How I got $2 million from UCLA this week

Hopefully UCLA's endowment over the next year

We were told that school gets easier after the the fall quarter, and although the course load might be slightly less intense (since I decided not to take any electives), recruiting has really come to the forefront in the early part of the quarter.  The majority of my time this month was spent on interview prep (7 interviews so far), company research, stock pitch practice, and finalizing everything for the Career Night I organized.  At the same time I tried not to completely neglect a new set of classes, professors and my new learning team while also staying involved with other campus activities.  The internship search will continue to rage on for quite some time, I still have some catch-up to do in classes, but the major accomplishment of the month was landing a spot with the Student Investment Fund (SIF). 

The Student Investment Fund is a portion of the UCLA Foundation (the endowment for the entire university) that is entirely run by Anderson students each year (the students make all investment decisions for the fund) and is used to provide scholarships to 2nd year students.  It was started many years ago by an alumni donation and currently stands at around $2 million.  Joining SIF has been a goal of mine since I first applied to UCLA because it's definitely the most prestigious school-run program related to investment management.  The main benefits are: a) it gives us direct experience in investment analysis and portfolio management with a large sum of real money; b) SIF members meet with 30+ investment companies a year which gives us great networking opportunities and exposure to the industry that other students don't have; and c) anyone in the industry familiar with UCLA knows what SIF is, so it should be a huge differentiator when applying for full-time jobs next year.

The application process itself was pretty intense.  The initial meeting back in November had about 80+ students in attendance, but I think the time commitment scared off a lot of people who weren't completely gung-ho about asset management and were more looking for a resume boost.  Those that applied were assigned two stocks and had to write a two page report for each with our investment thesis, valuations, risk summary, supporting data and recommendations.  For the second round, we had to submit our resume and answer some essay questions.  Those that made it to the third round had to prepare a stock pitch (it couldn't be a stock we were already assigned) and present it to the 2nd years SIF members in an interview setting.  The toughest part was all follow-up questions they asked to challenge our true knowledge of the stock and our analysis.  The fourth and final round was an interview with members of faculty, the head of the Career Center, and a member of the Board of Directors of the UCLA Foundation.  During this interview, amongst other questions, we had to provide our economic outlook for the next year and provide a recommended asset allocation for the endowment. 

From now through the end of April we help out with the market research and need to collectively prepare stock recommendations.  Starting in May, the transition from the current 2nd years to us is completed and we become the full-time portfolio managers.  There are required meetings with faculty/board members starting in the spring quarter and going every week until I graduate next year, but most of the actual work will be done in student-run meetings outside of that time.  It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm definitely pumped about the opportunity.