#197 Avoiding the Default Major: Smart Steps for Aspiring Business Students with Anita Doddi Transcript

THIS IS AN AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT… PLEASE FORGIVE THE TYPOS & GRAMMAR! xo-Lisa.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 1:06
questions, is business, the new undecided major? More and more students are choosing business without fully understanding what that really means, or how wide the field actually is, from finance to marketing to entrepreneurship, the options are endless, but so are the missteps if students don’t take the time to reflect and explore. I’m thrilled to welcome back to the podcast Anita Doty from college wise she has spent her career guiding students through the admissions process and helping them discover their strengths. Anita shares why real world experiences like jobs, volunteering or working in small businesses often make a bigger impact than what shows up on the transcript, you’ll hear practical advice on how students can explore business in high school, what admissions officers are truly looking for and why reflection is just as important as rigor when applying to competitive programs. We’ll also dig into common mistakes aspiring business students make, how to sidestep them, and strategies to stand out in a sea of business hopefuls. I’m Lisa Marco Robbins, and I want to welcome you to College and Career Clarity a flourish coaching production. Let’s dive right into a great conversation.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:18
Anita, welcome back to the show.

Anita Doddi 2:21
I’m so glad to be back. Lisa, it’s great to talk to you again. This is

Lisa Marker-Robbins 2:24
gonna be fun. So business majors, oh my gosh, this is the I know computer science is arguably the most and I just recorded a podcast where we were talking about, like, Should computer science be the most popular major because there’s a shrinking job market a little bit, which is fascinating. But business is right up there among the most popular majors. It can be very competitive depending on the school. So we want to dig into all things related to business majors and tied into my favorite topic, careers as well. So you love working with STEM and business, right?

Anita Doddi 3:06
Yeah, the vast majority of my students that I work with are stem or business. I always like to say my sweet spot is actually working with undecided students, but I think a lot of students don’t want to say they’re undecided, or I just don’t seem to get them. But I also like to talk about how business is a little bit of the new undecided. I think sometimes students are like, Yeah, I’m interested in business. And when I probe a little bit more, I’m like, oh, what type of business? You know? What got you started? They kind of look at me with a little bit of a blank stare. And it’s, it’s interesting to try to go a little deeper and say, like, what does that mean? And I sometimes I’m getting, I think, the same vibe that I would get from an undecided student with some of these business hopefuls.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 3:49
Do you like if a kids? Because, of course, I work with tons of undecided students in my launch Career Clarity course. So I get that I’m curious, why do you think business has become the new undecided, like, why isn’t it engineering, or why isn’t it computer science or something else?

Anita Doddi 4:15
I think a few things. So I think that, you know, young people are asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? And it’s such an intimidating such a, like, hard question, and so I think a lot of them are like, well, business, because, you know, so many people that they see, you know, whether it’s like influencers or, you know, just people making money, they are people who had some experience in business, but a lot of students, you know, and I think a lot of parents are really happy with that answer, like, oh yeah, my kid wants to do business. They’re going to do great. It’s a career for maybe extroverted people who, you know, it’s sort of this stereotype, right? Of people who are going to make money, who you know, are very extroverted, work with other people. But when we come down to. Business is such a wide range of things, right? It’s everything from finance to sales to entrepreneurship to marketing, and there’s just so many layers to it. And so when I ask a student like, What do you mean by business? It’s very hard for them to pinpoint what it means. They’re just thinking that it offers some stability as a career, and it sounds good, and a lot of people will just say, oh, business great. And they don’t have follow up questions necessarily for the student. And there’s a lot of like, you know, there’s just a lot of business literature out there, like, a lot of popular books my son was reading, oh gosh, what’s the one about the sneaker guy? Phil Knight, oh, yeah, you know. And there’s like videos, right? Or like movies, excuse me, that are just popular. It’s like these people who’ve made these businesses and succeeded, and that is a definition of success for a lot of

