Full-Time MBA Student Profile Pursuing an MBA for Investment Banking and Healthcare with Trisha Atluri

Trisha was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, alongside her twin brother. She comes from a family of physicians, so she was exposed to medicine at an early age and naturally became curious about healthcare and its impact on people’s lives.

She attended Wellesley College, studying Computer Science and completing the pre-med track. Post-graduation, she worked as a computational biologist optimizing cancer therapeutics, an experience that prompted a broader question about scaling innovation from the lab to patients. This led her to ZS Associates, where she spent three years as a healthcare consultant helping clients commercialize novel therapies and navigate the payer environment. Through this work, she became fascinated by the business decisions that shape patient access to therapy.

Trisha decided to pursue an MBA to gain a comprehensive understanding of business across functions, from finance and strategy to operations and management. Chicago Booth stood out for its analytically rigorous and flexible environment, as well as its community of curious, ambitious people excited to build their own paths. She was drawn to the ability to tailor her experience around her specific interest, which has been the most rewarding part of her time at Booth.

For someone interested in investment banking, it is hard not to be drawn to Booth. The school has an extraordinary legacy in finance, and that reputation is backed up by both the classroom experience and the strength of the alumni network. As someone coming from a non-finance background, I was especially excited by Booth’s academic rigor and the chance to build a strong technical foundation while learning alongside classmates who brought a wide range of perspectives to the process.

What made Booth especially compelling to me was the community. I knew I would be challenged here, but I also saw that students were deeply invested in helping one another succeed. That combination made Booth feel like the right place to make a career pivot into banking. Throughout my first year, I repeatedly heard my peers reference Booth’s “pay-it-forward” culture, and I firsthand saw it come to life throughout the recruitment process. Furthermore, Booth is a target school for many banks, and you can find Booth alumni at essentially every top firm in the US. This network is invaluable not only throughout recruiting, but also once you hit the desk.

My advice to prospective students is to go beyond the school’s reputation and talk to current students about what the recruiting experience actually looks like. Even when schools place into many of the same firms, the process can feel very different depending on the program. I would encourage applicants to ask about alumni presence in the geographies or industry groups they care about, what kind of peer support they can expect during recruiting, and amount of travel required to network with bankers. Those details shape your day-to-day experience more than people often realize.

One of my favorite aspects of Booth is how interdisciplinary the experience can be. I am pursuing a dual degree, earning an MBA with a concentration in Finance alongside an MS in Biomedical Sciences. That combination allows me to build real scientific fluency alongside a strong finance foundation, which was important to me in choosing an MBA program.

Another aspect of Booth that has been especially helpful is its customizable academic structure. Being able to front-load finance classes during my first year gives me more confidence heading into my summer internship, particularly as a career switcher. Booth also offers a world-class finance curriculum taught by leading faculty in the field. Courses like Cases in Financial Management and Deal Structuring and Financial Reporting Implications help students strengthen their technical toolkits and think more deeply about how transactions come together in practice.

At the same time, some of the most valuable resources have been outside the classroom. My fellow students, both 1Ys and 2Ys, have been instrumental in helping me reach my career goals. The support of second-years is especially important during recruiting, and I have also learned a great deal from classmates who worked in banking before Booth and were generous in sharing their perspectives. That mix of formal training and peer support has been one of the most impactful parts of my experience.

Booth’s Investment Banking Group (IBG) is a student-run organization dedicated to helping students prepare rigorously for investment banking recruiting. For anyone seriously considering banking, IBG becomes a central part of the experience because it provides both structure and community throughout a demanding process.

At Booth, joining IBG is a critical part of fully engaging with the recruiting process. IBG works closely with Career Services to provide students with additional touchpoints and networking opportunities with the firms that recruit at Booth. It also offers formal programming to prepare 1Ys to excel in interviews from both a technical and behavioral standpoint.

My involvement in IBG has shaped my MBA experience in a meaningful way. Recruiting for banking starts almost immediately after Orientation and can be intense, fast-paced, and at times stressful. But it was also one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had at Booth. It pushed me to grow quickly, gave me a strong support system, and brought me closer to many of the people who have become some of my closest friends here.

The most valuable IBG offering for me was the formalized connection between first-year and second-year students. That support system was incredibly important throughout recruiting.

As someone who was recruiting for healthcare specifically, the insights and tips I received from second-year students were invaluable to my success. Second-years are able to offer something uniquely helpful because they have just gone through the process themselves. They can speak candidly about what worked, what did not, and how to navigate the many moving pieces of recruiting with a level of specificity that is hard to find elsewhere. For example, Tami Sacré ’26, who, as a second-year, led San Francisco recruiting for first-years, spent significant time helping me navigate the process and prepare for healthcare-specific interviews. Booth’s “pay-it-forward” culture is something students talk about often, and the support second-years provide throughout recruiting is one of the clearest examples of that culture in practice.