favorite professors or staffers or even your friends. Usually the CMC (Career Management Center) has an open table and I chat with them for a while, but today I see a few friends of mine and we begin to chat about the upcoming Asia Night. It's one of the many culturally themed nights that Johnson has and is hosted by the Asia Business Association (ABA) along with a few other Asian affiliated clubs at Johnson.

10:00am: I head off to an MSP class named "Using Improv to Improve Your Business Skills". After signing in and taking a seat, I look around and notice a few familiar faces. It's a good mix of MBA1's (first year students), MBA2's (second years), and AMBA (1 year MBA) students. We start of with a round of introductions and then go into a fun improv game where pairs need to work together to make conversation starting with a random word. It's a pretty interesting and funny exercise because most of the pairs are made with people you are unfamiliar with. Throughout the class we go through many more fun improv exercises and debrief about how skills learned from these activities can be applied in a business situation. It's a fun 3 hours that wraps up with some pizza and a feedback session for the instructors.

1:00pm: I go across the street to the hotel school and eagerly meet with a few friends before going into our next MSP: Wine Appreciation hosted by Banfi Vintners. As we all shuffle into the lecture room, various wait staff is organizing a large array of glassware in front of us. There's a packet on each chair and it's filled with descriptions of various Italian wines and regions. I find taste charts and definitions to various terms I've never heard of. As the class begins, the lecturer introduces himself. He is a wine sommelier and chief marketer of Banfi Vintners. He describes his personal journey into the wine world while simultaneously describing the Mariani family that runs the Banfi business. It's interesting to hear how the Mariani family (many of whom are Cornell/Johnson Alumni) entered into the business and how they view the importance of wine education. As the lecturer describes the various wines, he blends wine history, wine regulations and scientific facts with his own personal opinions in a very engaging class. As I try each wine, I find myself getting a little tipsy and realize that I'm a light weight

4:00pm: The class wraps up and I head back home to walk off the alcohol and to make some dinner

6:00pm: I start doing research for my Managerial Finance Immersion project. My team is meeting tomorrow morning to begin tackling the final presentation.

10:00pm: A friend calls me up and says that he and a few other classmates are going to head to Johnson's favorite watering hole, Ruloff's, to have a few drinks. I tell him that I can only stay out for a drink or two, but catching up with a few classmates sounds like a great idea.

11:30pm: I make my way back home and head to bed. I set my alarm for 7:00AM because my team is meeting bright and early at 8:00AM.
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This post deserves to go down in GC Hall of Fame imo. Great overview of what a day in the life of a "real" business school student is like. Thanks for taking the time out of your super busy day to post!

PS. Super jealous of your daily coffee hour?!?! #whycornell


Sent from GMAT Club Forum mobile app
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great job dtse86! Now let's hope that the other ambassadors follow your lead.

Can someone describe activites of old ezra club and how that is helpful for a career in investment banking ?

Not sure if anyone from Old Ezra is on this board anymore, but I'll try to answer from what I know and have seen.

Old Ezra's Investment Banking track is very structured and thorough. It starts with rigorous resume reviews and informational interviews with 2nd years that will comment and give feedback on aspects of your candidacy. There are weekly meetings where current events in the market are briefly discussed and certain professional development guidelines are reviewed. Old Ezra also works in conjunction with the Career Management Center (CMC) to organize and develop the curriculum for the Career Workgroups (CWGs). In those smaller groups (8-10 each), 2nd years reinforce the material reviewed in the weekly meetings and give more personalized feedback on your development. These are also done in conjunction with JPrep sessions held by the CMC that teach technical skills like Capital Structures and Valuation Methodologies. Then in the early fall (sometime in October), Old Ezra organizes a big trek to visit most of the large banks in NYC, which kicks-off a cycle of weekly trips to the city to meet with the banks.