Lisa Marker-Robbins 5:55
people. Yeah, I agree with you. It is. It’s so funny how kids do not realize, like, I always say, it’s an umbrella term, and there are these buckets. And, you know, accounting and sales could not be more different, right? As far as for myself, I’m looking at the DNA of somebody’s hardwired personality, and I can tell you from a data driven piece, not even an interest piece, that who looks like they are going to thrive and be happy in accounting looks very different than the person in sales. And I think you got to the heart of something though too, is as parents, they just want to know that their kids going to be able to confidently launch into the next chapter and thrive. You know, when I asked, What do you really want for your kids? I just want them to be happy. And they want them to know that the kids gone on to the next chapter, which is out of the nest, by the way, and that they get to go on to their next chapter, which is living their best empty nest years like that can be fun as well. So I get it like, the stability and the many options that come with business. So when you get this undecided student for business and hey, listeners, keep listening, because we’re going to get into like, what’s trending in business and what makes an impact if you’re working towards clarity. Because you said you love those undecided kids. I love those undecided kids, yeah. How do you talk them through, deciding if business is really for them? Right?

Anita Doddi 7:38
A few things. I mean, one is, you know, asking some of the reflection questions of like, what have you enjoyed? What do you enjoy doing outside of the classroom and in the classroom? What are the, you know, what are the problems you want to solve in the world? Because I always say Business and Computer Science too, are much more of the tools for solving something else. Yeah, they’re not standalone things that you can just study pure computer science unless you want to become a teacher, which is fine and great, but you can’t just study them on their own. And so I’m trying to ask students some reflective questions about what they’ve done, but then also really poke into what activities can help them explore. And for me personally, I feel like these words of internship and research have become very big in the high school sector.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 8:30
It’s intimidating too. Yeah. Well, I’m

Anita Doddi 8:33
like, internships and research opportunities were not made for high school students. They don’t know enough yet. And I’m like trying to convince a lot of students get a job, any job, you know, babysit, mow lawns, you know, pet sit, you know, work at like the local fast food place or retail, whatever it is, tutor, get to know some people and learn some basic skills that You don’t learn in the classroom or through an extracurricular activity at school. And these are the things that will actually tell you a lot about business too, especially if you are lucky enough to maybe work in a small business, and you get to see like all the different things that maybe this entrepreneur at the small business is really doing. They are doing everything from the sales to the back end pieces of merchandising and inventory to the marketing pieces, right? And like, which pieces do you gravitate towards? You know, can you, if you’re working the smaller business in particular, can you help them out with some of those things?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 9:34
I like that. You said, I’m going to interrupt real quick just to say, like, I like that. You said small, like, a small business, because, if you’re listening people, this gives you, that’s great advice. That gives you something to target, right? Instead of, like, going to work at McDonald’s, who, externally, all of the marketing and things like that are being handled by someone else. They’re not handled you’re not going to be able to see. Them in action. I mean, a job, a part time job like that, is really an ultimate job shadow. And if it’s in a small business, you just named a lot of ways that they’ve just job shadowed, a lot of different roles. You know, we had a we had a recent guest on the podcast on episode 185 and Ramon talked about how to reframe what we often feel like are little jobs. And I think this goes back to what you were saying. I found internships can be helpful, but the even the word or research, it’s so big, it can be a intimidating, it can feel elusive. And so let’s go after just the things that we can gain from what feels little, but sometimes people feel like that’s beneath them and not going to set them up for entry into a business program, because I do want to talk about today like what we both are seeing as making impact extracurricularly, anything they do outside of the classroom that sets them up for entry into business once they know business is for them, because so we need to move from like business is my undecided catch all, right, business confidence. And then, okay, if I if I am confident, then how do I go about getting into a business school?

