Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club brings firms and students together

Learning the secrets to landing a consulting job is the last thing students might expect to do on a Friday afternoon.

But about 120 students did just that in Huntsman Hall at Friday’s second annual Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Conference. Hosted by the Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club, the conference featured panels and a case competition hosted by leading professional services firm Ernst and Young.

The conference also featured keynote speaker Adrian Slywotzky, a partner at Oliver Wyman. Slywotzky gave his speech on working with clients and best consulting practices.

Representatives and recruiters from several other consulting and management firms, including Capital One, Deloitte and Accenture, also attended the conference. They led resume-building workshops and educational panels and sat down to one-on-one coffee chats with selected students.

Before the conference, WUCC called on all of its members to submit resumes to the attending firms, and the firms responded with a list of students whom they were interested in meeting.

Gloria Lozano, the Philadelphia area campus recruiter for Deloitte, co-led a presentation on resume-building. Lozano, who received her masters in government administration from Penn, said, “We’ve sponsored the consulting club for a couple of years, and it is just a great way for us to get in front of a large group of very talented students.” She continued, “The diverse set of experiences that you get as a Penn student, I think, is something that is attractive to us as employers.”

Students were thrilled to have the opportunity to hear directly from an employer.

Wharton and College freshman Samay Dhawan said, “I think having the opportunity to listen to resume builders from Deloitte is always amazing. It’s great because they are one of the top consulting firms in the country.”

Wharton sophomore Tanya Paul commented, “They also went over points about what kinds of things should be on your resume, as in, for example, she talked about how Deloitte really values community service.” Both Dhawan and Paul explained that it is “very possible” that they would apply to Deloitte in the future.

The firm representatives also acted as the judges for the case competition, in which student teams presented their original solutions to a problem posed by Ernst and Young. This year’s winners were Northeastern University in first place, University of Toronto in second place and Penn third place.

Students from other universities were also very pleased with the opportunities at WUCC annual conference. Yale junior Mona Cao said, “We thought it would be a really great way to engage with other students from other schools and see what a real hands-on, maybe more realistic approach to consulting is like.”

Yale sophomore Noah Siegel said, “[The firm representatives] were a lot of the younger workers in their companies, so to know what they’re going through just a couple years after graduation gives us a good window into the future.”

Other students just wanted to visit Penn. Yale senior Trang Nguyen added, “So it’s parents weekend this weekend at Yale, so there is nothing going on, and we think UPenn is a lot more interesting.”

In addition to this once-a-year conference, the Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club tries to run at least one event each week. WUCC President and Wharton junior Vanessa Seah said, “We like to collaborate with other clubs in Wharton and put on events that educate the student body about what consulting is.”

WUCC has about 1,500 registered members and charges 15 dollars per membership. The club works to help its members land consulting internships by providing resume workshops, case interview workshops, coffee chats, networking opportunities and socials throughout the year.

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