Mark and Jie's Journey to B-School

This has been a remarkably different Hell Week than last year’s, all for very good reasons.  First off, the weather has been absolutely perfect for trekking all over the place to interviews.  It’s been sunny and in the 60’s all week, which is about the best possible situation in early November in Boston.  It doesn’t seem like I am interviewing nearly as much as I was last year, though I do have 5 first round interviews this week as opposed to 8 last year.  I was focused on equity research and investment management the first time around, so there were a few more firms to talk to.  This year I am interviewing with consulting firms and one operating company, so there aren’t quite as many players.  

The biggest difference, though, is that the results have been much better this time around.  I’m still in the process, but I think I was dinged by a firm basically the first day last year, so this is definitely an improvement.  There is a very immediate payoff when you change from trying to get into an industry with macro trends that work strongly against you to one where the trends are strongly in your favor.