Anita Doddi 11:19
Yes, exactly, exactly. And I think that any job will help a student. And I often tell students actually getting a job is probably the most impressive thing for an admissions officer to see. You have learned about getting to work on time, working with a manager, doing completely new, unfamiliar tasks, probably working with the set of people you’ve never that you don’t usually encounter, because usually you just excuse me, you see your parents, your family and your peers, but maybe all sudden you’re working with little kids or older people, or, you know, just the general public, and that can be really valuable, too. Like, what kinds of people do you want to work with? But yes, I think that, and there’s nothing wrong with working out with a big business either? Obviously, you and I both agree on that. But yes, a small business can really, like open up a few other doors, and those are the ones that really need a lot more help too, because you do see these small business owners trying to juggle all the different things so it can be really fun.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 12:18
I’ve seen I just talked about this on the previous episode, so I hate to do it again so quickly. But one student that she was volunteering somewhere, and it was just a food pantry, and it wasn’t like she was doing a business job, but she approached them to volunteer in a business related role, and so she created her own and I said, Do it if you don’t even get paid?

Anita Doddi 12:45
Right? Yes, yes, the experience is so valuable. And that’s what a lot of students, I think, in this day and age, everyone is very focused on academics, you know, taking the you know, especially students who want to, we’re very ambitious and highly motivated. They’re looking to get into these great schools, and they think they need all these APs and a high GPA and whatnot. But actually, for me personally, the thing that helped me get away from being undecided, and what I see from a lot of students, what helps them get away from being undecided is actually those real world experiences, whether it’s in the summer or after school, or whatever it is, so that you realize, like, Hey, you’re not a student forever, right? And you have a certain set of great academic skills. But how do we foster those other skills that you will need for you know, whatever it is that you do in life, and having a first job, I think, is just such a nice bridge to what’s to

Lisa Marker-Robbins 13:42
come. So I like that. You said admissions officers love jobs, because sometimes I get families that are like, I have to have a job, but gosh, is that going to hurt me? No, hear that, right? Or I have to help out at home. Is that going to hurt me? No, you’re managing a lot of things. That’s teaching a lot of those soft skills as executive functioning skills that we also get from jobs. So let’s, let’s move to like a student has done some of this, and they’re like, yes, business is going to be for me. And now it’s not just an umbrella business. It is I might be focused on marketing or operations or finance or accounting. What do you see for the students that you’re working with as an IEC is moving the needle as far as actually securing a spot and any program or even like the competitive programs?

Anita Doddi 14:41
Sure, I feel like I focus a lot with my students on those reflection pieces, you know, like, Okay, you did a job working. What did you learn from it? What you know, what did you take away? What were those lessons? What’s some memorable experiences that came out of that? And they may or may not be directly related to what you want to study. So I have a student who’s really interested in engineering at first, and then, you know, she did some she did something with a family friend. She did think she did some job shadowing, I can’t remember exactly. And she said, No, engineering is not for me. What do I do? I think I want to do business now. And I said, Well, you just learned all these great skills about collaboration that’s really important for engineering. It’s important for a business like, let’s refocus what you’re going to say you learned from these jobs. It’s less about the technical maybe that she was originally going to focus on with the engineering so really helping students pivot a little bit and rethink and talk about what they’ve learned, that reflection is so important to be thoughtful and to say to an admissions officer like these are not just the things I did, but this is what the skills that I

Lisa Marker-Robbins 15:53
grew so you’re really taking those have The experiences, reframe the bigger picture, the deeper lessons from them. And then those are going to be expressed where in the essays