I hope this gives you a good idea of how the club provides students with the resources to successfully find employment in the investment banking industry. For the most part, the club has historically been very good at placing students at banks that are coming from outside of the industry and subsequently getting students to convert those internships into full-time offers.

If anyone from the club happens to troll this forum or thread like I do feel free to chime in.
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Thank you so much. This is helpful

The semester has just ended for me and so I thought I'd revisit this thread and add in some more information while I have some free time.

The next few posts will be around the professional career aspects of business school and will be from my own experience. I'd like to encourage you all to still do your own research, look at the data (https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/Career-Management/Employment-Report-for-Two-Year-MBAs), and talk to current students and/or alumni (https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/Programs/Full-Time-MBA/Inquiry).

(I apologize for the upcoming "propaganda-like" language, but I feel the following message must be said):
I will say that while many of us go to business school to move up in our careers or transition into new ones, it isn't necessarily the sole purpose of a business school to make sure you find employment. I think that many people enter into an MBA program expecting to simply get placed into an amazing career with a high salary, but the fact is that you still need to do a lot of work and that many of the most coveted positions are still highly competitive among the top MBA programs. The school simply provides support and connections for you to do your own professional preparations and network to first get the interview, then get the internship, succeed and thrive in the internship, and then get the full-time offer. An MBA program doesn't necessarily generate successful people, it takes in ambitious, high-performing individuals and allows them to grow into better versions of themselves who then go back out into the workplace and succeed in some of the world's most competitive business environments.
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Based on the employment data from the CMC and my own experience, the incoming class starts with interests in the following areas (listed from most interest to least and forgive me for not being completely MECE ):

• Consulting
• Investment Banking
• Marketing
• General Management
• Corporate Finance
• Investment Management/Research
• Real Estate Finance and Development

These functional areas of interest also span several industries including (but not limited to) Tech, Healthcare, Energy, Human Capital, and Financial Markets.

Companies that spend a lot of resources recruiting on campus include (in no particular order):
Liberty Mutual, Arconic (formerly Alcoa), Deloitte, McKinsey, Bain, Accenture, PwC, EY, Amazon, Citigroup/Citibank, BAML, Evercore, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Intel, SC Johnson, Reckitt Benckiser, Proctor & Gamble, American Express, Mastercard

I'm definitely missing a lot of companies on this list, however I think there were well over 50 different companies that participated in on campus recruiting. Participating in on-campus recruiting can be as little as posting a job position on JTS (an internal school job-board system based on a platform used at most business schools) to doing a corporate briefing, sponsoring a school-wide case competition, and flying students out on a private jet to spend a day at their offices. However, the ones that I've listed above are all companies that have done in-person corporate briefings on campus, which is a huge effort and cost for employers (as anyone who's ever tried to fly into Ithaca an attest to).

Other companies that we've sent interns to (but admittedly in lower numbers) that might be of interest:
TIAA, Vangard, CBRE, Lazard, Moelis & Co, GoPro, LinkedIn, Exelon, Honeywell, Qualtrics, BCG, LEK, Sony, Nike, Microsoft
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It can start as early as pre-MBA (some people will start the program with internship offers in hand) and ends when you accept your offer !! Because of the many pre-MBA programs and events that happen the summer before most MBA programs begin, you will find some people ahead of the curve when it comes to internship recruiting when school begins. For others, their internship recruiting journeys will take them all the way until May or even June before they find something.

Internship recruiting timelines are different for every person, industry, and company. For those participating in diversity programs, they will have opportunities through events conducted over the summer and early fall by MBA diversity organizations or companies themselves. The list includes:

• Consortium
• JumpStart
• MLT
• National Black MBA
• MBA Veterans
• ROMBA
• NSHMBA
• Asian MBA
• Ascend

For those that do not participate in those programs or events, the timelines for internship student-company interactions are generally as follows:
Early September thru December: Corporate Briefings, Informationals/Coffee Chats, Company Dinners, Office Visits
After Fall Break: Investment Banking weekly bank visits
Early December/End of Semester: Investment Banking Super Interview Days and Resume Drops for everyone else begins
January-May: Interviews begin generally starting with Consulting, Internal Consulting and Strategy then Marketing and General Management then Tech, PE/VC, and non-profit

These timelines are also quite varying based on the company. For example, Church & Dwight marketing internships had interviews and offers as early as November, Amazon internship interviews competed with consulting timeslots, and I heard of someone who got an IB placement in February.
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This is one of the most thorough posts on recruiting options as of late. @Dtse for the win!

