Mastering the Quantitative
Prior to attending William & Mary, I worked as a sales representative for a little over two years. In sales, you regularly work with a wide variety of individuals and rely heavily on your soft skills to solve the majority of your challenges, both internally and externally. Over time, I settled in to my role and continued to develop these soft skills, but as I progressed in my career, I began to notice various blind-spots in my knowledge base.
My goal was to work my way into a management position early on, as I was eager take on additional responsibility by leading others. In speaking with various leaders within my organization, I quickly concluded that I would need a more robust understanding of finance and operations in order to be more effective in a leadership role.
Having had experience in a more qualitative environment, I knew I needed to pursue an MBA program that could provide me with the technical expertise I desired. While searching for business schools, I noticed that William & Mary was very highly regarded in terms of the faculty and overall learning experience. The combination of these two factors made my decision a quick one as it would allow me to gain the quantitative knowledge, I needed to complement my qualitative skill set.
The smaller learning environment at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business has thoroughly enriched my MBA experience thus far. My undergraduate institution was rather large, with a total enrollment of 40,000+ students. While I’m ever grateful for my educational experience at Purdue (Boiler Up), I knew I wanted a smaller environment while working towards my MBA. The class size at the Mason School is small and very engaging, often triggering in-depth discussions amongst our diverse student body.
To complement our in-class learning experience, we are put onto learning teams before classes even begin. These learning teams, which usually contain 4-6 individuals with different professional backgrounds, act as a valuable resource as you progress through the program. You work through various cases and assignments with your learning team throughout your first year, creating a peer-to-peer learning environment that enhances the classroom learning.
Additionally, the faculty and GA’s readily make themselves available to anyone who desires additional information or simply wants to discuss a subject matter in greater detail. All of these resources make Mason a very special place for those pursuing a truly immersive MBA experience.
John Maxwell is an MBA candidate with the Raymond A. Mason School of Business class of 2020. Originally from Westfield, Indiana, he joined the full-time cohort after participating in a part-time, online MBA program. John is specializing in Finance and plans to intern at EY in Houston, Texas during the 2019 summer break.
