I’m planning to transition into the nonprofit sector, but with an aerospace engineering undergraduate degree, I knew I needed to complement my technical skills with business knowledge and knowledge about how the world works. The Silver Scholar program was the perfect fit. It let me go directly to business school while also giving me the time to build professional experience.
Yale SOM students want to make an impact, whether through for-profit or nonprofit organizations. And the opportunities begin as soon as you arrive on campus. I’m doing pro-bono consulting for a New Haven NGO that wants to open a local learning center as part of the Outreach Nonprofit Consulting Club, which matches students with local organizations. We work in teams and address a wide range of problems. It’s the first time I’m getting to solve a problem directly impacting the community, and it’s an amazing opportunity.
For someone like me who doesn’t have any business background, the integrated core curriculum has been extremely helpful in connecting the dots. Every professor knows what’s happening in every other class. You’ll have the modeling professor talk about a problem in class and how to use Excel to solve it. Then next week, the economics professor will take the same problem and look at it from an economic perspective. You see the big picture, and you look at it from every point of view.
Interviewed on November 4, 2015.
