<p>Article:</p>
<p>UCLA</a> Students Bad at Selling Themselves: School Culture?</p>
<p><a href="Note:%20this%20article%20ignores%20the%20obvious%20explanation%20that%20UCLA%20lacks%20a%20business%20management%20major,%20hence%20not%20attracting%20“management”%20consulting%20firms.">quote</a></p>
<p>So when talking to the top consulting firms in the business world, the recruiters have consistently said that UCLA students are not good at selling themselves. Besides being in lack of practice for the case interview, this might explain why among the top 50 consulting firms, only 8 of them recruit seriously at UCLA. Compared to other schools like UC Berkeley and other top colleges, UCLA does seem to be more warm and friendly, which matches the nice warm weather. This also means that the competition is less fierce here. It seems to me that students are relatively chill here, with their enjoyment of all the interesting places around, accompanied by the entertainment industry. The whole feel is like happy bruins enjoying a lighthearted life in the warm weather without worries.</p>
<p>In the Case Competition hosted by Bruin Consulting this year, we put together a panel of judges from Mckinsey, Bain, Deloitte Consulting, Hitachi, and Anderson Students. This is very important as many of the recruiters don’t recruit much at UCLA and if we don’t give a strong presentation, these firms won’t come back again. So the founders of Bruin Consulting wanted the teams names to be very professional. However, most of the team names were not professional, but consists of of somewhat cute names. Names that don’t take a prestigious college education who is going into a prestigious business field to create. This is consistent with the cuddly and cute feel of UCLA students.</p>
<p>So I was wondering why is this the case in UCLA? Do we have an environment that decreases our competitive spirit and causes us to reside to cute and cuddly good-warmheartedness? Looking into the issue, I thought there might be three forces that causes such an effect. Those are 1. The geographical environment, 2. The Asian dominated ethnicity, and 3. The Mascot(!).</p>
<p>So maybe the warm and mild weather, along with being in a rich and stable neighborhood and the fun entertainment industry makes bruins sheltered in a environment that destroys the fierce competitive spirit. Peace and harmony is more nurtured in this little village. Berkeley has a much harsher climate, and the neighborhoods are not as pleasant, which may or may not cause people to grow through a struggling environment, which they transition to struggles against each other. In countries like Russia, an extreme example, where the climate is harsh and many neighborhoods are poor, people tend to conserve that competitive spirit more.</p>
<p>The large Asian based population might be a cause of this tendency too. A many Asian cultures value humbleness as a great virtue, and people are not good at selling themselves. However, since Asian kids are forced to do a few dozen math problems after they finish their homework since they were in second grade, a good proportion of them are good at number crunching. UCLA at this point does not attract many consulting firms, but it’s Investment Banking and Accounting is quite strong. Accounting and Finance related jobs are more based on technical skills, while consulting stresses a bit more on presentation skills(outside of the analytical). However, this cannot be the sole reason, as Berkeley is Asian dominant too, and it does not have the same tendency.</p>
<p>Now is the Mascot. I think UCLA often goes towards team names that are cute and not being acquainted to sell themselves well goes with along with them identifying themselves as Bruins. Bruins is like a baby bear, or those good hearted bear characters in childhood stories. It’s almost like we’re constantly identifying ourselves as Berkeley’s little brother. I think doing that often automatically associates students to a cuddly, cute and goodhearted little bear in their subconscious minds. Even in competitive sports, when we compete against USC, we are always Joe Bruin the cute little happy bear-figure who jumps around all the time, where our nemesis is a trojan figure who seems dignified, serious and sharp(though he has a lower IQ and only pretends to be cool). This might be far fetched but I do believe that this has some effects on UCLA students. Btw, I don’t know about Banana Slugs.</p>
<p>These are just some observations that I noticed in trying to explain why UCLA students are not good at selling themselves according to consulting firms. It’s not like we can change our climate or mascot, so we can only hope that each student wakes up from this modesty and shine a stunning light to this world, proving they have more than brains, but the ability to create astounding value in this world as UCLA students.
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