Ambassador Program: Yale SOM -- Hear from current students & alumni

Hah there's a reason I'm not doing this: so many things have changed since I've been a student (already)! How you choose classes, the flexibility of the core curriculum with the possibility of course exemptions -- that's all after my time!!


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Just a few thoughts now that orientation week has gone by:

1. Dean Snyder is possibly one of the most charismatic man I've seen. Everyone, I mean everyone was drawn to him. I can see why he's an excellent fund raiser.

2. My classmates have been fantastic. As someone who went to a top business school in Canada, I'm shocked by how well thought out every question asked and opinion voiced were. I have yet to hear a single thing that made me roll my eyes (bad habit of mine). They're brilliant, patient and kind. This year, we're at 46% international students and 43% female. It's a very diverse group with plenty of folks from strong backgrounds (McK, Morgan Stanley, Google, etc.)

3. Yale really cares about integrity and its collaborative spirits. I mean it. They spent a week drilling these ideas into our heads.

4. We already had a day long primer and panel of ex-SOMers who took time off from work to share with us very frank insights on various industries. We had mid level to senior folks from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, M/B/B, Bulge Bracket banks, impact investment funds, renewable energy companies, design and innovation firms, etc. come visit us at Evans Hall to share their experience and insights on how to transition into these jobs.

For those looking to apply to Yale - almost everyone I met here has made some form of contribution or given back to the society. It doesn't have to be some kind of non profit or social work - but these people don't work and live just for themselves. This is something constantly preached and thus valued at SOM.

I can see why Yale insists on laying down the foundation of a collaborative culture early on.

It really works.

Our peers don't withhold information in order to hold on to competitive advantages.

Everyone I've spoken to are extremely accessible despite their insane schedule.

Classmates are there for you and are willing to make small sacrifices to ensure you have an opportunity to succeed.

To highlight this point - one of our core courses, negotiation, pits our classmates against each other. Grades are allotted based on how much you "won" the deal by. You'd be amazed at how far classmates go to maximize mutual benefits - rather than taking the pie for themselves.

I think Yale SOM has its shortcomings; mainly its lack of depth in network since its a relatively young program. To make up for this weakness, the SOM alumni are fiercely loyal to Yale SOM and go the distance to make sure you're at least given an opportunity (interview). Even greater Yale University alumni have been fairly accessible.

Now that I officially finished Fall 1 (1st quarter), I feel like I can answer these questions to a reasonable degree.

School & Curriculum
• Describe your typical day.
Between 2 hours and 40 minutes of class to 4 hours of class; a bunch of recruiting events, presentations, and club/social events between or after classes

• What are some of the best classes you have taken?
Negotiations with Barry Nalebuff, Game Theory with Zhou Jidong and Power and Politics with Heidi Brooks and Michael Kraus - I feel like I can answer this more sufficiently after Fall 2 or Spring 1, because that's when the more interesting courses roll around.

• 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)?
Fall 1 and Fall 2 (Aug-Dec) are all core courses. After that, there's a ton of electives to choose from. You can also take stuff from Yale College or even Yale Law.

• 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?
It's very strong for banking, investment management, consulting, non-profit, social, sustainability, entrepreneurship and healthcare. For stuff not in those fields, such as tech, Yale is very strong in the the Northeast.

• How would you describe the student community?
Just the friendliest and loveliest people in the world. It sounds cheesy, but Yale spends a lot of effort and time drilling the whole "coopetition" thing into our heads. We're not fighting each other for spots in McKinsey, we're looking to beat everyone else out there. I've heard some companies love this aspect so much, they'd open up extra slots just to let Yalies into their firms.

Internships
• From what you’ve seen, what types of intern programs/companies were students most interested for their summer internship?
Consulting is hands down the most popular choice here. I'm not going for consulting, but we have a ton of resources here to prep students for casing and other relevant skills.

• When does the summer internship search begin and when does it end?
Varies for sectors - Consulting and banking starts about 2 weeks in, get taken or dinged around February.

• What support does the school provide for finding an internship and understanding the internship search process?
The Career Development Office here offers resume review, interview coaching, etc. It's pretty standard and most schools should have this. The clubs provide a ton of resources on top of that.

• How did you prepare for your internship recruiting process?
Getting my resume torn apart by second years at the moment. Going to start hustling soon.

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?
Still consulting. I came from banking and have 0 interest in professional service firms.

