Advice for First-Year Students
Embarking on your career at CMU can be both daunting and thrilling! We asked some of our key employer partners for advice on how first-year students can make the most of their time at CMU.
Ford Motor Company
Congratulations on embarking on the next chapter of your life. As you begin this journey, make sure you get the most out of this opportunity. Focus on your classes but also get involved. Join a club, try a new hobby and overall make sure you walk away from school with a breath of new experiences. Internships are a crucial part of your journey, these projects can help you to apply your classroom knowledge and find a potential career fit for post-graduation.
PwC
Welcome to CMU! Keep an open mind and enjoy the journey! College is a time of discovering your passions and values. As you begin your career search, prioritize finding a company that cares about you and will invest in your growth, and don't be afraid to try new things. You'll have a much more fulfilling career if you pick a company based on mutual values, rather than focusing solely on your first job title!
Boeing
Welcome to CMU where your journey intersects with innovation, much like Boeing’s! Together, we share a steadfast commitment to excellence in science and engineering. Whether your aspirations lie in industry immersion or further academia, we encourage you to embrace diverse experiences that foster growth and connection. We are happy to help with internships or campus engagements to support you along the way. We would love to have you help us shape the future of aerospace together!
EY Parthenon
Welcome to CMU! First and foremost, enjoy these next 4+ years. The upcoming years will be exciting and sometimes daunting with many highs and lows. But at the end, which may seem too far away to even think about right now, you will walk across that stage proud and ready for the next challenge. So you may be asking yourself “how can I maximize my next 4+ years before I walk across the stage?”.
Our advice to you is simple – leverage each and every single class and professor you have. You may not think the classwork relates to anything you plan to do in the “real world”, and the content very well may not. But what will translate, for example, are the problem-solving skills, working under pressure in a fast-paced environment, and working as both an individual and a team. Now others classes will directly correlate with what you will be doing in the professional world which will lay the foundation for you to build upon at your future role and differentiate you among your peers from the beginning.
Next, get out of your comfort zone and take a few ‘soft skill’ classes whether that be a leadership course, a presentation/ communications course or one of my favorites, Acting for Business. CMU students are notoriously known for their superb quantitative skills but not as much for their qualitative/ behavior skills. And guess what type of first round interviews are before you get to showcase your quantitative skills? That’s right, behavioral interviews.
Just as we started with, please enjoy the next 4+ years here at CMU as graduation will be here before you know it.
Mathworks
This is an exciting time as you embark on your first few days as a college student. You’ve already set yourself up for success by joining one of the most collaborative, innovative, and dynamic campus communities. The ball is now in your court to take full advantage of all resources to prepare you for college and beyond CMU. As a long time employer partner, I will say that CMU talent is uniquely prepared for career opportunities after college. The next four years will equip you with the skills to launch into the STEM field – take the internship that challenges you, collaborate with a peer on a cool project, and leverage the robust resources that you have at your fingertips!