I will be attending the reception in LA on Wednesday.
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I will second that. Dean Bruner is an excellent spokesperson for the school, and those who know my story know that my meeting with him at an event like this was pivotal in getting me to learn more about Darden, which eventually led to visiting the school, meeting more people, applying and finally attending.

He'd also be an excellent person to listen to right now because he's an expert on financial crises (his book from last year titled Panic of 1907 seems particularly relevant right now) and finance in general. If you get a chance to go, I think you'll also be able to observe the tight community that carries across graduating classes and generations. Even in places far from campus like San Francisco (which I attended a few years ago) and Los Angeles, the community spirit really comes through in the people and in the presentation.

Hey,

No activity on this thread for a few days. Whn do u think would the interview invites start coming in? My app went complete today. Did anyone check the thread from last year?
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Nope, i did not. I knew that the status was changing without an email notification. So I was checking the status regularly and saw the change this morning.
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In fact that was the main reason y i asked the question. I was too lazy myself. Just did a quick search and got 1000s of results. So posted the question instead!
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Fianlly, my app is also "complete"...... and I did not get the email too......
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I attended the reception last night in LA with ryguy. I will post a re-cap later once things calm down at work.
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Alright, I attended the Darden reception here in LA last night. They had a very small turnout as compared to the receptions for the M7 schools (about 25 prospective students, as compared to 200 for the M7 schools). It was a very personal reception, the Adcom members were straight shooters - they did not seem to believe in the typical "Adcom speak" and were plain spoken and blunt with their responses. They wanted people to discover whether Darden was right for them, and they were totally fine if it was not.

They made a very personal speech highlighting what differentiates the school. There was no PowerPoints or any of that. There was about 10 alumni present. The alumni and the prospective students both seemed very entrepeneurial. There was very few finance/consulting types around. The finance folks that were around were primarily in private wealth management (this may be a function of being in LA, rather than Darden). The school has a reputation for being rigorous, and this was well emphasized throughout the night. The case method is one of Darden's main selling points. Another thing they mentioned was that Darden used to be solidly in the Top 10 in the 1990s, but it slipped due to Dean turnover. The new Dean is apparently very impressive and working to claw back up the rankings.
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I'm glad you guys have been able to attend the Darden receptions. Those of you who are familiar with my story know that I had a similar type of experience a few years ago. I was on the west coast, attended a Darden reception and the school shot to the top of my list. It sounds like they are still using the same format. No powerpoint, and in fact no sitting down. It was a reception where you had the opportunity to speak at length with a bunch of different alums (at the event I attended in San Francisco there were about 40 perspectives and 20 alums) and then some remarks from the Dean which led to an impromptu cold-call by Dean Bruner asking alums of various vintages to tell about their experiences. That was the first time that I noticed the the strength of Darden's community across generations and how different it was from other schools. The Adcom's do take seriously the goal of admitting students that will be involved and enjoy the community here, in addition to the obvious goal of admitting top notch students. For those of you who proceed to campus visits and interviews, I think you'll find that the campus culture here is very positive.

u back already? that was a quick visit. Did u meet pelihu?
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