Meet the new “THE BOOTH EXPERIENCE” Team (Post 2 of 2)

Hi!,

This week we have the second installment of current Booth students who will be writing during the upcoming school year and sharing their experiences with you. Last week we introduced five of the members of the team (Meet the new "The Booth Experience" Team / Post 1 of 2). This week, we present to you the other four!

First of all,  we are proud to introduce Darren Spicer, our own former MLS Star!

Darren is a Southern California native and second-year student at Booth pursuing concentrations in finance and strategic management. He studied international politics and captained the varsity soccer team at Princeton before getting drafted by Chivas USA in Major League Soccer. He then went on to play professional soccer for five years across the US and Germany. And yes, he played against David Beckham. Before Booth Darren also coached youth soccer and coordinated camps in Southern California for Slammers FC, one of the top youth clubs in the country. This summer, he is interning with The Cambridge Group in Chicago, doing growth strategy consulting. He also loves to surf, snowboard, bike, bike, hike, and golf, and he's never met a spicy curry that he didn't like.

Next up, Jatin Jindal brings an enviable startup experience to the table...

Jatin is pursuing a summer internship at Amazon Web Services as a Product Manager. Prior to business school, he worked with multiple startups in several roles. He started Hellointern.com with some classmates as an undergrad and later sold it to Angaros Group in 2012. He also worked briefly in 2013 for a startup in cab service space - Bookmycab. Prior to that, Jatin worked in the Investment Banking Department of Credit Suisse from 2009 to 2013, advising clients engaged in oil & gas sector on raising capital as well as M&A transactions. He obtained a Bachelors of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

In his free time, Jatin loves to read books and go on short hiking trips. He is also passionate about Arsenal FC, and has been supporting them for more than a decade now!

Favorite Booth memory: traveling with my Booth classmates to different places like Fiji, Mexico and Florida. He is looking forward to another amazing year at Booth and many more such trips!

The editor of Chibus, our school's renowned newspaper, is also part of our group. Meet Tyler Kearn!,

Tyler is a rising second year Booth student and co-chair of the Chicago Business newspaper (chibus.com) and the Family Enterprise group. Prior to Booth, he worked for COIT Services, a nationwide specialty cleaning and restoration company, as well as CBS Interactive and the San Francisco Giants (Go Giants!). His interests and hobbies include hiking, travel, skiing, and movies (including “bad” movies – movies so bad, they’re good).  

Finally, and last but not least, we have Suzi Singh!, 

Suzi has a PHD in psychology and will be certainly psychoanalyzing the entire Booth community in her posts!

Suzi is a first year student at Booth pursuing a concentration in marketing management. She earned her bachelor's degree from the College of William and Mary and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Prior to Booth, she was an assistant professor in an addiction studies program. This summer, she is a marketing intern at Campbell's Soup Company in Philadelphia. 

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Favorite Booth Memory: singing karaoke with friends at the LEAD retreat!

That’s it! We’ve introduced all 9 members of our team: Linda, Edward, Craig, Ignacio, Alex, Darren, Jatin, Tyler and Suzi

Once again, we are looking forward to sharing our experiences with you. We hope to give you valuable information and insights that can help you see another side of Chicago Booth.

Cheers for a wonderful year to come!

The Booth Experience Team

Meet the new “THE BOOTH EXPERIENCE” Team (Post 1 of 2)

Hurrayy!!,

We are very happy to introduce the new “The Booth Experience” Team. We are 9 second year Boothies who will be posting content throughout the summer and the rest of the academic year to keep you up to date with the latest about life at Booth.

From where to live, to the best coffee shops in Chicago and the coolest places to go on a date, you’ll hear from us on a regular basis to give you an insider’s perspective on what it’s really like to go to Booth to pursue your MBA.
We are very excited to share our experience with all of you and look forward to hearing your questions, comments, feedback, ideas, etc.

Without further ado (drumroll), meet five members of our team (we shall introduce the rest in a post next week)

By way of Boston, MA we have…Linda Yan!

After four years in finance, Linda decided it was time for a change. She came to Booth looking to round out her knowledge base, make friends, and test out different career options. She's at consulting firm A.T. Kearney for the summer, working on a project for a F500 financial services firm. In her spare time, Linda enjoys working on her first poetry collection, trying all sorts of new whiskeys and defending her title of World Krav Maga Champion!

