By Rahul Ramteke, MBA Class of 2016
Anxiety is one of the things that an international student traveling to the US for the first time, or for that matter any new student beginning a new college experiences. My anxiety lasted for only the first 20 minutes of the first day of orientation. That was the time it took for me to travel by bus from my apartment to the Business Building. The moment I stepped into the Business Building and met the welcoming team at Smeal, all of my anxiety went away, and everything that followed for the next two weeks fell perfectly in line.
The Smeal MBA orientation is something that I will remember for the rest of my life. The two-week schedule that was organized for our orientation was not only apt, but also exceeded everyone’s expectations. The first day started off with a check-in breakfast, followed by a welcoming message from the admissions and student services teams. The second half focused on global immersion and the expectation setting for graduate assistants. The second day of orientation focused mostly on the administrative related work such as laptop setups, insurance, assistantships and so on. One thing to note here is that the entire schedule, although it looked hectic on paper, was actually prepared to cater to the students needs. It took out all the pressure and anxiety of coming to a new place.
The third day of orientation was a special one for us. It was an all day team event at Tussey Mountain. The day was filled with a lot of fun that included free breakfast and lunch. But what’s the fun in going out somewhere and not learning something? Well that’s where the entire beauty of this event lied. We were engaged the entire day in team building and leadership activities, and the coaching that we received at this event is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. The one thing that I particularly liked about this activity was the way we were taught to introspect and learn from every activity that we performed. Not only was it fun but it was also a great learning experience.
The next two days that followed were the most important sessions for any MBA student entering a B-school. A few of the sessions were focused on employer relations, career services, etiquette and networking, self-exploration, resumes, cover letters and job search strategy. These were the sessions that strengthened my faith in the Smeal MBA program, and the focus and energy of the entire staff in the 220 office simply made me awestruck. If it looks intimidating, it is not so. After all there were times in between for a lot of fun and interactions. All of us enjoyed every bit of attention that that we got in neatly dressed business formal suits. That concluded the first week of orientation. Although we were looking forward to relaxing that weekend, we also had the “can’t wait to get back” feeling to begin again the next Monday morning.
The second week of orientation started with a session on Career Fair Strategy, followed by a simulated career fair where we pitched ourselves to various recruiters at the Business Building atrium. It was a good practice for all of the first years since most of us have never been to a career fair before. We also received feedback at each of the recruiter booths on the various ways we could improve ourselves in future career fair interactions. The day ended with a fun session on improvisation, which was very well crafted. The interactive session gave us very good insights on how to use improvisation techniques in our day-to-day conversations and activities.
The next day was all about how to network, and use social media for job search. We also learned some important interview strategies, along with a short introduction to the administrative resources that are available to us for our day to day activities at Smeal. Social media is the norm and the buzz word these days, and I really admired the way our career services and admissions team gave us some important insights into how to use social media for our advantage. And yes, we actually opened and browsed through our FB, LinkedIn and twitter profiles during these sessions. Business schools are a lot of fun after all!!
Honor and integrity are taken very seriously at Smeal. Our sessions for the next day were all based on understanding the honor and integrity code at Smeal. The presenters for these sessions did a very nice job in explaining the intricate details of professionalism and conduct. We also had a very useful workshop on citation and plagiarism. We often take many things for granted in our day to day activities, but these sessions were real eye-openers in understanding what is considered ethical and what may be seen in the school and business world as non-ethical. The sessions also provided a fresh perspective in tackling ethical dilemmas that may arise in the work place or at school. Again, this was another very productive day of orientation for us, as we learned a lot of new things.
That brought us down to our last two days of orientation. The final two days were something that we all were really looking forward to, as they involved a case simulation. The penultimate day started with a session on cultural and team dynamics followed by a session on how to approach a case. All of the teams were given a common case topic for which we had to prepare slides that were due by 9:30 pm that evening. The final day started with the team case presentations followed by lunch that was sponsored by Chevron at the Nitanny Lion Inn. The finalists were declared by the time we finished our lunch, and we all moved for the Case simulation finals. The judges included Smeal Faculty, MBA Alumni, and a Chevron representative. Every one of us watched the presentations attentively, and they were not only professional but also very detailed. Before declaring the winners for the event, we received some very valuable feedback on our case presentations, and a very good observation made by all of the judges was that although it was our first case presentation, every team was very professional and composed during the entire event. The orientation activities came to a closure with closing comments by the MBA Managing Director Carrie Marcinkevage.
We all had a surprise in store as we started to leave for the day, and the surprise was a reception that included drinks and hors d’oeuvre. It was a great opportunity for all of us to mingle with our classmates and the MBA staff.
Finally, our orientation ended and we were formally inducted into the Smeal family. As we wrapped up for the week, not only did we had a sense of pride joining the wonderful community, but also a sense of anticipation as we were looking forward to the start of our classes the next week. To celebrate the start of classes there was a welcome picnic the following Sunday which was sponsored by the MBA association at a local park.