Tips for SMFA First-Years
To be honest, my first year at SMFA at Tufts was a bumpy road. I laughed a lot, cried a lot, but most importantly, I learned countless important life…
Why Doesn't Tufts Offer Business Majors?
If you fancy yourself a future Fortune 500 CEO of a designer shoe label or aspire to be the next Don Draper and “buy the world a Coke”, you may be considering Business as your undergraduate major. If you have looked through our academic offerings, you have likely noticed that we do not have a business major here at Tufts. Yet, many of our alumni have made a splash in the business world, including SoBe Beverages founder John Bello, Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang, co-founder of Ethos water Jonathan Greenblatt and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar! How did they do it? What resources at Tufts helped them take the business world by storm? Let’s talk about how the Tufts experience can help prepare you to enter the worlds of finance, accounting, marketing, and more.
As someone with an aspiration towards international business or consulting, you may be thinking: Why would I want to earn a BA (Bachelor of Arts) in Economics instead of a BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration) in Business? While an Accounting major at a business school would teach you skills to prepare for a job as an accountant, your undergraduate studies are meant to push you to grow as a critical thinker and engaged community member. Tufts students embrace the exploratory nature of a liberal arts education. At the end of the day, a liberal arts program will challenge you to learn how to think and apply those critical thinking skills in practice to any career you choose. You aren’t limited to your BBA in a particular business field; you can go on to any specialty you’d like, or pursue an MBA (a Master of Business Administration) to truly deep dive into your area of interest (which most aspiring CEOs and CFOs would likely pursue beyond the BBA anyway). Your institution’s career center, whether at Tufts or another institution, will help you translate those skills into tangible, career-oriented skills during resume and cover letter sessions.
“So Keira”, you might ask, “If I’m not studying business, what will I study to prepare myself for the field”? Great question! Our students typically major in Economics. However, depending on your area of interest, many different majors could make sense! If you’re interested in developing relationships between brands and agencies, as well as running numbers and conducting research on brand perception among consumers as an account manager, you may consider studying Applied Mathematics. Conversely, if you want to create visual content to elevate your brand on TikTok, you might become a Film and Media Studies major. All of this is to say that pretty much any major you pick can be tailored through interdisciplinary study to give you the tools you need to succeed! The only “Business”-related courses of study we offer are an Entrepreneurship minor in the School of Engineering and a Finance minor in the School of Arts and Sciences. The minor offers two tracks: a traditional Entrepreneurship track and an “Entrepreneurship for Social Impact” track, an interdisciplinary track created in partnership between the Tisch College for Civic Life and the Derby Entrepreneurship Center. Finally, Tufts offers the $100k New Ventures competition every year for Tufts alumni, faculty, staff, and students to participate in! Participants can win prizes and services for new business ideas in three tracks: technology, health care and life science, and social impact.
Of course, classroom learning is just one element of the undergraduate experience. You’d also probably want to complete an internship, join related clubs for professional development, network with alumni, and utilize the career center. We offer a LOT of support to our Business-minded students outside the classroom! Starting with extracurricular involvement, many students will join professional clubs to network with older peers and attend career-building events. Clubs on campus that are related to building professional skills for business include the Consultant Collective, the Economics Society, the Financial Group, and the Sports Business Association, among others. All undergraduate students can complete internships on campus; many of our students elect to participate in internships related to their area of interest in the field. Tufts students have interned at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an Analyst intern, Cuisine en Locale as a Business Development intern, and even a paid virtual Real Estate internship! The Career Center will be instrumental in helping you prepare to apply for one of these opportunities. In addition to offering resume and cover letter review services, our Career Center also hosts a business-oriented career community. The Finance, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, and Business Career Community offers specialized support from career advisors who are knowledgeable in the field of business and helps you connect with alumni working in your field of interest.
At the end of the day, while we may not offer a business major, we do offer a variety of academic, professional, and personal support systems for students to prepare to enter the business world running with field-changing ideas and innovations. Your academic advisor, career advisor, peers, and our alumni network will all help guide you towards your future career in human resources, real estate, or any other area that piques your interest. Whether you want to expand your crocheting business on Etsy or develop the next Snapchat or Instagram, Tufts has the resources you need to make that dream a reality!