And yeah I've seen IB internship placement in February as well and even as early as January. IB works fast and early.


Sent from my iPhone using GMAT Club Forum mobile app
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As I described previously, the resources available for students during the internship search process are spread across the CMC and the student-run professional clubs.
More Info here: https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/Programs/Full-Time-MBA/Two-Year-MBA/Careers

The CMC has 6 Associate Directors that are aligned to specific industries or functions. https://www.johnson.cornell.edu/Career-Management/Contact-Us
These directors act as advisers that help guide students throughout the entire process and bring in more new companies onto campus.

The professional clubs hold weekly professional meetings and help coordinate the CWG's (Career Workgroups) along with the CMC. The professional club meetings will be led by 2nd year student leaders that will give industry overviews, current events, and updates on where you should be in your professional development. The CWG's will reinforce the material covered in the meetings and give you an opportunity for more personalized feedback within groups of 6-10 students led by second year students that were successful during recruiting. Activities within these groups can include resume reviews, cover letter reviews, mock informationals, mock behaviorals, professional introduction practice, and review of technicals/case interviews. Every industry, function, and/or company has a different process, interview structure, and expectation of preparation, but these groups and professional clubs are very well structured to guide students in the direction that they need to develop to be successful.

I personally recruited for consulting and utilized all of the resources described above. I also laid out a schedule and structure for myself that was aligned with the school and club's recommended schedule. However it contained specific milestones such as number of cases performed by a certain point, resume reviews conducted, and informationals performed. I also created my own spreadsheet to track contacts made for each firm, firm specific notes, and deadlines for application deadlines. My overall strategy for internship recruiting was to focus on companies that recruited on campus so that I could focus the remainder of my time on schoolwork and leadership. I applied to all of the main consulting firms and a few general management/corporate finance positions as a back-up. Ultimately, my strategy worked out fairly well and was given 4 different internship offers.
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It varies from year to year, but there is always an inevitable shift from people's internships to what they end up seeking for in full-time positions.

I'd categorize the different groups of students in the last year into 3 or 4 groups:

• People who don't have offers
• People who do have offers but are looking for something different or better
• People who have offers from the internship or were sponsored and will be returning to their company

The students in the first 2 categories will be the fellow classmates alongside of you at corporate briefings early in the fall (and perhaps into the spring) whereas students in the last group will be the classmates that are helping classmates to recruit full-time or the first years recruiting for internships.

1. The number of students with no offers can vary greatly from year to year depending on the economic outlook of each industry and where students chose to go for their internship. For example, I had heard from many friends that this year was a particularly tough year for IB interns across the country. Many BB banks told the incoming intern class that only about 50% of them would get offers. Although Cornell has historically performed better than other schools in IB offer conversions, it left a good number of IB interns without full-time offers. Those students typically re-recruited for a very few number of IB spots full-time (typically at boutiques) or shifted focus to consulting or corporate finance/general management. There may also be a group of students that haven't heard about offers or have "contingent offers". To be fair to employers, understanding or knowing the needs of your company over a year out is extremely difficult and so giving out an offer of an employment to individuals that won't be eligible to work for nearly a year can be very risky. I know of several individuals who did excellent work and performed very well in their internship, however the company they worked at could not give out offers for full-time employment until later in the year. This leads to many of these individuals participating in full-time recruiting to hedge the risk that the company cannot hire them. Lastly, you will also find many AMBA (aka 1-year MBA) students participating in full-time recruiting. They did not have internships and were instead taking their core classes over the summer. Many of these AMBA's will leverage the school's resources and fellow returning students more heavily because the didn't have the benefit of developing relationships or practicing their professional skills over the course of the prior year.

