I'm Miles Jackson and I'm pursuing a finance degree in the McIntire School of Commerce.
The benefits of the Commerce school are kind of two-fold. On the one hand, you're getting
these hard skills, learning the technical details. On the other hand, you also have
this kind of hub for employers where they want to come, they want to recruit
commerce students, and they know this is the cream of the crop when it comes to
undergraduate business. There are a lot of prerequisites you have to finish.
While I was doing those courses, I was also able to take more liberal arts courses
and those classes have already paid dividends in my internships. My second internship with
JP Morgan actually brought me into New York for that summer. So while I was meeting with a mentor of mine at
JP Morgan he mentioned the fact that there was a managing director who was actually a UVA alum
working on a different floor. I reached out, sent a quick email and
they were glad to meet with me and actually took time out of their day to me for a couple of hours.
You learn a lot of the hard skills here and some of the soft skills
in terms of communication and presentation, but the real value of internships is the fact
that it gives you a chance to really apply those skills hands-on, and in my case at least,
it can also lead into a full-time opportunity which I'll be accepting this year