trinity [week 9]: scp bonding

Every year, Oxford MBAs have three options during the summer to satisfy their academic requirements: Strategic Consulting Project (SCP), elective courses, or Master's thesis (10,000 words). Next year, SBS will start counting internships for credit for the first time, too. Traditionally, most students opt for the SCP. The b-school has staff solely dedicated for sourcing, and administering SCPs for you. They're very helpful, and approachable. This year there were approximately 60 SCPs to bid for, some with big names such as Citigroup or De Beers, and some with decent packages, such as a salary, or free travel and accommodation. MBAs compete as teams of four for these more desirable SCPs. You can, of course, just circumvent the entire process by "sourcing" a SCP all on your own, which is what I did.

Back in April, I organized a student-led Trek to New York and Boston. During one of the company visits, with SecondMarket, I could sense that they had a lot of projects that they wanted to follow-through on, but since they were still relatively new and short-staffed they just didn't have the man-power they needed. So, during the Q&A portion of the presentation, I asked our host if he was interested in having a small group of Oxford MBAs come back during the summer to help. And happily, he agreed. I remember Donald Trump once writing, "It never hurts to ask, because the worse that can happen is that they say no."

Since April, I've been in contact with the New York office to iron-out the details. I had to draft a proposal for SBS to receive approval for academic credit, and I had to find a team of four MBAs in total. This was all difficult, considering that during this time I was still running the Finance Club, and taking 6 elective course, such as Corporate Valuation, Entrepreneurial Finance, and Financial Risk Management. Now that all the administrative work is out of the way, though, I thought that it would be a great time for the team to bond. And what better way to bond, then to spend a sunny weekend afternoon in Trinity term punting on the Cherwill with Pimms? Good friends, and good times. We learned a lot about each other, and spent time discussing the fast-approaching SCP with SecondMarket. I'm very proud of our team, too. After I tell people who's on our team, they usually raise an eyebrow, and simply say "Wow. That's a good team." Both Platt and myself were nominated for the "John Nash: MBA who can crunch numbers like kit kat bars" award, so that's when you know you've got the cream of the crop, or at least a tasty candy bar.