2. Students that are fortunate enough to have offers but still participate in full-time recruiting are much more focused and selective about which companies they apply for (for obvious reasons). What I've seen, many are looking because they can't see themselves working at that company full-time either for cultural fit reasons, the work wasn't as exciting as they thought, the working hours/lifestyle wasn't something they could sustain, or some combination of all. I've seen many high-performing individuals in this category re-recruit and see various levels of success. It is very dependent on the individual's motivation to network and learn a new industry or company if they didn't recruit there previously.

3. This last group will generally be taking a lighter course-load and be involved with helping fellow students re-recruit or 1st years recruit for internships as mentioned previously. I will say that I wish I had numbers around how large this group is, but it likely varies greatly from year to year and is extremely dependent on students' willingness to disclose this information. Based on my wildly inaccurate observations, it seems that over half of the 2-year class will have offers when they begin their second year and regardless of their recruiting status, they will help their fellow students (bringing it back to the highly-collaborative environment).
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According to the latest employment report from the CMC, 67% or roughly 2/3 of students accepted offers that were obtained through "School facilitated activities". I'm not sure how that's calculated or what's considered "school-facilitated", however I'm sure there's also sampling biased because not everyone reports this information and the sample size is likely on the smaller end.

That being said, I think, based on my observations and pure inferences, most if not all job seekers find jobs in part due to the school. Excluding students that are sponsored or plan on returning to their family businesses, students find networking opportunities through professor's connections/research, guest speakers, alumni, or other people around the university campus. In fact there's a few classmates that have seen mild success with their start-up due to Cornell's eLab incubator and have just started production on their first batch of product (https://elabstartup.com/class-of-2017/, Pure Spinach). And so although I doubt these students will be included in these numbers, I would say that they were definitely supported by the school to help them pursue their professional dreams.

Now if we assume the reported numbers are meant to represent the vast majority of students that aren't starting their own business, are already sponsored, or going back into a family business (which is probably true), then I'd say that this number likely reflects the number of students that end up accepting offers in industries and/or companies that have traditional MBA hire programs or recruiting paths. The vast majority of people going into investment banking, consulting, traditional marketing/brand management, or general management rotational programs will follow an industry "standard" recruiting process in which the CMC and professional clubs help prepare you for (see previous post). However, for those that are unfortunate enough to not receive offers from those processes or are seeking opportunities in more niche industries where MBA's are less prevalent, then they will need to rely on networking. This networking can be CMC facilitated given that the CMC is usually in constant contact with new companies that might recruit from Johnson (the staff will usually post listings and information for companies looking to recruit students but won't come on campus), however many times it is up to the individual to take initiative and reach out to alumni. I will say that I have heard and seen the power of alumni in the workplace and Johnson's strong network is the reason many students in this latter 1/3 find's placement. I was at a JAMA (Johnson Ask Me Anything) where the Advisory Council Chairman described how he and the rest of the Advisory Council had personally distributed students' resumes during the recent financial recession, which amazed me because he was the founder of a very successful fund and I know that many of the Advisory Council members are extremely senior executives at large companies as well.
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Honestly, there's just too many to describe them all, but I'll try to give a quick overview of the big ones.

On-Campus:
During the "pre-term" or orientation period there's usually alumni career panels and CMC led session that give an overview of various industries and roles. This is pretty much the first structured introduction meant to give students a better idea of what career paths they'd like to explore.

There are usually company briefings, company sponsored on campus events such as case competitions or workshops that occur over the semester and information regarding all of these activities are usually coordinated by the CMC and managed through our online career system (called "JTS").