Anita Doddi 16:07
and the essays, the Activities List, yeah. And then I also tell students, you know, you can major in anything and go into the business world. Yes, right? You and I know this, it’s really more about those experiences that you’re having the business field, especially wants to know, like, what kinds of work experience have you had, or, you know, even for clubs, activities, extracurriculars, whatever you want to call them, but what are those experiences that helped you work with other people? What are the experiences that helped you build certain kinds of skills. And for me, when someone says, Hey, I want to be a marketing major, I’m like, Well, you could do business, you could do marketing, you could do psychology. Guess what? Occasions? Yes, there’s so many options. If you want to go into finance, like, maybe you should be a math major. You know, there’s a lot of different things. And I would tell you a fun story. I used to work at the University of Chicago, and we had a lot of econ majors, because economics is the number one, you know, major, most popular major, probably at the University of Chicago. And I remember a group of us academic advisors talking to a group of recruiters about, like, what are they looking for? You know, what’s important? And I remember this one guy said, all the econ majors look exactly the same. They have had all the same classes. They’ve had, you know, the same kinds of internship opportunities. And he said something so fascinating. He said, I love the philosophy majors. And we were all like, what? Wait, what? Like philosophy

Speaker 1 17:39
majors, and you’re shaking things up over here. Yeah, the

Anita Doddi 17:42
philosophy major at the University of Chicago in particular is very logic based. So it’s a lot of like that, math, logic that they need for. You know, some of these careers, they were great writers. And he said, these are skill sets that we really need. I can’t, I can’t remember exactly, I mean, he was a recruiter. I don’t remember exactly what I recruited for. But so these are skill sets that we really need, these people who can, you know, think clearly through a problem and write about it and express their beliefs. And these are just really strong, interesting students who have some different experiences than the sea of econ majors who all look the same, they really stand out. And I was like, wow. Well, I’m gonna tell every econ major be a philosophy major, right? Not really, but like, a shake it up. You know, if you know that there’s a really strong major at the college you’re going to go to, or there’s a really popular major, right? Like businesses, I agree with you, computer science is popular. Computer science is very competitive, very but I actually think that business is still the number one major in the country. But how are you going to differentiate yourself from all those other business majors, right? Well, it’s, I

Lisa Marker-Robbins 18:52
think it’s too it’s having conversations at home where you made a great point and the recruiter helped also make the point. Like for we always begin with the end in mind. So what is the job that you’re wired for that you would love? It’s not a soulmate job. There’s not only one of them out there in the world. But what are you aiming for? Where are you going to put the GPS pin in that destination for that first job that you’re going after, your first career move out of after graduation, right? And then work back to major, you know, yeah, like, to your point, some universities don’t even have a business major, so a lot of kids will just opt into the Econ major for undergrad. But you don’t have to have it, you know, engineering, yeah, you need an engineering degree. We need you to have an engineering degree if you’re going to build the building that I’m going to be in nursing. My daughter in law is a nurse teaching, yes, there are some, but business doesn’t doesn’t end that opportunity. Also the fact that you don’t even have to have a college degree to go into business, right? Right? I mean, we’re talking about business majors right now, but you don’t have to have a college degree now. You might have different opportunities. There are some jobs that you know management training programs are going to seek college graduates, but you can still go into business and do quite well without even having the degree, right?

Anita Doddi 20:18
But you have to be able to be able to talk about yourself and your experiences that’s right in a way that is compelling to show you know, the recruiter or the hiring manager, whoever it is, that you can do the job you know, with some basic skills and that you’re ready, willing and able to learn, and that is going to be the biggest thing in our shifting, changing, crazy world where everyone’s worried about AI coming and taking these jobs or whatever it is, but if you can say, like, I’m ready to learn, I’m willing to learn, I’m a fast learner, I can adapt. Then those are great skills, especially for the business world,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 20:55
which is, yeah, the kids that I’ve seen get hired into business roles who don’t have a degree, going back to that argument, yeah, I’m a, I’m a college junkie. So I would, I would have gotten a college degree no matter what. But if you’re, if, for those that don’t go the ones that I see getting hired in those business jobs, they’ve had, they’re making a career move into business, but they’ve had some little jobs, some jobs where they maybe did inventory or had to balance the cash register or the books, or they had opening and closing duties, or they made schedules. Those are transferable skills that show that now you’re we’re talking a lot about, like real world experiences and extracurricular co curriculars. I know when students get to college, they feel like extracurriculars is the term for high school students. So we just say anything you’re doing in your time outside of your academics, really is how we’re doing that. How do you see, do you see the extracurriculars that Activities List and how they’re expressed in the essays trumping academic sometimes not at all. Are there any academic hills that you’ve seen admissions officers for good business schools are going to die on how do you navigate that with your students?

