Two things really mattered to me when I chose an MBA program. One was the school’s brand, and the second was a curriculum that would give me a broad business foundation and prepare me to switch sectors.
I interned at DuPont Sustainable Solutions in India. My role was with the company’s management consulting firm, with clientele primarily from the chemical manufacturing and oil and gas industries. SOM’s core curriculum, especially courses like Customer and Competitor, really set me up to succeed. I knew how to unpack problems and discover insights, because I had already studied numerous similar issues in our classroom case studies.
The SOM community is very friendly, down-to-earth, and helpful. The second-year students in the Consulting Club, for example, spend hours preparing first-years to interview. They’re not getting paid; they do it because they want to help.
There are a lot of different ways to get involved here. As part of the Student Life Committee, I organize the weekly Closing Bell event. It’s a great opportunity to interact with the entire SOM community. You meet so many students with such diverse backgrounds, both in terms of culture and professional experience.
I’m also a South Asia Club co-leader. This year, we’re broadening our scope from purely cultural issues to include a speaker series on topics related to business and society, and we’re organizing events with the greater Yale South Asian community.
Diversity is something that starts on the first day, when you’re introduced to your incredibly diverse learning teams. I come from an engineering background. In my undergraduate class, there were two women in a class of 30. When I worked in fracking, I was the only female out in the field. Here, more than 40% of my class is female. It’s exciting that women have this representation. And we also have good representation in terms of international students, with our MBAs and with the MAM class. As a second-year student, I’m getting to interact more with the MAM students. They’ve already attended business schools all over the world, so they bring amazing cultural experiences and insights. If you want to embrace diversity, if you want to learn and explore, you’ll have every opportunity at SOM.
