100 Best & Brightest Business Majors Of 2021

Freshman year can be a real wake up. Everything is faster and heavier – and academics are just part of the transition. For many, the biggest issues involve managing time and money. Sometimes, freshmen just take on too much.

Sven Wollschlaeger probably heard the warnings. That didn’t stop the University of Michigan Business major from co-founding a company as a freshman. Inspired by campus tours he took in high school, he built VenueTourist – which he describes as “a 3D and virtual reality tech company specializing in higher-ed campus tour creation.” Over four years, Wollschlaeger has taken his startup far beyond Ann Arbor – and racked up achievements that’d be the envy of MBA students.

“I am proud that we built and scaled VenueTourist from my dorm room to being deployed at universities all across the U.S. – from campuses like GWU to the University of Miami. We raised <$1M from the co-founder of JetBlue, and pitched to Google Streetview, Bessemer Venture Partners, and A16Z. We were invited to operate out of Dan Gilbert’s Detroit Venture Partners office (2019), and I just recently participated in Y Combinator’s Virtual Startup School. I learned the value of good products, great execution, exceptional teams, and starting!”

100 STUDENT LEADERS FROM TOP 50 BUSINESS SCHOOLS

Wollschlaeger is among the 100 seniors honored in Poets&Quants’ Best & Brightest Business Majors of 2021. Entering its 6th year, the Best & Brightest features seniors who personify the best in business education. To compile this year’s list, P&Q invited each of the Top 50 undergraduate business schools to supply two representatives from their programs. The schools were given the flexibility to choose their students using their own selection criteria and process. However, P&Q encouraged the schools to consider students based on factors like “academic excellence, extracurricular leadership, personal character, innate potential, a striking personal narrative, and overall impact on the program.” Overall, the list includes 54 women and 46 men. In addition, 15 students hail from countries outside the United States, including Turkey, Ethiopia, Romania, Thailand, Haiti, and Ecuador.

Despite a sluggish economy, many Best & Brightest are already ticketed to the world’s top employers.  10 members have already accepted offers from Deloitte, with Bain & Company, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PwC scooping up 3 students a piece. In addition, you’ll find future consultants, bankers, and client developers at firms like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Microsoft, and SpaceX among the Best & Brightest. In addition, 9 graduates are returning to campus to earn Master’s and law degrees.

Upasana Barot

Such students include Leah Wren Hardgrove. A legally blind Marketing major from Washington University, Hardgrove will be joining Google in product management after graduation. At the University of North Carolina, Mary Laci Motley built EATS2SEATS, which enables non-profits to operate stadium concession stands to generate financing for their causes. Not only has Motley survived the pandemic, but has expanded her enterprises to seven venues. At Wharton, Cristina Pogorevici entered a war-torn country to study entrepreneurship. Some students even stepped into the role of leadership. Case in point: Upasana Barot. She developed a 6-module peer mentorship curriculum at the College of William & Mary – one that has been adopted campus-wide.

“It always makes my day when mentees reach out about their positive experience with the program,” she tells P&Q.

Who are some of the most promising Business majors from the Class of 2021? Where have they interned and where will they be working after graduation? Which faculty and classmates do they admire the most? And what were the biggest surprises they faced and lessons they gained on the way to graduation? Click on the links below to learn about the next generation of consultants, financiers, c-suite executives, and entrepreneurs.

2021 Best & Brightest Undergraduate Business Majors

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