Anita Doddi 22:15
So as you know, the variety in the business programs out there are, I mean, it’s stunning, right? There’s lots of places where, you know, they’re very, very specific requirements. They really want to see, pre calc or Calc. Other places don’t really care. I always tell students, your transcript is first and foremost, you know, and you do the academic work, will you be able to succeed at that college? But then at the same time, a lot of maybe future finance major students were thinking about it. Maybe they have very similar profiles academically. But is there something you know in your experiences that can help show why you’re a good fit? So, you know, a great example is the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, right? They have this extensive other piece of their application. It’s a direct admit business program. You either get admitted to Roz or not at all to University of Michigan. You can’t even list a second choice. It’s a high stakes application, right? If you really want to go to Ross, and it’s really interesting, because they have a portfolio and artifact that are required. And the portfolio, you know, students are thinking really hard, and they’re thinking really big about, you know, maybe big problems. And one of the things that one of my co workers loves to say is, stay local, like, tell me about something, a local business problem. And my student, who got it to Ross was that last year, the year before, I don’t know anymore, but she wrote about how Chipotle came in and really, you know, to her local town, and took up a whole bunch of business from local businesses. And this was a huge problem, right? They had more advertising money, and this couple of these smaller restaurants had been around forever. They were just real, you know, icons in her Yeah, village. But then, you know, younger people were gravitating towards, like, oh, Chipotle, or whatever it was, you know, some of the bigger chains. And so she was writing from real world experience of like, watching her town and watching the people in our town be affected by this. And it was a great statement for her portfolio problem. And then she talked about how she wanted to, you know, rectify it, right? So I think that some of these business programs where students have to think beyond the academic piece, think about like, what are the problems around them? How might they solve them? Are really great for you know, especially Ross has made this priority for them. They want to know how students are thinking. You know, what are they thinking about? How are they going to make change in the world? And change often happens with their life. Local communities. There’s a lot of variety in terms of what admissions officers of business programs are looking for, what the top business schools are looking for, something beyond just academics, right?

Lisa Marker-Robbins 25:10
We had somebody on the podcast a while ago, and I think we weren’t able to say her university, so I’m not going to say it right now. Maybe we were. I’ll link to this episode in the show notes, but it was actually about switching majors once you were already in college and at her university. She said, You know, I don’t she doesn’t believe that students have to be proficient in calculus to do well in business school for many of the business majors or the concentrations in business. But she said, You cannot switch. If a student comes to me and wants to switch into business and they’re struggling through college algebra, pre Calc, she’s like, it’s not going to happen. Like, you cannot be sex successful in the program, but they can be successful in business, and they just need to major in something else. You know, you brought up a great point. Like Ross is very, very difficult to get into, as we both know. And as you said, yes, there’s a wide variety of rigor. As far as entrance. We did a study in early 2024, of the 50 state flagships, and we looked at one of the questions we asked. And I know you’ve seen my data set before on this, and we’ve talked about it in the Facebook group that we’re both in, but we asked, is there any major that is restricted or or nearly impossible to switch into after you’re already on campus, and business was regularly on that list for top for all research universities, not even top universities, so for the 50 state flagships, business is just very difficult. So you’ve got to know, you’ve got to ask those questions really, in advance, right?

Anita Doddi 26:59
Yeah, I love your spreadsheet. That’s been such a helpful resource,

Lisa Marker-Robbins 27:02
and we let me give everybody it’s flourish coaching, co com, forward slash majors, so you go there, we’ll give you the spreadsheet. We’ll give you the email that we sent to every college asking them for this information. So if we didn’t do it for the college you’re interested in, you can take that email and know that you’re asking the right questions to get the right answer, and then I give just a like six minute teaching video on on how it works. But go ahead, what were you gonna say?

