VAND E RBILT A CCE L E RATOR®
DO MORE THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED.
ACCELERATOR
®
VANDERBILT SUMMER BUSINESS INSTITUTE
15
#
The U.S. News & World Report ranking of Vanderbilt University, often referred to as a “new ivy.”
On the cover: Read the story of James Fulham, Accelerator Class of 2017, at business.vanderbilt.edu/accelerator.
Give yourself a killer résumé. In just 28 days. In four fast-paced weeks, you gain the knowledge and hands-on business experience to help you launch your career. Designed for undergraduates and recent college graduates—especially those who did not major in a business-related field—Accelerator is a nondegree program that combines classroom learning with projects that allow students to act as consultants, solving real problems for real companies and presenting their ideas to management. The Vanderbilt Advantage the nuts and bolts of marketing, logistics, finance, operations and branding as well as soft skills such as client service and presentations
n Learn
n Learn
by doing real projects for real companies
n Focus
on working in (and leading) teams
n Develop
your career prospects with résumé review, mock interviews and networking exercises
n Experience
a “taste” of a graduate business program at the university that’s ranked #1 for happiest students in the nation by the Princeton Review
n Experience
Nashville—one of the “it cities” according to sources like Travel + Leisure, Forbes Travel Guide and Business Insider
Program length
28 days
Designed for
Undergraduates and recent college graduates (any major) with a strong record of achievement and the desire to learn and apply new concepts.
Class profile* Class size—68 Women—48% Recent Graduates—5% Rising Seniors—20% Rising Juniors—45% Rising Sophomores—30% Undergraduate GPA—3.41 Companies that American Airlines, Captain D’s, Coca-Cola, FedEx, Goodwill, have sponsored Humana, Lexus, Nissan, PNC, Society6 , Sony BMG Accelerator projects** Entertainment, Warner Music Group Whirlpool, Wrigley * Multi-year average ** Consulting clients vary from year to year but are selected to represent a variety of industries and organizations, large and small, for-profit and non-profit.
28 The number of days that you will get to spend in Nashville and at Vanderbilt as part of Accelerator.
76
%
The percentage of time that you will be working as part of a team in a consulting capacity.
Coca-Cola FedEx Nissan Just a few of the firms that have sponsored Accelerator projects in the past.
100
%
The percentage of students, staff and faculty who will know you by name.
Day in the Life:
Laura Per-Lee
Laura Per-Lee grew up in a family of strong businesswomen. During her freshman year at Furman, she began to see herself as a woman who also could fit into the business world. She decided to attend Accelerator to learn more about specific career opportunities, to develop her professional skills and to learn about what getting an MBA would be like.
I wanted to walk into my junior year of college prepared and with a sense of direction.
6:00 AM
Wake up, get dressed into my business attire, and brew a cup of coffee (a must-have for the busy day ahead). Walk over to Owen with my roommates.
7:00 AM
Grab breakfast with team members or friends depending on the day. Breakfast is a great time to get to know someone new, re-group as a team and practice our “elevator pitches,” or make final touches on presentation days.
8:00 AM
Most mornings start up with class or a guest speaker. Some of my favorite classes so far have been “Strategy” with Professor Slatton, “Personal Brand Building” with Kimberly Pace and an “Excel Workshop” with Professor Clark. The lectures equip us with the proper tools and knowledge to approach the problems in our consulting projects.
9:30 AM
Team time! Throughout the day we switched between class and project time. Some days we start working on project one and then switch to project two with a different team. It’s a fast-paced environment that has taught me how to get to the core of the problem quickly, and not waste time.
12:00PM
Lunch is a highlight of the day. It’s a good time to take a break and sit in the courtyard to eat and get to know your team members better.
1:00PM
After lunch, we jump right back in. A lot of times we have guest speakers come like Accelerator alum, Christine Owenell, who shared her story about how she started her own consulting agency in Nashville.
2:45 PM
Afternoons are a great time to check in with coaches and mentors one-on-one. Each team is assigned a coach that is there to answer any questions we may have about our projects. My coaches have also helped me see how I fit into the team dynamic through constructive feedback and ways I can improve my teamwork skills.
4:00 PM
Back to project mode. For every deliverable, a professor or mentor comes and gives feedback on our work. This is crucial time to iron out rough spots in our business plan and run our ideas by an “experienced business professional.”
6:00 PM
Most nights my team will work through dinner to ensure we complete our deliverable for that day.
8:00 PM
When 8:00 PM rolls around, everyone is usually pretty tired, but determined to keep working on making our project the best it can be. The nights before presentation days are always late, but it feels good to see the hard work pay off in the morning!
