“Diverse backgrounds. One pre-professional choice.”

The Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Club’s (WUCC) slogan doesn’t just refer to the fact that our general body and committees are made up of students from varying majors involved in numerous unique activities besides WUCC. Diversity extends to the types of initiatives our members partake in, other universities we work with and the consulting firms we routinely partner with. This could not be more apparent than it was during WUCC’s second annual Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Conference, held on Oct. 12 of this year.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Charting Your Career in Consulting.” The Conference was intended to help attendees get informed about, prepare for and connect with careers in consulting. Representatives from WUCC’s sponsors, including Ernst and Young, Oliver Wyman, Accenture, Deloitte, and Mars & Co. came out to offer their insights.

This year’s conference introduced new opportunities for students to network with company representatives and recruiters including coffee chats featuring WUCC’s gold and silver sponsors as well as a career fair featuring 13 firms. Besides partnering with our nine corporate sponsors, WUCC also looks to connect students with boutique and specialized firms which can expand students’ networks and provide even more diverse opportunities.

The case competition brought together students from NYU, Yale, University of Toronto and Penn, among other schools. Adrian Slywotzky, a partner at Oliver Wyman and WUCC’s gold sponsor, gave the keynote and discussed his newest book, Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It.

The conference was proclaimed a huge success by attendees and firm representatives. In the words of one participant, “The conference gave me not only a high-level view of what to expect in consulting, but also specific, concrete tips to succeed in the industry.”

It’s always surprising for an organizer to hear praise about how smoothly-run an event was, especially if one (and one’s team) has been scrambling in the background resolving “crises” that inadvertently pop up during the day!

Many other clubs have huge teams dedicated to organizing their conferences, but WUCC has a relatively small Conference Committee. The beauty of WUCC lies in the cohesion between committees—Conference Committee members found they could rely on people from Technology, Marketing and Corporate Relations committees to assist with the planning. This unity reflects the community at Wharton—people are always willing to reach out and go the extra mile to achieve success for the greater community. I am really fortunate to have worked with such an amazing group of people. They’re also a great bunch to hang out with outside of WUCC!

With such capable people in WUCC, I’m certainly looking forward to next year’s conference and the other activities the club has planned for the rest of the year!

Editor’s note: This post first appeared on Wharton Undergraduate Program’s Student Voices blog on Nov. 19, 2012.