Anita Doddi 27:28
Yeah, there’s just a wide variety. But you’re right, because business is so popular, and because not everyone knows what they’re getting into when they’re looking for a business major. I think that colleges really have to think about their enrollments, right? Like they don’t want to make they don’t want to have everyone apply the business major, and then they can’t graduate and get the classes they need in the four years. And so that’s a huge problem on the other side of the desk, and it’s something that students need to be cognizant of. And I always tell students, if you’re gonna apply to college, and you’ve got a few things in mind, you know, pick the hardest one, because you can always switch out of it, but you can’t switch into it.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 28:13
Yeah, it. I mean, the once you’re on campus, then there are opportunities that have slipped away. So it’s better to start hard and and then ease. And that could go for like nursing. We see that a lot as well, right? I’ll see people like, I might be a t want to be a teacher, but I might want to be a nurse. Maybe both fit because they really want to help people. It’s going to be harder in most cases, to get into a nursing program than to get into an education program. So if you’re truly still undecided when you’re applying to school, hopefully not join us and watch Career Clarity, and we’ll get that figured out, then go for nursing. So as we’re wrapping up, here’s a question for you sure, what mistakes do you see? I mean, we’ve kind of said mistakes like just thinking businesses undecided, and they don’t have to have a focus that would be a mistake, right thinking, only a business degree will lead to a career in business. But are there any other missteps or mistakes that you see students making when it’s like figuring out the colleges for business applying to business schools? Any final words of advice,

Anita Doddi 29:24
just going back to those class choices, I know there’s a lot of talk about whether or not calculus is necessary. I generally tell students, if you can do calculus, try to do it. It’s again to have it and not needed than to feel like, oh, I should have taken calculus. And I hear a lot of students who are like, Well, I’m not going to go into any kind of STEM or business major. I’m going to take AP Stats, you know, after pre Calc, or whatever it is. And I’m like, Well, you know, you did well in the math classes, just take the harder one, you know, just for a little bit and just, you know, and then decide from there. Are. So I think there’s a lot with class choices. And in particular, I will also say that there are a lot of business electives at some of the high schools. They vary a lot. I always tell students, go talk to your school counselor to find out what the real deal is, or talk to someone who’s taken that business elective to see if it’s really going to help you decide or not. Because those business electives are kind of all over the map, and I’ve heard a lot of different things, so I love to talk about class choices, and that’s definitely something that you want to think about as you’re

Lisa Marker-Robbins 30:29
in high Well, that’s a benefit of having somebody like you on their side as an IEC is being able to collaborate on curricular choices and extracurricular activities. So we will put a link in the show notes that if you’re listening to Anita and you’re like, Okay, I need a guide, and we need some extra support, you reach out to her. She would love to help. So Anita, thank you for making time again.

Anita Doddi 30:56
Yeah, it’s so great to see you again, Lisa, and I’m always happy to chat with you. So this has been

Lisa Marker-Robbins 31:01
great. Thank you.

Lisa Marker-Robbins 31:08
Business may be one of the most popular majors, but it doesn’t have to be the default choice for an undecided student, as Anita reminded us, what matters most is reflection real world experiences and clarity your student builds along the way. Those are the things that will truly differentiate them, whether they pursue business or an entirely different path. If you want more information and guidance on competitive majors and how to navigate them, don’t miss my free resource at flourish, coachingco.com forward slash majors, you’ll get a spreadsheet of restricted majors at state flagships, a template email to use with colleges and a short teaching video from me to help you ask the right questions before your child applies. I’m grateful to Anita for sharing her expertise and stories, and I’m grateful to you for listening until next time, I’m Lisa marker Robbins, and this has been College and Career Clarity.