When she first looked over the Master of Marketing curriculum, Samantha Budd recalls that she was nervous about having to take quantitative classes like Statistics and Quantitative Methods. “I had not taken math since my freshman year of college,” Sam says. But once she immersed herself in the program, she did exceptionally well. In fact, she says, “I’m proud to say those two were among my favorite classes.”

Immersion turned out to be one of the most beneficial aspects of the entire MMark experience for Sam. At the beginning of the year, during Mod I, the program includes an independent study involving an industrial immersion—“a deep dive in an industry you’re interested in,” she explains—that prepared her for networking and interviews for internships.

Near the end of the year, she went through another immersion—Filling the Marketing Toolbox—“where you choose a marketing-related skill you want to enhance, and then you workshop that with the guidance of a professor as your advisor.”

Her internship during the program, as it turned out, was even more immersive than she had anticipated. “About a week into my role as a digital marketing intern,” Sam explains, “my hiring manager left the company. Since it was a small company, I immediately took on a few of her ongoing projects, even though she was a manager with several years of work experience. At first, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hose, but I learned so much so quickly that I’m really proud of the impact I made there across several marketing channels, particularly social media.”

That experience, in turn, helped prepare Sam to land a position as a marketing analyst with Mastercard in New York, not far from her hometown in New Jersey. “The program helped shape my future in so many ways,” she says in retrospect. “I learned so much from the amazing faculty and from my peers from all different backgrounds. Owen has given me the knowledge and resources to launch my career in the right direction.”

Fun Fact: Sam was a competitive equestrian for eight years.

You choose a marketing-related skill you want to enhance, and then you workshop that with the guidance of a professor as your advisor.