Denis Zaviyalov’s experience
I stumbled upon a very thorough and organized online photo album by a 2004 Wharton/Lauder grad. This is an awesome depiction of the excitement and fun that the Wharton School and the Lauder Institute continue to be. http://public.fotki.com/DengKohno/ I am amazed at the diversity of places and activities these guys have had at Wharton.
At the Lauder Institute one has to fulfill stringent language proficiency requirements: first, in order to be admitted all applicants have to show an advanced level as measured by the Oral Proficiency Test administered by Language Testing Intenational; then once admitted, a rating of Superior on the OPI is required to graduate. For some reason, at Lauder everyone refers to these ratings on a numerical scale: Advanced High is referred to as “2+” and Superior is a “3″ - and one needs a “3″ or higher to get the MA in International Studies. We take the OPI once every semester. After a Lauderite gets a “3″, he or she needs to maintain that level till graduation.
To illustrate what these numbers and ratings stand for, I did a search on OPI, and it seems that in order to qualify as a court interpreter in some parts of the US, one needs an Advanced (in the 2’s) on OPI.
I must mention that Chinese language training at Lauder is top notch. Not only does one get to spend over two months in China over the course of two years, we also have absolutely wonderful native language instructors who love what they do.
During the summer immersion in China, the language program is intense and diverse. Last summer, we had ample resources to study Chinese: small groups of 2 to 6 students, 6 hours of class time per day, lectures on different topics by outside professors and professionals, one-on-one study sessions with our professors and instructors, mock OPI interviews which were video recorded and then thoroughly analyzed with the professors, optional personal language tutoring with Beijing Foreign Studies University’s graduates specializing in Chinese as Second Language teaching, real-time presentations during the numerous corporate visits, and of course, Chinese media available 24/7.
In Beijing we had a wonderful opportunity to learn from a wide pool of experienced and knowledgeable teachers from BFSU on a daily basis.
Here are some pictures of BFSU’s campus where you can see the Foreign Student’s Dorm (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10575085) and the Yifu Building (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/10574963) where we had most of our classes last summer.
The level of the outside professors and professionals I mentioned above commands a demanding preparation for their visits, and that kept the Chinese track on their toes last year. For instance in June and July, 2008 we had the honor of learning about China’s stock market and banking system from leading experts in Finance and Banking from Shanghai Jiaotong University who routinely consult top officials of Shanghai. While in Beijing, we finished a week-long discussion of matters pertaining to the Olympic Games with a round table with one of the senior members of the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOOC).
At the same time, the “culturally challenged” (this term that identifies Lauder students originated in 2008 Wharton Follies) often communicate between themselves in their track language, so last summer Chinese trackers most often than not talked to one another in Mandarin. We continue to use Mandarin in our day-to-day communication in Philadelphia, too.
Having spent fifteen years actively learning and translating from/into Mandarin, I am blessed to be surrounded by people as passionate about the Chinese language and culture as my fellow Chinese trackers at the Lauder Institute. It is a joy to be in this environment.
A couple of days ago, while talking to a good friend of mine from Jamaica, I noticed an MIT class ring on her necklace. I have never seen anyone wear a Wharton school ring - it is just not something people do here. I hear, at other business schools it is more of a tradition, but at Wharton, Josten’s and its competitor friends have almost no presence.
At the same time, people like to wear prep. I noticed it last year, and this year when it became warm again, the scene repeats: the campus is full of preppy looking kids flip-flopping around in expensive casuals. Oh, and pink is in big time.
Finally, I have some time to write about Wharton and Lauder!
All the exams are over, tickets booked and bags packed - the summer internship awaits. It is an exciting time, indeed.
I stopped by the Lauder Institute today to pick up a few things at the office, and I saw all these new students sitting around the Lauder Lounge and in the Library on the new couch (Such was the gift from Lauder class of 2009; now the power naps will be much more comfortable), trying to finish their reading for the Strategy class. Lauder class of 2011 has just started their classes - Unbelievable, I thought, It has been a year already! It flew by like no year before it, and I think the next year will feel just as fast or even faster. Looking back on my first-year experience at Wharton/Lauder, it has been the best time ever. This school has been everything I wished it could be and much, much more!
At the same time, I met a few second years today who are pretty much done with everything, and busy themselves moving, wrapping things up on campus, etc. It is sad to see them leave, but at the same time I am truly happy for them.
Googling my name leads to an article China Economic Review has published about foreign managers’ employment prospects in China: http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/cer/2009_03/Need_not_apply.html
The article is realistic and at places pessimistic, but it is nevertheless flattering to read that some employers may see me as a dream MBA hire. Hmm…
Since I am on the topic of articles, Knowledge @ Wharton is going to publish ALL the research papers Lauder students wrote last year during their summer immersion. They thought the quality of our research and writing was THAT good. Myself and several other Chinese trackers were researching the topic of investments in renewable energy in China.