• How did most people find their full-time role (e.g., on-campus recruiting firms, off-campus recruiting, the extended school/alumni network, etc)?
For banking, consulting and big tech firms, it's done mostly through on-campus recruiting. For the small start ups to mid-sized publicly traded firms, it's done off campus through contacting our awesome alumni.

• 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)
There are events everyday. The big firms all visit campus (MBB, BB banks, big techs). You really have to pick and choose here.

Social
• What are the “fun” events that you should not miss out on (e.g., happy hours, formals, Olympics, follies, etc)?
Too many to list. Seriously. If you don't have some kind of commitment, you're going to have a ton of fun. New Haven is a small town, not too far away from NYC and Boston, but just far enough to stop people from drifting away into their own circles.

• What opportunities are there for students to work on-campus or off-campus while in school?
TA - I won't be doing that because there's a ton of resources supporting entrepreneurship stuff on-campus.

• What is something not mentioned on the school’s website that an applicant should know?
A lot of stuff. If you have specific questions, ask me. I'll try to get back to you if I can.

Just came back from our Tech Club's SF Trek. We visited Facebook, Google, Apple, LinkedIn, Square, Lyft, PayPal, Adobe, Intuit and Legalzoom. We had just under 100 attendees for this trek, and approximately 50~60 students were in SF to visit tech firms. Interest in tech is definitely huge at Yale, and we can see the CDO making more efforts to cultivate relationships with firms out west.

With most of our classmates already holding offers from investment banks and consulting firms, it is now my turn to be stressed out with recruiting as tech internship hiring is just about to ramp up Bring it on!

Wilch, does recruiting take place on these treks? Or do the schools also visit campus?

The west coast trek has little to do with recruiting for large tech firms because it takes place in January and that's well beyond some of the internship posting's application deadline (Google and LinkedIn late November, Amazon early January, Microsoft mid December, Apple early December, Facebook is all over the place but usually January). Moreover, larger tech firms don't care about networking quite as much unless you know someone who can vouch for you from a team you can work on or if they're really senior.

With that said, we visited some companies on the smaller side (Lyft and Square to name a few) and will be visiting these types of firms in NYC (maybe Venmo and Uber). Bigger firms are generally looking for specialists, smaller firms may look for folks with more well rounded ability. If anything, it might be easier to network your way into a 500~2,000 employee firm as the large firms usually have a multi-layer hiring process where even referred candidates can get lost in a massive pile of resume.

If you're good at schmoozing, some of these visits may help. If not, it's great for students to get a feel for the company's general vibe and perks.

To add on, these firms also do come to campus and do the regular on-campus recruiting process with corporate presentations, coffee chats, interviews, etc. I think the job trek gives you a better sense of the culture of the firm, the type of person it attracts, etc -- how much the trek itself turns into an interview depends on the firm and how/when they do recruiting.


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Yep. Some very awesome alumni comes back to New Haven to participate in panels and host coffee chats now and then.

I also got some alumni to hold private company visits for myself when I was out in the Bay Area. Just need to talk to them ahead of time and they're usually glad to help out.

Wilch , thanks for your sharing here.

Just want to ask a question here :
Is it common that candidate from sales and marketing background (or in other areas outside banking, consulting and non-profit) change to a social-impact or non-profit sector here? We've already known that Yale emphasizes a lot in social impact. Is there any preferable typical background for Yale's candidate?

Thanks!

One of the key offerings of an MBA is the ability to pivot into different careers. There's no preferable typical background. As with any business schools, you'll have your share of consultants, bankers, and techies. I'm not sure if it's the case with other schools, but we have a fair amount of ex-TFAs. Many of these people are making career changes.

While a small sample, I can use my learning team as an example. 7 out of 9 people on my team are making an industry and/or functional change from their pre-MBA job. Of the 2 who aren't making changes, one is a joint degree looking to pursue a career in healthcare and the other one is sponsored by her employer to attend at Yale.

In terms of NPO/Social impact, I'm not the best person to talk to, but there's definitely a large number of postings on our career portal that leads to NPO/Social impact type opportunities.

If you're thinking about angling a career pivot story for getting into Yale SOM - as long as your story is coherent and feasible, it's fine.

It's been a while since I posted because I've been incredibly busy with recruiting, but now that's over... I have about a month or so left to take a breather.

