The Eller Community : Meet Eller MBAs

Ritu Bhagat earned her undergraduate degree in economics from UT Austin. She plans to leverage her Eller MBA in a career in finance, eventually leading to corporate strategy.

Ritu Bhagat, MBA '07

“The Eller MBA program is designed to push you out of your comfort zone. The professors challenge conventional thinking.”

On choosing Eller:

I chose Eller because of its reputation and small size. I researched the biographies of faculty and staff, the backgrounds and placements of the previous classes, the percentages of women and international students, and felt that I would be a good fit with this program. The faculty and staff were very approachable and went out of their way to answer my specific questions even before I was accepted! This level of personalization made me feel that I was not just a student ID number. In the end, as our associate dean says, it’s your program and your education; you can make it as challenging and rewarding as you want it to be.

On the Eller experience:

The Eller MBA program is designed to push you out of your comfort zone. The professors challenge conventional thinking. My classmates come from different backgrounds and different countries, so classes are not lecture-based but rather lively discussions with the professor being the moderator. There’s never a right or wrong answer. My experience at Eller has been great! I have forged relationships that I know will continue beyond the duration of this program.

On Eller faculty and curriculum:

I enjoyed marketing with Dr. Steven Permut tremendously. His class is structured such that we simulate roles of marketing managers and present our arguments for a strategy that we believe will be most beneficial. We have to defend our argument not with just a qualitative approach but also need to quantify our results to support that argument. I was also very impressed with Dr. Gregory Crawford’s business strategy class. He adopts the Socratic method of teaching and works with each student’s answer until it becomes specific and clear.

On her internship:

I had a great internship experience as part of a post-merger integration team at a company that had just acquired a major competitor. I was able to see all that I had read or studied in cases about mergers and acquisitions come into play. Apart from analyzing revenue and profit impacts, strategic positioning, and competitive challenges, I was impressed by the way they handled change management. This experience has enhanced my MBA because right from day one, I was part of the team, asked to come up with my analysis, and also challenged on it.

On her career goals:

The MBA office and the Office of Career Development helped me design a course of study that would give me the required skills for a career in finance. They also helped me get in touch with the specific departments so that I could discuss how those classes will help me. As a result, my concentration in finance is optimized with some relevant marketing classes.

 
Meet other Eller MBAs.