The SGE Immersion: A True Consulting Experience
The SGE Immersion: A True Consulting Experience
by Brett Lester, MBA ’17
The Sustainable Global Enterprise (SGE) Immersion allowed me the opportunity to interact with clients and support a market expansion problem, leaving me prepped for success for my internship with EY’s Strategy group.One of the most important questions a 1st year MBA student must answer is: What should I do to prepare myself for a successful summer internship? For consulting, this questions inevitably considers the number of practice cases, the importance of GPA, and choosing the right immersion, as it seems that one can never practice enough cases when recruiting for consulting, GPA is always an important metric of your potential and the right immersion can give you the skills needed to succeed in a summer internship. Having now completed my internship with EY’s Strategy group, I can confidently say that Sustainable Global Enterprise (SGE) Immersion is an excellent answer to this question of how best to prepare for consulting. More specifically, the Immersion gave me the opportunity to develop client facing skills while solving a complex market expansion problem — a problem very similar to the one that I faced during my summer internship with EY.
At EY, I was part of a team working to develop a strategy for a fortune 100 client to expand into China. During the SGE Immersion, my SGE team faced a similar question for our client of how the company could expand within the U.S. Learning through my Immersion experience how to collect and analyze data to develop a quantitatively supported recommendation while at the same time learning to feel comfortable without perfect data was crucial for ensuring my success this summer. During the Immersion and my summer internship, there was always a lack of complete data whether it was company specific information or market analysis. Learning how to be comfortable making recommendations based on incomplete data was essential. Experiencing the SGE Immersion allowed me the opportunity to face a complex market expansion project with imperfect data and was an excellent precursor for what I would face while serving EY’s clients.
Having spent my summer with EY, I hope to join EY’s sustainability team and make my passion of using business to help solve social problems a reality. At EY, I have been encouraged to find my purpose, and this includes, similar to the SGE immersion, making a positive difference in the world through business.