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Jake Schogger has packed more into the nine years since he left QE than many achieve in a lifetime.

Having already sampled life as a professional rock musician, a drum teacher, a marathon-runner, a football manager, a Bollywood film extra, a writer and an entrepreneur, Jake (OE 1999–2006) is now on track to start a new career as a lawyer at multinational firm Freshfields next year.

On leaving School, he embarked on a gap year, safe in the knowledge that he had a place to study Animation at Bournemouth University. During that gap year, however, a band in which he played as the drummer along with two other QE leavers – bassist Justin Pither and guitarist Michael Lane –was offered a small record deal.

“The band was (quite embarrassingly) called Minus IQ,” says Jake. “We spent the next four years recording and touring around the UK, and eventually released an album. Our singer quit at this stage so we all applied for university!”

He went to Warwick, where he studied Law & Business. “At Warwick I got very involved in a number of societies and helped to establish the Commercial Law Society.” He regularly assisted younger students with their CVs, job applications and interview preparation.  “This gave me the idea to write a short guide to help these students to enhance their commercial awareness. This guide was initially distributed free throughout Warwick University, but demand was so high that I decided to develop it into something more substantial and release it nationally the following year. There is now a series of four books aimed at different City careers (Commercial Law, Investment Banking, Consultancy and an Application, Interview & Internship Handbook). These are complemented by a website (www.citycareerseries.com) and approximately 7,000 have been sold during the past 12 months in more than 15 countries.”

While studying for his degree, Jake was elected president of Warwick Finance Societies, which, with its sub-societies, is regarded as the university’s largest society. He also won places on vacation study programmes in H R College of Commerce in Mumbai, India, and at Shandong University China. Over the years, he has completed the London and New York marathons, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and reached Mount Everest Base Camp. A keen footballer, he founded and now manages a team. Jake also has a 12-year record of teaching drums, helping a number of students through grades 1-8, while also regularly playing drums in the University Big Band. Jake has given his time to a number of charities and has worked towards making various festivals carbon-free.

He is currently following the Legal Practice Course at BPP University, which he completes in February 2016.  In August next year, he starts his training contract with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, which is believed to the oldest international law firm, where he took part in a summer vacation scheme during his degree.

“I plan to spend the six months I have off prior to that developing additional books and travelling,” he says. “I am about to release a handbook on Consultancy, then next plan to work on a Business Writing Handbook. Who knows where things will progress from there!”

Jake has recently been in touch with the School to discuss helping current pupils with their career plans.

Nathanael Jackson, who was School Captain in 2011–2012, is now heading for a rank of a different kind, as he heads off to Sandhurst early in the New Year to join the commissioning course.

“I am currently visiting different regiments, but am hoping to join the infantry,” he wrote to the School recently.

It is a new departure for Nathanael (OE 2005–2012), who was neither a member of the QE CCF nor of the University Officer Training Corps at Durham, from where he graduated with a 2:1 in History in the summer.

Characteristically, he threw himself fully into university life. “I had a great time studying History. I kept up playing rugby and played football for college, but mainly I have been playing lots of music, especially trombone with the University Big Band, with which we have been performed at gigs in Durham, Darlington, Newcastle, Manchester and as far south as London, at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in Soho. We even won the Great North Jazz and Big Band Festival last year.

“I have been heavily involved with the Christian Union and my local church up in Durham, leading small group Bible studies for the last couple of years. Last year I was also fortunate enough to have been chosen to lead a charity expedition to Tanzania, where we climbed Kilimanjaro and completed the construction of a local school, as well as relaxing and enjoying what the country had to offer.

“Somewhere amongst all this I have also managed to fit in my History degree, which I have loved! In my final year, I worked on changes in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the fall of Roman Gaul and the rise of ‘barbarian’ successor states, and wrote my dissertation on the emergence of the newspaper in the years preceding the English Civil War.”

Ashish Kalraiya (OE 1997–2004) has qualified as a surgeon and will be taking up a new post as an Orthopaedic Registrar in the spring.

Passing his MRCS surgical examinations is the latest milepost in a career that has so far seen Ashish secure a degree in Management and win plaudits for developing mobile phone applications – in addition to his medical successes.

Ashish looks back on his time at QE, where he returned as Guest of Honour at the 2011 Junior Awards Ceremony, with both fondness and gratitude. “As I’ve always said, nothing could have been achieved without the help and support of QE Boys and all its staff. So that really has set the foundation for my career.”

After leaving QE in 2004, Ashish spent the next six years at Imperial College, where he graduated from the Medical School with an MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery) qualification and also took a first in BSc Management at Imperial’s Business School.

