Premium program is an honour program at Maastricht University. This program selects high performed and motivated master students at Maastricht University. I am glad to be selected into the Premium program.
Before participating in the Premium program, there were two interviews in the selection procedure. The first round interview was an individual interview, in the form of one on one. Interestingly, the interview was taken by the participants. I was interviewed by another two participants. At the same time, I also interviewed two other participants. Next, the second round interview was a group interview. There were 8 participants in the group. An interviewer gave the instructions and an assignment in the beginning. We had to discuss and come up with solutions for the assignment. An interviewer was listening to our discussion. In the end, the interviewer would give an explanation of everyone's performance and indicated what was good.
After receiving an offer, I joined an opening ceremony which was "the Mix & Match" evet to match a commercial company. In this opening ceremony, I got the opportunities to talk with the clients from firms and deeply understand their projects. Though I had researched their project before joining the ceremony, it was important that giving a good impression to the clients as they had the right to choose the participants to join their project. On the other hand, the organiser would accord to participants' expectation order for the first consideration. At the end of this section, I handed my expectation orders for the project. Luckily, I got my first expectation order which was personalised nutrition project. The client was BASF vegetable seed company.
After matching, I was informed who was my teammates, mentor and coach. In this personalised nutrition project, there were 6 members, a mentor and two coaches as well as a client. All of us were from different majors. Three of us were assigned to a coach. Another three were assigned to another coach. Firstly, our mentor arranged a "kick-off" meeting via Doddle (which made the meeting arrangement so easy), so that everyone could officially get to know each other and understand what the client wanted for the final project product. As for members, we arranged another meeting as an ice breaker for ourselves before an official meeting with the client, mentor and coaches. It was fun that everyone prepared a home dish to share in the "kick-off" event. My teammates were from Peru, India, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and American-German. Thus, I could try many dishes worldwide.
Next, the project itself. As this was a project for a commercial company. We had to take into consideration of marketing, R&D and relative regulation. I was assigned to the R&D task. In this task, I had to answer the question such as how personalised nutrition (PN) could bring the end of obesity or how PN could prevent obesity. It was an interesting topic for me as I am always fascinated by scientific solutions.
In addition to the project with the client, participants in the Premium program had to present the progression of the project in the mid-term presentation where around a hundred student joined. In the mid-term presentation, I acted as the main presenter to display our team progression. That was a very nervous moment for me.
In the end, our team had to deliver an end product to the client. Our team did a final presentation in BASF vegetable seeds company. In the presence of the company's several managers and employees was the head of market & competitor, head of CCC (customer and consumer chemistry), CCC manager, marketing specialist and marketing research specialist. Their position in BASF gave me some thoughts about an organisation's structure. In the final presentation, all of the team members talked about their own part. Luckily, I did a good job as well as a whole team. The client said the end result exceeded her expectation. This was definitely a great memory in the Premium program.