bigblue87
This may sound like a strange question late in the game, but very important to me being agnostic about my career direction now:
I had a really great time at welcome weekend at SOM- a really impressive and fun '16 cohort- but I feel the one gap in my knowledge was the extent of career office involvement starting day 1 and before the first semester starts in terms of helping students find a concrete professional direction (for students like me with a varied background, likely not looking to go into finance/consulting and a not clear understanding of where they're headed in an internship or career at this point). There was a lot to take in during the weekend and for some reason I wasn't able to probe this issue enough with students or staff. Can any current students (or incoming classmates who have a better idea) frankly just reassure me about this before I submit on my deposit?
Thanks!
I'll start this conversation!
The Career Development Office (CDO) is always around! They'll post some information over the summer in the admitted students portal to get you started thinking about where you want your internship to be, what you look for in a job, etc, but the "official" start to the CDO will be during Orientation where they'll give you an overview of what the office is supposed to help you achieve, how to schedule meetings with the Relationship Managers (RMs), information on internship searches and figuring that out, etc. Besides meetings with the RMs to figure that out, there are also second year Career Coaches who you can talk to about anything -- their internship, their past experiences and how they changed jobs/stayed in the same industry, and more granular things like interview prep & resume reviews.
While you do have to put in your own effort in order to find the internship you want, the CDO is there to offer you that guidance and that support -- beyond holding on-campus recruiting events. As a second year, you can even get appointments during the summer if you have questions about your internship! Once you get access to some of the internal platforms (after paying your deposit!), you'll get all sorts of information from them.
If you have specific industry questions, happy to chat offline about this too.