The following articles were written by George Lee and Stacy Shung, both MBA '08 students.

Day 1 (Tuesday, January 2, 2007)
The head of Merrill Lynch investment banking gave a firm-wide presentation. We were joined by Wharton b-school students. Afterwards, there was an informational session with members from Banking, Capital Markets and Research.

Day 2 (Wednesday, January 3, 2007)

Deutsche Bank - ECM
Today, we met members of the Deutsche Bank ECM team for a light breakfast. We were joined by Stern and Wharton B-school students. The Deutsche ECM team is very active especially with the growth of the Chinese equity markets. They have participated in many Chinese IPO transactions including the latest ICBC deal. Ideally, they are looking for people who have an interest in banking coupled with capital markets knowledge.

These functions are heavily attended by many top business schools. Many banks do pre-screening based on these informational sessions. So, it would be advantageous to sell yourself and ask intelligent questions.

Citigroup
The head of investment banking in Asia gave a general presentation of Citigroup and the many growth opportunities in the region. Afterwards, we were given a detailed presentation of the summer associate program in terms of the expectations and type of workload. We were joined by Stern, Wharton, Darden, Harvard B-school students.

The event ended with an informational sessions with representation from Global Markets, Banking, and Research.

Credit Suisse
At Credit Suisse, the CEO of Asia Pacific, Paul Calello, kicked off the session for the initial 30 minutes. Shortly afterwards, we were divided into 3 smaller groups to spend 30 minutes with IBD, Equities, Fixed Income and Asset Management. The groups were divided by schools (Darden, Berkeley, Cornell), so the atmosphere is more relaxed because it's among your peers. The difficult part is to ask relevant questions for each represented group. I found Asset Management to be most challenging because not many people are interested in the field and not many banks promote this group.

Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers dedicated this event exclusively to Cornell. There were no other schools. At times they had more representation than we had b-school students. This was a very informal session because they previously had presented in NYC for their Asia recruiting. They had groups from Banking, Capital Markets and Prime Brokerage.

Again, with these small gatherings like this, it is crucial to come prepared because you don't have the reliance on other schools to fill in the 'voids'.

Day 3 (Thursday, January 4, 2007)

Today, we visited JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. They were both joint info sessions with other business schools, including Wharton, Stanford, MIT, Darden, Harvard, and Berkeley.

At JPMorgan, they divided us into small groups by different career interest; say IBD, S&T, or Research. In this way, we had more time to talk with the banking professionals from a particular area.

At Goldman Sachs, we had a presentation and Q&A session from their Asia Banking Head for an hour, and then followed by a cocktail reception for about only half an hour that we could mingle with recruiters and students from other schools.

I really encourage people to ask good questions during their Q&A session. It is very possible that you would be picked for on-site interview because of your active involvement.

Day 4 (Friday, January 5, 2007)

Today, we had only one event with Deutsche Bank in the afternoon. Again, it was a mingling session with recruiters and other b-school students. They provided the best food that we've had during the job trek compared with other banks. In addition, we saw some students were pulled aside for small talk with some recruiters. It was a good sign.

In the evening, we had a happy hour with the alumni and prospective students at a very famous club in Hong Kong. Although no prospective students showed up, a few alumni and second-year students joined us. It was great to get together with our alumni in Hong Kong and get to know their job and life there. Later on, we met students from Wharton and MIT there.

Apart from those formal events during the job trek, we had a lot of fun hanging around in Hong Kong by ourselves as well. It was such a wonderful trip with the delicious food, exciting bars, and plenty of good shopping places in Hong Kong.