Career Diversity in the MBA Program
Thursday, October 13, 2011 / Bookmark & Share
By Holly Cuneo, MBA'13
The thing that I love most about the MBA program at Virginia Tech is the diversity of future career aspirations among the students.
This is perhaps the largest difference I have noticed between my undergraduate program and the MBA program; each and every student aspires to work in a different industry and/or position. For example, in my specific undergraduate major, nearly everyone wanted to be a Fashion Buyer or a Creative Director. In the MBA program, I am amazed every day with the diversity pertaining to what career fields students are pursuing; it is really hard to find two students with exactly the same end career goal!
There are students who want to be in the C-Suite, students who are aspiring to be Marketing Directors, Marketing Researchers, HR Directors, Hospital Administrators, CIA agents, Project Managers in Construction, Analysts (financial, business, etc), Public Relations Directors, Hospitality & Tourism Directors, Supply Chain Managers, a huge variety Consultants (government, commercial, IT, financial are a few of the ones that I’ve heard students mention), and a plethora of other diverse jobs!
It is interesting to see the networks we are building before we graduate. Instead of seeing other students as competition as I did during my undergraduate career, I now can see them as future contacts and valuable sources of information. In my own perhaps selfish opinion, we are building networks in different, but often tied industries, which may turn out to be quite useful. Maybe I will be consulting and will need to find a contractor in a specific area…I might be able to find that contractor among my classmates!
Originally published October 2011