Updated May 12, 2009:
All the Lauder articles are now available on Knowledge@Wharton in a special and first-ever Lauder Global Business Insight Report 2009.
Our venture was in two countries: our “comfortable” base was in Ushuaia, Argentina, but most of the hiking, rock climbing and kayaking was done on the Navarino Island in Chile.
In the morning of the first day the main task was to cross the Beagle Channel, transfer to the base camp and get prepared for several days of hiking in the mountains.
Few people know that crossing the Beagle from Ushuaia is subject to constraints: for security reasons, the Chilean side prohibits boats with more than 12 people on them from docking in Puerto Navarino. That means that we could not just get on a big boat and arrive in one big team. Instead, we had to make several trips on three small boats. This took a bit of time, but I think the Vertical, who was responsible for the logistics of the trip, has done a decent job at organizing and managing this. As the day was quite chilly, the HOT coffee and tea prepared for us on the Chilean side in Puerto Navarino was very appreciated - a small thing, I admit, but it added a lot of comfort.
When we had all the people onshore in Chile the first task was to set sail on a big schooner called “Victoria” to a lagoon where indigenous people used to live.
To me it was an important experience, as I witnessed how the randomly selected group of six completely different people that I was a part of transformed into a team on that boat. The key to that was that we were very active and involved in steering the vessel. We became instrumental as all the communication on the boat between the skipper who did not understand English and the passengers-turned-crew was done via the interpreter on our team (yes, a Lauder guy, too). We discovered that we were all very open and sincere people, and this allowed us to build an atmosphere of support and trust by encouraging and helping each other. This had an amazing power - strong enough to help some of us overcome the fear of heights.
Continued on May 11, 2009
What endured afterward was four days of hard-core trekking in the mountains with the team. The way to the base camp was the most difficult part — not just physically, but also psychologically. Our backpacks were loaded with (A LOT OF) gear, food, water and whatnot and most of us have not trekked in the mountains in quite a while.
While the day on the boat was important for establishing the team spirit and for initial bonding, the first day in the mountains was really the key to finding practical ways of finding solutions under stress. We got tired and cranky and crisis resolution became a very useful skill. Do we go east or west? Up or down? Simple questions like that are not so easily answered when you have a 100 pounds of extra weight in the backpack.
I was amazed at how well we worked together! Everyone on the the team was flexible and respectful of others so we were able to overcome our personal differences and capitalize on each others’ strengths. The more we hiked the more we learned about each other, and this was a great part of the experience: not only did we get to know what our professional and personal backgrounds were, we also learned about each others’ true characters and personalities. It is amazing that when a person is not in his or her comfort zone for an extended period of time, his or her personality is seen as if through a magnifying glass.
We even thought that trips like this should be more widely used in personnel selection and screening: say, a week’s worth of hiking trip in the Rocky Mountains would tell it all about the candidates for a particular management position. An HR manager would then get a complete, unbiased portrait of every single candidate in no time at all. Oh well, I am sure someone somewhere is already doing this sort of stuff.
What did I discover about my team? Well, in addition to being super intelligent, they are amazingly happy, fun, honest, strong and endlessly wise people. Their wisdom and happiness made the rock climbing, hiking, living in tents, cooking together, endless discussions, stories and jokes so much more meaningful! To sum it all up, I am truly happy that I made such good friends in such a unique and beautiful place like Patagonia. My Wharton Leadership Venture has been an amazing experience!
The leadership venture in Patagonia was absolutely awesome!
From my side, a lot went into the planning of the trip as I had to get in shape, buy/borrow all the gear, arrange two visas and somehow finance it all.
Getting in shape had been in my plans for over six months. Unfortunately, I abandoned my regular exercise routine in May last year so getting ready for the Leadership Venture was a great way to get back to my usual healthy life style. This has been a transformational experience: I discovered that a simple thing like a morning run with a friend or two adds a ton to the quality of life. I know it is common knowledge and all, but reading and hearing about it is not the same as experiencing it.
Wharton Leadership Development program offered a lot of advice and guidance on how to gear up for the trip. The process is facilitated by Venture Fellows - specially trained second-year students who have been on at least one Venture themselves - who are assigned to a group of venture participants. They ran scheduled gear checks, and one-on-one counseling sessions. All in all, Wharton’s Venture Fellows did a great job: thanks to their advice I was able to choose gear that was useful, compact and light. This proved to be essential in the wilderness of Patagonia.
Financing the venture was easier for me than for many venture participants, thanks to the generosity of the Behrman family who established a special Behrman Scholarship to facilitate leadership development at Wharton. I am truly honored to have been selected as one of the first recipients of the scholarship.