There are also a few student or club organized events that will occur including the MBA Stock Pitch Challenge, Cornell Energy Connection Conference, Johnson Women in Technology (JWiT), company coffee chat/office hours, and 2nd year intern panels.

Then there are usually a few ad-hoc events that are organized by the school or faculty that will include prestigious alumni speakers that come to talk about topics where they are experts in the field. Usually the president of Domino's comes to speak for the Core Marketing class (and usually brings a ton of pizza!). This year we had the Senior VP of Finance for all of North America, Rebecca Hollingsworth, come and talk about her career path and have a surprisingly open conversation about recruiting and their efforts to get more Johnson students at Amazon. We also had several Deloitte partners from their M&A practice talk about few of their experiences with a few large public deals recently.

Off-Campus:
Each club will organize at least one (sometimes 2+) treks in the fall to visit companies in various cities. The ones that I can think of at the moment include (and I'm sure there's more that I'm missing):

• Old Ezra- NYC IB trek over Fall Break
• Consulting Club- Full-time treks to NYC and Boston, Internship treks to NYC and Boston (all separate)
• Marketing Club- NYC trek
• Media, Entertainment, & Sports- West Coast Trek,
• Tech Club- West Coast Trek

Companies themselves will host experience or shadow days at their offices. Notable ones include Ernst & Young, Pfizer, and SC Johnson

Some companies will reach out directly to students and invite them to specific events including dinners, coffee chats, or cocktail networking events. I've heard of all of the consulting firms, IB firms, and PWM practices doing this.

There's also company hosted and school hosted case competitions (of which there are honestly too many to even get started into). These are probably some of the best ways to network, not just with companies but also other MBA students that you may call colleagues or clients one day.
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Once again, there's honestly way too many to capture them all here, but I'll cover the big events:

Year-round:

• Sage Social - every Thursday afternoon
• Coffee-Hour - every weekday from 9:30-10:30am
• Johnson-On-Tap - happens right after Sage Social

Fall:

• Welcome-back Party (end of Aug/Beginning of Sept) - the first social opportunity for all residential students to get together and "network" out of Sage
• Halloween Party - this year it was a joint party with the law school where we rented out a bar in the Downtown Commons
• Winter Formal - this year it was a black tie event held at a museum
• Diwali Celebration - event hosted by the South Asian Business Club in Sage

Spring:

• Spring Welcome-back Party (beginning of Feb)
• St. Patty's Day bar crawl
• Lunar New Year
• Asia Night
• Carnivale!
• Cinco de Mayo
• Johnson Follies - a longstanding tradition where the school rents out the historic State Street Theater and makes fun of business school life and things around Johnson with videos and live skits. Faculty will usually participate for the early part of it before the night really devolves with even more drinking...
• Spring Formal
• Beer Olympics (typically done as a charity fundraising event)
• Johnson Community Impact Silent Auction - traditionally a great fundraiser where faculty and students will donate "experiences" to help a good cause

Other Misc:

• Cornell University Homecoming
• Cornell Hockey Games - we may not be a great football school, but at least we know how to leverage our cold environment! The must-go-to game for every Cornellian is the Harvard game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell%E2%80%93Harvard_hockey_rivalry
• Slope Day! - Last day of classes in the spring. Usually the university organizes for a big musical act to perform on a stage set up at the bottom of the slope.
• Johnson Night Out - faculty will host students at their homes for dinner at least once a semester
• Johnson Dine-Around - 2nd year students will host 1st year students for dinner in the fall and vice versa in the spring
• Hike with the Dean - Dean Nelson has held a few "hikes" where we walk as a group to a local bar and have a nice happy hour
• Dine with the Deans - Luncheons with Dean Nelson and/or Dean Gaur and a Faculty member. They happen throughout the semester and is a great way to get to learn more about what's happening around the school

There's definitely a lot more that I'm missing and a lot of the student clubs will also hold or host additional social activities that are many times open to the entire Johnson community.
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