Real clients. Real projects.
Real opportunities. In four short weeks, Accelerator students handle several real-world consulting projects. Applying what they learn in class, students work in teams to devise real solutions to real business problems for companies. Then, competing against other teams, they present their ideas to the companies’ key executives (people you might not meet in an ordinary internship). Take a look at what past students have worked on:
It was really cool to see how everyone viewed the problem differently and ran with it in a different way,” said Shannon Roche, a member of the winning team who went on to intern for Society6 after the program concluded. “My internship at Society6 involved two similar projects that allowed me to take ownership of my work and create a tangible impact. The experience helped me gain a deeper understanding of the industry while developing key professional skills that I know I’ll be able to use for the next steps in my career. It was an extremely insightful, challenging, and rewarding experience.” Shannon Roche Vanderbilt Accelerator | 2017
The client: Society6 Society6 (one of Leaf Group, Ltd.’s art and design marketplaces) has established themselves as a leading marketplace in the growing print-on-demand industry, with 4 million unique designs across over 40 different products and 3 million customers. Its community of artists numbers in the 100s of thousands, and the marketplace’s royalty model incentivizes greater involvement. Through careful attention to technology, commerce, and creativity, Society6 has built a successful enterprise in a market on the rise. The assignment: This summer, leaders from Society6 turned to the Accelerator program for product development insights, looking for new opportunities to appeal to their primary demographic, which, coincidentally, aligns neatly with the Accelerator’s class demo. The result: The Accelerator project for Society6 turned out to be a win-win for everyone involved—students gained strong research, modeling and presentation experience, while Society6 and Leaf Group reviewed strong ideas from their target market. They also hired several students as interns to implement the results!
J U S T A F E W O F T H E C O M PA N I E S T H AT H AV E S P O N S O R E D A C C E L E R AT O R P R O J E C T S O V E R T H E Y E A R S
ACCELERATOR
®
VANDERBILT SUMMER BUSINESS INSTITUTE
DISCOVER YOUR STRENGTHS. DEVELOP YOUR SKILLS. DEFINE “The Accelerator coaches and professors are amazing. I really benefited from their feedback.”
“The best part about working with actual companies is that everything you’re doing has a chance to make a real difference, to influence someone’s life and give them positive ideas that can be implemented.”
KELLY PORTER
ANTHONY SWENSON
Vanderbilt Accelerator | 2017 Undergraduate Institution: University of Pennsylvania Undergraduate Major: Biological Basis of Behavior Anticipated Graduation Year: 2020
Vanderbilt Accelerator | 2017 Undergraduate Institution: Vanderbilt University Undergraduate Major: Engineering Science Anticipated Graduation Year: 2019
“Accelerator is one of the most challenging but rewarding things I have ever done. I felt like a sponge every day, always absorbing new things.”
RACHEL HUANG
Vanderbilt Accelerator | 2017 Undergraduate Institution: Colgate University Undergraduate Major: Economics Anticipated Graduation Year: 2019
“I strongly recommend Accelerator. You get such invaluable team experience that you can apply to your future career, whatever field that’s in.”
JAMES FULHAM
Vanderbilt Accelerator | 2017 Undergraduate Institution: Harvard University Undergraduate Major: Economics Anticipated Graduation Year: 2019
NE YOUR GOALS. Accelerator gives you classroom learning in the business fundamentals—from marketing and branding to finance, operations and logistics—all from Vanderbilt’s world-class faculty. But that’s just the beginning. On top of that, you’ll learn how to work in teams on projects for real companies, with invaluable advice and feedback from faculty and MBA coaches on everything from your business ideas to your presentation skills. You’ll receive career counseling, too, which will help you sharpen your interviewing and networking skills, as well as develop your résumé. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another summer program that gives you so much in 28 days.
Accelerator Bounce Back Scholarship: Accelerator alumni who apply for and are accepted to an Owen Graduate School of Management degree program are automatically granted a $5,000 scholarship applied toward tuition for that program.
We’re a different type of business school. We’re competitive, not cutthroat. We lead with ideas, not egos. We’re adding to our repertoire and our résumés, all at once.
Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management 401 21st Avenue South Nashville, TN 37203-2422
Telephone: 615.322.6795 Fax: 615.343.7177 Email: accelerator@owen.vanderbilt.edu Web: business.vanderbilt.edu/accelerator Hours: 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, US Central Time
©2017 Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt logo are registered trademarks and service marks of Vanderbilt University. REV. 9/17 Vanderbilt University is committed to principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action. Visit owen.vanderbilt.edu for Vanderbilt University’s complete EEO and affirmative action statement.