From 2010–2012 he worked as a Foundation Doctor in North London, before moving to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to train in Trauma and Orthopaedics for eight months.  “That was a fantastic experience for gaining exposure to complex trauma – for example, from road traffic accidents. I received great training from extremely friendly and diligent surgeons. It’s a great country as well, full of history, culture and safari.”

Since he returned, he has worked as a surgical house officer in North London and most recently was working close to the School in the Orthopaedic Department at Barnet General Hospital “which feels as though I have come full-circle, given that I did my first-ever work experience here as a 16-year-old after GCSEs!”

Ashish has also developed applications for healthcare staff to use to eradicate ward inefficiencies and save money for the hospital. The app, which is called MediShout, has been successfully trialled and was a finalist in two awards schemes. In 2014, Ashish was himself a finalist in the Rising Star category of the EHI Awards, which recognise excellence in healthcare IT in the UK.

In late 2015, he undertook some work in orthopaedics in Malawi to obtain further exposure to high-trauma environments.

His new role as an Orthopaedic Registrar, starting in April, will see him working in hospitals across North West London.

Sport psychology expert Mustafa Sarkar’s career is progressing by leaps and bounds, after he gained his PhD, won another award and secured a permanent job in academia.

Mustafa (1997–2004) was awarded his PhD in Sport Psychology from Loughborough University in July. After the completion of a two-year post-doctoral role as a Research Fellow at the University of Gloucestershire, he has now taken up a permanent Lecturing post in Sport Psychology at Nottingham Trent University in September, where he teaches across the undergraduate and post-graduate Sport Science degree programmes.

Mustafa was also awarded the British Psychological Society (BPS) Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology (DSEP) PhD award for 2015 – the latest in a series of awards and prizes that he has won over the last few years.

After taking A-levels in Economics, Chemistry and Mathematics at QE, Mustafa spent a gap year working for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an assistant tax consultant for eight months and travelled in South America for three months.

He went to Loughborough University, from where he graduated in July 2008 with a first-class honours degree in Sport and Exercise Science. He then went on to complete a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology (with Distinction) from Middlesex University.

In 2009, he was named Xcel Sports Student of the Year, with the judges praising him for his academic work, for coaching cricket with Loughborough school children, for climbing five UK mountains for charity and for running the London Marathon for charity, raising £2,350.

Other awards he has won include Loughborough University’s Sir Robert Martin Faculty Prize for academic and non-academic achievements and the Head of School’s Postgraduate Prize for Academic Excellence, awarded annually to the student with the highest overall mark in a Masters Programme. He also received the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) Masters Dissertation of the Year Award in 2011.

At the time of the London 2012 Olympics, he made headlines in the mainstream press with a piece of in-depth research – conducted jointly with his Loughborough supervisor (Dr. David Fletcher) – which looked into the psychology of 12 Olympic Gold Medal winners, exploring how resilience helped them to achieve success.

In his new Lecturing post at Nottingham Trent University, Mustafa is Module Leader for ‘Advanced Topics in Sport and Exercise Psychology’ as well as contributing to several other modules across the undergraduate curriculum (eg ‘Introduction to Research’). He is also Leader for the postgraduate module, ‘Current Issues in Sport and Exercise Psychology’.

Mustafa is married to Tasnim, who is a qualified speech therapist workjing in the NHS. His younger brother, Mustali (OE 2000–2007) got married in 2013, just a few months after Mustafa’s wedding.

Aaron Sonenfeld is enjoying life in New York as he forges an international career in management consultancy.

Aaron (OE 2000–2007) was School Captain in 2006-2007 – one of three former School Captains to feature in this issue of Alumni News (with Nathanael Jackson and James Slessor).

While at the School, he was a major figure in rugby, playing for the First XV for a number of years. He has since maintained a passion for sports, and especially rugby, having played for the Cambridge University U21 side while reading Social and Political Sciences at St John’s College.

On graduating in 2010, he began work as an analyst in Operations at Goldman Sachs, where he had been an intern the previous year. He worked there until mid-2012 and then spent two months exploring Central America.

Aaron returned to the School in 2011 for the 46th Elizabethan Union Dinner debate in 2011, where he spoke for the Old Elizabethans in favour of the motion This house believes universities have become too expensive, which was carried.

In October 2012, he took up a post as a senior consultant, specialising in financial services, at management consultancy Oliver Wyman. Founded in New York in 1984, Oliver Wyman now has offices in more than 50 cities across 26 countries.

“Over the past three years, I have worked on projects with a number of financial institutions in London, Zurich, Madrid, and Toronto,” says Aaron.

In January this year, he was promoted to associate at Oliver Wyman and he moved to New York in March. He has set himself the target of visiting all 50 states in the US.