My trip to the end of the world began on March 6th, right after the final Managerial Accounting exam (I did very well in that!). I flew Continental from Philadelphia to Buenos Aires, and frankly, I was pleasantly surprised by a great in-flight service the airline delivered. They now top my list of US airlines and next time I fly to Latin America, I will try to book a flight with Continental Airlines. In Buenos Aires airport I met up with several Wharton MBA’s who had booked the same flight to Ushuaia - the closest city to the South Pole in the world. That’s where our six-day adventure began.
On the night of March 7th, when everyone arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina, Wharton MBA’s lodged in two nice hotels; at dinner the Venture Fellows ran an orientation, explained the plan and logistics for the next day, introduced us to our guides from Vertical and then we split into teams of six. I was selected to be the first Leader of the Day in my team, which code-named itself “Team Impulse” the next morning.
That’s it for now.
Photos from the Wharton Leadership Venture to Patagonia, March 2009
It has been a while since I last updated the blog, and out of all the news related to the Wharton/Lauder program to share with the world, the most exciting to me is that the Lauder Institute’s incoming class of 2011 will be composed of super diverse and incredibly achieved people. Needless to say, many of them have reached out to me and my classmates for advice since the start of the application period. It has been a pleasure communicating with so many candidates, and I am happy for those who got accepted to the program this year: from what I hear it has been an extremely competitive applicant pool so getting in has probably never been harder. It will certainly be exciting to meet all of the incoming students in May when they start the incredible Lauder journey.
As for the Chinese track, it will not be as big as the Class 2010, but it will still have a considerable weight. There will be some changes this year to the Chinese summer immersion, as the sequence of events will be different this time around. The Chinese trackers will start their immersion in Beijing and finish it in Shanghai. The reason for this is the Wharton Global Forum that will take place on June 13th in Beijing. Of course, Lauder has gone out of its way to make sure the students get another amazing opportunity to learn and network during the summer immersion!
It seems that anything China does outside its borders attracts a lot of attention. A few journalists approached me regarding the Shanghai Government Job Fair in New York. Most of them seem to be interested in exploring the reasons why very few non-Chinese candidates attended the fair. While my opinion is documented in this blog, some asked to clarify, for example, if I had ever been discriminated against at a workplace in China. I really cannot recall any such issues whatsoever, and I do not want to reinforce any scary myths about the PRC that are circulating in some Western media.
My view remains unchanged: I am convinced that since there is an enormous resource of talent in the West, China will make deliberate attempts at attracting it, and it will get much better at doing so with time.
The New York Times even spared some ink to print a photo of the event on the front page of the business section. Ironically, depicted in the background there is me being interviewed by Thomson Reuters. Also, a fellow Chinese tracker has discovered that the three expats in the video accompanying that article, i.e. Tom Leggett, Nick Topjian and Liz Aab happen to be close friends of current Lauder students.
My plans for the Lauder Institute Global Knowledge Lab research project have changed as I decided against researching the Sovereign Wealth Funds, and instead joined the so-called “Green Buildings” project team. For this project, the Lauder Institute is cooperating with Dr. Ali Malkawi and his Penn-Tsinghua T.C. Chan Center For Building Simulation And Energy Studies. Dr. Malkawi is an energizing intellectual with a good business acumen, in addition there are six Wharton/Lauder MBA/MA students on our team spanning Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese tracks, and it seems that our project might take us to the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Latin America. We are currently working on the structural part of our research, and reading up on such issues as energy efficiency, environmentally sustainable architecture, clean materials, carbon trading, real estate law, etc. It is a lot of work, and it is really fun!
Work is fun, right?
Well, at Wharton/Lauder one can certainly choose to do fun work.
The past several weeks surely moved fast! Lots of things are happening right now as I am in the middle of the Designated Interview Period (DIP). I am constantly adding bits and pieces to the long-promised post about my attempt at career change, but I realize it is still too early to push the “publish” button. All I can say now is that changing careers at Wharton/Lauder is extremely time-consuming, but very possible.
Since I have had no time for blogging, for the next several days I will be making up for the long silence with some highlights.
First, all my core classes this semester are super good. I love Pr. Jeremy Siegel’s Macroeconomics class. The class went for over 2400 points on the Course Auction back in Quarter 2, but it is definitely worth the expense. Those who were not fortunate in the bidding process come and listen to Pr. Siegel’s famous market recap for the first 30 minutes of the class, during which they stand in the isles. Needless to say, the auditorium 351 at the Steinberg-Dietrich Hall is always fully packed! I am also taking Finance 601 with Pr. Kaufold, and he makes the subject so clear - every class is a joy. Plus, my Chinese classes at Lauder are a source of an immense satisfaction as always. Generally speaking, I am enjoying all of my courses a lot, and it is clear that the knowledge and skills foundation I built in the first semester is what makes this semester’s classes so clear and fun. Hard work always pays off, right?
Well, at Wharton it certainly always does.