Favorite Booth memory: Hiking the Inca Trail during Spring Break with twenty-five awesome Boothies and their partners

Next, we have Edward McDonald, the most interesting man at Booth without a doubt:

Computer Science and Information Systems Engineering at West Point? Check.

Film School (Master of Fine Arts-Tisch School of the Arts)? Check.

Runner-Up as the Most Eligible Bachelor in Colorado according to Cosmopolitan Magazine? Check.

Edward has it all!

In addition to all his accomplishments, he is pursuing concentrations in finance, accounting and entrepreneurship. Prior to business school, Edward worked for three years as an officer in the US Army, two years at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, two years at CBS Corporation and three years as an independent film producer in NYC. This summer he is interning at Deutsche Bank in New York City, working in their Leverage Finance and Health Care groups. Next year he will spend the winter quarter abroad studying at IESE in Barcelona Spain!

Favorite Booth memory: Raging in Hong Kong during a 9-hour Random Walk layover between Phuket, Thailand and Chicago with 17 random Boothies who became some of my closest friends.

With our first international representative we have Ignacio Vinke! He likes to hike, take pictures and managed to watch every game of the World Cup during his internship! At Booth, he is pursuing concentrations in Finance, Economics and Strategic Management. He studied Production Engineering from Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, worked in marketing for three years and then opened Frigo, a healthy restaurant startup. At Booth, Ignacio serves as co-chair of BoothTech and Photobooth. This summer, he will be interning with Dish Network in Denver, Colorado where he is avidly training to run the Chicago Marathon in October (altitude training they say, harder than it looks).

Favorite Booth memory: Almost beating the Chilean team in the intramural soccer league! (They are very good)

Next up, we have Craig Carter!  Proud father of three, he is one of our brightest second years and is not only hoping to get concentrations in statistics and econometrics, finance, and operations, but also to do so while being the most amazing dad. Prior to Booth, he worked in corporate finance for the largest US freight railroad and is currently interning in the controller’s organization for a large oil and gas company. Beyond Booth, Craig loves exploring Chicago with his family (especially getting out along Lake Michigan) and is quite excited to be running the Chicago Marathon this October as well. Be sure to cheer for him and Ignacio if you come to Chicago next October.

Finally, our last introduction for this week, we have the amazing Alex Simon:

Alex loves to run, visit the latest Chicago festivals and all the new restaurants that open throughout the city. After going through the undergraduate program at U of C, he thought he was completely prepared for what the Booth experience would be, but couldn’t have been more wrong. What surprises him the most about the school is the number of students volunteering to help out their classmates or the different school groups in any way they can.

Favorite Booth memory: the winter formal at the Field Museum (you can party with Sue, one of the largest complete dinosaur fossils ever found).

Over the next year, we hope to answer as many questions as we can from all of you and post interesting content that can be helpful as you go through the process of trying to decide what school is best for you.

Cheers!

The Booth Experience Team.

Admit Weekend on the Horizon: Meet your Co-Captains!

Admit Weekend is a terrific opportunity for admitted students to experience life as a Chicago Booth MBA for a weekend. Admits learn about the Booth curriculum, tour Chicago neighborhoods, and have plenty of time to get to know fellow future Booth MBAs.

It takes lots of planning to make this happen, but fortunately we have a huge team of great volunteers. The students involved on the Admit Weekend Planning Committee take a “Co-Captain” role in a specific, key aspect of the Admit Weekend experience, from neighborhood and housing tours to partners’ programming.

Several of our Co-Captains offer reflections on their experiences and discuss why all admitted students should come to Admit Weekend!
--Matt Richman


Mary Cate Waris and Jennifer Phillips
Admit Weekend Squad Leader Co-Captains

We both attended Admit Weekend last year and we had such a great time meeting everyone and learning more about the Booth community that we were excited to be involved in planning and organizing the 2014 events. As the Squad Leader Co-Captains we are responsible for selecting and training the squad leaders (current students who help lead admitted students through the Admit Weekend activities) and for organizing many of the events that you will take part in over the weekend. As you may know, Booth uses a cohort and squad system for the LEAD course that all first year students will take. After LEAD, students take whatever courses they want independent of any cohort; however cohorts and squads still function like your home base throughout your time at Booth. Admit Weekend squads work the same way. The squad and cohort activities of Admit Weekend will give you an opportunity to have fun and get to know both your new classmates and Booth’s current students. We hope that you will enjoy participating in the activities as much as we have enjoyed preparing them. Your Admit Weekend squad will introduce you to many of your closest friends during your time and Booth, as it did for us. We look forward to meeting you soon!

