During the first semester of your second year you have the choice between two different Practice of Management Courses. Those who are following a finance concentration typically take Burkenroad Reports, while those in Strategic Management or Leadership typically select Strategic Consulting. If you would like to be an overachiever I believe you can sign up for both classes. Practice of Management courses are meant to be fairly intensive and thus I decided to stick with just one. This year I selected Strategic Consulting.
The class seeks to prepare students for management consulting positions and covers such topics as industry analysis, consulting skill development, and the stages of consulting. Even if you aren’t interested in consulting I have found that this course helps to provide a framework for developing and solving problems. No matter what career we end up in, we will all be faced with problems so I have found this to be a very beneficial class. Even better, the professor is a practicing consultant so he is able to bring in a vast amount of real world experience.
Outside of class we read cases, do case write-ups, and selected consulting teams for our final project. My group is analyzing the redesign of business systems and processes at Dairy Farm Group which is a major Hong Kong-based food retailer that operates all over Asia. Other group selected different cases and some decided to work with local clients to help solve business issues they were facing.
I hope that provides a bit of a taste for what we are doing in Strategic Consulting.
-Eric