Darden - Wahoowah!

zxsteven

Sam gives very valuable insights of Darden. But do not be too scared, you know what, all Chinese students in the past several years are still alive and landed ideal jobs in the U.S. or back to China. Nobody is born to be a Darden Material (even for Americans), It all depends on whether you want to take on the challenges of cracking hundreds of cases in two years and establishing your reputation in a team of smart people from all over the world. Overall, the two-year Darden life will definitely change your way of thinking and benefit your whole career.

yorkzhong

Yesterday we had our Internation orientation and it was fantastic! We had the first career course in the first day!

In Darden the CDC (career development center) take career of students seriously. We have a 4 step process to follow in the whole 2 years, and each student is assigned with a career consultant from Sep, by major functions you want to work in.

Another big infor we get is that this year Darden enjoyed a HUGE increase in yield rate, that's the rate % of pepole taking offer vs. offers being send out. The result is that Darden sent less offer but turned out more student entering, and the school have to deffer and/or encourage deffer of some students to next year.

pengpengming

3，听说darden倾向于招工作经验丰富一些的学生，我三年工作经验，是否相对薄弱些？另外，貌似来答疑的都是男生，是不是darden对中国女生不感冒呢？

In Darden2008, we have 3 Chinese girls from mainland, and another one originally from China. On yesterday's International Students Orientation, we also met a number of female peers with various background,including: Korean,Japanese,African,European,South American and...a lot of Indian.

There should be kind of limit on specific applicant pool, but there's NO gender bias(or preference) on admission process. 

As long as you think you are a qualified applicant and you can survive in hard working ambience, just go ahead to communicate with the admission office. All Darden staff are very nice and helpful.

Good luck!

香香茶

I really appreciate your answers, which are helpful for me to figure out the very school that I fit in with. Darden is a decent school, and I will definitely go in for it if ever I have the chance to be admitted. I guess many people hold the same views with me towards Darden, which explains why the yield rate increases greatly this year

yorkzhong

Guys - I am putting some new taken pic in the first page of this thread, please take a look. BTW it's really time consuming to put pic in this site, if you never done before.

yorkzhong

 

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On the other hand, if you plan to go back China after your 2 years, Darden may not be your best choice, in my opinion -  you dont really need the English communication skills, and Let's face it, Darden dont have particularly large alumni network in China, so it might not help your Business in China. After all, We are still a "small" school.
 

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Sam did give very value point but one thing I might not fully agree is about whether Darden is great for you if you wanna come back China. To be honest, I myself plan to come back China after graduation and Steven also have the same plan. I didn't see much shortcoming for Darden students coming back China. As I mentioned in previous post in this thread, there are several things you need to consider if you plan to come back to China:

1 - Job, Job, Job. Landing a job which is interesting and paied well is always the most important thing. As I mentioned, this year there're 3 students coming back and 2 of them find global paid job (9-10K$), and the rest I am not sure but should be very good. As far as I know, many some other top schools graduates cannot gurrante it's graduates to find a >50K$ job in China. Actually, in my previous company, there was one top-10 (not Darden certainly) graduate reported to me and I know he definately earns less than 40K$

2 - Network, please refer to my reply to "香香茶", not only the size, but also the connection of the Alumni counts. I saw graduates from some top schools with very large brand do not help each other too much, and/or they do not communicate to each other too much.

3 - Brand, admitted Darden is not like Yale, HBS, Stanford who can raise direct repect just by saying their name, but as I mentioned, in the MBA world, Darden is respectable. Most time, the senior executive of the firm will know Darden and they know it's a great school!

[此贴子已经被作者于2006-8-13 7:23:35编辑过]

Aleana

ah, finally figured out what the problem is, and here it is-my first responding post. Hi guys, here i come.

York, thanks for your note--you guys made Darden even more attractive than it was to me!

Thanks to everyone's great effort!

Aleana

sorry that i messed up with the message at the botton. i have no idea why it went there. i am a computer moron.

yorkzhong

以下是引用Aleana在2006-8-13 22:12:00的发言：

ah, finally figured out what the problem is, and here it is-my first responding post. Hi guys, here i come.

York, thanks for your note--you guys made Darden even more attractive than it was to me!

Thanks to everyone's great effort!

H Aleana - nice seeing you here! Just shoot any question you have, all the Chinese students with different background are more than happy to answer.

Miranda_sheng

I have spent my first week in Darden and never doubted my choice.

Discussed with many friends who have graduated from top 20 MBA schools in USA, I realized that the most important thing in MBA are communication skills and career transfer. Darden does a good job in both areas by case study all through the courses and closely customized career instruction. The positive feedbacks from newly graduated Darden 06 students easily add more evidences for my view. Additionally, the friendly environment in Darden will benefit chinese students a lot who are not so familar with American culture and living style as south American and Indian students.

Welcome to join Darden and be part of the big family!