Emma Tan
Partners Co-Captain

Starting business school is an exciting journey for not only us, but also for our partners. While moving to a new city can be hard for a couple, Booth has great resources, such as the Partners Club, and an inviting culture that help make our significant others feel like an integral part of the Booth community. The experience so far at Booth for me and my husband has been wonderful, and I wanted to give back as part of the Admit Weekend team. Working as a co-captain to plan the partner-specific programming is a great opportunity for me and my team to share our experience and help admitted students and partners get ready to make the most of their time at Booth. Through the partner experience panel, we will invite students and their partners to talk about the fun and surprises they had living in the Booth community, offer tips, and answer questions about Chicago. We also planned a Chicago resource fair to create an opportunity for partners to share information, make new friends, and bond with this amazing community at Booth! It has been an incredible experience for us to be part of the Admit Weekend Planning Committee to share our excitement about being at Booth with the incoming class!

Prakriti Mishra
Neighborhood and Housing Tours Co-Captain

I am a former UChicago undergrad, and although I moved to NYC after graduation, I was hesitant about coming to Admit Weekend last year, because I felt like I already "knew" Booth and Chicago. However, I am glad I went against my instincts, and flew out for Admit Weekend. The Booth that I saw at Admit Weekend was vibrant, intelligent, and incredibly fun! In the three days over Admit Weekend, I met my current roommate, talked to 2nd years who got me interested in technology and consulting, and saw the city of Chicago in a completely new light. Now, as a Co-Captain for the Neighborhood and Housing Tours, I hope to provide admitted Booth students with a fun, informative and engaging way to see the city for themselves. We have student hosts and tour guides to take our guests around some of Chicago's most popular neighborhoods, and give them a chance to see some of the apartments that current Boothies live in. I hope many of you will take this opportunity to get to know Chicago, and I look forward to seeing you on a tour around one of Chicago’s many exciting neighborhoods!

Tradeoffs and Compromises in the 90-Hour School Week

As he sails past midterms in the final quarter of his first year, Josh Hirschland reflects on his experience dealing with a common (and fortunate) problem at Booth:  too many opportunities for too few hours in the day. Read on to find out how he has made the most of his year.

--Matt

After you’ve been admitted to Chicago Booth (Congratulations!!), you will receive several guides detailing the ins and outs of student life. One of these handbooks will helpfully outline what a typical schedule looks like—how much time you will spend in class, on homework, on recruiting, and so forth—which, when you add it up, will account for between 79 and 105 hours per week. And upon looking at that, and you will say, “That’s crazy; that must be wrong.” And you’ll forget about it.

Until you get to school and you realize that it’s accurate.

For those incoming students who see business school as a vacation from work, the volume of requests that are made of your time as a student can be jarring. Between classes, homework, guest lectures, recruiting, extra-curricular activities, mentoring and leadership opportunities, social engagements, and the daily requirements of being an adult human being, there are literally dozens of things going on at any given moment. And with just 21 months to spend at Booth, every activity represents a trade-off—a deliberate choice that must be made.

Some of these tradeoffs are obvious: most students can only participate in one summer internship before accepting a full-time position, so it’s important to think long and hard about what experiences will help you make an informed choice about your post-MBA career. The bathroom scale is happy to remind anyone who forgets about the opportunity costs associated with going to a happy hour instead of the gym. And the rapidly diminishing balance of many students’ bank accounts is black-and-white (or, more accurately, black-and-red) proof of the positive correlation between short-term international travel and long-term Ramen consumption.

Other examples are more hidden. While Booth’s flexible curriculum and vast array of courses is part of the school’s unique draw, and the chance to take classes at other schools within the University was one of the things that sold me on Booth, with just 20 classes to take between enrollment and graduation, many students find themselves having to choose among award-winning professors in their final year. And though students are encouraged to get involved in a wide range of clubs, it is nearly impossible to take leadership positions in more than a couple without sacrificing quality and foregoing many of the rewarding experiences that come from being a co-chair.

My own experience is living proof of these tradeoffs. Last quarter, I was fortunate to have interviews at fascinating companies located in three different time zones, but each time I got a callback, I found myself having to cross plans off my calendar. As great as it was to save some money and catch up on sleep by having a low-key spring break, it was hard to see photos being posted to Facebook of my classmates sunning themselves on the beaches of Mexico or hanging out in Tel Aviv. And though I had to push marketing strategy back for a quarter, I had the great opportunity to take Building the New Venture with Professor Deutsch.

