Business is one of the most popular majors for undergraduate students in the United States, with nearly 20% of all undergraduates graduating with a business degree in hand. It makes sense. A major in business can be used in so many more ways than simply knowing how to start a business (although you can do it with that, too). A business degree empowers graduates to enter the corporate world or join a growing business. Business graduates can launch into impressive, fast-paced careers, or choose to take their education somewhere that lets them savor life more slowly. Unlike many other tracks, like pre-med or pre-law, graduating with a business degree doesn’t mean you are lining yourself up for many more years of schooling before the big paychecks roll in. Instead, you have the option to get right into it.
There are many great undergraduate business programs in the US. However, and perhaps counterintuitively, many of the most famous schools in the country don’t offer a business degree for undergraduates at all. The big exception to this, of course, is Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. Other top programs include the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, Stern at NYU, McCombs at UT Austin, MIT, and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. These are just a sprinkle of all the amazing options if you have you are eyeing a business major, so get in touch if you want a college list customized for you.
In this post, we aren’t talking about specific programs, though — instead, it is all about you. This post is all about junior year activity strategy for prospective business majors. In it, we’ll break down the different types of activities you can be doing, and how to pick what is right for you. Ultimately, the goal is to build the strongest application possible. What happens in the classroom is the entry point for serious consideration by a dream school. What happens outside of the classroom is what seals the deal. So, let’s seal the deal.
In you are a looking towards applying to college and not sure what to do next, get in touch. We change the game for high-achieving students.
As a high school junior, it’s easy to feel like you are on a ticking clock. College applications are coming up quickly, and you may have as little as a few months to make big moves with even bigger impacts on your college applications in the fall. If you are wondering if there is still time to make a difference for your applications, we have good news. There is still time — if you play it right.
CLUBS & TEAMS
If you are a junior, you’ve probably been in a club or on a team or two related to business while in high school. If your high school doesn’t have a business club, you may have served as treasurer or led fundraising for a club. If you did any of this, that’s awesome. However, if you aren’t on a route towards a leadership position by senior year, you may want to drop this activity to open up time in your schedule for other opportunities. “Leadership position,” doesn’t solely mean being the single club head, or a co-head, though.
Being a leader for a club or team could mean becoming the head of a group within the club or team, or taking the lead on a club or team initiative like an event or fundraiser. It doesn’t need to have a title, but it is better if there is a title associated with the role. Titles aren’t everything, but given the limited space available on college applications, titles truly do matter. ‘Head of X’ or ‘Leader for Y,’ makes a difference, especially when paired with compelling storytelling and strong results.
If you have not been part of a club or team related to business during your freshman or sophomore year, and you are starting or in the midst of your junior year, now is not the time to join something at school. You have limited time to strengthen your applications and deepen your interest in business, and joining a club or team where you don’t have the potential or time for a leadership position is not a strategic move. Instead, you should be looking at internships, jobs, or starting your own thing.
INTERNSHIPS & EMPLOYMENT
One of the most powerful things you can do to strengthen your application is to be involved in the regular grind of building or growing a business. This typically takes one of two forms, depending on where you live and what opportunities are in easy geographic reach: an internship or a job.
An internship and a part-time job are really interchangeable here for aspiring business majors as long as they fulfill one requirement: long-term. An impressive internship should be at least 3 weeks, ideally longer, and a job should be at least for the length of the summer before senior year, or stretch into the school year through working in the afternoons/evenings or remotely. The work you are doing in either opportunity, an internship or job, does not need to be impressive — it almost certainly will not be — but it does need to be real work that is related to your interest in business. This may mean interning under a Chief Financial Officer at a corporation, working in the back office of a local carwash chain, or managing a summer ice cream shop. What matters isn’t having a title or it sounding ‘important’. Remember, you are in high school. What matters is what you are absorbing through the experience.
You see, the activities section of the college applications gives so little space for explaining your activities that you really can’t do something simply to put it in the activities section. That isn’t enough for it to be worth your time. What makes something matter are the experiences that you can elaborate on in your supplements, and the stories that you can tell. So, make stories. This means working as part of a team, learning from a mentor, and doing something that prioritizes human interaction. Working through a screen may be real work, and may even be hard work, but that doesn’t make it useful work as far as college applications are concerned.
START A BUSINESS
One of the best ways to make stories as a prospective business major is to start a business. This should be a bit of a no-brainer, but actually executing on it isn’t.
A major mistake we see juniors make when they are months away from applying for a college with a strong business program is to try to start something big when they are down to the wire. It may be a great idea, and it may pay off in the long-term, but there is almost no chance of a new business growing in an impressive way in such a short window of time. We aren’t trying to knock you down here, but simply stating reality. So, what should you do when you have so little time but are also intent on putting together an application that makes an impact?
We advise juniors who are not already entrepreneurs to think stay super focused. This is not the time for your grand designs or big ideas. Instead, zoom in on something you’ve already been doing — but haven’t monetized fully or even at all — or on something you are already good at…but also haven’t monetized. For example, if you do yard work for your family, sell your skills to your neighbors. This could turn into a short essay about how to cut the perfect corner on a lawnmower and the attention-to-detail necessary to truly excel at anything in life. Or, if you are a babysitter, recruit some friends to work together as a babysitting team so you can provide more and better services to you client pool. This could become an essay about teamwork, collaboration, and navigating the dietary preferences of a five-year-old. Or, if you love animals, start pet-sitting. A world of essays can be written about the behavioral quirks of a parrot and how working with others isn’t always all that simple.
What you don’t want to do is to do anything that isolates yourself. As we’ve said, the activities section of any application for college gives you very little space to explain what you love. So, the places that are the most powerful are the essay and supplement sections. Writing an essay about staring at a screen optimizing SEO or moving pixels is far from inspiring, and is unlikely to motivate an application reader to give your application a proverbial gold star. Spend your time working with people, and you’ll get the most out of your junior year.
SUMMER PROGRAMS
If you gearing up for your junior year and are feeling the fall creep in, or are planning for the summer following junior year, summer programs may be tempting. Most college programs target rising sophomores and juniors, but we mostly advise our rising sophomores to seriously consider a structured summer program. For rising juniors, there are often better options than an experience that is sold as college-lite.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t opportunities that could be life-changing, but they aren’t going to be as impactful for your application process as something else could be.
Most summer programs for high schoolers are geared towards younger students with limited experience in their area of academic interest. These aren’t for you. You are a junior! Instead, we advise our students who are rising juniors and seniors to look for true college courses at local colleges and universities. This means taking real college classes, not watered down versions for high school students. These courses should come along with transferrable college credits. For example, Babson offers an online Introduction to the Entrepreneurial Experience course for rising Juniors and Seniors that, if successfully completed, includes 4 college credits. Georgetown, too, offers a whole suite of business-focused online courses for high school students that can, if completed successfully, result in college credit. They include courses focused on marketing, international relations, and even psychology through a business lens.
It can take some time to find a program that is a good fit, but they exist at most colleges and universities and are often online. When an application is required to be admitted into a course, it’s good practice for the full college app experience. And if you get stumped, we can help.
Planning your ideal junior year activity list as a prospective business major isn’t complicated, but you do have to be thoughtful. It helps to work with experts who have helped match outstanding students with the perfect activities to strengthen their college applications, leading to impressive acceptances. You have one shot at the first-year college application process, and you need to approach it with the same thoughtfulness and care you bring to your work in business.
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