OCS Fair Draws Freshmen

Although it fell on the first day of fall reading period, the Office of Career Services’ annual Summer Opportunities Fair this Monday drew hoards of students who shifted their focus away from papers and study guides to summer internship options.

Student attendees roamed between tables representing Harvard affiliate programs in the Radcliffe Gym and company representatives offering summer employment opportunities at the Gutman Conference Center.

Employers represented at the fair included Microsoft, Oliver Wyman, and Abercrombie & Fitch. New additions to the fair’s line-up included Bloomingdale’s and the White House’s Office of the Chief Information Officer.

Ge Zhang ’13, an Economics concentrator, said that he was mainly interested in the participating consulting firms.

“It was great,” Zhang said, noting he  enjoyed the chance to connect with representatives from firms, such as Boston-based consulting giant Bain & Company.

While there was a wide range of employers and programs represented at the fair, freshmen noted their disappointment at the limited set of opportunities geared towards them.

“It was a little underwhelming from a freshman point of view,” Kevin Hu ’15 said.

But Jodi S. Balfe ’15 said that she had enjoyed the fair, even as a freshman.

“It was good to see that a lot of companies were looking for people with quantitative skills,” Balfe, who may concentrate in an applied science, said. “It was good to get a feel for what they were looking for.”

According to Deborah Carroll, Associate Director of Employer Relations and Operations, OCS made deliberate efforts to indicate which programs offered opportunities for freshmen in handouts distributed at the fair.

One of the employers looking for freshmen, Genevieve C. Chawluk, from the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University, said the program was looking for students of all majors who wanted to work with kids.

William J. Rice, representing venture capital firm Cue Ball, said he was particularly impressed by those students who had sought the firm out.

“Quite a few people took the time to research our firm,” Rice said. “I saw some good, sharp young students.”

—Staff writer Aisling H. Crane can be reached at acrane@college.harvard.edu.