The Internship Experience

At the end of each school year, first-year SOM students depart New Haven for their summer internships. They head off to positions at organizations in all three sectors and in industries as varied as energy, education, finance, healthcare, and consulting. The summer internship is an important part of the MBA experience — a step toward fashioning a long-term career and the first chance for students to test how much they have learned at SOM.

This past summer, SOM students interned at top companies on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and Paulson & Co.; consumer packaged goods giants, such as PepsiCo and Kraft; major consulting firms, such as the Boston Consulting Group, Booz Allen Hamilton, and McKinsey & Company; plus a wind farm manufacturer, Exxon Mobil, the Federal Reserve, Google, the Common Fund, the Museum of Modern Art, and the China Investment Corporation.

For Soji Maurice Diya '10, who interned for Kraft, the summer was both intense and rewarding. One of his assignments was to assess the emergence of store brands as serious competition for some of Kraft’s flagship products. "Obviously, the low-price nature of the store brands plays a role during tough economic times," he said. "But there’s more to it than just this. As I dove deeper into the problem, I found that I was really calling on what I’d learned so far at SOM. The multi-disciplinary nature of my education was crucial to a successful understanding of the issue. I was able to create a well-received comprehensive action plan that had implications for different facets of the business — legal, finance, marketing, operations, and strategy – and it was clear my supervisors at Kraft appreciated my ability to see the problem from so many angles."

While the Yale integrated MBA curriculum teaches students to take a broad perspective on management challenges, Diana Stein '10, who interned in the finance division at Nationwide, found that the Yale approach also provided her with unexpected returns as she progressed through her summer. "At SOM, you learn to deal with ambiguity — an often ignored, but crucial skill for success in the business world," she said. "Having experienced ambiguity in a variety of projects throughout the first year helped me handle one of my internship projects — a cost-benefit analysis around some IT initiatives the company was looking to roll out — as the project required me to interview employees, use their experience to develop assumptions, run the model I built based on these assumptions, and then communicate these results to management."

Summer Internships
Watch four students discuss their summer internships.


Catherine Swick ’10, who worked for Cigna over the
summer, explains how the SOM curriculum gave her
the tools she needed to succeed. (0:56)


Michelle Moy ’10, who interned at Fidelity, found that
her SOM class work provided a unique look on
management closer to the way organizations actually
work. (2:14)


Yash Shah ’10, intern at IBM, explains how the SOM
Career Development Office helps students find and
prepare for internships and jobs. (1:30)


Patrick Aylward ’10 ended up at the Global Fund in
Geneva, Switzerland after a long search for the right
type of non-profit that would build off years he spent in
West Africa. (1:04)