But the rewards have far outweighed the tradeoffs. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview at most of my top choice companies this year and am excited about my internship this summer at Groupon. While I haven’t made every Booth social event this year, I have been grateful to be able to spend a lot of time with my girlfriend. And while I would have enjoyed spending more time with the Epicurean and Marketing Clubs at Booth, being heavily involved with the Dean’s Student Admissions Committee (DSAC) has allowed me to meet some really amazing prospective and current students.

The best thing about Booth is the overwhelming number of amazing opportunities the school offers and the freedom that students have to chart their own paths. But the flip side of all that amazingness is what Booth students refer to as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). At a school where economics is held in high regard, it is fitting that the student experience is marked by being able to efficiently allocate your scarcest resource—time—to get the highest level of return. Booth offers so many great opportunities, but getting the most from the experience means focusing on those things that are most meaningful to you. And looking back on my first year, I am happy with the choices I have made!

Introducing the 2013-2014 DSAC Co-Chairs

Ever wonder how your Harper Center tour guide got his or her job? These guides, along with the other volunteers you see during campus visits or Admit Weekend, are members of the Dean’s Student Admission Committee (DSAC). DSAC is one of the largest student organizations on campus, given the enthusiasm that Booth students have for the school, and is led by eight Co-Chairs. We’d like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, Freddy Elorza and Matt Richman, as the new 2013-2014 DSAC Communications Co-Chairs. We manage The Booth Experience blog, Facebook, and YouTube content, as well as the newly launched Twitter feed.

Matt

I’m originally from the Philadelphia suburbs in New Jersey, and worked in the defense sector in Northern Virginia before Booth. I studied history as an undergrad, and got an MA in Soviet history from Penn. I really enjoy writing, so I got involved with The Booth Experience blog right away during my first year. I’m concentrating in finance and accounting here, and as much as I love my quant problem sets, I missed getting to express myself in prose rather than accounting ledger entries. I wanted to be a DSAC Co-Chair to help other students write about their unique Booth experiences, and to play a role in shaping the messages that prospective students get about Booth.

In addition to DSAC, I’m a member of the Public Speaking Group and the Investment Banking Group (I’ll be doing a summer internship this year at a bank in New York). I love Mixed Martial Arts and have trained regularly in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the last five years. A few other Boothies and I get together to train and we are trying to form a student club for next year.

In my free time in Chicago, my wife and I enjoy spending time by the lake, checking out the city’s museums near our apartment in the South Loop, and trying new restaurants in far-flung Chicago neighborhoods.

Freddy

I’m originally from Bogota, Colombia, but my family moved to Miami, FL when I was three years old. I grew up in Miami (GO HEAT!!!) and went to undergrad at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to study aerospace engineering. After graduation I had the great opportunity to teach high school. I really enjoyed teaching juniors and seniors, but after a few years I decided I was ready for a different setting. That led me to consulting as a career path and business school as the next logical step. Chicago Booth fits my personality really well. I can be a bit of a math geek but get to stretch myself to do things I haven’t done before, like help to write in this blog.

During my first year at Booth I was an active member of the Management Consulting Group, Net Impact, DSAC, and Booth Soccer Club. I will be one of the DSAC Communications Co-Chairs for the next year. I’m most excited about our new Twitter page—follow us @TheBoothExp!

In my free time I enjoy traveling and nature hikes. During spring break I spent nine days touring the National Parks in the Southwest. I went to Zion, Bryce, Arches, and Grand Canyon National Parks. It was an amazing trip, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Freddy and Matt thank the outgoing Communications Co-Chairs, Dana Fortini and Beth McNamee, for the excellent job they have done with the group and for increasing the visibility of student-led communications outlets at Booth. We look forward to continuing their work, as well as adding some new initiatives. Follow The Booth Experience on our new Twitter feed, and be on the lookout for short videos illuminating the daily lives of Booth students, and multimedia blog posts focusing on unique student experiences at Booth.

Finally, please meet the other 2013-2014 DSAC Co-Chairs!

Tracey Jackson, Admit Weekend
Megan Portanova, Admit Weekend
Josh Hirschland, Campus Visit
Amanda Needham, Campus Visit
Tolu Oyekan, International Recruitment
Cristina Pereira, International Recruitment



We look forward to sharing The Booth Experience with prospective students!
Matt Richman Matthew Richman UPenn TCNJ booth