A Veteran MBA Breaks Into The Nuclear Energy Industry

How did they do it?

Happy 4th of July Weekend Weekly Sitreps Readers!

I hope everyone had a great and fun 4th of July weekend. I am finally back in Texas after being gone for a month doing summer travel and hanging out with my wife’s family. We used this holiday weekend to get the house back up online, catch up with neighbors, hang out in the pool and shoot of a bunch of fireworks in my driveway lol. For this edition of the weekly sitrep, I wanted to offer a perspective on “non traditional MBA career paths”. One of my friends and mentees who is currently at Yale SOM decided that the typical career path of Investment Banking or Consulting was just not what he wanted to do. So he decided to pursue a career in nuclear energy. Not exactly a normal path for an MBA.

However…before we get to all of that. I wanted to highlight the AMAZING SUCCESS OF OUR 3RD ANNUAL VETERANS MBA ADMISSION WEBINAR.

This free event drew 189 transitioning veterans who wanted to learn more about the MBA as a transition tool to the private sector. We had a fantastic lineup of speakers, including The Wharton School Associate Director of Admissions Park Watson and representatives from most of the top MBA programs in the country. A big thank you to our fantastic partners Leland and Smart with a Heart® by Sherpa Prep®. Also a big thanks to Wyatt Frasier for organizing and running the event, and Timothy Johnson for his help. In our 3rd year this event remains a free and most importantly accessible resource to transitioning military who do not have the ability to travel to individual MBA programs.

If you did not have the opportunity to catch the event live then check out the recording here.

News Articles I found interesting this past week

WSJ - You Might Be Buying Your House at the Top of the Market

WSJ - How Dragons, Magic and Steamy Sex Took Over the Book World

WSJ - The Blue-State Wealth Exodus Continues

AP - France election highlights: Leftists win most seats, but no party wins majority

MarketWatch - Ray Dalio says Trump and Biden reflect decades of ‘horrendous leadership’ by baby boomers

MSN - What would happen if Russia detonated a nuclear bomb in space?

How a Veteran MBA broke into the Nuclear Energy Industry

(The following is a guest post)

If you’re like I was after I got accepted to an MBA program, you might have seen the talk about how tough it was for consulting, investment banking, and ESPECIALLY tech recruiting and questioned whether the MBA would be worth it. Making matters worse online are the constantly crowing cohort of neckbeards on /r/MBA who insist anything below MBB consulting or bulge bracket investment banking is a complete waste of time.

However, another world is possible, one in which you look for a career that you find interesting and meaningful instead of one that sounds impressive at a cocktail party. During my MBA applications, I wrote a typical “consulting, then impact investing” career goal story, which in retrospect was a bit cliché. However, by the time I got my T15 acceptance at the end of R1 I had talked to some veterans a year ahead of me at top programs. They warned me that the days of “if you’re a veteran with a pulse at a top MBA you’ll get a consulting offer” were gone, and that I should be prepared to pursue consulting aggressively if that was what I truly wanted to do.