Most of my classmates have found something to do for the summer & are looking ahead to that. I've opted to take the minimum number of credits for the 2nd semester (14 core + 4 elective credits) while some of my classmates who finished recruiting early (consulting/banking/some tech firms) went all out and are taking 24-28 credits - which is totally cool because I find some of the electives very intriguing.

Now that I've seen more of our professors in action, I have to say I'm very interested in taking classes with Kyle Jensen (our superstar entrepreneur professor), Fiona Scott Morin (another superstar professor known for the "Competitive Strategy" course), and David Bach (our associate dean & a fantastic lecturer). Some core course lecturers that really stood out for their ability to deliver course content are Peter Schott (the Hugh Grant of SOM) and Lorenzo Caliendo (hilarious guy).

For now though, I'm just gonna sit back & help out some of my other classmates still currently seeking summer internship/full time opportunities.

Some thoughts now that it's been a year:

- Changes are made quickly at Yale SOM - the 2nd years and alumni definitely weren't kidding about this. A couple of courses that received unanimously poor feedback will be completely overhauled for next year. Mandatory attendance for classes will be changed to help those who are recruiting for investment banking; these people frequently miss classes because they travel down to NYC 3-4 times a week in the first semester. It's always refreshing to see substantial changes being made so quickly when feedback is provided.

- I don't think there's any doubt that Yale SOM is a top target school for MBBD. We sent an obscenely large number of classmates to MBB - roughly 20% of our class (I'm estimating here because 280/330 people reported where they'll be going, the other 50 probably don't know there's a report function or simply forgot) will be going there. In McK SF alone (very tough office to get into), 4 out of 13 summer interns are from Yale SOM. That figure is about 50 or 20% for class of '17 (those who bothered to report).

- Of course, raw numbers don't really mean much unless you look at the denominator. If I had to pull a number out of my butt (I might be completely off here), about 60% of those who wanted MBB got MBB. Hard to keep track of because people change commitments mid way (a friend of mine wanted to do MBB but dropped out half way and got into a top IB).

- About 15-20% of our classmates are in California and about 25-30% are in the Greater New York area. I'm currently doing an internship in NYC - and it's been nice to be able to connect with classmates/alumni & hang out with them in the summer. It's nice to see that, despite being situated in a large city where there's so much to do, the Yale SOM'ers are still very tight knit.

- Summer socials are hosted all over the world, be sure to check out Yale SOM's official website for more information: https://som.yale.edu/programs/mba/admissions/events

Admissions Talk:
I don't think this was mentioned, but Yale SOM received approximately 4,100 applications in the latest cycle, up by 12.3%. The acceptance rate is now around 17%, and the yield has improved by 1%, which caused Yale SOM to overshoot their student intake by 1% as well.

As far as I know, Yale SOM will aim to enroll around 340 students each year, meaning they'll accept approximately 694 students a 49% yield. The acceptance rate will drop if Yale's yield continues to improve, but not by much. This might also explains why it was difficult to get off the waitlist during the last cycle.

Student Quality:
Among other initiatives, Yale SOM is continuing to promote awareness of the school outside of the US - where its reputation still lags behind. I suspect this year will be even more competitive, as I feel that the quality of students are improving every year.

While I only know the class of '19 at a superficial level, there definitely are more students coming from brand name companies in stronger positions. A few years ago you might see Yale SOM tooting their own horn about bringing in someone from McKinsey or Goldman, but they may come from a middle or back office function (don't get me wrong, the work isn't any easier front office work, but business schools tend to place more value in front office candidates as far as I know). Now we're starting to see a larger number of students from coveted positions from great brand firms and cool places like Lyft, Tesla, and even SpaceX at Yale SOM.

Now, I come from a non-brand name background myself, and I don't feel like it makes me lesser than my classmates who do come from a brand name firm. I'm not using brand names to gauge students/classmates' capabilities, but rather I want to point out that these are the types of candidates who traditionally have the option of going to other top 10 business schools and turn down an admission from Yale SOM down in favor of their other options.

Second Year:
It's definitely easier than the first year. I intend to spend more efforts on academics, because I'm very interested in the elective courses I'm taking. I think electives are of much higher quality than core classes because they're designed by the professors based on their on interest/passion.

I also want to spend more time & effort helping out 2nd years who are seeking full time opportunities & 1st years who are seeking internship opportunities. The 2nd years or the class of '17 were vital to my internship search; I look to do the same, if not more, to continue the collaborative culture & tradition at Yale.