This past week, young alumni Rebecca Haft came back to campus to chat with current students about her own Human Ecology experience and her experience as a Senior Consultant for Deloitte Consulting. As a Policy, Analysis and Management undergraduate in Human Ecology, Rebecca applied to the Sloan Masters in Health Administration program during her junior year and was admitted into the 4+1 program. Since graduating from the Sloan program in 2014, Rebeca has been working with Deloitte Consulting in New York City.
During this lunch series, Rebecca shared with current students about how her Human Ecology education has prepared her for her career and provided insights into the world of consulting. Here are some of the wonderful advice and experiences she shared with the students during lunch:
During her undergraduate years, Rebecca took mainly healthcare classes in PAM. She had always known that she wanted to work in a healthcare setting, but did not want to go to medical school. After she had considered applying the rigor of the Sloan 4+1 program, Rebecca decided to spend her summer after sophomore year abroad. During her time abroad, she had the opportunity to intern at a Dairy company, which helped her reconfirm that Sloan was a good choice for her. She stressed how although she had spent a summer a doing something that was not relevant to her career of interest, it was just as valuable to confirm what she didn’t want to do. As a junior, Rebecca applied and was accepted into Sloan. During her senior year, Rebecca not only finished her undergraduate requirements, but also started the Sloan program as a first year graduate student. When asked about how she reconciled with being both a senior and a first year grad student, Rebecca emphasized the close-knit cohort of her Sloan program. Having close friends who shared similar course load as a senior never made her feel as though she was missing out on the ‘senior experience’. In fact, she remembers everyone in her cohort still being able to enjoy senior year, and the rest of the Sloan students understanding their situation.
Rebecca believes that Sloan has well prepared her for her current career. She felt that many of the business practices were not stressed during her academic career as a Human Ecology undergraduate, and that Sloan was able to provide her with those. As for choosing between an MPH and MHA, Rebecca admits that she never considered pursuing a Masters in Public Health (MPH) degree because of the Sloan program’s 4+1 option. However, many of her current colleagues at Deloitte come from various Master’s program, for example Masters of Public Health with a focus in healthcare administration and Masters of Public Policy. For some people, it was a matter of geographical preference for graduate school. Sloan prepares its students really well for their career, regardless of what specific industry students go into. For example, the course of study provides students with a background for working in a hospital, hospital insurer, and healthcare consulting.
The benefit of having a Human Ecology education is that not many people know exactly what ‘Human Ecology’ means. Rebecca suggests to use this ambiguity to your advantage. She provided different examples of pushing a PAM major depending on the student’s career goals. For example, students who are more interested in business-type programs can stress he quantitative impacts of policies, and how they have trained in understanding the true quantitative impact of anything is. Given the freedom of choosing ‘concentrations’, Rebecca suggests students to talk about their own course of study, why they chose the courses they did, and how specific courses will prepare them for certain jobs.
Lastly, Rebecca described a daily life as a consultant. She had initially decided to go into consulting because she was not sure of what specific industry she wanted to go into for sure. She wanted the opportunity to learn more and work with people within the various industries. Through her various projects at Deloitte, both as an intern and as a full-time employee, she has been able to explore various aspects of healthcare. For example, one of her project involved working with the client to increase performance and efficiency of the pediatric and neurology service line within a medical center. Another project she really enjoyed working on involved helping a provider sponsored plan expand nationally. As a team, they had to think about all the systems in the country and which characteristics of the system would make them a good partner for the client. Within the projects, however, there were many variations. The size of team, the length of the project, and the type of work done varied. As a Consultant, and now a Senior Consultant, Rebecca does a lot of work within Excel and PowerPoint, to analyze and present data and solutions. While the work-life balance was initially hard due to the constant traveling, she thinks that it is pretty cool. She has gotten the experience of traveling to different states and cities, and collecting many hotel and airline reward points. By being away Monday to Thursdays, Rebecca has learned how to figure out her priorities for when she is home, whether that is attending her favorite gym class or catching up with friends. Although consulting is known to be fast-paced, Rebecca stresses how the nature of Cornell has properly prepared her to work in such environment.