Submitted by: Justin Wang
For the past couple of years, there has been a lot of chatter among UCLA students, alumni and faculty about establishing a business curriculum at UCLA, specifically a business major or minor.
Undergraduates who have gone through fall and winter recruiting seasons realize that they’re at a real disadvantage. An undergraduate business curriculum would finally allow UCLA students to better compete with their West Coast counterparts at Stanford University, UC Berkeley and USC.
So here’s the truth: There will be no undergraduate business program at UCLA in the near future. Here’s another brutal fact: As much as I dislike everything about USC, it seems like their students are landing more business jobs than ours.
That said, UCLA is still one of the greatest universities in the world. It provides an intellectually challenging environment, a culturally diverse and vocal population and some of the most successful athletics programs in the nation.
In addition, this university also houses some of the most motivated students in the state. So instead of relying on the university to prepare us for top business jobs, we, as students, need to take more initiative to help prepare each other for these interviews.
In other words, we need to create our own “business minor” through student-organized events.
This past year, student organizations have taken the initiative to train students for top business careers. These same organizations are the reason why some large companies recruit at UCLA, year after year. They are also the reason why some new companies have decided to hire from UCLA for the first time.
In the past year, Bruin Consulting has hosted two strategy and operations case competitions and a number of case-preparation workshops. Student Accounting Society and Beta Alpha Psi have also done a tremendous job at building UCLA’s brand at major accounting firms. The Undergraduate Business Society has hosted new career workshops, even one targeted at students interested in a career in sales.
During the year, Academics in the Commons has launched two new student-run business workshops. The Sports and Entertainment Business Network just hosted a speaker seminar. Entrepreneur Mentor Society is starting to develop its platform at UCLA.
The Student Alumni Association is beginning to host more business-specific alumni events. Black Business Students Association has begun training new leaders. The Latino Business Student Association has contacted new firms.
Finally, the business fraternities Delta Sigma Pi, Alpha Kappa Psi and Phi Gamma Nu have all done their share in preparing their members for interviews.
We’re headed in the right direction, but we can do more and we can do better.
As a university, we need to provide would-be entrepreneurs more opportunities. We need to train more business leaders. We need to place more students in business positions.
Despite what I said earlier, this isn’t just about making UCLA better than USC in every way, as nice as that would be ““ it’s about building UCLA’s undergraduate business brand for years to come.
Wang is a fourth-year psychobiology student and currently an adviser to the Bruin Consulting board. A former president of Bruin Consulting, Wang is now signed on as a Redwoods Summer Analyst at DaVita.