International MBA student honing business analytics and marketing skills

International MBA candidate Sneha Rangarajan chose to pursue her International MBA after four years with PricewaterhouseCoopers India so she could cement her business analytics skills and prepare her to take on more responsibilities with a multinational firm.

A senior associate for PwC India before she came to the Moore School, Rangarajan held three positions with the multinational firm in four years. She started out as an assistant for audits and worked her way up to leading audits.

Working for PwC, “the common theme was hard work and grinding for 12-14 hours a day, owing to the short deadlines and the high-quality professional services that are expected of a Big-Four firm,” she said.

Rangarajan said her experience with PwC India taught her valuable lessons she now applies to her courses in the Moore School’s International MBA program.

She said she learned to challenge herself to continually take on greater responsibilities; it is imperative to be a collaborative team player and build trust in relationships with colleagues and clients; hard work and dedication always yield results in the long run.

Ready to gain more formal business skills to accompany her accounting background, Rangarajan chose the Moore School for the International MBA program because of its reputation and the faculty’s collaborative teaching methods.

“I moved to the U.S. from India just four months ago, and in my short time at the Moore School, I have been learning a lot on the educational and the cultural front,” Rangarajan said. “My classmates bring a lot to the table with their own educational and professional backgrounds.”

With the International MBA program, she is specifically interested in developing her technical and managerial skills and enhancing her marketing knowledge by pursuing a functional specialization in marketing.

Rangarajan is also pursuing the Business Analytics Graduate Certificate to sharpen her ability to make sense of large data sets.

“I firmly believe that we need to constantly adapt ourselves to the changing environment, lest we become obsolete,” she said. “With increasing advances in technology, there are more analytical tools available for making business decisions, and hence, I believe the Business Analytics Graduate Certificate will help me learn to use these tools, apply them to practical business problems and arrive at optimal solutions efficiently.”

To gain further experience, Rangarajan intends to spend spring 2023 in Germany as part of her in-country immersion. She has chosen the language track, as German is the second most widely spoken language in Europe after English, she said.

“Being an international student, I love to learn about new cultures by traveling. I have traveled to Germany before, and I loved walking through the beautiful cities observing how the culture and history has been preserved for centuries,” she said. “This culturally enriching experience should help me apply practically what I learn through the International MBA program in terms of developing a global mindset in conducting business and make me more adaptable and agile in responding to the ever-changing business environment.”

Looking ahead, Rangarajan intends to leverage her existing background in accounting and finance with her newly acquired business analytics and marketing skills to pivot her career to marketing analytics or market research.

“Working with data and analyzing it has always interested me. I also love interacting with people and understanding what makes them tick. So, I think that this career path aligns with my core nature,” she said.

She said she also would like to work for a company that prioritizes sustainability and making positive change in their communities.