Management and Technology Summer Institute 2019

This summer I attended the Management and Technology Summer Institute (M&TSI) at the University of Pennsylvania. My interest in the program was a result of a spontaneous admiration of the M&T coordinated dual degree UPenn offers. The program combines business entrepreneurship and engineering in a pre-professional fashion that sets you up to thrive in the growing tech-markets.

I applied very late as I only discovered the summer program when my mum brought it up at the dinner table. At the time I had already been accepted into a Harvard summer camp which I had previously applied for. The Harvard camp however, was just another heavily priced college camp with an acceptance rate of 85%. While desperately trying to submit my application for the M&TSI program I was naive to think it was the same as all the other camps in America.

When I arrived at UPenn, July 7th 2019, I quickly learnt that M&TSI was like no other summer course offered in America. With an acceptance rate of just 5% (as low as the actual UPenn college) M&TSI was well known and extremely prestigious in America. The academic rigour was highly recognised by admission boards from the top universities so much so that you earn one college credit for completing the camp (the same amount as completing the IB). On top of that, over 40% of students that attended M&TSI the previous year were accepted by the M&T under-graduate program (2% acceptance) the following year. All of this sounds nice on paper, however these honours aren’t simply handed over to you when you arrive, the content, submissions and professors at the summer program make you earn every bit of it. Looking back at my 3 weeks at M&TSI, I can say that I have never been pushed so far in my life, there were nights I didn’t think I would make it to the end, especially not with flying colours. On top of that however, I made friendships and connections that will last a very long time and opened my eyes to a world that stretches far past the UWC bubble that sometimes leaves us questioning what it is we are really chasing?

The hardest night for me was no doubt the first night of the camp. I had received the introduction email a few weeks prior to arriving but again this false image of an average uni camp lead me to disregard the email. After arriving and settling down into my room I began hearing more and more people talk about the essay. ‘What did you write about in the essay?’ ‘How long did it take you to write the essay?’ It was only then when I realised there was an entire 2 page essay analysing a 26 page case study I hadn’t read yet due the next morning. So there I was on my first night in the camp, reading a case study about the 3D printing industry and writing a 2 page essay advising the company to either remain open source or go proprietary. I slept at 4am that night, but I successfully submitted and even ended up doing quite well on the essay.

That night really set the bar for the rest of the camp. Anyone that knows me well knows how much I hate reading, so a 50+ page case study every night with either an essay or in-class test the next day really ran me down. The big thing that really set the tone for the camp was the ‘Canvas’ page (online learning platform) that had all our up coming quizzes and documented all our results on  past essays and quizzes. Everything we did in the camp was graded, from both the finance side which was mainly essays and the engineering side which was mainly electronic quizzes, even our class participation per day was graded. All the grades were averaged and displayed as a percentage at the bottom of the page. 90% and above was equivalent to an A and almost immediately we developed a phrase ‘path to a 90’ which referred to the day to day battle to either make it across the boundary or stay within it as everything you did during the camp affected that number.

I know it sounds like it was miserable, stressful, non-stop 3 weeks and that is because that is exactly what it was. There were nights were I simply thought I would not last another day. There were mornings I seriously considered staying in bed and giving up. However, 2 things changed that mindset for me. Number on, my best friends from Singapore. During those times were I didn’t think I would make it, I would call my friends from home. The encouragement I got from my close friends in Singapore seriously made the difference for me. This entire experience has really put into perspective how much these friends from Singapore mean to me and how much they care about me and how I need them to do all the things that I do. Number two, the boys that I met at the camp. Within the first 2 days a group of us had already developed a tight circle. With this group of boys I experienced something I have never experienced before, within the first week we were friends as if we had known each other for years and by the end of the camp it was as if we were brothers. Looking back I think it is because we were all going through the same thing, we were together through all the highs and lows of the camp. All together, it was both my friends from UWC as well as my new friends from the camp that got be through the 3 weeks. And now that I have complete M&TSI I can look back and see just how utterly amazing and respectable the camp was.

The first week of the camp was all about theory, we learnt about entrepreneurship and business during our morning lectures and engineering and design in the afternoon. Whilst I have done both economics and design in school I have never learnt either in such depth and real world relevance as I did during the camp. The entire camp was very pre professional and for the first time I actually saw how the things I was learning could be directly implemented in the real world.

During the second week we were slowly introduced to the major project. We would be developing an MVP (minimal viable product), market proposition and product release video for a product that we would have to come up with and design, the only guide lines was the theme ‘Data for the benefits of our selves and the ones around us’. It was a chance for us to combined and show case everything we had learnt in finance and engineering. I was grouped with 2 other boys and 2 other girls. Our group of 5 was from all parts of the world and we came together really well. After all the graded ideation stages we finally landed on our product idea; we called it Miran. A stress mitigating necklace with body analytics and an accompanying app. The third and final week was completely focused on developing our product. As we were required to have a working prototype for the product fair most nights were spent in the lab till 4am developing our hardware and software. Throughout the day we spent time drafting our 3 page executive summary and filming our product release video.

Each member on team Miran had their own job based on our skills evaluation session. My main job was managing then electrical engineering as well as the product release video. After countless hours, 3am the night before the final product fair we finally complete all submissions. We were really happy with how much we accomplished as a team. We even tracked our live Facebook ads for just 24 hours and received over 11 willing customers and 2 people that actually reached out to us personally asking if we had any in stock.

Our product did not win the directors choice award, however I was thrilled when I received a certificate for best product video during the awards ceremony.

Aside from our time on the Upenn campus, we also went on a New York trip where we visited a variety of places. Firstly, in full suit and tie, we visited JPMorgan where we had a talk from billionaire Micheal Grimes (who’s son a Upenn M&T Alumni). We had chances to ask him questions about his work, he also ran a Google IPO simulation with us where we were able to see some of the principles we had learned about in class, as-well as the unique Google IPO which we had a case study and essay about, come to life. Following this session we visited the R/GA Ventures space in NYC where we toured the design space and had a sit down with the CEO of LATCH, one the the venturee firms of R/GA, and had the opportunity to ask the young tech CEO (an Upenn M&T Alumni) what it was like working in that kind of area. One thing that became very apparent from our NYC trip was the network that being apart of M&T allows you to develop and the kinds of places and M&T student will have exclusive access too.

Although it sounds like it was all work and no play, this was almost true aside for the mandatory fun sessions. M&TSI is the only place I think they will ever have to force students to participate in fun activities, including a trip to Ocean City New Jersey and Six Flags Theme Park. Given a choice many kids would have chosen not to go on these trips just because of how much work we had due the following days. However, these opportunities during the 2 weekends really brought us closer as a group especially my friend group. Being from Singapore it was cool to see how other kids my age from around the world hang out and chill as-well as share some things from back home with the boys in America. By the second week our brains were so dead and sleep deprived that we found the smallest things so funny and would die of laughter over the smallest things.

Throughout the camp I got really close with my professors, Sid Deliwala (engineering) and Jeffrey Babin (finance). Especially Sid, he was an old, loving, and funny man that was always ready to answer questions about engineering or life in general. I had many long conversations with him and he gave me a lot of advice about high-school, college and life. His biggest advice to me, given I was 1 of 2 participants that still had 2 years of school left, was focus on doing things I love, not things I think other people will love to see.

All in all, M&TSI has opened my eyes and my mind to the world of entrepreneurship, something I am defiantly now considering doing in the future. As well as the American college experience. I may very well be applying for M&T Upenn in 2021 and I hope to see some familiar faces when I return.

 

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