Allison Schwartz (MBA ’25) evaluates just how helpful AI was for MBA interns.
For EC students, generative AI was hardly a reality in the workplace before starting HBS. ChatGPT’s consumer app launched on November 30th, 2022 – just a month before Round 2 HBS applications were due. On the same day EC students began classes last year, as we sat debating Supreme’s marketing strategy, OpenAI released the enterprise version of ChatGPT. While we spent the past year reading cases in Allston, our former employers have been experimenting with new ways to integrate AI into the workplace. Many students come to business school for a “break” from work, but during this period of historic platform shifts, how can HBS students ensure we’re not just sitting on the sidelines?
This summer, EC’s had the chance to get back in the game, and I connected with classmates to better understand how they sought to catch-up on the rapid adoption of AI. During their internships, students overall found AI valuable for research, but limited for complex analysis. They noted surprising differences in organizational AI policies and returned to campus eager to use AI for coursework and daily use.
For many students, the business school internship is a chance to pivot into a new function or industry. One EC, who previously worked in Consumer Packaged Goods (“CPG”), leveraged ChatGPT to get up to speed during her private equity summer internship. She used AI to quickly understand new industries and define complicated financial concepts, saying it was easier to use than Google search. However, she found AI less useful for building actual work products, especially data analysis. “I’d use ChatGPT to ask for 20 examples of opportunities in an industry and iterate with more specifics, such as companies within the UK and of a specific size. But it wasn’t very useful for analysis in Excel. ChatGPT was inaccurate with everything I tried, including running regressions and pulling in revenue data from the internet,” she said.
Another student used Perplexity to help with market research for her healthcare VC internship. “I basically used AI as a form of search,” she said. “AI was really good at finding academic articles related to my topic of interest because it can summarize lengthy documents. I used Perplexity because I needed to cite specific literature.”
Students found mixed signals regarding organizational AI policies. A student working at JPMorgan mentioned that OpenAI’s website was blocked internally. “I heard there’s a proprietary version being tested, but didn’t get any training on this,” they said. “I used my phone for ChatGPT and Perplexity, but definitely wasn’t supposed to.” At BCG, the opposite was true. “I used an enterprise version of ChatGPT and was praised every time I used it. I was even allowed to put certain case information there,” one previous intern said. “I also tried an internal GenAI tool for slide-building, but to be honest this did not work well at all.”
After engaging with AI this summer, some students are more determined to try new AI tools during the school year. “I still use ChatGPT nearly every day,” a student said. “It helps me define tricky concepts in cases and build additional arguments for case questions.”
“I’ve used AI for interview prep. Since Perplexity is connected to the web, I’ll link a company’s website before a call and ask Perplexity to analyze what the team does, any recent company announcements and suggested questions to ask my interviewer,” another student said.
As for the future? “AI has made me realize that the judgment piece of business matters so much more than being able to do the analysis,” another EC said. “But one thing I’ve stopped doing is saying ‘thank you’ to it. I’ve started to see ChatGPT as more of the internet than a person.”
Allison Schwartz (MBA ’25) is originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Computer Science. Prior to HBS, Allison worked as a data scientist in technology companies and political campaigns. She previously worked at Lyft, Modern Treasury and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
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