“I feel very happy,” he said. “The pandemic has forced me to think about my priorities as well. I could step back and pause and ask, ‘What do you really want to do?’ “
Mrs. Reichert had the opposite experience. She did an internship at Chewy, the pet food website, last summer from her parents’ home in Spotsylvania County, Virginia – 1,000 miles from Chewy’s headquarters in Dania Beach, Florida. While she praised the company for its efforts to make the most of a bad situation, she decided to return to the consultation.
Networking is a big part of the MBA experience. It’s the component that could pay the most dividends well after closing. But in a virtual or socially distant world it got stunted.
“The social component was disappointing,” said Emma Finkelstein, a sophomore at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. “When I’m a floating head at Zoom, I will have a different relationship with my professors and classmates than in social situations.”
Mr Garg, who describes himself as an introvert, said he had pushed himself to get out.
“It’s a lot about being proactive,” he said. “I’ve had coffee with people. It takes a lot of effort. There are some days when you don’t want to do this. But then you realize that you’ve been home for three days and haven’t seen anyone. “
And it’s not just less sociable students who feel left out of the social aspect of business school. International students who have not been able to return to the USA and students from underrepresented minority groups are also affected.
“Of course, I would say that the impact of the pandemic on the nature of informal networking on our campus could be more impactful for students who, for some reason, felt less enclosed among their MBA peers,” said Dr. Rockoff from Colombia. “These missed opportunities for networks and connections will have a significant impact on them.”