While some people were getting tan at the beach or heading up north to ski, other Auburn students went to New York and experienced Wall Street for their spring break.
Frank Oprandy, director of graduate career services in the office of professional and career development, took 12 Auburn students on a four-day trip to Wall Street to help them begin networking for their futures.
"For this last trip every visit but one was either facilitated or led by an Auburn graduate," Oprandy said.
The group visited places like Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, Bloomberg, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and the Office of Controller Currency. At the end of the trip, the students met with Auburn alumni.
"Alumni met with our group, some of them in the financial industry, some of them not, but all of them willing to help," Oprandy said. "From a networking perspective if they weren't in the industry they might know somebody in the industry so they were very willing to connect our students with people that could help them."
This is the third trip that Auburn has organized for students to visit Wall Street. The group consisted of both graduate and undergraduate students.\0x2028"The best part of the trip was definitely the visit to Bank of America/Merrill Lynch," said Matthew Humphry, first year masters of finance student. "It was really interactive, we went out on the trade floor and were able to interact with people who were actually trading and then afterwards we met with an investment banking recruiter that recruits Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and he gave us great insight on . . . what it takes to make it into Wall Street."
The students also had free time to explore New York. They saw Time Square at night, went shopping on Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Plaza.
Some students used their free time for interviews and networking on their own.
"The idea of the trip is to build up your network," said Ralph Reed, Junior in finance. "We were meeting with people from different sectors of the bank, they were telling us what they do on a daily basis."
Rigby Coleman, junior in finance, said that Oprandy did a phenomenal job running the program.
Many of the students said that the trip made them realize how much they would have to do to get to Wall Street.
One of the people that they talked to had made 11 trips to New York and went to 30 other places before getting a job at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.
"It was inspiring to hear that it could be done for an Auburn student if you're willing to put in the work to do it," Coleman said.
Humphry said he would go back again.
"I'm getting ready to go work an internship with IBM in Texas doing mergers and acquisitions," Humphry said. "I'm coming back to Auburn to finish my last semester of my degree and from there I'm hoping to work in mergers and acquisitions, potentially with one of these major banks."
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