In Break from Past, Some New MIT Sloan MBAs Coming Right from College; Other Class of 2008 backgrounds run from Peace Corps to Martha Stewart

Business Wire, August 31, 2006

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Their backgrounds range from serving as a Peace Corps volunteer at a rural health clinic in West Africa to helping launch a magazine for Martha Stewart to working in a range of finance and other business sectors. But some students arriving to begin their MBA studies this fall at the MIT Sloan School of Management arrive with very little real-world experience at all.

Though the typical Sloan MBA has five years of work experience before returning to the classroom, they are now being joined by classmates coming directly from undergraduate studies.

"I understand that few students make the jump that I did, coming straight from college," said Paul Fricilone, 22. "I applied as a senior in college, knowing that there are positive and negatives to entering an MBA program without prior work experience. On the positive side, I am used to being in school, so there is no transition needed for me back to school. On the negative side, I may not be able to bring as many business examples to class."

Fricilone, a Chicago-area native who graduated from Northern Illinois University in 2006 with a B.S. in finance, is interested in investment banking. "I look forward to "learning from my fellow Sloanies, who will be able to speak to me about their experiences and allow me to learn from where they have been."

Melissa King also decided to make the college-to-MBA program jump. "Once I decided to pursue an MBA, I thought, why wait?," said King, 22, a Tulsa, OK, native who earned a BS in chemical engineering at Rice University. "There's no denying that my difference in background will lead to a unique experience at Sloan, but I don't believe that one path is necessarily better than the other. Perhaps not being as involved in the business world will provide me with a fresh viewpoint on certain issues."

While King and Fricilone are at one end of the experience spectrum of the Sloan Class of 2008, students such as Christina Beaumier, Ye Yin and Susan Hanemann Rogol enter with varied professional and other backgrounds.

Beaumier is coming to Cambridge after two years with the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso, one of West Africa's least developed nations. "I am lacking a traditional business background, but through my experience living in an isolated village without any electricity or running water, I gained a keen insight into the challenges faced by some of the most underprivileged people on earth," said Beaumier, who is from western Massachusetts. "I believe that technology and education are important keys to unlocking the poverty conundrum that exists in West Africa. I hope to use my MBA to run high-tech businesses operating in emerging markets that aim to develop West Africans' access to technology and infrastructure."

Rogol, 33 and a Memphis native, said she seeks "to take advantage of Sloan's strengths in operations and entrepreneurship to enhance my business development skills," which she has already honed with work in the culinary industry, including work on a Martha Stewart start-up magazine.

Nearly one-third of students at MIT Sloan are international, including Ye Yin, 31, of Beijing. He initially came to the United States to earn a Ph.D. in biochemistry and then worked as a research scientist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. "An MBA will enable me to do a lot more than what I can do as a scientist," he said. "I have seen how technology advancements in the U.S. health care sector have helped improve peoples' lives. I intend to use my MBA to find a position in a pharmaceutical company or a healthcare organization to help people in other parts of world, especially in developing countries, also benefit from advanced medical technologies."