Student Profile

Jonathan Rossi

Where are you working?

I'm currently managing the third-party scholarships program at Harvard in our undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid office. A large part of my job is advocating for families by making sure that scholarship dollars are utilized in ways that most benefit students while remaining compliant with federal guidelines and our financial aid program. CORe has helped me become more fluent in talking with families about the rising costs of education and their own financial concerns and has allowed me to better understand the business strategies and considerations of scholarship organizations.

Why did you decide to sign up for CORe?

I signed up for CORe because I am always searching for new learning opportunities and wanted to fill a gap I felt I had in understanding the language and basic mechanics of business. I also wanted an opportunity to participate in a collaborative learning environment here at Harvard and to connect with people from many different backgrounds and industries.

What was your favorite part of the program?

During CORe, and specifically through Business Analytics, I discovered a new-found love of data analytics. I was fascinated to learn how we can use data to systematically seek an answer to a specific business question or predict the outcome of a scenario given past behavior.

This new interest has motivated me to pursue a career in data science, which I have begun to work toward since finishing CORe. I've taken the skills I learned a step further in the past few months by studying Python and machine learning and have already begun to apply this new way of thinking to my life and career.

How are you applying what you've learned in CORe?

CORe has helped me tremendously in framing my discussions with families about the economics of financing a college education and has helped me to better understand the businesses and organizations that provide our students with scholarships. More specifically, CORe has inspired me to study data science, which is reshaping how I think about problem-solving.

I've been able to ask business or management questions that are relevant to many domains. For instance, one of the hardest parts of my job at Harvard is helping students identify scholarships to apply to as they are transitioning from high school into college. I've begun collecting data to see if I can identify specific factors that "predict" higher amounts of outside aid in our student population. I hope to look at this information across high school, city, and other demographic factors to see whether certain communities do a better job of helping their students access external funding (e.g., through connections to companies via summer internship programs or through certain types of community organizations). Answering these kinds of questions may help me better advise students in finding external funding, which is often abundant but difficult to locate.

I've also applied this new way of thinking to my athletic pursuits. During CORe, I trained for and participated in C.R.A.S.H. Bs, the indoor world rowing championship that happens every year at Boston University. I was able to track my training data and use regression to find predictors of better performance in training pieces.

I hope to leverage the knowledge I gained in CORe to ultimately pursue data science full-time and eventually go back to school for an MBA or PhD.

Any advice for people who will be taking CORe?

The best advice I can give would be to fully engage. While CORe's written content and videos are fantastic, I think most of the learning happens when you're talking something through in peer help. Plus, once CORe is finished, you'll have new connections with people that may open your mind to new ideas or interests you might not otherwise have found.